RV park to a micro-resort

My sister Karina(I call her Kar or "the little one") came to visit yesterday.

Rod and I fly to San Diego this week, so she caught me right before the trip.

Somehow the conversation drifted to real estate.

With us, it always does.

Karina has spent the last five years in real estate investing, with the past three focused on RV parks.

She has closed on several RV parks and currently owns a park in Bryan, TX.

Behind those closed deals sit thousand leads, hundreds of conversations with park and campground owners, dozens of park walkthroughs, and a few properties that went under contract and died in inspection.

We were dissecting one of those recently lost deals when I realized: this is tomorrow's newsletter.

So I asked her to share the three things she checks first when buying an RV park to convert into a cabin resort. Here they are.

Why buy an existing park at all?

Quick context before the tips. Buying an existing campground or RV park is one of the fastest paths to a micro-resort, and here is why:

The hard part is already done. Zoning, use permits, road access, water, power, and wastewater already exist. Getting raw land entitled for hospitality use can take a year or more. An operating park skips most of that fight.

You buy income, not just dirt. RV pads keep producing revenue while you phase in cabins. You are not carrying a dead asset through construction.

Infrastructure is expensive to build and cheap to inherit. A new septic system for even a small park is a major capital expense before you place a single cabin. Poor soil can double or triple the cost.

But here is the catch. The infrastructure you are inheriting was designed for RVs, not cabins. Cabins with full bathrooms and kitchens put more load on every system.

That is exactly where deals fall apart, and exactly what Karina's three tips are about.

Tip 1: The septic system is probably undersized

Many original septic systems were permitted for a specific number of RV pads. Say seven pads. Then over the years, owners added more pads. Or a shower house. Or a laundry room. All tied into a septic system that was never designed for it.

The result: an overloaded drain field. Karina sees it constantly. The field gets oversaturated and stops draining properly, because too many things are connected to a system built for less.

Seeing a septic system on the property does not mean you can add cabins to it. A cabin with a full bathroom and kitchen generates more wastewater than an RV pad. If the system is already maxed out on RV load, cabins will push it over the edge.

How to check it:

Pull the original permit documents. Request the septic records from the county or the local permitting authority. In Texas, on-site sewage facilities are permitted through TCEQ or its authorized local agents. Compare what was permitted against what is actually connected today. A gap between the two is a red flag.

Side note from Karina: a red flag is often not a deal breaker but a negotiation lever.

Order a hydraulic load test. An inspector runs a large, measured volume of water into the system and watches the drain field. A healthy field absorbs it. An oversaturated field cannot take more water because the soil is already wet, and the water backs up. The test is cheap insurance on a six or seven figure purchase.

Why it can kill a deal: drain field repairs are expensive, and full system replacement costs even more. Worse, you cannot always replace or expand. If the property does not have enough suitable land for a bigger drain field, you are stuck. Check whether a new drain field can even be built, and where. Karina knows one investor who had to remove several RV spots just to give the field room to drain properly. He bought a park and then had to shrink it.
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Tip 2: Look for daisy-chained electrical

There are two ways to wire a park. The right way: each pad gets its own conduit running back to the panel. The cheap way: daisy-chaining, where power runs from the panel to one pedestal, then jumps to the next, and the next.

Daisy-chaining can be done correctly. But it is often done to save money, and that is where problems start. Too much load stacks on one run, connections overheat, and the 30-amp and 50-amp plugs start burning.

When Karina walks a park during inspection, melted receptacles are one of the first things she looks for. They tell you the system is running past its limits.

The math. A 50-amp pad can draw up to 12,000 watts. A 200-amp panel comfortably supports four of those pads with individual runs. That is the conservative build. But electrical code allows demand factors, on the theory that not every RV maxes out at once. So some parks legally hang seven 50-amp pads on a single 200-amp feeder.

Here is the problem with that logic in Texas: on a 105-degree August afternoon, every single AC unit in the park is running at once. The demand factor assumption collapses, the system runs at its ceiling for hours, and connections cook. A park can pass code on paper and still melt plugs every summer.

How to check it: walk the park and open pedestal covers. Look for melted or discolored receptacles and scorch marks. Ask how the runs are wired: individual conduits or daisy-chained. Count how many pads share each panel. And remember that cabins with mini-splits, water heaters, and full kitchens will demand steady power, not the intermittent load the system was built for.

Tip 3: Visit during heavy rain

Elevation and grading get the least attention and kill just as many deals.

Karina's best test costs nothing: visit the park during a heavy rain.

Watch how water moves. Does it drain off the property, or does it pool on pads and roads? Just as important, watch what flows in from neighboring properties. You can grade your own land perfectly and still get flooded by the ranch uphill.

Poor drainage destroys roads, especially gravel. Every big storm washes out material, and you pay to replace it. Again. And again. On a cabin resort, standing water also means muddy guest paths, wet crawl spaces, and one-star reviews.

How to check it: time a visit with a storm if you can. If you cannot, walk the property after rain and look for erosion channels, washed-out gravel, and low spots with standing water. Pull the FEMA flood map for the parcel. And look uphill: everything up there drains toward you.

One last thing: trust but verify.

The seller will tell you the septic was upgraded. The broker will tell you the electrical is up to code. The listing will say the property drains beautifully.

Do not take any of it at face value. Pull the permits. Run the tests. Stand in the rain. Every claim has to be verified, every single time.

That’s all for today,

Till next week, dear readers.

p.s. Putting it out here since it's a small world: both Karina and I are looking to buy RV parks/campgrounds in Texas in the near future.

If you happen to know someone who might be interested in selling, let me know.

A piece of land without any infrastructure but with some natural elements could work too.