Wondering if anyone rents out RVs in their parks. If so, do you think they are good for rentals? Is the maintenance more costly or difficult than regular MHs? Do you find it’s harder to find renters for them?Thank you for any information.
We do not rent them out. I want to point out not all zoning will allow RV’s in mobile home parks. In fact- 50% of my parks will not allow them- period. They can not be set up in the park at all, it is a different type of zoning.
We don’t do it today, but I did it 15 years ago in my first park. There are some distinct problems with that concept that you need to be aware of. First of all the RVs don’t hold up well at all to typical renter abuse. You’ll get R&M calls almost immediately as RVs are built very gingerly and things like the toilet seat will rip off after two days of a 300 lb. guy sitting on it. The other problem is that the type of tenant that wants to live in a rental RV is the absolute bottom of the barrel. My final tenant was a carnival worker that was found to have four hookers at a time in the trailer and, when that wiped out his paycheck, just walked off and abandoned it. After about six months of the experiment, I sold both RVs for $500 each (I had only paid about $2,000 each to begin with) and combined the two lots together and brought in a regular mobile home. The moral: RVs may make for the worst rental properties of all time.If your park is in an oil &gas area you might fare better with the quality of tenant. If your park is in Wisconsin, they’ll probably renovate the RV for you for free, stay until they die, and leave you a large inheritance in their will. But in a rough and tumble southern park, you’re probably asking for trouble.
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I’ve got a friend who does them off/on in WA here with success when he can’t find a MH. He’s in a really tough market without much economy so goes out and buys the RVs for 4-5k a pop and does the rent credit thing. It could be that the cost of living is so high here that more people are living in RVs. Western WA pad rents are high, 400+ on the I5 corridor. I would not even attempt it in Eastern WA where pad rents are 250 and the tenants are connoisseurs of crystal meth.
Thank you for the replies. The area I’m in does have a lot of RVs and RV parks that are constantly full. We have a lot of work going on at the chemical plants, apparently. The maintenance issue did seem scary to me. They seem to have expensive specialty parts. I keep chuckling over the image of the 300 lb man sitting on the flimsy toilet seat!What got me thinking about it in the first place was an old post on here where someone said they make excellent rentals. They didn’t expand on why they were good. But in searching for MHs to buy around here, I keep running into sellers wanting them moved off the property, or the ones in parks are going for high prices. I’m guessing that we have a high demand here (Houston area) and the immigrant population seems to buy them for high prices. There does seem to be a supply of RVs at reasonable prices, and they would be cheap to move unlike a MH.
Sounds like you have all the makings of a test. Buy a cheap RV, put it on the lot, rent it out, and see what happens. If it works, buy more. If it fails, sell it for what you have in it or a loss and move it out. Many mobile home park success stories are based on testing theories and seeing if they work. The industry is still young enough that nobody has all the answers, and every market is different.
Well, I bought my first one yesterday. Now very nervous about how it will go, but I’ll find out!
At least it makes for a cheap test.
Well I’m curious, how did the RV test work out?
I have a park that does allow a percentage of rv’s and I have 2 that came with the park and they stay rented. They are in a oil area and have no problem renting them. So far tenants have not destroyed them, but the parts are a little pricey. Some parks have converted to rv only and charge $450-$475 month all bills paid… tenant owned rv’s that is.
I know most of you are discussing leasing travel trailers, but certainly be careful leasing a driveable RV. Those demand specific insurance coverage, else not only will damage to the RV not be covered, but the auto liability may follow you too. The coverage issues are difficult enough that only companies that specialize in RV rentals typically ever rent them out - except for an occasional MH Dealer who took one in trade then found out the hard way that coverage for RV damage is tenuous at best.