[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to RV Park Boss, a podcast for RV park owners. I'm your host, Jason Lafferty. This is a show where we dive deep into the challenges and rewards of park ownership and some funny stories along the way. This podcast is sponsored by RV Park Pros. 78% of all parks are self managed mom and pop operations. And aside from strong marketing, guest experience and proactive management, all those put together are keys to success and profitability for any park. So if you're trying to keep up with all this all yourself, there is a better way. RV Park Pros is a park management system that helps you maximize your occupancy and profits while optimizing your guest experience and retention, all without having to be involved in the day to day.
To learn more about how we can help streamline your park's operations, you can reach
[email protected] again, that's rvparkpros.com and today's RV park boss is Martin Evans, who moved from a successful corporate career to owning several businesses, including seven or eight oil change shops. Then move focus to acquiring and operating RV parks. In the last four months, he and his partners have acquired three parks in two states, syndicated a 2 million dollar raise, and is currently expanding one park 50% that he's actually working with us on. So, Martin, welcome to the show. How we doing, sir?
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Fantastic. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Yeah, awesome. Well, again, I appreciate your time scheduling this with us. We had to do a few attempts on both of our ends, but we made it here.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: This is great.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So I like to kick things off with a, with a question. So my question for you is, what's the biggest lesson or takeaway since acquiring these parks, these first few parks?
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Probably the biggest lesson, the takeaway. I'll give two. Right. They're both brief to you. First one is there's a lot of opportunity in this field. We kind of felt like there was. It's a mom and pop industry, as you said in the intro, it's still very much mom and pop. That means there's a lot of opportunity if you're ready to go after it. At the same time, pairing up with that, there's a lot of decisions to make, a lot of work to do, and it's not always clear how to get it done.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: It's not always obvious judgment calls. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Is this the right one or just the wrong one?
[00:02:06] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. So you end up with a lot of those things. And having run other businesses and worked in corporate things, can Match in a different way. But now it's coming very micro decisions, macro decisions, all the way from annexations down to, you know, do we replace that little pipe or the connection or you know, putting numbers on pedestals, you know, how do you get that done?
[00:02:30] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah, all the, all the little intricates, it's just a lot of little attention to detail stuff.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: So that's awesome. So, so we got. You said you have three parks. Were they pretty geographically strategic? Because, because me, when I got involved with four parks, it was more about the deal. And now it's 800 mile drive if I want to hit all four of them in a loop. So.
So like let's, let's rethink this again. You know, that's right.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: We, we did, we were a little bit more strategic on our first go round. Prior to RV parks, we did some short term rentals and we thought about destinations we, we wanted to be and it would be Florida, Panhandle, we sit in Texas, North Texas, it could be Idaho, Montana.
But then suddenly it's like, how do you support and service those things? So as we started with RV parks, we said we're going to stay a whole lot closer. We wanted to be within a five hour driving distance from home to there so we could be there in a day and still have a half day on the ground if something really blew up. So that was kind of our parameter and we've, we've stuck to that and that's been a godsend.
Two parks in Oklahoma, one in Louisiana.
So the two are about two and a half hours from us, the other's about five hours and five hours is a full day by the time we get there and do some stuff. But it gives us enough things to work with.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Sure, yeah, that's a good point because I mean it's really important to be able to get there when you need to. Just as important as lean on your on site staff and have their operations lined up.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Absolutely. And as these are first parks. Right. It's important to be close for us anyway. It's important to be hands on. We want to understand it and we'll scale over time, but we want to understand the operations from the ground up. At some point we'll be able to turn this over to other folks for these parks and then others. And when we get to that point, when we understand and have more better knowledge and experience, then we'll be able to manage remotely, better further distance. But for now we want to be able to get there to deal with things with the folks on the ground. So we're learning as they're also learning that we're doing.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And then you're just building your systems and you'll see trends, you'll see flows and you'll see, you'll see habits, you'll see, you'll see it for sure. Yep.
This is always a fun one, is how, how do you like or how do you go about like evaluating like the demand for the area, like the projections going forward, you know, is it a growing area, the demand for RVs? It's always kind of a judgment call obviously, because it's not multifamily. We don't have data for days because everybody's. It's all super private. There's not data to go off of. It's more of a gut instinct. So what are some things you've seen or kind of like little indicators that popped up to you about that when you're making those judgment calls?
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we used to have an oil. Oil change shop in West Texas. Small town, 10,000 people. And you know, when we first looked at it, we thought, oh my God, there's no way this town supports this business. Right. The size of the business we were buying. But that's what first open my eyes that there's a lot of stuff that goes on that you may not see. So understand what the product is you're selling and buying that. So as we looked at RV parks, we're looking solely at long term parks. We're not looking at transient. So we're not. There's not a lot of sexiness to the things, the amenities that are in there. It's basic, straightforward stuff.
We have good customers. So as we look at areas we start thinking about what are the, what are the employment drivers in particular or people. Reasons for people to stay long term. Could be seasonal as well. Yeah. But so far what we've seen is it's mostly workers coming and going. So you're looking at employment. Quick, quick metric is drive through downtown. If half the buildings are boarded up and it's derelict, it's not the right place. Right, right. Busting downtown, there's a reason to believe you see new businesses coming in.
Typically there's a Walmart or tractor supply or some of these kind of businesses in town. These folks are sharp in terms of store placement. So where we look, they have these stores in towns. You know, it's just a proxy for there's some things going on because that also brings other people into town.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, for sure. If they don't at least have like a small Walmart then it might make you, you know, they don't have to have that big Home Depot or Lowe's per se, but, but at least that Walmart tractor supply in the south, one.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Of the two of those or both.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: That's right, yeah.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Or Atwoods, whatever proxy for tractor supply. Yeah, but there's, there's others, you know, around different names, but they've got to have those kind of stores that brings people in, that brings jobs in. People want to live more or less close to kind of the center of things without necessarily being in it.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So in terms of like the, the workers, have you been able to like tap into like any of the, the local workforce and trying to figure out how to be like a referral. Referral source for them or something? Because I always try to think of ways to do that. Like one of my parks, there's a solar farm there and you can't get those big corporate companies on the phone. So I'll just drive up there and you'll see who the main guy on site is. You just give them some flyers and like we'll just offer them a. Hey, there's 50 bucks off any kind of referral you can give us for your workers as you come in.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Absolutely. We've done some of that as well.
Thankfully, most of our part, the two parks in Oklahoma are doing very well. They're pretty full with just normal word of mouth. And we put up some other stuff, putting up little basic social media posts and things. But everyone in Louisiana, we've started doing that as well because it ebbs and flows more on oil and gas pipelines, particularly gas, solar farms, those kind of projects that will come into town, traveling nurses. So we're reaching out to the hospitals, talking to the supervisors, and then construction areas. You find the supers on site and do exactly what you're talking about.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think it's great because I mean, I've seen a lot of success and just offering somebody 50 bucks for referral and they're like, hell yeah, that's great. Absolutely.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: And you're like, that's right.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Is, are you, are you guys currently looking for any, any more parks at the moment or, or like 2026 is around the corner or kind of. Got any plans for, for 2026 or goals?
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll continue to stabilize these two. We've got an expansion we're working with you on for the one park we'll get that filled up once that's opened up from the electric company, the whole park, and we're starting to fill that and that gets into a process.
The other one will be stabilized as well. So then we'll start looking at other parks. Our plan in 2026 is between three or four parks for the year.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That's nice. That's one quarter.
That's some active hunting.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: On.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: On PowerPoint and Excel. It shows up perfect. It should be so easy, Right?
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. Yeah. They'll just pop up and it's going to be great.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: That's right. That's right.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we're. I'm definitely looking. Looking as well. It's. It's kind of interesting in Texas because I think it was like a 50 increase in listings. Park listings for sale this 2025, like 3, 400 listings right now.
So obviously there was a shift in the market, and it's a buyer's market for sure.
And So I think 2026 is, in my opinion, is going to be good because 2025, you had a lot of sellers. They want a top dollar. It just wasn't happening. A lot of things are sitting. So I think a lot of realization is going to sit in, like, hey, I really freaking like to retire this year.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Like, let's, let's talk creative. Can we assume some loans and do some more owner financing instead of just traditional seller financing? Is there, you know, different things that we would. Could work to where it's successful for both parties?
[00:10:02] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: So I think we're going to see.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: What's that?
[00:10:06] Speaker A: I think we're going to see that little shift.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I hope so.
We've done conventional financing on one, which is an arduous task. I mean, it's, it's horrible and it's.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Especially with partners. Yeah. And it's.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: It's hard to find many lenders. Right. You. You do kind of the cocktail networking circuit. You know, you talk to lenders. Oh, what do you lend to? What asset class? Oh, we do them all. And you. Or RV park, they're like, oops, accept that. We don't do that. We don't like it. You know, whatever.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: So there's not that many lenders out there that are in the space and, and understand it and excited by it. We think there's huge opportunities. We've also done a seller financing, which has been a great opportunity as well. So I think, as you say, there's a lot of parks on the market. There's a lot of calls we get a lot of calls we make just kind of looking around and I think the longer they stay on, the more motivated it should be. A better market, more balanced. Not just buyers, but also sellers having realistic expectations.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, for sure. It's kind of, I think I forget how it goes, but you, you give them their price and your terms or, or your price and their terms kind of deal.
That's right. Yeah, that's, that's nice.
I'm definitely excited to try to get involved in a few more.
In terms of lending, that's always a popular one because if you're developing, you know, you can find local conventional banks and then SBA is a, is an easy one in that sense, especially a little experience. But acquisition, I think is a little nugget. You can usually, you know, hunt down your local banks within a two hour radius and then ask them if they've done an RV park before, kind of kick it off. But then after that, you know, it's the more regional or nationwide banks they don't want to do, or lenders, they don't want to do small deals. And then you know, like, oh, it needs to be an hour from a major metro area or like there's weird parameters. So I think it's really important to always be building networks, especially on the acquisition side.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Absolutely. And that's what we look for solely or acquisitions. We're not looking to build anything ground up.
Our belief is you're. If we have an acquisition, we're making a bet on whether we can take over that park and, and grow it in whatever way it needs to grow.
But it's, there's an existing business. If we're doing a buildup. Our fear is there's two risks there that we both, that we have to account for both. One is that we found the right place that will have the demand that we expect and then the second one that we can run it. So if we can eliminate that first risk, we'll give some premium to the, to the seller, you know, for having run and operated a park. But a lot of these parks, when you're looking on the long term side, they're selling for about replacement value of a build out.
So when you start thinking it's already an existing business with noi, it's cash flowing from day one and you just have to figure out how to grow it.
That's the challenge we're choosing to take on.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Because a lot of people talk about infrastructure, but you know, with RV parks is 90% is you know, how are your roads and pads doing if it's a park a little bit older and then your water, sewer and electricity, you know, your electric has like a 25, 30 year lifespan.
You know, probably water is technically something similar, sewer technically something similar. But there's always plus or minuses. But if it's always existing and then you're taking over a park, just having a little bit of a, a maintenance hat on, you know, ideally that's a little bit better to start from scratch. You know, if you start from scratch, you can design it, you know, maybe a little bit better or you just have that unique location that's really high in demand. But.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, yeah. In the future I think we'll move into transient parks. Right. And, and look more destination based because we are RVers, my wife and I as it is, and, and we enjoy going around up to the upper west, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming area with RV through Colorado, everything and love these destination parks. Yeah.
But at the same time from a business perspective we like the lower overhead, lower cost and more the simplified operations of a long term park over a transient.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Right now I think I got the same, same ideology on that as well. I just kind of gravitate towards affordable housing, you know. Exactly. Just keeping it nice and easy for them because it's a, it's a different decision. You know, if they're workers, they, you know, you focus on having an easy process for them to come in and out. You know, if they paid for a month, but they got called to working across the state, you know, prorate their return. So next time when they come back in a few months, they'll be happy to come back and not, not look at you as the guy that stuck them for 200 bucks when you didn't really need to.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: That's right, exactly, exactly.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: But yeah, this different clientele base.
But I'm with you on the same side as the destination transient one too because you know, at the end of the day this would be the ideas have places you can go and enjoy yourself too, not just be a job.
Right. You know. Yeah.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: And my wife and I both came out of the consumer business world or consumer product world in business and corporate stuff for a number of years and love the consumer insights and really get into the mind of the consumer who's coming.
With transient parks you just have a lot more repetition, a lot more things you can do, a lot more ways.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: To add value to those ancillary income for, for amenities.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Absolutely. So if you're not adding 10 other things in there Then you're missing a couple tricks there.
But right now, as we start into the industry and operating the parks, we've stayed on the, on the long term side.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I like it for sure.
But the short term though, I mean, that keeps evolving almost every few years, you know, with just different things like, like interview this guy at the, at the national RV park conference called Companies Joyride. And they took all the technology and stuff from like Lime Ride and all your electric scooter rentals that years they spent R and D, you know, coming up with all this technology to get approved for all these cities. So they're just taking that, putting that technology on like a golf cart. So then you get a golf cart leasing company, you got your golf cart, you put the technology on it and then bam, you just, you got an app for, for your campground. You can set your parameters. People can just, you know, check in. You'll see those at like state parks for, for kayak rentals now too, where you just scan a QR code and then it opens the lock and then you got a rental for how many hours?
Wow.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: So that's impressive.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Yeah, so those are more exciting. So I can't wait to get like my own park because we're doing some of that on the management side for other people. But I'm really excited to get my own park where there's like some extra ATV trails and just golf cart friendly. You know, that stuff's fun for me.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Absolutely. And that's like some of the things we work with a couple masterminds and some of the transient parks that they do, things like book reading time. Right. So you can schedule to have someone from the park come around with warm cookies and do a book reading for your little kids. If you got 3, 5, 7 year olds, whatever. And they come around, get some cookies, they have two or three book readings, you know, but right before bedtime and the kids go off to bed or they hang out, whatever. But you look at that and you're paying maybe 15 bucks an hour to the employee, but you're charging them 15, 20 bucks per session for 15 minutes. You know, the numbers make a ton of sense. And you just.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Because you already have the on site staff and.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Exactly. They're already there.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: And your on site person that is there, they're. That's probably like a highlight of their day, you know.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: They're probably really enjoy that.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: And it just creates a beautiful memory for everybody. Oh, remember when, you know, whatever.
So there's all those kind of options and Opportunities like that on the transient side that, you know, one day we'll get to.
But for now, we like running the businesses, making decisions, figuring out how we scale this in a way that's interesting to investors today and hopefully new investors down the road as well.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I guess to switch it up a little bit on the investor side, I'm seeing, I don't do a lot of, I don't do much capital raising or part. It's more, more like I'm finding an opportunity, I find a partner kind of deal and eventually I'll get involved with the, I have one capital raising partner but get more involved into that. Maybe start my own fund one day. But in terms of like investor decision making, you're seeing a lot of like scarcity and people hesitant this past year because that seemed like a common theme talking to a lot of colleagues.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: You know, it was interesting.
We, it was our first syndication. So we raised for, for the parks and raised a couple million bucks and, and we were told, you know, maybe it'll take about a month per million raised. So we expected a couple months.
We went out and we did a couple things, maybe a little bit different, but we had no problem raising the money. We, within about 10 days we were fully funded, committed, let's say everybody. We were overfunded. We were overfunded about 20%, you know, from what we're expected to raise. And then we actually got overfunded because folks were coming in and we thought we had it right. Then all of a sudden, bang, bang, bang, a couple more and we had more than expected. Right. So we kind of trued that up.
But we had a great reception to it because I think the returns were strong, the opportunity made sense. It's a new asset class for every one of the investors. Yeah, we were all first time park operators, but we had deep business experience and a humility that we know there's a lot we don't know, but we're going to figure it out quick and I like that. Yeah. And we put in, we put in about 35% of the equity on the front end to be able to say first dollars in or ours. So we're going to be equally aligned.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: That's key.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: The other 65% comes from the investors so they know that we've got skin in the game as well.
It's not just, you know, 100,000 across a couple partners. It was, it was material to everybody and I think that resonated quickly. So then as we start talking about the deal, the Opportunity. I think it became obvious.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: The type of investment that's there.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Yeah. It's all about positioning and yeah, that's, that's great because that was my thought too. Is like, because I'm involved in four. Four parks I have now is like once I get to a point, like maybe like use one or two of those parks into a new syndication. So like, hey, look, I have some cash and, and this is my life. And I have my own park that I already didn't have to do. Put this in here. So I got skin in the game too.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: I mean, I think that makes a big difference.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And you've got a lot of what we don't have didn't have coming in, which is experience on building and operating parks and running the business. Right. Because those are two very different things.
So we said we're partnering with folks like you and RV pros on the build out of the expansions and the other things and Strateg advisors. Right. Talking, you know, in our regular networking conversations on the other side. We've run a lot of different businesses. We've been in corporate, We've seen what scale looks like.
We understand how to build the scale.
So it's just a matter of time.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: It's applying those skills. So we do things now looking and saying if we've got, we can do it one way today, but if we've got five parks, 10 parks, we're not going to do it that way. So let's start out there.
What would that look like? And maybe there's a half step between here and there. But you don't have to do just the band aids today if you know you're going to be in a very different spot.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Or another way of saying that is now the deal makes sense. Now the numbers make sense, but as we grow them out, they're going to, they're going to get even more efficient and they're going to even. They're going to feed off each other even more than that.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Double down optimization.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: Yep, exactly.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: That's awesome.
That's awesome, man. Well, I think it's a good, a good session we had here. I think it's a good stopping point. Again, I appreciate your time. And is there any way that if somebody want to listen to this and wanted to reach out to you would be a good way to do so?
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Absolutely. Best way. Phone number 214-335-3737 or obviously email and text as well on that.
Or email. Martin evproperty.net. and that's Evans Venturi, so evproperty.net either way is fine. Love to hear from folks, if there's anything I can help with.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: Sure, sure. That's. That's the. That's the secret sauce is the more I talk to people, the more you just offer to help people and then just more stuff that's magically comes up. And it's not really magical, but it is.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: Absolutely. And you guys, you and. And Chris and the make pretty team up there have been amazing to work with. We've done great work. So I know you weren't asking for that, but I will give it unsolicited.
As you look around for vendors and providers, you quickly come and meet up with folks that are also looking to do a good job and work together with folks they like.
That's what we found with you.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: Awesome. Yeah, I really appreciate that, and I'm excited to get back up there in a few days and.
And finish up that expansion for you, so.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Awesome. All right, folks, listen to this. If you guys own at least one RV park and want to be on a Future episode of RV Park Boss, you can apply
[email protected] that will do it for us. Thank you.
