Heather Blankenship (02:56):

I started Google searching RV parks for sale, campgrounds for sale and I found one in the tourist town near where I lived. So I called the local bank and this was after the market had collapsed. So banks were willing to do loans in ways that they weren’t previously and that they aren’t now for things that they still had on their books because let’s get real, banks don’t want to operate properties.

Heather Blankenship (03:16):

So any amount of money they’re getting paid is better than the no money they’re getting paid when they’re trying to operate themselves. I call them and I’m like, “I want to buy this.” And they said, “Okay, how much money do you have?” And I’m like, “I don’t have any.” It was $3.2 million and long story short, they gave me a non-recourse loan with no money down, but I had to figure out how to run an RV park, and my first payment was $18,500, and I had never paid more than a normal payment before in my life. Kind of a freak out moment and a little bit of motivation to be like, “Okay. I got to figure this out.”

Robert Leonard (03:51):

For those listening that aren’t sure the difference between recourse and non-recourse loans break that down for us.

Heather Blankenship (03:57):

Yeah. So if you think of it like your family home that you live in, if you were to not pay your payment and the bank decides it’s going to take it back, you’re going to have to file for bankruptcy and they’re going to take that back. That is your recourse that you’re going to lose at home and you’re probably going to have to file for bankruptcy if you stop paying all your bills. Non-recourse means I could simply change my mind and be like, “Here you go. You can have it back.” And there would be no repercussions.

Robert Leonard (04:23):

Especially in today’s world, that sounds like a pretty crazy opportunity that you had with that bank. What kind of bank was it? Was it a small community bank? A small credit union? And why-

Heather Blankenship (04:34):

It is. It’s a local bank. And I always tell my students that building those relationships with local banks when you’re getting started is going to be, make it or break it for your investing career, because you’re not just a number like you are when you… The big banks like Wells Fargo or Chase or whoever. They care nothing about you, and you’re one of a billion customers and you’re just a number. So building those relationships with those small local banks is make it or break it.

Robert Leonard (05:00):

So what did the terms look like on the loan?

Heather Blankenship (05:03):

I don’t even know. I didn’t know enough to even understand the terms. I didn’t know enough to even know I was buying real estate because most RV park owners think of themselves as business owners. They don’t realize that they also own real estate because unlike multifamily or the normal asset classes that we’re used to buying, RV parks are this interesting mix between real estate and a business. We’ve got 10 to 12 different streams of income and all of these operations.

Heather Blankenship (05:31):

So it’s not the passive real estate investment that you’re used to. But because of that, it’s like this perfect world with cashflow and appreciation that you don’t get in some other asset classes.

Robert Leonard (05:42):

How did you make that first payment?

Heather Blankenship (05:44):

So there were people living there in their campers. There were 100 people living there with refrigerators and mailboxes outside. They were paying $300 a month and that included everything. It wasn’t anywhere near enough to pay all of the bills. And so luckily, I had a small savings and was able to get through that first couple of months of paying, but that was going to run out quick. I knew enough to be dangerous about things like Google AdWords and pay-per-clicks and social media.

Heather Blankenship (06:14):

So before everybody was putting their stuff on Facebook and you could still grow organically. Again, this is 11 years ago. I created a Facebook account and worked really hard to build that up to, I think it got up to like 30,000 people for campers, which was a lot back then. And using Google AdWords and pay-per-clicks. And it being in a tourist town, quickly had lots of customers for camping and things like that. And I made the right super cheap to bring those first year of customers in.

Robert Leonard (06:43):

Was it a campground that could be… I think you said it was in the south, right? So was this something that could be used year-round?

Heather Blankenship (06:49):

That property is 10 months? So it’s in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which is a huge, booming tourist town now. Not that there weren’t tourists back then, but that town has grown enormously in the last couple years. But it’s about a 10 month season. January, February, there isn’t really anybody there. It’s snowing. However, in an RV park, there are so many moving parts and your occupancy is so high in season that you need those two months to clean everything up, make repairs, deep clean the cabins to get you going into that next season. So you need that little bit of downtime.

Robert Leonard (07:23):

A little bit of a spoil alert, but do you still own it today?

Heather Blankenship (07:26):

I do. It’s crazy. So from the 3.2 million that I paid for 11 years ago, it is now worth 13 million.

Robert Leonard (07:35):

Talk about some appreciation.

Heather Blankenship (07:37):

Right? Yeah.

Robert Leonard (07:39):

And is that from mostly you being able to drive up NOI and increase the profitability of the property?

Heather Blankenship (07:46):

Yeah, it’s a mix between, obviously, things are going to grow anyway. As time goes on, we talk about long term holds. Even if you mess up a little bit when you buy it, if you plan on keeping it for the long term, it’ll eventually make up for it. So it’s a little bit of that mixed with operations. Operations is the key to being successful with something like an RV park and adding all those extra streams of revenue as well as dynamic pricing with your software and being able to manage those rates and maximizing your occupancy through all of that. So all of those management and operations are make it or break for your income in that type of business.

Robert Leonard (08:23):

Some people listening to the show maybe have no experience with campgrounds or anything like that. So they might not know that it’s not great to have refrigerators out in these camp sites. But I do. I’ve spent a lot of times in campgrounds and in RVs and camping and doing things like that. So I know that’s definitely not great. So I’m guessing that’s one of the things you did when you got in there was clean up some of that stuff. But talk to us a bit more about what you did to revitalize this campground?

Heather Blankenship (08:49):

So I think what you’re talking about is a lot of people who aren’t campers themselves, they assume that mobile home parks and RV parks are very close to the same thing. And while they’re both land that you rent the site or the lot, they are very different. RV parks that are short-term RV parks which is what we’re talking about are vacation rentals essentially.

Heather Blankenship (09:11):

They operate just like an Airbnb might. People’s average stay is three days. They’re coming there. These people have campers that cost more than some people’s houses. Some of them are multimillion dollar buses. So these are people who are on vacation with their family for a couple days and they’re looking for that nice, outdoor hospitality resort feel when they go somewhere like that. And they’re paying between 50 and $100 a night for site that includes their hookups of power, water, sewer, things like that. Usually, there’s pools and some activities and more, but that’s the gist of it.

Heather Blankenship (09:43):

A mobile home park is where people have a trailer and they live there as affordable housing. Now, there are a few in places like Florida and California that are people’s kind of second home in their very, very nice mobile home parks, but that’s not what most of them are. There are long-term RV parks where people live for affordable housing, but that is less common than what we’re talking about with that kind of short-term outdoor hospitality resort.

Heather Blankenship (10:10):

So imagine you’re taking your family on vacation in your very nice camper and pull up and the people next to you have everything they own outside, including their refrigerator, and they’ve got tarps everywhere, and it’s just not a good scene. That’s not going to work for people who are on vacation. So when I first bought the property, I found this city ordinance that didn’t allow refrigerators or tarps outside. Something to do with kids, getting in them and getting stuck and potentially, which is a real risk.

Heather Blankenship (10:41):

So I was able to evict most of them based on them violating the city ordinances and being unwilling to clean up. Obviously, we gave them the opportunity to clean up and all of those things, but most of them were able to be evicted due to that.

Robert Leonard (10:54):

Was it like a true eviction process like you would for, say, any normal rental property?

Heather Blankenship (11:00):

So different states have different laws on that. And that one, because the people had been living there for so long, they were considered residents. So you’ll even notice in some states when you’re a camper, they won’t let you stay at a site for more than two weeks. Maybe you can check back in and say on a different site, if you want to stay longer than that, but they don’t want to risk you turning into a resident and having rights, like somebody who would live there. The laws are different depending on what state you’re in.

Robert Leonard (11:27):

So given that, I’m assuming you probably don’t do seasonal sites?

Heather Blankenship (11:31):

No, I don’t do seasonal sites. But however, seasonal sites are really great method for parks. A lot of parks in the north do this. People will rent a site for a season and they’ll pay a couple thousand bucks and they can come and go. But most of the time, those parks have a requirement that somebody has a second home and those operate like a lake house. People will drive an hour or so and go visit it every weekend and that’s kind of where they hang out. But there’s always that requirement of they have a second home, so they’re not running into that same risk.

Robert Leonard (11:59):

That’s exactly what my parents do. So for the first about… I’m 27. So for the first 17, 18 years of my life, we would go to a campground up north here in New Hampshire, and we would just go for a week or so every year in the summer. And then after that, my dad was like, “I want to do this more than just once a year.” And so he ended up going seasonal at a campground just down the street. And exactly like you said, he pays like three or $4,000 for the year, but he has this camper there all year. Now, he can go basically anytime he wants. For the last 10 years, we’ve been able to kind of just go up there. It’s like kind of like a cheaper way to have a lake house, basically.

Heather Blankenship (12:31):

Exactly. And there’s also a lot more community involved in it. Oftentimes when you have a lake house, you’re kind of secluded into yourself. It’s not a community environment. So most of the people who enjoy doing that are people who want to hang out with their buddies. In Wisconsin, almost every campground has a bar. And so everybody’s hanging out at the bar and they’re all buddies and BFFs that they go hang out with on the weekend. So it’s a lot more community involvement.

Robert Leonard (12:57):

It’s funny because that’s exactly how this is. I think my dad was the first of his friend group to move in there. And then obviously he made friends and met people while he was there as well. But then five, six, seven, eight of his buddies all got campers there, all seasonal there now and pretty much my dad’s friend group almost runs the whole campground now. It’s funny because wherever you are in the US, it sounds like it’s kind of pretty similar.

Heather Blankenship (13:18):

Yeah. Well, other than in the south, it’s more like a hunting camp, or deer camp, or fishing camp. It’s usually related to one of those activities, but it’s the same idea.

Robert Leonard (13:28):

What’s interesting about one of the things you mentioned that I really hadn’t given much thought until right now was that you talk about how if you’re there for X period of time, that’s too long, you have these rights. I never really gave much thought to that, but my dad does get a tax bill from the town every year for his spot.

Heather Blankenship (13:45):

Yeah. Different counties and cities all operate different ways, but there’s always some version of it. If you’re there over X amount of time, this is no longer a vacation.

Robert Leonard (13:55):

Yeah. It’s really interesting. The other thing I believe you briefly mentioned that you implemented maybe some software and just got more modern management. I want to hear a bit more about that because all of my experience with campgrounds at least here in the Northeast and specifically the one that I have a lot of experience with at my dad’s campground is they’re just so old school. This guy has owned it, I don’t know for how long, but decades and decades. It’s probably 30, 40, 50 years and it’s like, “Oh, yeah. Go to the office and pay your cash for your weekend and we’ll write it on our little notebook and that’s how we’ll record our accounting.”

Robert Leonard (14:28):

So I want to hear a little bit more about the kind of modern technological kind of advancements that you’ve made with your campgrounds.

Heather Blankenship (14:34):

It’s interesting that you word it that way because as of last year, and the new statistics haven’t come out yet, 88% of RV parks are mom and pop owned. And it works exactly like you’re talking about. And even when you’re trying to purchase them, sometimes it can be difficult because their bookkeeping is like, “Eh, I don’t know about that.” Because you can’t take their word for it with the cash that they say they’re taking in.

Heather Blankenship (14:56):

So it’s one of the deterrents for some people trying to figure out how to invest in them. However, that is the huge advantage when you’re trying to figure that out because if you go in and you update some basic operational issues like software and proper accounting, you can dramatically increase the value with that low hanging fruit instead of big halls of massive capital to remodel and things like that.

Heather Blankenship (15:20):

Not that you don’t oftentimes need to remodel, but it’s not the same when you can make small operational changes to dramatically increase your revenue. And some of them that we’re talking about are dynamic pricing. So for people who aren’t familiar with dynamic pricing, it’s the same thing that a hotel or an airline would do. When your occupancy is low, your price is going to be less and the higher your occupancy grows, the higher your price increases.

Heather Blankenship (15:43):

So for example, at that original property we were talking about, my base price is about $50 and every 10% of occupancy, my price increases 10%. So that last site is going to be double the price was when the occupancy was low. Or maybe you have special event weekends or holiday weekends and the prices are going to be higher. It’s a very simple concept. But instead of having to manually figure that out, the software is going to automatically generate those prices.

Heather Blankenship (16:09):

As well as things that are as simple as online booking. You would be shocked how many RV parks do not take online reservations. And with the younger generations, if I can’t figure something out online to book, I’m moving on to the next park. I’m not calling and leaving a message and waiting two or three days for them to call me back. I’m ready to plan my trip now. So you’d be surprised by how many parks don’t do online booking with their websites.

Heather Blankenship (16:34):

And then the third and final thing, that’s a huge deal with the software is occupancy optimization. So if you think of it like a grid or Tetris, most of the time you’ll see your site numbers on one column and your dates at the top. Long time ago, before these sophisticated softwares came out, as owners, we would have to move people around to maximize our occupancy, manually sitting there, staring at it to get an extra say, 500 bucks.

Heather Blankenship (17:01):

Then let’s get real, most employees aren’t going to do that. So unless you’re the person that owns the park sitting in there doing it yourself, you’re losing out on thousands of dollars. So if you use site optimization with your software, it automatic moves people around to maximize that occupancy and results in a ton of extra money. I think my income growth was 40% the first year when I implemented that software.

Robert Leonard (17:22):

And for those who have been listening to the show for a while, you probably have heard us talk about this on a past episode with Travis about short-term rentals. This is very, very common in the short-term rental space. So I’m not surprised to hear that it’s kind of made it to another campgrounds really. In essence, it’s short term rentals, right? It’s just the difference.

Heather Blankenship (17:40):

Yes, It’s so much similar. It’s like having 133 short-term rentals in one place is how that property operates. Especially, there’s glamping tents, there’s tiny homes, there’s rental campers, which you were talking about earlier and there’s the RV sites. So you’re essentially running a giant short-term rental property.

Robert Leonard (17:59):

The online booking is another thing that I’ve actually had a bit of experience with. So my dad’s campground, they don’t do any online booking. So usually, I’ll just stay with him, but I do own an RV myself. So occasionally I’d want a spot and I’d tell him like, “Oh, just send me the website. I’ll go on and book a site and I’ll have it for the weekend.”

Robert Leonard (18:13):

He’s like, “Oh no, you got to wait until you come here and pay cash.” I’m like, “Oh my God.” And then the other piece was that I literally yesterday got home from a month long road trip. I was gone for an entire month in the RV. And as part of my trip, it didn’t stay in a campground every night, but I stayed every other couple nights just to empty the waste tanks. I was trying to find these campgrounds and I was absolutely shocked because I drove from New Hampshire to Florida.

Robert Leonard (18:37):

I was absolutely shocked how many campgrounds did not offer online booking. It just seemed like such an easy thing and I needed that because I might have been after hours or four hours or just didn’t work and I needed that online booking and they just didn’t offer it.

Heather Blankenship (18:50):

It’s amazing that you say that. I drove 6,000 miles from Key West out to California over the summer. I pulled an Airstream and kind of the same idea. And it’s more common out west I found that nobody has a website and you’re not finding them. Everyone is stopping and staying in truck stop parking lots because they can’t find something. You’re exactly right. It needs to be implemented.

Robert Leonard (19:15):

One of the other things that intrigues me about RV parks and campgrounds as an asset class is from my relatively limited research, it seems like seller-financing is actually a bit more common in this kind of niche than it is with other types of real estate, specifically residential real estate that a lot of people listening to the show are into. So have you leveraged this type of financing at all in any of your deals? I mean, in theory kind of the bank deal was kind of a seller-financing in a sense. But other than that, have you done any other seller-financing?

Heather Blankenship (19:46):

Yeah. You’re exactly right. seller-financing is a lot more common in RV parks and mobile home parks. And there’s a couple reasons. Normally when you’re buying multifamily or maybe you invest in single family homes, the person who owns usually has debt on it and they haven’t owned it for multiple generations. So seller-financing probably isn’t even available or these people are investors themselves and they plan on taking the money and doing a 1031 exchange and going and buying something else.

Heather Blankenship (20:14):

It’s a different person that you’re buying it from. If you remember earlier, I talked about how most people don’t realize that they even own real estate. They think of this like a business. Oftentimes it’s been in their family for five or six generations. It’s all that they know. They don’t owe anything on the property. So if you have a really great pitch to explain to them what seller-financing is, because initially they’re going to say no, because they don’t understand it.

Heather Blankenship (20:38):

But if you get a really great pitch where you can explain to them, “You’re going to pay most of this money in capital gains tax, if I give it all to you today. Here is the payment that you would get every month for the next X amount of years. And here’s the extra million bucks you’re going to make in interest that the bank would be making instead if I continue to pay you payments. So unless you have a plan that you’re going to do with this money, here’s why it would be beneficial to you.”

Heather Blankenship (21:02):

So having that really easy to understand pitch for seller-financing makes it really easy. And I don’t want to make people think that every deal is going to be willing to seller finance. It’s still rare. Needle in the haystack. You’re going to have to ask a hundred people before one of them say yes. But it is definitely way more common than going to get a multifamily that’s owner financed, basically doesn’t happen in today’s world. RV parks, mobile home parks is bigger chance.

Robert Leonard (21:25):

Yeah, that’s exactly kind of what my re search has said. I haven’t done it myself yet, but that’s kind of what my research has said. What do the terms look like typically on those seller finance deals on these RV parks or campgrounds?

Heather Blankenship (21:38):

It’s interesting that you ask that because it’s what everybody asks and it’s because we’re used to banks, where these are the parameters and they’re mostly not negotiable because they’re controlled by some higher body of whoever that’s saying, this is what exactly what you can do. Owner financing is like the wild west. They can ask for anything whether it’s they want half the money down or they want no money down, whether they want a crazy interest rate or they’re willing to do a low interest rate. Sometimes it’s only for two or three years, just long enough for you to get regular traditional financing.

Heather Blankenship (22:11):

Sometimes it’s 20 years and there’s a prepayment penalty and they don’t want you to get a traditional loan. There is no set method for owner financing. It’s all negotiable. And if that’s something that you really want, you need to listen to what the owner is telling you they need. If they’re 95 years old, likely they’re thinking this is going to be passed down to their family, meaning that what you are paying is going to then roll over to their children. And they like the idea of them getting payments for the next 20 years instead of one chunk of money that they might blow.

Heather Blankenship (22:42):

So you got to really pay attention to what the owner tells you that their needs are. Maybe they’re 60 and ready to retire, and they want that long chunk of money. Maybe they aren’t that interested in it and three years from now, they want you to refinance so that they do get that chunk of money. You really got to listen to what they want and structure it so that it’s appealing to them.

Robert Leonard (23:00):

With my small residential rental properties, the most important metrics that I personally look at are the cash on cash return and the monthly cash flow per door. How do you analyze a potential campground or RV park investment? What are the most important metrics that you’re looking for?

Heather Blankenship (23:17):

RV parks are more of an art than a science when you’re evaluating them. There are so many more moving parts than when you’re looking at small multifamily or single family homes because of all those different revenue streams we were talking about and a ton of different expenses that you might not find in other asset classes. And they’re also sold on a cap rate instead of price per square foot or comps. There’s not necessarily comps in the area all of the time.

Heather Blankenship (23:42):

For example, if we keep talking about the Pigeon Forage property that I have, if I would have tried to sell that five years ago, there might not have been that many transactions in the area to compare it to. So an appraiser is going to look at things like maybe Branson, Missouri is very similar to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. So looking at comps in other areas because they’re towns that are similar.

Heather Blankenship (24:02):

You’ve got to be able to look through their profit and loss statement and know what’s missing. A lot of times it’s payroll because mom and pop aren’t paying themselves or maybe they’ve got three or 4X or family members on payroll that aren’t real. Maybe pop’s truck is tied in there and doesn’t actually need it. So you’re kind of digging through and that’s the art of it, figuring out what should and shouldn’t be there in that profit and lost statement. And then they’re valued on a cap rate. So again, very different than your traditional single family home.

Robert Leonard (24:29):

Yeah. Are there any specific metrics like cash on cash or what is your cap rate?

Heather Blankenship (24:33):

Yeah. So you’re looking at cash on cash and you definitely want better cash on cash return than you would see. You hear on BiggerPockets, you’ll hear them sometimes talk about for smaller multifamily or single family homes like eight percent like the bottom of what you would want, like 13, 14%. So like a great… What do you usually look for, for yours?

Robert Leonard (24:51):

I personally don’t really get interested into like 20, 25%.

Heather Blankenship (24:55):

Yeah. That sounds more like short-term rental returns to me. People usually talk about 20% or higher for short-term rentals and you’re going to want the same thing for an RV park. Unless it’s a class A and a tourist destination and you’re really there for an appreciation play.

Robert Leonard (25:11):

What do you look for when you’re going to analyze a campground? And if you’re going to walk one, maybe you see one that you’re potentially interested in buying, what are the certain things that you’re looking for that tell you it might be a good deal? And then what are some of the red flags that turn you away? You see something in a campground you’re like, “Okay, I want nothing to do with this.” It maybe it’s location? Maybe it’s the amenities? Talk us through a little bit, your walkthrough process.

Heather Blankenship (25:35):

So the top three things that I’m looking for, first is going to be that location because you cannot change that. So what’s the demand for that location? Also, how many acres is it? Am I able to expand or am I tapped out? because you want to know how much more value add there is left. And third, I want to know about their utilities. Ideally, I want them to have city water and city sewer. If they had a well and city sewer, I would consider it. If they had septic and city water, I would consider it. But I really don’t want things like wastewater treatment plants and lagoons, and lift stations and some of these more complicated forms of dealing with the sewage, because those can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes more than the value of your property if something goes wrong with those. Utility side of it, is kind of make it or break it with your deal.

Robert Leonard (26:25):

What determines if you can expand? Obviously, you have to have the land available, of course, but is there… I know you can’t… Let’s say residential. You can’t just go build another building right behind your house just because you have the land. There’s a lot that goes into that. So is it kind of the same with campgrounds? Do you need permitting and things like that to add additional spots, or if you have the land, you can make more spots?

Heather Blankenship (26:44):

It’s all going to be different depending on where you’re at in the country. Some places in the country have stricter zoning laws and rules. You’re exactly right. Just because you have the land doesn’t mean you can do something with it. So oftentimes you’ll see people when they’re going through due diligence on an RV park, they will go ahead and start trying to go through that process with city planning and zoning, figuring out if they can expand.

Heather Blankenship (27:06):

But you need drawings from a civil engineer to go present to the city planning board, to figure out if they’re going to let you expand the property. And it’s not just that. Sometimes it’s the cost. One of the properties that I own, and this is actually the only deal I’ve ever made an offer on that I was the one who backed out. It was five that was attached to a property I already owned.

Heather Blankenship (27:25):

And during due diligence, we started doing exactly what I’m telling you about. We started getting the engineering drawings drawn out and planning for our city board meeting. And it turned out that I was going to need over a million dollars in dirt just to get the land level enough for the city to approve RV sites being put there, which put us at like, I don’t know, $120,000 per site to build it out. And there’s no way we were doing that in that location. Sometimes it’s even your expenses of what it will cost to develop in that area.

Robert Leonard (27:56):

Did you look at the payback period on that? Because if I’m thinking 120,000 per spot, that’s going to take a long time to get paid on?

Heather Blankenship (28:02):

Oh, yeah. I can’t remember exactly how the numbers turned out, but it was like you said, it’s so long that you’re like, “My money is way better spent somewhere else. This is not worth it.”

Robert Leonard (28:09):

I had a guest on the show recently, his name is Paul Moore back on episode 108 and we talked about how you can increase the net operating income and the value of your property specifically for self-storage, by adding other products and services like U-Haul and some other things like that. What types of products services do you add your campgrounds that increase the income and the value of your parks?

Heather Blankenship (28:30):

So it’s very similar when you talk about those things, that self-storage ads and you can add things like golf cart rentals are a huge value add. Your camp store. That original park that I was telling you about has a very small camp store and that small camp store takes in over $200,000 a year.

Heather Blankenship (28:47):

The laundry room. You essentially have a whole laundry room business, laundry mat business inside your property where you’re either collecting quarters. If you’ve updated your machines, it’s digital, but that’s a whole separate revenue stream in business.

Heather Blankenship (29:00):

You talked about rental campers. That’s a great side hustle with it. I have a couple rental campers, I think have six now at that original property and they’re each bringing in $30,000 a year, each rental camper. You’ve got the tiny homes. The tiny homes of that property bring in over half a million bucks a year. You’ve got the glamping side of it.

Heather Blankenship (29:17):

So I’ve got 15 glamping tents at that property. And again, they’re doing great. There’s all kinds of different revenue streams that you can add to the property to increase the value.

Robert Leonard (29:28):

You mentioned the campground stores. I have a lot of fond memories over my last 27 years of going to campgrounds in those little campground stores. They’re usually these tiny little shops and they have candy. And I know for me as a kid, I was always asking my dad for dollars or quarters and I’d run up to the store and buy as much candy as I possibly could.

Heather Blankenship (29:47):

Exactly. There’s candy, there’s ice cream. Most campgrounds also have some sort of food. That property has a pizza kitchen. There’s different trinkets and toys for sale that the kids have. But then there’s also the camping supplies. People forget their sewer hoses. They forget their water hoses. They forget their coax cable. So those are also some of your bigger ticket items that you’re selling.

Robert Leonard (30:08):

In addition to camp grounds and RV parks, you also invest in mobile home parks and section 8 multifamily properties. Up until relatively recently, you didn’t really hear a lot about people investing in mobile home parks. You also don’t really hear a lot of people talking about investing in RV parks or camp grounds right now. So do you think that camp grounds are going to gain traction and become a more popular asset class, similar to how mobile home parks have in recent years?

Heather Blankenship (30:36):

Absolutely. They seem to have already done that. The number of institutions that have contacted me and say, “How do we make money off of this type of property” is increasing dramatically. So it’s an asset class that is starting to get that recognition. So if it’s something you’re interested in, you need to figure it out now before the cap rates go to a number that regular people can’t purchase.

Heather Blankenship (31:00):

Mobile home parks have already done that. Sometimes you’ll see mobile park sell for a 4% cap rate. And if you don’t understand cap rates, you know that’s basically cheaper than the interest rate that we can get right now on them. So if you’re a regular person, you can’t purchase those. You’ve got to have debt that’s so cheap that it’s not relevant. And only those large institutions are able to do that.

Robert Leonard (31:19):

I know it probably varies from property to property, location to location, but what generally cap rate are you buying at?

Heather Blankenship (31:26):

Really depends on the park and how much deferred maintenance they have and what their location is. The offer that we put in last week was a 6% cap rate, but that was a tourist town, perfect class A park that had over 300 sites. If you’re looking at something that’s in maybe a B market and it’s still a really great property, but needs a little bit of value add, it’s not uncommon to see those eight, nine, 10% cap rates. But you’re not going to get that perfect park in a perfect town at a 10%.

Robert Leonard (31:55):

I know you were recently on the BiggerPockets Rookie Podcast, and I am friends with Ashley Kehr, the host of… And Tony, but also Ashley. And specifically Ashley, I know has taken an interest in campgrounds recently. Do you think you were kind of that push to get her into campgrounds? Or do you think that was kind of a separate kind of…

Heather Blankenship (32:14):

Actually, I think when I met Ashley, that is how I met her. She sent me a message on Instagram and she’s like, “Hey, I’m interested in RV parks.” And when I did that episode, she was talking about kind of same as you. “This is kind of self-serving, but I’m super interested in RV parks.” Because she’d made an offer on one and lost on it, but had been aggressively trying to find another one.

Robert Leonard (32:35):

Yeah. We were going back and forth and she was mentioning, she’s like… Because she was in a lot of different asset classes. So she’s like, “I really want to decide, focus on one.” And then a couple weeks later she came back and she’s like, “Campgrounds. That’s what I want to focus on.” I didn’t really understand where that came from at the time, but now having noticed that you were on the show and I was like, “Oh, I wonder if she was influential in that decision.”

Heather Blankenship (32:55):

Yeah. I think she made an offer on something. I haven’t heard her say how it turned out, but I know like you said, she’s doing a couple different things right now.

Robert Leonard (33:02):

After that first park you bought with essentially seller-financing from the bank, what have you done for financing for future parks? What are the terms, down payments, things like that? Look, like somebody is listening to this and probably like, “All right. Campground sound pretty cool. Maybe I’m interested. Maybe I want to get started, but how do I actually finance this? I’m not going to be able to do the same deal that Heather did on her first one. What can I expect if I go to get a loan today from a local bank or credit union?”

Heather Blankenship (33:26):

The difference is going to be in a local banker credit union, they’re typically going to have a lower LTV, meaning they’re going to give you probably 80% financing, but their interest rate is going to be a little bit higher than if you were to get some kind of agency debt or go through a professional loan broker. So my mastermind students were learning about exactly this last week and we had one of the guys that’s a loan broker come on and talk to us about it.

Heather Blankenship (33:51):

He’s at more like 70 to 75%. So you’re going to have to bring a higher down payment. But his interest rates are significantly different. And also his terms are longer so you might get a 25 or 30 year loan with him where with the local bank, you’re probably going to get 20 years. Whether your pain point is how much money you’re paying is the down payment or having that better interest rate, you got to work your numbers out and decide which works better for you. But I always stick with the local bank. Having that relationship with them has been amazing for my investing career.

Robert Leonard (34:24):

So is it safe to say that if we’re going to look to buy a RV park or campground, we’re probably going to need somewhere in the ballpark of 20 to 30% down?

Heather Blankenship (34:32):

Yes, which causes some people to go out and find partners or maybe private money to make up that difference because RV parks aren’t 100 or $200,000 single family homes. An expensive RV park’s going to be like half a million bucks, but even like a decent park is going to be multiple millions of dollars. So that down payment can get pretty hefty, which is why people usually do partnerships or private money.

Robert Leonard (34:55):

Can you BRRRR essentially a campground? And what does financing looks like in that kind of structure? Because I’ve been able to buy a couple rental properties at essentially $0 down because I BRRRR’ed it. So I’m curious if you could kind of do the same thing on a bigger scale with the campground?

Heather Blankenship (35:09):

Absolutely. That is what I have done to build my portfolio from that original park up to $30 million without any outside investors. That first park that we talked about being 3 million and now worth 13 million, I’m able to pull the equity from that property, which is essentially doing BRRRR out of it and then go buy the next property. I am under contract on a small motel by the beach. I’m super excited about boutique hotels right now. So I’m under contract on a property that is a block from the beach in Florida, and I’m pulling the equity from one of my other properties to then go buy that.

Robert Leonard (35:42):

You mentioned earlier that campgrounds are actually quite different than mobile home parks. But I’m curious, did you make the transition from campgrounds to mobile home parks because initially you thought they were going to be similar and then you were kind of surprised that they weren’t? Talk us through kind of that mindset of how you went from one asset class to the other and then how you were surprised that they were different, if you were?

Heather Blankenship (36:03):

Yeah. So like I said in the beginning, I didn’t understand I had bought real estate. I was thinking of it as a business. In about six years and once I got really great at RV parks, I decided this is not something I want to do during retirement. This is not a retirement job. This is very active. And I was a broker at the time also. I covered the US and Canada and I did about $300 million in transactions for RV parks and mobile home parks.

Heather Blankenship (36:28):

And learning more about mobile home parks, during that time, I realized that mobile home parks are kind of like RV parks. Only they are truly mailbox money. So the idea was someday I will want to sell those parks because I won’t want that active of an investment, and I want something that I can keep as my retirement. In the mobile home parks, even though they don’t have as much cash on cash return, they’re really great mailbox money for when you’re retired and getting that money every month.

Heather Blankenship (36:57):

So that was my section 8 multifamily that you were talking about. And my mobile home parks was the idea of these are the ones that I’ll keep and have my passive income when I’m tired of doing this.

Robert Leonard (37:06):

One of my main focuses right now for my investing is long distance rental properties. And the most common question I get, anytime I talk about long distance rentals, people say, “Well, have you ever been to your properties? Do you go to your properties? What does that look like?” So I’m curious to flip that question to you is do you go to all your campgrounds? Do you stay in them? Do you go there before you buy them? What does that process look like?

Heather Blankenship (37:28):

It’s interesting you asked that because I had the same question yesterday. It seems to be common. I have one property that I’ve never seen and I’ve owned it for two years now. Generally, on RV parks, because they’re larger purchases, I will go to the property before I buy it. I do not go before I make an offer. I do not go before I decide how much I want to pay, but I go during that due diligence process and make sure that I’ve got all my numbers written out accurately, and it’s exactly what I think it is.

Heather Blankenship (37:55):

Do I stay at them? I stay at one of them. I don’t usually say it the rest. When you were talking about you not hearing about people buying mobile home parks, or section 8, or RV parks, it kind of ties into that because it’s sexy or exciting to say that you own luxury Airbnb properties or these fabulous condos in some great city. In reality, mobile home parks and RV parks make way more money than those types of properties do. But they’re not something that people want to brag about and take their friends to. You may not always own properties that you want to stay in, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a great investment and make great money.

Robert Leonard (38:32):

A good friend of mine he’s in his 30s, and his whole life he had no idea that his dad owns… I forget the exact number, but it was like three or four. He just found out a couple months ago that his dad is like, “Oh, yeah. By the way, I own this campground, and this campground, and that campground.” He had no idea. In his 30s, he had no clue. I mean, I think it’s like you said, it’s just not sexy. So his dad never was just like… And he doesn’t stay in them like you just said. So he is just like never probably bragged about it or mentioned it. I know his dad. He’s a humble guy anyway, but it’s just like you don’t brag about having a nice beachfront condo in Florida. You know what I mean? It’s just different.

Heather Blankenship (39:06):

When it’s not things that the general person who doesn’t invest in real estate cares anything about. Unless they’re a camper, they don’t care anything about that. It’s almost, everyone’s like, “Ooh, a beach house.” But pretty much no one, if you’re not a camper is like, “Ooh, a campground.”

Robert Leonard (39:22):

So how about on the other side? One of the things that worries me is about these kind of sexy strategies, specifically Airbnb, I’ve had the interest in getting started in them recently, but I’ve kind of held off on pulling the trigger just because I’m worried about, not even so much a recession, but just the industry or the asset class as a whole kind of getting heated. So I’m curious what your experience is and what you think, and how you think campgrounds will hold up if a recession hits or something like that? I think mobile home parks will do really well, but I’m curious about the campground part.

Heather Blankenship (39:50):

So there’s two things I think of that way. First of all, if you have a single family home and your tenant leaves, you’re screwed. There’s no money coming. In an RV park, you have a lot of spaces and you have occupancy. So right now where the parks are at these higher occupancies and we’re making great money, most of us, if our occupancy was cut in half, which is extremely dramatic, it’s not likely going to be cut in half. You’re still paying all the bills and not losing your property.

Heather Blankenship (40:21):

Maybe you’re not rolling in the money, but everyone is still okay. So you could dramatically reduce occupancy and still be fine. Second, the statistics show that in a recession when something like that is happening, people don’t stop going on vacation. They change the way they vacation. They go on cheaper trips. They drive to places closer to home instead of buying a bunch of plane tickets. And a lot of times, RV parks are able to be that affordable vacation for them. They don’t necessarily suffer in a recession like that luxury beach rental might because it’s then too expensive.

Robert Leonard (40:57):

A third strategy that we’ve hinted at that you embrace or invest in is section 8. I’ve found that section 8 investing is actually a little bit of a polarizing strategy for many real estate investors. Some love it. They swear by it. Others absolutely hate it, say they will never go near it with a 10 foot pole. But it seems like you’ve had some good luck with it. So I want to talk a bit about that. First, explain to us what section 8 investing is for those who aren’t familiar and then tell us why you chose this niche of residential rentals to focus on?

Heather Blankenship (41:28):

It’s so interesting you word it that way because when I make TikTok videos related to section 8, I have a thousand comments of people calling me a slumlord and all these crazy, mean things. And then I have a thousand people being like, “Ooh, that’s kind of interesting. How do you do that?” So it’s like a love-hate relationship. And I have the same relationship with student housing. I owned 19 beds of student housing for a while and I’ve hated it. But you will meet a million people who makes tons of money in student housing and love it.

Heather Blankenship (41:55):

And my point with saying that is you kind of got to pick your poison because everything is going to have a negative side to it and figure out what you do and don’t want to deal with. I did not want to deal with students who needed their light bulbs change and would call me at 2:00 in the morning for petty crap.

Heather Blankenship (42:11):

You’re not going to get that with section 8 housing. So I bought my first section 8 property, I think it was six years ago now, and it was a duplex. And then I bought seven more units of it and kind of kept buying. What it is, it’s government subsidized housing essentially. People who are either low income or have some sort of issue with paying their own bills will apply for a voucher. It’s a voucher program.

Heather Blankenship (42:36):

And the government agrees to pay a specific amount of money for those people. Sometimes they pay all of their rent. Sometimes they pay a portion of their rent. It varies depending on the tenant that you have. So the government direct deposits the money on the first of every month into your bank account and the tenant pays their remainder.

Heather Blankenship (42:53):

Before you get excited about some kind of side hustle with that, if you don’t make the tenant pay their portion, it is illegal to accept the government’s section. So it’s still very similar to having to collect rent and things like that.

Heather Blankenship (43:04):

And talking about some people hating it and loving it, the stigma is “Well, don’t they tear up your property? Or they’re going to ruin it.” People tear up any kind of property. You have that issue even when it’s not section 8. But what I have found is a lot of these people, they have been on that wait list with section 8 for up to two years waiting for housing. Some of them were homeless before they got to that. Meaning they’re living on couches. Some of them have been living in churches and they are so excited to have their own place to live that they do not want to be kicked out of that program. Because if they mess up your property, they are kicked out of this section 8 program that they have waited to be in.

Heather Blankenship (43:44):

So a lot of them are really appreciative and really great tenants. I have over 100 units of that at this point. So don’t get me wrong. There’s definitely bad apples in that, but there’s bad apples in every asset class.

Robert Leonard (43:56):

My understanding is that you can still screen your tenants. Just because you have a section 8…

Heather Blankenship (44:05):

Yeah.

Robert Leonard (44:05):

Right? You have a section 8 property, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept the first section 8 tenant that applies, you can still screen your tenants.

Heather Blankenship (44:07):

Absolutely. And that’s the number one thing that I teach, screen every tenant. It doesn’t matter if they’re coming from section 8. You still want to do the background check. And if you do the background check and they had a horrible record 10 years ago, and you’re like, “Oh, they’ve been clean for 10 years. Make sure they didn’t just come out of prison.” Unless that’s your method. I met a mobile home park owner that was her thing and she only ran into people straight out of prison and she made great money. That was her version of rentals.

Heather Blankenship (44:29):

But make sure that you’re screening those tenants. Remember that it is affordable housing and nobody’s perfect. So have your guidelines. For example, one of my guidelines is they cannot have had an eviction within the last seven years because that’s leaning towards that. Are they going to tear up my stuff and not pay? And things like that. And then you got to have a guideline for criminal history too because they’re likely not going to have the most perfect criminal past.

Robert Leonard (44:53):

I’m glad you mentioned those guidelines because I was going to ask that. Because with a traditional tenant, typically one of the biggest kind of guidelines is that income. Typically, a lot of investors are looking at three times the rent for their gross income to be able to qualify for that rental. But with section 8, a lot of times they might not have income or they’re not required to pay. Like you said, they’re not required to pay the rent themselves. So I was wondering what are those important things that you look at?

Robert Leonard (45:16):

So I’m glad you mentioned those. And you also mentioned TikTok. I just want to briefly touch on that because I don’t make a lot of content on TikTok. Mostly because of those bad comments that you mentioned. I have some friends-

Heather Blankenship (45:26):

People are made.

Robert Leonard (45:26):

Oh, man. Instagram, 99% of my comments are really nice. They’re really great. Occasionally, you’ll get a bad add one here and there. But when I look at some of my friends that are big on TikTok like yourself, but like Tony Robinson from the rookie show, and then also Derek flipping a house, those guys, they’re great guys. I know them. They’re genuinely good people and they just get some of the absolute worst comments ever.

Heather Blankenship (45:49):

They’re insane. I think I have 70,000 followers on TikTok right now and a lot of them are like, “You’re not that hot.” You’re like, “No one said I was hot. I’m not over here in a bikini. We’re talking about real estate. This is unrelated.”

Robert Leonard (46:01):

It’s ruthless. It’s so ruthless.

Heather Blankenship (46:02):

Or they’re like, “You’re a witch that should be burned at the stake.” You’re like, “What? That’s really aggressive.”

Robert Leonard (46:08):

Oh, yeah.

Heather Blankenship (46:09):

They’re mean.

Robert Leonard (46:09):

It’s rough.

Heather Blankenship (46:10):

They’re mean.

Robert Leonard (46:10):

It’s rough for sure. We’ve talked so far throughout this conversation all about the good parts of campgrounds, RV parks, mobile home parks and section 8 rentals. But now I want to talk a bit about the downsides and headaches of all of them. Like you mentioned, you said in a recent video that all asset classes have their headaches and investors really just need to pick their poison. Talk to us a bit about the downsides, risks, and headaches of all the different asset classes that we’ve talked about today that you have experience with.

Heather Blankenship (46:38):

So if we talk about RV parks and the “downside”, two things come to mind. First, it’s going to be like we talked about. It is not a passive investment. Yes, there’s the option of when we talk about multifamily. Some people hire management companies. There aren’t a lot of great management company options in the space right now. I, for example, live in Florida and most of my parks are in Tennessee. So I self-manage, but I manage my managers at this point. But still, I’ve probably missed over a hundred text messages since we’ve been recording this podcast because it’s always something. It’s not passive.

Heather Blankenship (47:13):

So that would be if somebody wasn’t really excited about it and didn’t like doing this, it’s not really passive. The second thing that comes to mind is it’s very much customer service, and you cannot make everybody happy. So you’re going to have people… I think my most recent one was somebody who was enraged with anger over a spider in their tent. And you’re just like, “Dude, you’re camping. What is wrong with you?”

Robert Leonard (47:37):

You’re camping in the wilderness.

Heather Blankenship (47:38):

“What is wrong with you? You’re in the woods in a tent.” You can’t make everybody happy. And it’s not like the long-term tenant that maybe you have this long-term tenant that complains about something every month when they pay their rent. That’s once a month. These people are talking to you every day. I can remember when I decided that I was no longer the person that was meant to be in the office because I started hanging up on people.

Robert Leonard (47:59):

And it’s a vacation for a lot of people, right? So they have really high standards.

Heather Blankenship (48:04):

They have very high expectations. And even if the weather is bad, it’s your fault. I had one complaint of like, “It’s muddy.” I’m like, “It’s rained for seven days and you’re at a campground. Yeah, there’s going to be some mud. That’s part of it.” And not that your sites shouldn’t be gravel or paved and that part is not muddy, but there’s going to be some mud. Meeting people’s expectations when they’re on vacation, like you said, that’s tough. And you’re going to have to deal with the customer service side of that.

Heather Blankenship (48:30):

And that downside of it is relative. Things that are negative to one person might not be negative to the other. So those two things don’t bother me at all. I’m more than happy to manage by managers. It makes me excited and I love doing it. But to some people that may not be what they want to do.

Robert Leonard (48:46):

If you were going to start over today and you had to pick one of the asset classes that you’re involved in, which would you choose and why?

Heather Blankenship (48:52):

I have two answers for you because I would choose RV parks, for sure, because of that perfect mix between cashflow and appreciation. However, not everyone that’s getting started is going to have the down payment or the partnership option to go and buy an RV park. A lot of times it’s tough to find a partner or private money if you don’t have any experience at all yet. So if you already have some experience, I would for sure say RV parks.

Heather Blankenship (49:19):

However, if you’re just getting started and you don’t have that massive down payment, I would start out with short term rentals because if you buy one of those Airbnbs or short term rentals, the cash flow is so great that if you can budget and save that money to go buy your next property, you’ll be able to scale quicker. And most people are trying to get out of that hustle of the everyday nine to five. You can do that much quicker with short term rentals.

Robert Leonard (49:43):

We’ve talked a bit about RV parks and campgrounds. I just want to clarify quickly here, are those the same? Are they slightly different? How do you view those?

Heather Blankenship (49:51):

I think the term is interchangeable. And then one of the reasons I think of it is interchangeable because the industry does. It shouldn’t be, but just because something calls it an RV resort does not mean that it is actually an RV resort. They just chose to use that name. Or just because they call themselves a campground, doesn’t mean it isn’t a resort. That term is kind of loose in our industry. So in my mind, a campground is more like what you might find at a national park.

Heather Blankenship (50:19):

And an RV park is more like something with a paved site. They’ve probably got a pool. Definitely full hookups. It’s nice and clean. Looks kind of like a park. But in our industry, they’re not really defined.

Robert Leonard (50:31):

That’s kind of what my expectation was, but I just wanted make sure that I didn’t have a misinformed definition of those two different terms for people who can’t see the video or just listening to the audio version on the podcast, not on YouTube, you have about a dozen books or so behind you. So I’m guessing you’re probably a big reader. You mentioned Sam Zell’s book at the beginning of the episode. What has been the most influential book in your life?

Heather Blankenship (50:54):

I’ve been trying to think of the answer to that question, and I don’t think there’s one. I think that changes based on the phase I’m in my life. As you grow throughout your life, you need different things in different forms of motivation for the phase that you’re in. A couple that seem to be recommending the most lately, and it’s probably been pretty influential over the last couple years for me, it’s actually right here. This one it’s called vivid vision and everybody who hasn’t read it should. It’s a quick read. It’s short.

Heather Blankenship (51:24):

But if you listen to podcasts and you watch the YouTube videos and you see the social media, it’s really easy to have shiny object syndrome. You’re like, “Ooh, RV parks. Ooh, short-term rentals. Ooh, multifamily.” And you’re like, “You got to have the latest greatest. Oh my gosh.” And a lot of times that holds people back because I should make it really clear.

Heather Blankenship (51:42):

I got really great at RV parks for six years before I went and bought something else. And if you read the book, it talks to you about writing out your vision and getting really specific on the things that you want and the things you’re chasing. So I teach my students to have that vision written out and read it every morning, so that each time an idea or an opportunity comes across your desk where does it fit in your vision? If it doesn’t fit in your vision, it needs to be a hard no or a hell yes. You’re not going to know the answer to that unless you have that clear vision well thought out and written out. This is a great book to figure that out.

Robert Leonard (52:19):

A few years ago, Brandon Turner ranted and raved about that book on the BiggerPockets Podcast. And it’s been on my list to read ever since then. I’ve read hundreds of books. I just haven’t made it to that one yet. I really need to, because I’m struggling with focus right now, myself and I really need to just really get to it and read that book.

Heather Blankenship (52:36):

Yeah, you got to read it, and then you actually have to write out the vision. So I think a lot of people have read it and they’re like, “Oh, I haven’t taken the time to write out my vision yet.” I always tell my students, “Go to the beach. Go to your backyard. Whatever your quiet spaces that makes you feel relaxed and you’re able to be inside your own head without your phone and think it through, write that out. Brandon’s, if you read it, Brandon is a fabulous writer. So he’s written this like perfect news article.

Heather Blankenship (53:01):

So if you get stuck because you’re trying to duplicate what Brandon’s done, don’t do that, because we’re not all Brandon Turner. He’s fabulous. So I started out by writing bullet points from on, and then turn those bullet points into like a couple paragraphs instead of thinking that I was going to write this fabulous story.

Robert Leonard (53:19):

I’ll probably do mine on a flight. I think that’s what Brandon did. I fly a lot. I fly every other week. So I’ll probably end up doing mine on a flight in. I very often talk about on the show. I said, “After this episode, turn off your phone, turn off your podcast app. Don’t go to another one. Take action on something you learned in this podcast, because a lot of people just keep consuming and consuming and consuming and they don’t take action and you’re not going to make any progress just by learning.”

Robert Leonard (53:42):

Obviously, education is important. You need to learn to a certain point, but then you need to take action. So I really like that you mentioned that. Reading the book is not really going to do anything for you. You have to actually implement what the book says.

Heather Blankenship (53:53):

Exactly. And that flight is the perfect opportunity because you can’t use your phone and you’re stuck there.

Robert Leonard (53:59):

You can’t go anywhere and you can’t do anything.

Heather Blankenship (54:01):

That’s the perfect opportunity to be like, “Okay, let’s hammer this out.”

Robert Leonard (54:05):

Before we give a hand off to where people can find you, Heather, I like to wrap up the show by turning the tables for a second and letting the guest ask me a question. So what question do you have for me?

Heather Blankenship (54:15):

You talked about all of these different times that you’ve been in your camper or campground. I’m really curious what it is you look for in an RV park when you’re traveling around?

Robert Leonard (54:26):

So it really, really depends on kind of why I’m traveling. Typically, I have spent most of my time in campgrounds at a lake. And so that’s kind of like my more vacation type kind of travel trip, I guess I would say. So in that case, I’m just looking for a clean facility is really the biggest thing for me. Most of the time I’m going to the lake and we have boats or jet skis, or we have a lot of different activities that we’re doing around where we are anyway. So I’m not really a person that does a ton with the activities at the campgrounds, but I want a clean facility.

Robert Leonard (54:58):

I mean our RVs and our things that we stay in typically have showers. So we’re not really too worried about that, but occasionally, I might need to shower there, so I want like really clean showers or really clean bathrooms. That’s kind of the biggest thing for me. And then when I was just traveling on my month long road trip, that was less of a kind of vacation destination. It was more of like a quick stop. And so for me I needed things like utilities. I needed maybe water fill up, like potable water fill up for just the night so I could stop up and get some water. Maybe my tank was empty or I needed sewer.

Robert Leonard (55:31):

A lot of campgrounds, I was surprised to see they didn’t have like a dump station where I could empty the waste water tanks. And so I needed a campground that could do that. So it’s kind of those utilities and clean amenities for me. Kind of depending on which type of trip I’m on.

Heather Blankenship (55:44):

Do you use Good Sam to look up ratings of parks?

Robert Leonard (55:48):

I don’t think I Good Sam, but what I ended up staying at mostly was KOAs because they had the best online platforms. They didn’t have the greatest reviews, but a lot of them had sewer and dump stations and then they had online platforms. So that was kind of what I defaulted to. But I have heard good things about Sam.

Heather Blankenship (56:03):

Same. When I’m traveling, I default to that because you’re going to get the basic requirements you’re looking for. Otherwise, KOA would’ve pulled the franchise. Even though it might not be a perfect property, it’s going to be acceptable.

Robert Leonard (56:15):

Yeah, exactly. One of the campgrounds I was staying at was not nice. It was not nice at all. The staff was very rude. It was not a good experience, but they had what I needed and that was really all I was there for was to just empty the wastewater tanks and get electricity and get some water. So I mean they filled the basic needs that I had.

Heather Blankenship (56:32):

It’s interesting that you word it that way too, because I always teach my students to think of their avatar. Who’s going to be saying at your park and what are they going to expect? And you need to make sure you’ve carried that throughout whether we’re talking about RV parks or glamping because in that situation where you’re saying they were rude and the park was sucked, it didn’t really matter because your expectations were, “I’m here for a night. I just need to dump my tanks, fill them up and move on.” Versus when you’re at the lake, you’re expect a different experience because you’re on vacation. Those people better be nice and friendly and those bathrooms better clean.

Robert Leonard (57:02):

And I think they knew it too because literally we were… I could hit the highway with a baseball from my camp site. So they know this is a very transient kind of location. People probably aren’t staying here for weekends or weeks at a time versus the lake campground, they need to throw… They often throw like family get togethers, cornhole tournaments, things like that for everybody in the campground. I wouldn’t need that other one. So it’s really like you said, knowing your avatar.

Heather Blankenship (57:27):

Exactly. The lake wants you to come back and they want you to tell your friends and they want you to write good reviews.

Robert Leonard (57:33):

Absolutely. Well, Heather, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation and I’m sure the audience is going to want to connect with you. So where’s the best place to find you?

Heather Blankenship (57:42):

You can find me on Instagram or TikTok @heatherblankenshipx3.

Robert Leonard (57:47):

I will be sure to put a link to both of those profiles in the show notes for anybody that’s interested in checking them out. Heather, thanks for joining me.

Heather Blankenship (57:54):

Thanks so much for having me. I enjoyed our conversation.

Robert Leonard (57:57):

All right, guys. That’s all I had for this week’s episode of Real Estate Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro (58:03):

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