I was commenting on the manager/s/owners forum on facebook for rv parks about the new park that recently sold (in context with a thread about such things) and the owner of the 2 major competitors replied to me. "Oh, did they sell that already?". This conversation on the page went into some depth before she contacted me via Facebook DM and then it went on even much longer.
They are doing very poorly, I'm finding out. Not wishing that upon them, but the idea of having a sardine lot style RV park is catching up to them. And tho they have a lot of great reviews on Google, they have plenty of not-so-flattering reviews that tell the story about driveways in dire need of repair, long term that stay up making noise and the sardine can style of park that many RV'ers are steering clear of. I really don't wish ill-will upon my competitors, especially when they are reaching out asking things that clearly point to the fact that they are hurting.
She is ready to walk away from the RV industry and upon finding out that the new park sold for so much, she wondered out loud if it were the right time? I can't tell her that, but I can say that parks are going for high dollar amounts right now. Whether it stays that way, who knows? I am not in this to build and then flip, I'm in it for long term income. We're 9 years away from receiving 75% of Social Security. This isn't guess work anymore, it's nine years. Well, I won't even qualify for SS until 2026. So what does that leave me?
It leaves me a government that doesn't give a rat's @$$ about the citizens it is supposedly serving and the fact that all of those politicians that continue to ignore this problem are also getting rich off of the system they are allegedly in it "solely" for the purpose of making citizen' lives better. Can you imagine if any of this TRILLIONS of dollars that have been spent in the last several years would have been spent to address SS insolvency? And if SS is facing a chopping block, you can bet that Medicare will be on that list as well.
Anyway, they are apparently in such dire straits that they are trying a new approach to attracting people by combining 2 of their lots to make one. She said that so far, there are no takers. She was jealous of my park's layout with 40 feet wide lots. I was listening to her story, so I didn't bother to tell her mine. The reality is, it's a tight market and it's fixing to get a lot tighter. I'm going to "save" myself by getting a job on the "side", I doubt any of these parks will do that. My motivation is to increase the number of spaces and amenities to make it much more attractive place to live. Plus, get rid of ALL of the acres of weeds and have grass there instead.
I informed her another competitor that also has a sardine can setup is completely full. I made the supposition (the act of supposing, you can access that in Meriam's, thank you) (or if you will, I assumed) (perhaps the correct word is figured) ("I felt") (and endless other words/combinations I could insert here)..that they are charging less and probably far less to get those people in there. There is no other explanation for people willing to cram themselves in so close together that they can literally (yes, I do mean literally) touch their neighbor's slide outs while standing directly next to their own trailer.
I really had no idea they were doing so badly.
I can say curb appeal at the main park is atrocious. I could give them some help in that department and it wouldn't cost a lot of money, but I decided to zip it.
Well whatever. One can wonder about things to come forever and just waste a lot of time in doing so. It's now very late and yes, finally getting sleepy.
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