Case Study · Pennsylvania · RV Park & Campground · USDA B&I
RV Park & Campground Feasibility Study, Pennsylvania — A USDA B&I Worked Case
This is how our independent feasibility study company and feasibility consultant team analyzed a new-build RV resort and campground underwritten to a USDA Business & Industry (B&I) guaranteed loan, from drive-market visitation and seasonal per-site demand through the debt-service coverage the Agency and its lender must document. It is a representative, anonymized worked example of the methodology — not a specific client deal — set in a rural Northeastern Pennsylvania tourism corridor of the Poconos type.
A ground-up RV resort on a Pennsylvania drive-market corridor.
A sponsor came to our feasibility study company with a ground-up outdoor-hospitality project and a USDA Business & Industry lender that needed the projected cash flow independently tested before it would commit. The subject is roughly 40 acres in a rural Northeastern Pennsylvania tourism corridor of the Poconos type, within a two-to-two-and-a-half-hour drive of the New York and Philadelphia metros and inside a community of fewer than 50,000 residents, which keeps it USDA-eligible.2 The build program is a 120-site RV resort — full-hookup pull-through and back-in sites with 30- and 50-amp service — plus 20 rental cabins and a resort amenity core: a pool, a bathhouse, a camp store and check-in building, and a small clubhouse.
Because an RV park is a going-concern operating business rather than passive real estate, the lender's question is not “what is the land worth” but “can this specific site generate the site-nights, rate, and margin to service this specific loan.”7 USDA reinforces that: under 7 CFR Part 5001, a guaranteed loan over $1 million to a new entity requires a feasibility study by an independent qualified consultant, evaluating economic, market, technical, financial, and management feasibility.11 Our scope was exactly that independent demand, seasonality, competition, and debt-service analysis.
Representative and anonymized. Every figure below is illustrative of a typical engagement of this type; the site, corridor, and parties are composited, not a real named borrower, address, or completed transaction.
Drive-market visitation and the seasonal site-night curve.
The demand read starts with trips and nights, not a single blended occupancy. The corridor draws a large drive-to leisure population from two of the country's biggest metros, but the season is short and the curve is steep — the analysis has to model peak, shoulder, and off-season separately.
Outdoor-hospitality demand normalized above pre-pandemic levels and then stopped growing: North American camping households sit at just over 52 million, above the 42.0 million of 2019 but below the 58.5 million 2022 peak, and RV wholesale shipments fell from a 600,240-unit peak in 2021 to a forecast median near 314,000 units for 2026.48 The correct posture is to underwrite to that normalization, not to renewed boom — and to quantify the drivers rather than assert them. A park within a 30-to-60-minute drive of a major attraction consistently outperforms remote locations on both occupancy and rate, so the model is built from corridor traffic counts, lake and state-forest visitation, a nearby waterpark and festival calendar, and proximity to the New York and Philadelphia feeder markets.12
Seasonality governs everything in a northern park. The subject runs a roughly seven-month core season (mid-April through mid-October) with winterized cabins extending the shoulder, so annual site-night utilization lands near the 60-to-70-percent band a typical independent park achieves — peaking near 100 percent on summer weekends and falling toward zero in deep winter.6 Rate is a revenue-mix story: transient nightly RV sites run roughly $45 to $90 in this corridor, premium and destination sites higher, cabins higher still, and a block of seasonal sites lets by the season for stability. Blended to an annual figure, the model supports the $8,000-to-$15,000 per-site revenue band that separates a basic park from an upscale resort, and it is placed toward the resort end on the strength of the amenity core and drive-market pull.5
| Demand driver | Basis | Supported figure |
|---|---|---|
| Feeder market | Drive-to leisure demand from NY & Philadelphia metros, ~2–2.5 hrs | Large captive drive market |
| Operating season | ~7-month core season; winterized cabins extend shoulder6 | Peak / shoulder / off modeled apart |
| Blended site-night occupancy | 60–70% annual basis; ~100% summer weekends6 | ≈ 65% stabilized |
| RV site revenue | 120 sites × ~$12,500 blended/site/yr5 | ≈ $1.50M/yr |
| Cabin rental revenue | 20 cabins, higher nightly rate, seasonal | ≈ $0.42M/yr |
| Ancillary (store, activities, propane) | ~20% of gross; site rentals ~80%5 | ≈ $0.48M/yr |
Per-site revenue, revenue-mix, and occupancy logic grounded in outdoor-hospitality operating benchmarks; see sources 5 and 6. Figures are illustrative of the engagement type.
A thin, aging competitive set in a supply-constrained corridor.
Six competing parks sit within about a 30-minute drive, but most are older, utility-limited, and short on resort amenities. New private supply is slow to permit in the corridor, and public campgrounds function mainly as demand generators rather than direct competitors.
| Competitor | Type | Sites | Drive | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Park A | Independent RV park | ~90 | 8 mi | Dated; 30-amp, limited full-hookup, no pool |
| Park B | Seasonal / annual park | ~140 | 12 mi | Mostly seasonal lots; little transient supply |
| Park C | Franchise-affiliated | ~110 | 15 mi | Strong brand & amenities; the real competitor |
| Park D | Campground / tent-heavy | ~70 | 17 mi | Rustic; few full-hookup RV sites |
| Park E | State-park campground | ~60 | 9 mi | Public; demand generator, no hookups |
| Park F | Independent RV park | ~80 | 22 mi | Aging; trailing-edge, deferred maintenance |
Competitive set surveyed for the engagement; anonymized. Because outdoor-hospitality supply is not organized by MSA and has no CoStar equivalent, the set was corroborated deal-by-deal from rate sheets and site inventories rather than a vendor feed.7
Only one competitor — the franchise-affiliated Park C — offers a comparable full-hookup, amenity-rich product; the rest are older, utility-limited, or oriented to seasonal lots and tent camping rather than the transient full-hookup and cabin demand the subject targets. A rigorous study does not stop at the standing set: it scans announced and permitted supply, and here the read is a genuinely supply-constrained corridor, where high land cost, zoning friction, and the capital intensity of full utilities keep new private pads scarce even as drive-market demand holds.5 The subject fills the resort-quality gap rather than splitting a saturated market, and the nearby public campgrounds feed rather than cannibalize it.
Pennsylvania macro: flat population, deep rural tourism.
The state backdrop is a mixed but workable one for a rural tourism asset. Pennsylvania's population is essentially flat and aging, which disciplines any capture-rate assumption, but its rural tourism corridors draw demand from far beyond the local population.
Pennsylvania held about 13.1 million residents in July 2025, up just 0.1 percent on the year — a gain of only around 13,000 people, essentially all from net international migration, against roughly 10,000 more deaths than births. It is one of the oldest states in the country, where residents over 65 could soon outnumber those under 20.1 For a residential or local-demand asset that flatness would be a headwind; for a drive-market RV resort it is largely beside the point, because the demand base is the leisure population of the New York and Philadelphia metros, not the host county. What the demographics do demand is discipline — a study that assumed Sun-Belt-style local absorption here would fail review, which is precisely why the model leans on quantified visitation rather than population growth.1
The rural setting is the point. The vast rural “T” that runs up the center and north of the Commonwealth — agriculture, Amish country, Marcellus Shale gas country, and small metros — is heavily USDA-eligible, and USDA Business & Industry loans route through the Rural Development state office in Harrisburg, one of ten offices statewide serving 3.4 million rural Pennsylvanians.2 Pennsylvania is also a deep small-business lending market — roughly $1.09 billion in SBA 7(a) approvals across 2,416 loans in fiscal 2025 — so both the USDA and SBA channels for an outdoor-hospitality credit here are well established.3 The offsetting reality is seasonality and cost: a northern park carries year-round fixed costs against a seven-month revenue season, so the feasibility test turns on whether stabilized cash flow covers a highly leveraged basis through the off-season, not on optimistic peak-season extrapolation.
Why the parcel captures the corridor.
Drive-time access, attraction adjacency, and developable acreage all point the same direction, and the site plan converts that demand into bookable site-nights.
The ~40-acre parcel sits within a 30-to-60-minute drive of the corridor's primary demand anchors — a large lake and state-forest recreation area, a regional waterpark, and a summer festival calendar — the adjacency band that reliably lifts both occupancy and rate.12 Its highway access from the New York and Philadelphia feeder markets makes it a genuine weekend drive-to destination rather than a pass-through stopover, which supports the transient and cabin demand at the heart of the revenue mix.
The site plan does the rest. Forty acres at roughly three sites per acre leaves generous room for 120 full-hookup pads with 30- and 50-amp service, water, and sewer, plus 20 cabins and an amenity core — pool, bathhouse, store, and clubhouse — without the crowding that depresses rate. Each developed pad carries real cost: full utilities run roughly $5,000 to $15,000 per site all-in, and the amenity buildings add capital and operating expense, which is why the model credits resort-level rate only against a resort-level cost basis rather than assuming premium rate on a budget build.5 That internal consistency — resort rate underwritten to resort cost — is what lets the capture hold up in review.
The USDA B&I structure.
Total project cost lands at $7.5 million. USDA Business & Industry guarantees a bank loan for a rural, owner-operated business, which is why a going-concern hospitality project in a community of fewer than 50,000 routes here rather than to the agency multifamily window that excludes RV resorts.9
| Cost component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Land (~40 acres) | $0.90M |
| Site work, roads, utilities & 120 RV pads | $2.60M |
| 20 rental cabins | $1.40M |
| Amenities (pool, bathhouse, store, clubhouse) | $1.10M |
| Soft costs & contingency | $0.85M |
| Working capital, interest reserve & fees | $0.65M |
| Total project cost | $7.50M |
Site development at roughly $15,000–$50,000 per pad all-in is consistent with outdoor-hospitality build benchmarks; the blended all-in near $62,000 per site across land, cabins, and amenities is in line with recent per-site trade evidence. See sources 5 and 7.
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| USDA B&I guaranteed lender loan (~75%) | $5.60M |
| Borrower equity injection (~25%) | $1.90M |
| USDA guarantee on the loan | 80% of principal10 |
| Term / amortization | ~20-year amortization |
| Illustrative rate | ~8.5% |
| Annual debt service | ≈ $585k |
Structure per USDA B&I conventions under 7 CFR Part 5001: guarantees up to 80% of loans up to $25M in communities of 50,000 or fewer, feasibility study required over $1M, plus NEPA environmental review. See sources 10 and 11.
The equity injection sits near 25 percent, above a bare minimum, and that is deliberate: USDA expects meaningful tangible-balance-sheet equity on a ground-up, single-purpose hospitality project, and a heavier equity layer is what carries the seasonal ramp before the loan reaches its supportable coverage.10 At $5.6 million the loan sits well within the program's $25 million ceiling, and the 80 percent USDA guarantee is what makes a rural bank willing to hold ground-up outdoor-hospitality risk.10 On a 20-year amortization at an illustrative 8.5 percent, annual debt service is about $585,000 — the number the projected coverage has to clear. The feasibility study exists to support exactly that: the debt-service coverage the lender and the Agency must document, tested against an independent read of demand rather than the sponsor's own projection.
Feasible on coverage the USDA credit can document.
The stabilized model builds revenue from three engines — RV sites, cabins, and ancillary — nets a seasonal operating-expense load, and carries the coverage comfortably above the level USDA looks for.
| Line | Basis | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| RV site rental | 120 sites × ~$12,500 blended/site/yr5 | ≈ $1.50M |
| Cabin rental | 20 cabins, seasonal, higher nightly rate | ≈ $0.42M |
| Ancillary revenue | Store, activities, propane, laundry (~20% of gross)5 | ≈ $0.48M |
| Total revenue | Sites + cabins + ancillary | ≈ $2.40M |
| Operating expenses | Seasonal labor, utilities, insurance, R&M, taxes, G&A (~60%)6 | ≈ ($1.44M) |
| Net operating income (NOI) | ~40% outdoor-hospitality NOI margin | ≈ $0.96M |
Expense ratios of 50–70% of revenue are the outdoor-hospitality norm; a ratio materially below 50% is a review red flag. The ~40% NOI margin sits at the favorable end for a well-run resort. See source 6.
| Year | Stage | NOI | Debt service | DSCR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | Seasonal ramp | ~$555k | ~$585k | 0.95 |
| Year 2 | Building | ~$790k | ~$585k | 1.35 |
| Year 3 | Stabilized | ~$960k | ~$585k | 1.64 |
DSCR computed as NOI divided by annual debt service. A credible RV-park ramp projects gradual occupancy over 18–24 months rather than high day-one occupancy. See source 6.
The stabilized 1.64x coverage is the figure the lender and the Agency document, and it sits comfortably above the coverage USDA looks for on a guaranteed credit.11 By Year 2 the project already covers debt service at 1.35x. The Year 1 figure of 0.95x is intentionally below 1.0 — it is the seasonal ramp year, when a northern park opens into a partial season — which is exactly why the structure funds an interest reserve and a heavier equity layer: the reserve and working capital carry the shortfall, and permanent coverage is measured once the resort reaches its supportable, stabilized site-night occupancy over an 18-to-24-month lease-up.6 Modeling stabilized occupancy in Year 1, or blending peak transient rate with high stable occupancy at once, is one of the most common ways these pro formas fail review; the ramp here is deliberately graded, and the transient and seasonal streams are modeled apart.
On the equity side, the $1.9 million injection earns growing levered free cash flow — a modest shortfall in the ramp year covered by the interest reserve, building to roughly $375,000 a year once stabilized and net of an FF&E and amenity capital reserve for pads, cabins, and the pool. The exit is valued on a going-concern basis: an RV resort is an owner-operated business, and capitalizing a Year-10 stabilized NOI near $1.0 million at a conservative outdoor-hospitality overall rate around 9.5 percent — within the 8-to-12 percent range the market applies, and near the 9.3 percent average across 21 parks sold in 2024 — implies a gross sale near $10.5 million, and roughly $6 million of net equity after selling costs and the outstanding USDA balance.7 Holding demand roughly flat, consistent with a normalized rather than a booming RV market, the blended result is an illustrative levered equity IRR of about 19 percent over a 10-year hold.8
Verdict: financially feasible, and USDA B&I is well-suited to it. On independently derived demand, a stabilized 1.64x DSCR, and a ~19% levered equity IRR, the projections support the USDA B&I guaranteed credit.
Independent demand, seasonality, competition, and DSCR stress.
The engagement was scoped the way an Agency reviewer and a credit committee read it. As an independent feasibility consultant, our role is to test the sponsor's projection against the market, not to restate it — and USDA is explicit that the study must come from an independent qualified consultant, not the borrower.11 We derived site-night demand from drive-market visitation, corridor traffic, attraction adjacency, and the competitive set, then modeled peak, shoulder, and off-season separately rather than applying one blended occupancy. Transient, seasonal, and cabin revenue were built on a graded 18-to-24-month ramp at through-season margins, not a capitalized peak weekend.
The coverage analysis was then stress-tested. We ran debt-service coverage against occupancy and rate downside — the two variables a seasonal park is most exposed to — and against a compressed shoulder season, to confirm the credit still holds when the summer underperforms. Two scope boundaries are worth stating plainly: as the feasibility consultant we address the five USDA components and flag, but do not perform, the NEPA environmental review and any wetlands or flood assessment, which run in parallel as separate engagements.10 That combination — independent demand, seasonality, competition, and a stressed DSCR — is what lets the lender and the Agency rely on the file.
Representative engagement
This is an anonymized, illustrative worked example of our methodology, built on market data current to 2026; figures are representative of a typical engagement of this type and do not depict a specific client, site, or completed transaction.
Underwriting a Pennsylvania RV park for a USDA loan? Start with the feasibility study.
Feasibility Study Company prepares independent RV park and campground feasibility studies for USDA Business & Industry, SBA 7(a) and 504, and conventional credits, built to the five USDA components and the coverage standard your lender and the Agency must document. A methodology briefing walks through the demand, seasonality, competition, and DSCR analysis behind a case like this one, calibrated to your corridor and format.
Request a methodology briefingData sources and dates.
The deal figures are illustrative of the engagement type; the market data that grounds each dimension is real and sourced, drawn from our standing Pennsylvania, RV Park & Campground, and USDA Rural Development analyses and the primary authorities they cite.
- U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 Population Estimates (Pennsylvania ~13.1 million as of July 1, 2025, up ~0.1%, a gain of roughly 13,000 driven by net international migration against ~10,000 more deaths than births); Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office demographic outlook (one of the oldest state populations, with residents over 65 nearing parity with those under 20), as compiled in the firm's Pennsylvania market analysis.
- USDA Rural Development, Pennsylvania State Office, Harrisburg (one of ten offices statewide serving ~3.4 million rural Pennsylvanians; the rural “T” of agriculture, Amish country, and Marcellus Shale gas country is heavily USDA-eligible), as compiled in the firm's Pennsylvania and USDA analyses.
- U.S. Small Business Administration, Pennsylvania FY2025 7(a) totals via GoSBA Loans analysis of SBA data (~$1.09 billion approved across 2,416 loans, average ~$453,000 at an average rate of ~10.24%), establishing the depth of the small-business lending channel.
- 2025 North American Camping & Outdoor Hospitality Report (Kampgrounds of America) and outdoor-hospitality industry data: ~52 million camping households in 2025 (above 42.0 million in 2019, below the 58.5 million 2022 peak); U.S. campground and RV-park industry revenue ~$10.9 billion in 2025, up ~2.5%.
- Outdoor-hospitality operating benchmarks (Sage Outdoor Advisory and broker/analytical compilations): transient nightly RV sites ~$35–$90 and premium/destination sites $60–$150+, seasonal sites $400–$1,200/month; per-site annual revenue ~$8,000 (basic) to $15,000+ (upscale resort); ancillary 10–25% of gross with site rentals 80%+; site development ~$5,000–$15,000 per pad for utilities and ~$15,000–$50,000 all-in.
- Outdoor-hospitality operating norms: annual site-night occupancy of ~60–70% (peaking near 100% in prime season), distinct from REIT annual-lease occupancy; operating expenses of 50–70% of revenue; northern parks operating ~6–8 months against year-round fixed costs; credible ramp-ups projecting gradual occupancy over 18–24 months.
- Parks & Places 2024 transaction survey (9.3% average cap rate across 21 parks sold, average time-on-market 8.8 months); broker/analytical cap-rate ranges of 8–12% (resort-quality 6–8%, value-add/tertiary 10–14%+), EV/EBITDA 4.0–7.0x; a February 2026 seven-property, 1,500+-site portfolio trading at ~$62,000 per site; the going-concern (real estate + FF&E + business) valuation basis.
- RV Industry Association wholesale-shipment data and Summer 2026 forecast: a 600,240-unit peak in 2021, a 313,174 trough in 2023, 342,220 in 2025, and a ~314,000-unit forecast median for 2026 (down ~8.2%); the analytical posture of underwriting to normalization rather than 2020–2022 boom growth.
- U.S. Small Business Administration SOP 50 10 8 (effective June 1, 2025): RV-park eligibility as a hospitality business requires more than 50% of gross revenue from short-term stays of 30 days or fewer; Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae manufactured-housing-community programs exclude pure RV resorts, routing them to SBA, USDA, conventional, CMBS, or debt-fund capital.
- USDA Business and Industry program under the OneRD rule (7 CFR Part 5001): guarantees up to 80% of loans up to $25 million ($40 million in select cases) in communities of 50,000 or fewer, with a feasibility study required for loans over $1 million and a NEPA environmental review; tangible-balance-sheet equity expected on ground-up, single-purpose projects.
- 7 CFR Part 5001, defining a USDA feasibility study prepared by an independent qualified consultant and its five required components — economic, market, technical, financial, and management feasibility — and the over-$1-million-to-a-new-entity threshold.
- Outdoor-hospitality demand-driver evidence: parks within a 30-to-60-minute drive of a major attraction consistently outperform remote locations on occupancy and rate; the demand-driver test requiring quantified attraction visitation, corridor traffic counts, event calendars, and feeder-market proximity rather than asserted demand.