Boat Storage Feasibility Study

A boat storage feasibility study answers two different lending questions depending on the product. Land-based trailer, covered and enclosed boat storage underwrites like RV storage: a stall, a rate, an absorption curve and a supply census. Forklift-served dry stack and rack storage is a different asset, a purpose-built barn with launch infrastructure, a fixed labor cost, a single point of failure in the forklift and a special purpose classification in the SBA 504 program. MMCG Invest prepares feasibility studies for both, for SBA 7(a) and 504 lenders, certified development companies, USDA Business and Industry lenders and conventional banks on coastal and lake markets nationwide. This page sets out how the demand is measured, how the formats differ in cost and revenue, what the coastal and reservoir risks do to the credit, and how the programs treat the asset. The RV and boat storage feasibility study page covers the land-based asset class as a whole.

The United States had 11.8 million registered and documented recreational boats in 2024 and an estimated 3.6 million more that are not registered. Ninety-five percent of the fleet is under 26 feet and trailerable, which is the segment that lives on a trailer in a storage stall or on a rack in a barn rather than in a wet slip. Florida leads the country with 1.2 million registrations, the Great Lakes states hold nearly a quarter of the fleet, and the South Atlantic region grew fastest in the last count. New powerboat retail sales fell 8.8 percent in 2025 to 215,237 units and were still running about 7 percent down on a rolling basis into 2026, with freshwater fishing boats, the largest and most trailerable segment, the only one holding flat. A boat bought in 2021 still needs a space in 2026; the sales cycle changes the pace at which new demand forms, not the size of the fleet. The study measures the fleet where the subject sits. State agencies register boats by the county where the vessel is kept, and the study carries county registration counts obtained from the agency, by length class where the agency publishes them, because a dry stack barn serving 16 to 40 foot boats needs a different count from an open lot serving 18 foot fishing boats on trailers. Texas, for example, registered about 562,000 boats statewide in 2024 with about 111,000 in its 18 coastal counties, of which roughly 79,000 fall in the 16 to 40 foot band that rack storage serves. Where an agency does not publish county counts, the study files the records request and states the result or its absence. Freshwater and saltwater markets differ in product. Inland lakes and reservoirs, from the Great Lakes to Table Rock Lake, Lake Norman, Lake Travis and Canyon Lake, skew toward trailerable fishing boats, pontoons and wake boats, and land-based storage near the ramps is the dominant format, with a winter haul-out, shrink-wrap and heated indoor season in northern markets that the study treats as a revenue line of its own. Coastal saltwater markets, from the Texas Coastal Bend to the Carolinas and Florida, support dry stack because boaters use their boats year-round, wet slips are expensive and insurers favor hurricane-rated dry storage. Each carries a risk the other does not.

Outdoor trailer storage, covered canopy and enclosed boat storage are built and priced on the same basis as the RV formats on MMCG's asset class page. Posted rate cards on lake markets show open trailer storage at $45 to $100 per month, covered at $120 to $260 depending on length, and enclosed units with power at $145 to $325, with enclosed product at the marinas themselves setting the ceiling: an indoor dry storage rate of $165 to $175 per foot per year at a Lake Norman marina works out to $305 to $350 per month for a 21 to 24 foot boat. In northern markets heated indoor winter storage runs $8.65 to $15 per square foot for the season, cold indoor about $5.76 and outside about $3.05, with winterization at $12 to $18 per foot and shrink-wrap on top; a 22 foot boat in heated storage pays about $1,600 for the season before services. The study prices the subject inside the verified band for its lake and its format and carries seasonal service income separately. The risks specific to lake storage are access and level. In reservoir markets the real demand variable is whether the ramps are open and at what length limit. Lake Mead reached a record low of 1,038.5 feet in September 2026 with concrete ramps closed and launching on pipe mats, and the study models a scenario in which ramps close or boat length is restricted for any subject whose demand depends on a managed reservoir. Entitlement is the second risk: outdoor storage is a conditional use in most lake-country commercial districts and several lake cities have paused new storage approvals since 2024, so the study treats the permit path as a condition.

A dry stack barn is a steel building of three to four rack tiers, in large Florida projects up to 72 to 83 feet tall, served by marina forklifts of 20,000 to 40,000 pounds that lift boats to 40 feet and set them in the water on request. Capacity in a standard barn is capped by the forklift's reach and by boat length, usually 30 to 42 feet, and a facility of 200 to 500 racks is typical. The cost per rack is the number a lender needs and the public record is thin: the clearest recent datapoint is a municipal boat barn in Vero Beach, Florida, built 2024 to 2026 for about 120 boats up to 33 feet, awarded at $5.9 million for the building, about $6.4 million with upland work and $6.9 million with the forklift, or roughly $49,000 to $57,000 per rack. A $80 million Palm Beach Gardens redevelopment with 451 enclosed slips in 180 mile per hour buildings sits well above that and is an upper bound, not a benchmark. Legacy figures of $2,000 to $2,400 per boat describe open sheds from another era and do not belong in a current study. Revenue per rack is correspondingly higher than any land-based stall. Posted rates on the Texas and Florida coasts run $17.25 per foot per month on an annual contract at a Rockport barn, $18.77 to $22.73 per foot at a Clear Lake marina depending on term, and $20 to $30 per foot at the Vero Beach municipal barn, so a 26 foot boat pays roughly $450 to $600 per month and a 33 foot boat $700 to $1,000. Against that the barn carries costs a parking lot never sees: a full-time or on-call forklift operator, launch capacity on summer weekends that caps the number of racks the facility can actually serve, a forklift that costs $325,000 to $365,000 to replace and is a single point of failure, fuel and wash-down, and hurricane-rated construction with the insurance that follows. The study builds the operating budget by line with the labor and equipment inside it and tests launch throughput against the peak weekend demand the rack count implies. Supply in a dry stack market is counted in barns, not acres. The Texas Coastal Bend has two forklift dry stack operators within fifteen miles of each other, one with more than 470 racks and one designed for 277, so a new 300 to 500 rack building would add 40 to 65 percent to the market's capacity, and the study's sizing verdict for that market is acquisition or expansion of an existing barn rather than ground-up construction. Clear Lake, by contrast, has a 245 boat barn adding 288 racks in a January 2027 expansion beside a 375 rack competitor, which is the pipeline a new entrant leases up against. The study counts every rack within the trade area and every expansion announced.

A coastal boat barn is built to a design wind speed set by the jurisdiction and verified by the state's windstorm inspection program. On the Texas coast, San Patricio and the other first-tier counties fall inside the Texas Department of Insurance catastrophe area, where a certificate of compliance from the windstorm inspection program is required for state windstorm pool eligibility, Aransas Pass sits in the inland wind zone at an ultimate design speed of 155 miles per hour, and applications from April 2026 are certified to the 2024 building codes. Florida barns are built to 150 to 180 miles per hour ratings, and the rating is a marketing fact as well as an engineering one, because boaters' own insurers price hurricane-rated storage lower. The study records the FEMA flood zone, which on a harbor-front site is usually a coastal high-hazard or special flood hazard zone, the design wind speed, and the state coastal program consistency requirements that apply to upland structures on leased harbor land. Insurance is the operating line that moves most. Named-storm deductibles on coastal commercial property commonly run 2 to 5 percent of insured value, broker guidance for Florida boat storage pointed to premium increases of 15 to 25 percent into 2026, and marine operators legal liability sits on top of property and general liability. No published benchmark states these costs per rack, and the study carries a bound or broker-quoted figure as a condition rather than a benchmark, because a coastal barn's coverage can be the difference between 1.25 times and 1.10 times. Tenure is a question the study asks before anything else on a harbor site. Many boat barns on municipal or port harbors sit on long ground leases rather than fee simple land; the Aransas Pass barn MMCG models sits on a 75-year ground lease on about 5.2 acres of upland with harbor rights. A ground lease is financeable, but the lease term must cover the loan term, the collateral is a leasehold, and the rent and remaining term go into the operating budget and the lender's collateral analysis. Sales tax follows the state: Texas taxes the storage of motor vehicles and the study obtains a ruling on boats and trailers, and Florida's 2025 repeal of the commercial rent tax left boat docking and storage at docks and marinas taxable under a separate statute while removing self-storage from the tax.

Under SBA 7(a) and 504, land-based boat storage is underwritten as an operating storage business under NAICS 531130 and follows the rules on MMCG's SBA RV and boat storage feasibility study page. A marina with fuel, a ship store, wet slips and dry stack is a different business, NAICS 713930 with an $11 million size standard, and its bundled operator services make the active-business finding straightforward; a storage-only rack barn with no operator services is more exposed to the passive-business question and the study documents the control facts. A dry stack barn with forklifts and launch infrastructure is a single-purpose building with limited alternative use, and lenders and certified development companies should expect it to be classified as a limited or special purpose property, which raises the borrower contribution from 15 to 20 percent for a new business. The 504 program finances the land, the barn and long-lived fixed equipment; whether a marina forklift is eligible fixed equipment or excluded rolling stock is a question the study puts to the certified development company before the structure is set. USDA Business and Industry can finance a rural lake or coastal facility on the terms set out on MMCG's USDA RV and boat storage feasibility study page, including Rural Energy for America support where solar canopies over covered stalls meet that program's criteria. MMCG's model study for the format is an SBA 504 dry stack boat barn on Conn Brown Harbor at Aransas Pass, Texas: a 2011 steel barn designed for 277 racks for boats to 42 feet, 59,000 square feet and 57 feet tall, two Wiggins forklifts, a floating staging dock and 20 wet slips, on a 75-year ground lease, marketed at $6 million and sold in November 2025 at an undisclosed price. The study treats it as an acquisition and expansion case in a two-operator market, carries the Rockport competitor's $17.25 per foot rate as the revenue anchor, the certified county and city tax rates with the school district's failed 2025 rate election resolved, the windstorm certification and design wind speed, and the special purpose contribution, and states the tenure, flood zone and insurance quote as conditions.

Engagements are led by Michal Mohelsky, J.D., Practicing Affiliate of the Appraisal Institute. Feasibility studies are prepared under USPAP discipline, aligned with SBA SOP 50 10 8.1 for 7(a) and 504 loans and with 7 CFR Part 5001, Appendix A to Subpart D for USDA Business and Industry, REAP and Community Facilities financing. A senior analyst responds to proposal requests within 12 business hours from the firm's San Francisco office at 27 Maiden Lane, Suite 625.