RV and Boat Storage Feasibility Study

An RV and boat storage feasibility study tells a lender whether a proposed or acquired facility will fill, at what rent, how fast, and whether the resulting cash flow covers the loan. MMCG Invest prepares these studies for SBA 7(a) and 504 lenders, certified development companies, USDA Business and Industry lenders and conventional banks nationwide, across every format the asset class takes: open gravel and paved lots, covered canopy stalls, fully enclosed drive-up units, condo garages, and forklift-served dry stack boat barns. The study is written to the lender's underwriting question, not the sponsor's business plan, and every rent, cost and absorption figure in it is traced to a competitor's own rate card, a public record or a named benchmark. The asset class is easy to underestimate. It looks like parking. In practice it is a storage business whose demand comes from vehicles already owned rather than vehicles being sold, whose supply arrives in acre-sized increments that can double a submarket's capacity in three years, and whose financing runs through programs with specific eligibility tests that a landlord-style operation can fail. The sections below set out how MMCG tests each of those questions and what the resulting study contains.

Storage demand follows the installed fleet, not annual sales. RVIA's 2025 ownership profile counts 8.1 million RV-owning households, 6.7 percent of all vehicle-owning households, with a median owner age that fell from 53 to 49 in four years and 36 percent of owners buying for the first time. RV wholesale shipments were 342,220 units in 2025 and the industry's own 2026 forecast median is about 314,000, a decline of roughly 8 percent. The boat side reads the same way: the national registered fleet stood at 11.8 million boats in 2024, 95 percent of them under 26 feet and trailerable, while new powerboat retail sales fell 8.8 percent in 2025 to 215,237 units. A slower sales year slows the rate at which new storage demand forms. It does not shrink the fleet that already needs a space. The regulatory floor under that demand is residential parking restriction. About 373,000 community associations house 78.1 million Americans, more than a third of the nation's housing stock, and the covenants that bar an RV, boat or trailer from a driveway or side yard are the single most common clause in them. Cities add their own layer: Denver, Las Vegas, Frisco, McKinney, Meridian and Boise all limit how long an RV or trailer may sit on a residential street or lot. A feasibility study documents the specific ordinances and association density in the trade area, because that is where off-site demand is manufactured. Supply is the variable that decides credit. The national dedicated RV and boat storage inventory reached about 2,060 facilities in late 2025, with 51 more under construction, and advertised parking rents rose 4.4 percent year over year to $6.38 per square foot annualized, the strongest reading since the segment was first tracked. That national average hides the markets that matter. San Antonio delivered the equivalent of 48 percent of its inventory in three years and posted zero rent growth. Houston, Jacksonville and Dallas-Fort Worth grew rents by 2 percent or less for the same reason. Los Angeles, with almost no new supply, led the country at nearly 13 percent. The study's supply census, which counts every competing stall within the drive-time trade area and every project in permitting, is therefore the section a lender reads first. Transaction and valuation evidence has firmed. Dedicated RV and boat storage traded 55 times for about $256 million in the first ten months of 2025 at more than $570,000 per acre, down from a peak of 151 trades in 2022 and up from 57 in 2024. Stabilized Class A facilities, meaning canopied or enclosed product with masonry security walls, trade at capitalization rates of 5.75 to 6.25 percent, at parity with traditional self-storage rather than at the historical premium. Smaller open lots in secondary markets still price 50 to 150 basis points wider, and the study states which band the subject belongs in and why.

An open lot is the cheapest build and the lowest rent. A fenced, gated, lit and camera-covered gravel or asphalt lot costs on the order of $15 per gross square foot of site in 2026 pricing, which at 60 to 65 stalls per acre is roughly $10,000 per stall before land, and rents at $45 to $120 per month depending on the market. Expense ratios on an unmanned open lot run near 30 percent, and the securitized record MMCG tracks shows a Texas open lot holding 97 percent occupancy for three years at a 36 to 37 percent expense ratio, above the 23 percent it was underwritten at. Lenders underwrite open lots on the strength of the local supply census, because the product has no differentiation beyond location and security. Covered canopy stalls add a steel structure over the same footprint. Turnkey canopy costs run from $36 per square foot upward in 2026, and the structural steel share has moved with the 50 percent Section 232 tariff and a hot-rolled coil price that reached about $1,200 per short ton in August 2026. A 12 by 40 foot canopy stall therefore costs roughly $17,000 turnkey and must earn its premium: posted rate cards show covered stalls renting 45 to 67 percent above open stalls of the same length, which is the spread the study tests against the canopy cost in the subject's own market. Where the local covered premium is thin, the study says so, and the sponsor's canopy count comes down. Fully enclosed drive-up units and condo garages cost $56 to $75 per square foot and more, rent at $180 to $400 per month and higher for 45 foot units, and lease more slowly than open and covered product. They are the format that sits closest to self-storage in a lender's eyes, and the format most likely to be classified as a limited or special purpose property under the SBA 504 program when the building is a purpose-built RV garage with no alternative use. Dry stack boat barns, with their forklifts, launch infrastructure and hurricane-rated structures, are a different asset again and are covered on MMCG's boat storage feasibility study page.

The study opens with a written determination: feasible as proposed, feasible as resized, or not feasible, with the conditions precedent that apply. MMCG does not write studies that describe a market and leave the conclusion to the reader. The site and location analysis places the parcel on the record: acreage, listing and price history where public, zoning district and the ordinance sections that permit or condition outdoor vehicle storage, screening and paving standards, floodplain, utility providers and tap capacity, and the applicable property tax rates and assessment practice. Entitlement is treated as a condition, not an assumption, because a parcel zoned for retail frontage will not carry a storage lot without a rezoning or conditional use permit, and the study says which one and how long it takes. The demand analysis builds from the installed base in the drive-time trade area: registered boats by county, RV ownership applied to households, the share of housing under association covenants, the municipal parking ordinances in force, and seasonal drivers such as lake and reservoir access, snowbird patterns or northern haul-out seasons. The study states a stall-per-household ratio for the trade area and compares it with the supply census, so that the penetration the subject needs is a visible number rather than an implied one. The competitive supply section is a census of every facility within the trade area, each one checked against its own website rather than an aggregator, with stall counts, formats and posted rates by stall length. Projects under construction or in permitting are counted as supply. Concessions such as a free first month at a facility two years past opening are read as evidence of incomplete absorption and the subject's lease-up is lengthened accordingly. Pricing is set inside the verified band, by format and stall length, with seasonal and length premiums stated. The lease-up schedule carries a month-by-month occupancy curve to stabilization, typically 12 to 24 months to 85 to 90 percent occupancy, longer for enclosed product and in submarkets with recent deliveries. The project cost estimate follows MMCG's standard format with land, hard cost by line, equipment and financial cost, and the loan assumptions block states loan-to-cost, rate, amortization and annual debt service for the program the lender uses. The operating budget is built by line: property tax at the certified local rate on stabilized value, insurance, payroll or kiosk staffing, utilities, repairs, marketing, management and reserves. The five-year pro forma, debt service coverage by year, break-even occupancy at net operating income, 1.0x and 1.25x coverage, and a sensitivity table that moves rent, occupancy, expenses and interest rate separately and together close the financial section. Program compliance is a section of its own and states the eligibility findings the lender needs on the record.

RV and boat storage is financed under SBA 7(a) and 504 as an operating storage business within NAICS 531130, the same industry code as self-storage, which has been eligible since the 2010 standard operating procedure removed the mini-warehouse passive exclusion. Eligibility turns on control: the operator must run the facility, set the rental terms, screen and remove tenants and provide the security and services, and a management agreement that gives a third party sole discretion makes the business passive and ineligible. SBA SOP 50 10 8.1 governs loans assigned a loan number on or after October 1, 2026 and, among other changes, requires that every owner be a United States citizen or national and rewrites the change-of-ownership rules so that an acquisition must cover its debt 1.25 times on the seller's historical cash flow with no projections. MMCG's SBA RV and boat storage feasibility study page sets out the program rules, the equity injection cases and what SBA's own loan data says about the asset class, and the regulatory spine on SBA underwriting carries the SOP itself. USDA Business and Industry guarantees have been available to storage since the December 2021 OneRD rule removed self-storage from the ineligible list. The remaining test is owner control over tenants and services, the site must be rural, and a new business borrowing more than $1 million must submit an independent feasibility study. For fiscal 2026 the guarantee is 85 percent on loans under $5 million with a 3 percent guarantee fee. MMCG's USDA RV and boat storage feasibility study page covers the B&I path, the equity requirement for a new business and what the agency's feasibility study must contain, and the USDA regulatory spine carries 7 CFR Part 5001. SBA's own loan data is the strongest argument a sponsor can put in front of a lender. On MMCG's analysis of the fully seasoned 2010 to 2019 cohort, self-storage loans charged off at 0.51 percent, against 6.44 percent across the 7(a) program and 1.49 percent across 504, which makes storage one of the lowest-loss industries in the book. That figure covers the whole of NAICS 531130, because SBA's data does not separate RV and boat storage from self-storage, and the study says so rather than claiming a precision the data does not have.

Local oversupply is the first risk and the one most often missed in a sponsor's pro forma. The study answers it with the census and a downside case in which a competing project of the same size delivers during lease-up. Entitlement is the second: outdoor storage is a permitted use in industrial districts and a conditional use in most commercial ones, and cities from Coos Bay to Cape Coral have paused new storage approvals since 2024. Steel pricing is the third for any canopy or enclosed program, and the cost estimate carries a stress case on the structural line. Property tax is the fourth, because a Texas or North Carolina facility assessed at its stabilized value carries a tax bill that many first-time sponsors omit. Sales tax applies to vehicle storage in Texas and to boat storage at marinas in Florida, and the study treats both as revenue items rather than afterthoughts. Hurricane, flood and reservoir-level exposure are addressed where the site has them.

MMCG publishes complete model feasibility studies on real, publicly marketed parcels so that lenders and sponsors can read the method applied end to end. The RV and boat storage set covers a USDA Business and Industry covered canopy facility on Table Rock Lake in Stone County, Missouri; an SBA 504 enclosed and covered facility on Lake Norman in Mooresville, North Carolina; an SBA 7(a) acquisition and canopy expansion of an open lot in Canyon County, Idaho; an add-on RV and boat parking phase at an existing self-storage facility near Canyon Lake in Comal County, Texas; an SBA 504 ground-up facility in the oversupplied San Antonio market at Cibolo, Texas, resized and conditioned by the study; and an SBA 504 dry stack boat barn on Conn Brown Harbor at Aransas Pass, Texas, as a special purpose property case. Each is written at the length and depth of a client engagement and each states what could not be verified from a primary source.

MMCG's self-storage feasibility study page covers the conventional self-storage asset class and the hybrid facility that adds RV and boat parking on excess land. The RV park feasibility study page covers campgrounds and RV resorts, which are lodging businesses with a different SBA test. The boat storage feasibility study page covers dry stack, rack and marina-adjacent storage. For lenders working under the current SBA and USDA rules, the SBA feasibility study page and the USDA feasibility study page describe the two programs' requirements across all asset classes.

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.