Hi all. This is my first time on the forum and I need some advice. I own some property in the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York and I have four camp sites that I’m considering leasing out to RVers. I’d like to get your advice on how I could make these sites attractive to RV campers, ideally leased out for a whole season to the same person so I only need to do check-in/check-out once a year and the person has a sense of ownership in the site. The problem is that right now these are truly primitive sites – there are no bathrooms, no power hookups, no potable water, no structures, no staff on site, no wifi, and limited cell service, so I don’t know how appealing these sites would be to the typical RVer. I definitely can’t add on-site electricity or well water, so I’m hoping to get input on whether you think somebody would want to rent them as-is and what kind of improvements would be most helpful to make them rentable. I apologize in advance if this post isn’t allowed on the forum since it’s potentially commercial (I couldn’t tell), but I’m not going to show photos or be too specific about where I’m located so that no one mistakes this for an ad.
Let me describe them with enough detail to get your advice:
General location: The sites are in gorgeous woods on the edge of a very touristy area of the Adirondacks. Nothing is exactly nearby, but it’s 15 minutes to the nearest grocery store, 25 and 35 minute scenic drives to two major resort towns, and in the middle of tremendous hiking, paddling, fishing, and biking areas. There are dozens of real tourist destinations within 30 minutes drive. All of the sites are surrounded by many acres of hikeable forest with wildlife including loons, deer, moose, foxes, fishers, and black bears, plus this is a great place to see fall foliage. The temperature tends to be in the 70s and low 80s all summer, with cool evenings in the low 60s. Montreal is 2 hours away, and New York and Boston are both about 5 hours away.
Site 1: Directly on a quiet mountain lake with a great view. It is a level grassy clearing in pine woods that’s about 100’ x 70’ with 70’ of lakefront that would let you swim, fish, or launch a kayak from your own site. It’s at the end of a long dirt road that can handle basically any size vehicle but it gets tricky if you meet someone coming the other way – I would guess you’d want to minimize the number of times you drive the RV in and out, so it would be great if you have a car too for local trips. Its only existing infrastructure is a fire ring. I would imagine you could pull straight into the site and turn around to exit pretty easily in any size RV.
Site 2: Directly on a quiet mountain lake with a spectacular view that is at the end of a long but easily navigable dirt road. It’s a level, pine needle-strewn clearing about 50’ x 30’ with about 30 feet of shoreline that requires a bit of a scramble to get down to it but has a sandy section that could support swimming, fishing, and drawing up a kayak. It has no existing infrastructure. I would imagine you could turn a travel trailer around in the site without much trouble, but a large RV you’d want to turn around on the road and back in/out.
Site 3: A 65’ x 45’ clearing in the woods that has no view but is located above a large waterfall so you constantly hear the falling water. There’s a short but steep trail down to the Saranac River for fishing or hiking. The lake is a short walk from the site – you could carry or wheel a kayak to the water if you wanted to. A nice thing about this site is that it’s located immediately off a low-traffic paved road so access is very easy. I would expect you could turn around any size RV in this site, though maybe you’ll tell me otherwise.
Site 4: A roughly 100’ x 50’ clearing in the woods on a hill overlooking a gorgeous lake with a view of Whiteface Mountain. It connects to extensive trails that would work for hiking or mountain-biking, but it has no direct lake access. It is directly off a paved road so getting in and out would be easy. It has an old shed I could fix up to make it usable. You would pull straight into the site and I expect you could turn around inside it with any size RV. The other three camp sites are ready to go but this one needs me to brush it out and improve the steep dirt driveway a bit, so I’m also trying to decide if I should prioritize getting this one into rentable condition or improve the others first.
Here are some improvements I’m considering for any or all of the sites. Please let me know how much you think these would add to the desirability of the sites and whether you expect it would be worth the investment:
1. I could install outhouses on the sites. Otherwise the closest place to dump the black water tanks is probably a campground with a public dump station 20 minutes away. Well-built outhouses might cost me $3500 per site.
2. I could add picnic tables and fire rings. This would cost about $500-700 per camp.
3. I could build a tent platform or small enclosed storage for about $500 per camp.
4. I could (reluctantly) add a gravel pad, but I’m not sure I understand why it would matter on hard rocky ground.
5. I could place gas grills on each site for about $500 per site, though that would introduce the need for me to take them in and out of storage for the winter.
6. I could provide some kind of outdoor wash basin with a drain and a little counter space to put a water carboy on for washing dishes (maybe $500 per site to do it well).
7. I could provide some permanent infrastructure at each site like a large propane tank to supply a generator or potable water tank for the campers’ use. This would cost roughly $700 per tank per site.
8. I could build an outdoor shower using collected rainwater for about $300 per site.
9. I could offer multi-year leases so that people could leave stuff in the camp site from year to year (though the RV itself would need to leave for the winter).
10. I could include about two acres of woods around each campsite in the lease.
Realistically, most of these options are fairly expensive compared to the rent they would generate and would only be worth it if they would really help me attract long-term campers and eventually recoup my investment. Which improvements do you think are most helpful?
I know it’s difficult to judge price without knowing the exact location or seeing photos, but I’d also like to get a sense of what you’d expect to pay for a site like this as-is or with improvements. I hope to rent them out for the full season of Memorial Day to mid-October (roughly 21 weeks). I haven’t found seasonal rates anywhere nearby, but I know the two nearby commercial campgrounds charge $350/week and $450/week for their cheapest sites with just water and electric and they are usually full all summer though of course they have a lot of other amenities. The nearby state campground charges $126/week for primitive back-in sites for up to 20’ vehicles with no hookups, so kind of like my sites, but they also have a dump station and shared bathroom facilities. My sites are way more private and beautiful than any of those places but are totally off the grid. There are not many places for public RV boondocking in the Adirondacks, so I don’t need to compete with that. Given all this information, what would you expect my annual rental price to be for the property as-is? What if I added outhouses, picnic tables, wash basins, propane storage, and outdoor showers?
Thanks for reading to the end!
