What Arizona RV parks are usually not valued by
- Price per acre. Raw desert acreage nearby says little about a functioning park with utilities in the ground.
- Number of spaces alone. Forty spaces at $700 a month is a different business than forty spaces at $340.
- What the owner paid. Historic basis is a tax fact, not a value input.
- Residential comparable sales. Houses down the road do not price a commercial income property.
What actually drives the number
Income
- Gross revenue and how it splits between nightly, weekly, monthly, seasonal and annual tenancies
- Occupancy — and specifically, occupancy by month rather than a single annual average
- Average daily, weekly and monthly rates, including how long since the last increase
- Long-term tenant revenue and snowbird/seasonal revenue as separate lines
- Other income: laundry, propane, storage, cabins, park models, store sales, activity fees
- Utility reimbursement or sub-metered billback, and whether it actually covers your cost
Expenses
- Payroll, including seasonal staff and any owner labor a buyer will have to replace
- Property taxes and insurance
- Repairs, maintenance and the true cost of keeping older infrastructure running
- Water expense — municipal, or the cost of operating and testing a private system
- Sewer or septic expense, including pumping, monitoring and lift station service
- Electricity, including common areas, well pumps and any master-metered sites
- Management, marketing, reservation platform fees and credit card processing
- Deferred maintenance, which shows up as a deduction from value rather than an expense line
The property itself
- Location and the demand driver behind it — snowbird, tourism, workforce, recreation, highway
- Infrastructure condition: water, wastewater, 30-amp versus 50-amp service, roads
- Amenities: pool, clubhouse, laundry, showers, dog run, pickleball, storage
- Zoning, permitted density and whether unbuilt sites can realistically be added
- Expansion potential, and what it would actually cost to bring utilities to new sites
The formula, plainly
Income − Operating Expenses = Net Operating Income (NOI)
NOI ÷ an appropriate capitalization rate = an indication of value
NOI is calculated before debt service, before depreciation and before owner distributions. The capitalization rate is not a fixed Arizona number — it reflects how much risk a buyer attaches to that income stream. Steady, verifiable, documented income supports a lower cap rate and a higher value. Volatile, undocumented, or infrastructure-dependent income pushes the other direction. Financing conditions move it too.
We do not publish a universal Arizona cap rate, because publishing one would be inventing a number. What we will do is tell you the reasoning behind the range we apply to your specific park.
The Arizona seasonality trap
This is the most important paragraph on the page. Arizona RV park revenue is often highly seasonal. A snowbird park may generate substantially different revenue during the winter months than during the hottest part of the summer, and the expense side moves too — payroll, water and electricity rarely track revenue neatly.
Do not value an Arizona RV park by taking one excellent winter month and multiplying it by twelve. Review trailing twelve-month results and monthly occupancy and revenue patterns whenever possible. A park that runs at or near capacity from January through March and much lighter in July is a perfectly good business — it is simply valued on the whole year, not the best slice of it.
How value-add potential is treated
Sellers frequently expect to be paid for what the park could earn after rates are raised, vacant sites are filled and the bathhouse is renovated. Buyers generally pay for current performance, then price upside according to how much capital, time and risk it takes to capture it. The gap between those two views is usually where negotiation happens — and sometimes where a seller-financed or partnership structure becomes the honest solution.
A simple illustration
Suppose a park collects $520,000 in total revenue across site rent, nightly stays and other income, and spends $260,000 to operate, including a real management line rather than free owner labor. NOI is $260,000. At a 9% cap rate, the indication is roughly $2.89 million. At 11%, roughly $2.36 million. Same property, half a million dollars apart — which is exactly why the conversation about risk, records and condition matters as much as the revenue number itself. These figures are illustrative only.
Educational information only. This page is general commentary about buying and selling RV parks in Arizona and is not legal, tax, engineering, environmental, appraisal or accounting advice, and not an offer to purchase. Requirements vary by property, county, municipality and water provider, and they change over time. Confirm anything that affects your property with the applicable Arizona agency and with your own attorney, CPA and licensed professionals.