I’m Donna Bordeaux with CampgroundAccounting.com. If you are considering buying a campground, there are some things that you can do to help make that process a lot easier and a better decision-making process. If you are looking at purchasing with a ROBS plan, where you rollover your 401k and use those funds to purchase the campground, there are several things you need to investigate to fully understand your decision. And you’ll find many of the big providers have a lot of information about how to accomplish the ROBS plan, but they don’t ever talk about the long-term considerations with taxes or with exiting strategies.

That’s where we come into play, we do financial analysis for ROBS plans that will help you look at the short and long-term costs of utilizing that type of plan to purchase your campground. We’ll also look at other options for financing and compare the costs.

As long-term costs, we usually look at a 10-year perspective to determine the cost comparisons. And we’ll also look at how you would be compensated as the owner of the park, utilizing a ROBS plan. The overall administrative costs are also considered because you do have that every month, while ROBS plan is in place.

So the financial analysis is a good tool to let you see what the true costs of owning a park are if you’re utilizing a ROBS plan, it has its place, but you need to know what’s going on before you make that decision. That investment is $1995.

In purchasing a campground there are “3 phases” that you’ll go through. The first phase is the investigation phase. This is where you’ll determine what flavor of campground you would like to have. Are you looking at a seasonal park, a destination, a monthly stay type park, or a snowbird park, there are a lot of variations.

So we’ll help you determine what is the best use for you. We’ll also help you look at different parts of the country where different things are popular and determine how that affects you and the investment you’ll make. There are a lot of general questions that come up about how to purchase entity structure, tax considerations, and purely what to expect.

We’ll also help you look at the pricing so that you can quickly weed out parks that are priced out of your range or price too high based on their earnings. We expect that process to take about two weeks. It includes a strategy session to help you dive deeper and also an email consultation to dive into questions that come up along the way. The investment for phase one is $1495. Once you’ve narrowed down and found a particular park, you would like to consider purchasing you’ll move on to phase two, the due diligence phase. Here you’ll sign a non-disclosure agreement, an NDA, and then you will receive financial information specific to that park.

We will help you analyze the financial information, the taxes, and come up with questions that need to be asked, and look at how that purchase would affect you personally. We’ll also discuss the tax ramifications of the sale. So that process usually takes about 30 to 60 days, depending on the timing of the due diligence. And that is contractual. It would be included in your contract for the due diligence.

It includes up to three strategy sessions to discuss specifics of the case of looking at that campground in addition to email advice. The investment for phase two is $2995. And then if you decide that is the part for you, you would move into phase three. That is the letter of intent and closing phase. Here you’re wrapping up the timing and preparing to finalize the purchase, we’ll help you look at the tax ramifications of the structure of the sale.

We can also advise you on entity structure and help you form an entity for the ownership if needed be, and we’ll help prepare the asset acquisition or the allocation of the purchase price to determine what amount is allocated to assets and what amount is allocated to the Goodwill.

This generally takes about 2 weeks on up to 30 days. It includes a strategy session as well as an email. And we know we’re on a timing deadline. So we are very prompt to make sure that you get your questions answered. The investment for phase three is $1495.

If you have stepped through all three of those phases, and now you’re the proud owner of a campground, our help doesn’t stop there. We also have packages to help assist you with accounting, tax, operational advice, and consulting along the way to make sure that you maximize the value of your investment and pay us a little tax as possible along the way.

If you would like to sign up for one of these packages, we have links available right on our website, and we can get started ASAP. Please visit our website CampgroundAccounting.com or shoot me an email at donna@campgroundaccounting.com. And we’ll get you set up wherever you are in the process. Thank you very much and have a great day.

Donna Bordeaux, CPA with Campground Accounting

What happens when you send two CPAs out into the relaxing outdoors to camp? You get CampgroundAccounting.com.  Donna and Chad have over 50 years of combined experience as entrepreneurial CPAs.  They’ve owned businesses and helped business owners exceed their wildest dreams. They camp and travel across the country every chance they get, so it’s just a natural fit that they focus their CPA skills on helping campground owners throughout the USA grow their businesses and minimize the impact of taxes.  They understand the key performance indicators and specialized issues that face RV park owners every day.

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