My family is interested in purchasing a campground in MI. The camp opened in 1973, and operated until 2014. It was very popular in the local area. The property includes 40 acres, some shoreline on a lake, a boat ramp, camp sites with electric, a bathhouse, bait shop, and a house, 2 mobile homes, and 2 cabins, a barn, etc. Cost is roughly 200,000. My wife and I want to live in the house, my mother in law in one of the mobile homes, and my son & his wife in the other mobile home. My son wants to run the campground while I continue driving a truck. We have been unable to find financing for the place, as the banks and mortgage companies don't seem to want to touch something like this. Does anyone have any advice on where we can turn for some creative financing options? Thank you.
Thank you. Trying to familiarize myself with the format here, I clicked "connect" on your profile and failed to realize that I should have sent a message at that point. Tried again, and it won't go through because it's waiting for you to accept my request, I assume. Sorry about that.
This sounds like it may be ideal as a owner finance purchase. If financing is difficult to obtain the sell is going to have problems unless he finds a cash buyer. Leverage the situation and try too convince him, with multiple offers, that owner financing will provide him a income and he will end up with more than the 200K he wants.
Make sure you want this primarily as a place to live since rejuvenating the park and generating cash flow will require a great deal of time and cash. You will have cash going out and very little coming in for many years.
That's exactly what we want... and I've tried to convince the owner that owner financing is the way to go, but he has rejected that idea twice. I'm not sure exactly what to say to convince him... I did offer a large down payment, but the place has been in their family the whole time and I don't think they realize how hard it is to get financing for something like this.