What you should actually hire when you hire a management company
Plus the operating system that earns a seat at the table — and the question every owner should ask about their management company
Recently, a client called and asked if I’d come to a meeting with his bank. It was the kind of meeting about a loan that could determine an asset’s future. He wanted us sitting on his side of the table.
I’ve been at this long enough to know when those meetings are special, high-impact situations. A client choosing to put his management company in that room, ahead of his broker or his accountant, is rare.
THIS WEEK’S POSITION
The seller-financing arrangement on our Branson deal, which we walked through previously, is on track to close.
Also, the raise behind our Branson acquisition has come together faster than I expected and is close to closing out. We’re at roughly 75% firm commitments and circling soft commitments on the rest. If you want a look at how we’re evaluating the deal, reach out.
We’re still working toward opening the raise on the California deal. Stay tuned.
We also made an offer on a larger deal in Texas. More if it firms up.
The other capital threads from last edition are quiet this week. They’ll wait until there’s something material to report.
Accredited investors interested in keeping up with our deals can sign up for our investor portal.
IN THE HANGAR
While we’re still building and still have plenty of operational projects “in the hangar,” now is the time to focus on delivering exceptional guest experience. Several of the parks we onboarded over the last few months just ran their first Memorial Day weekend under our operation.
We’re working back through how each one performed. What held up, what strained, where the gaps showed once a park was actually full. A first peak weekend at a newly onboarded park tells you more than any spreadsheet did during diligence.
That review feeds straight into peak season. The fixes we make now are the ones that compound across June, July, and August.
Reply and tell me what your first big weekend showed you this year.
ON THE RADAR
What I’m watching for the back half of 2026 is something most of this industry isn’t seeing clearly yet.
The frontier has moved. Not 5 years. Not 10. The last 24 months have changed what a sophisticated operation can actually do. The gap between an operator running modern systems and an operator running the playbook from 2015 is now wider than the gap between any two operators in any room I walked into this spring.
That gap isn’t a tooling gap. The operators at the frontier didn’t get there by buying better software. They got there by building better operations. The systems, the scorecard, the standard work, the hard conversations. The tools followed.
What I’m watching is whether the owners who keep trying to buy their way out of an operating problem eventually realize they can’t. And whether the ones who do figure it out compound their advantage faster than the rest of the industry can catch up.
Lessons like these are what we’re building RVU around: the real playbook from inside the operation.
THE DEBRIEF
As I alluded to above, I was recently sitting across from a client’s lender, supporting the client upon their request in a relatively high-stakes situation for the client’s asset.
We were meeting about an 8-figure loan on an RV park. The client was in a tight spot. Not underwater, but tight enough that the next conversation with his bank mattered. He’d decided the thing that would most strengthen his position was bringing the operator into the room.
Not his broker. Not his accountant. Us.
We’re honored to be there for a client working through an 8-figure situation. We’re proud that he decided what he most needed in the room was his management company. That doesn’t happen often.
Most owners hire a management company the way they hire a landscaping service. They’re buying a vendor service. Mow the lawn, run the park, send the reports, stay out of the way. For a certain kind of asset, that’s fine. A small park, a stable market, a forgiving loan.
That’s not what most of this industry actually looks like anymore. Most of it now looks like an 8-figure loan on a park that needs real operations to work. A tight debt service coverage ratio that doesn’t leave room for a bad quarter. A lender watching the monthly reports more carefully than they used to. A market that’s grown less forgiving.
In the current environment, your management company shouldn’t be just a service provider. They should be part of your credit and investment story. They’re part of what the bank is betting on when they approve a new loan, or keep a tight existing loan in place instead of calling it.
Which means the question isn’t who can run my park.
The question is, who can I walk into a hard conversation with?
There’s a part of this that we can offer that a non-owner manager can’t. We own parks, too. I’ve signed the same kind of personal guarantee my clients sign. I’ve had hard conversations with my own wife about a deal that wasn’t penciling the way the model said it would. I’ve sat across from my own banker on my own loan.
The pressure my client was under wasn’t theoretical to me. It’s hard to fake your way through that conversation.
If you want to know whether you’ve hired the right management company, picture the scene from your own side of the table. A banker calls. He needs to meet about your loan. You think about who you’d want in the room with you.
If your management company isn’t the first name that comes up, you’ve hired the wrong company. Not because they’re bad at making sure the lawn gets mowed. Because they’re not the company you’d want or need when it counts.
At the end of the day, what you’re hiring isn’t a service. It’s a seat next to you when the conversation gets serious.
From the trenches,
Bob