RV and Boat Storage Market Study 2026

Published 17 September 2026 by Feasibility Study Consultant (FSC Consulting, Inc.). FSC Consulting, Inc. is run by Sarrah Allen, MAI.

The short version

Dedicated RV and boat storage has the best national story in the storage business and one of the easiest stories to misapply. Nationally, about 2,060 purpose-built facilities serve a fleet of several million RVs and roughly 11.7 million registered boats, parking rents posted their strongest recorded gain in September 2025, and institutional buyers have moved in. Locally, the same two years produced bank foreclosures on new facilities in Texas, flat rents in San Antonio and Houston, and trade areas where three-year supply growth approached half of existing inventory.

Both things are true because this is a business decided parcel by parcel. The national shortage is a shortage of covered and enclosed space in places where zoning makes it hard to build. It is not a shortage of gravel lots on the edge of fast-growing Sunbelt metros, where anyone with ten acres and a fence can enter the market in a few months.

This study is written from the consultant's side of the table. It sets out what the market data actually supports, works through a hypothetical 8-acre project with real arithmetic, names the ways these projects fail, and explains what a lender under the SBA 7(a), SBA 504 or USDA Business and Industry program needs from the feasibility study before it can approve the loan. One finding from the worked example deserves early notice: the industry rule of thumb that vehicle storage breaks even at 40% to 50% occupancy holds for an open lot, and does not hold for a leveraged covered and enclosed facility at 2026 construction costs and interest rates, where break-even sits closer to the mid-70s.

The companion methodology piece to this report is The Feasibility Study Consultant's Role in RV and Boat Storage Feasibility Studies. For the conventional storage product, see Self-Storage Feasibility Study: The Consultant's Comp Set vs the Broker's Feasibility Report and our self-storage feasibility study service page.

Part I. Five products, not one

"RV and boat storage" covers formats with very different cost, rent, risk and lender treatment. Treating them as one asset is the first analytical error in most developer pro formas.

Rent ranges are from operator and guide sources and should be confirmed by local survey. StorTrack's per-square-foot data puts the hierarchy in cleaner terms: about $0.35 per square foot per month for uncovered space, about $0.70 for standard purpose-built enclosed units, and about $1.09 for enclosed hybrid units.

Two further formats sit beside these. Dry-stack and marina storage serve boats at the water and are classified as marinas under NAICS 713930; the analytical treatment is set out in The Feasibility Study Consultant's Role in Marina Feasibility Studies. Parking offered at traditional self-storage facilities is not a separate product to the customer at all, and more than 20,000 self-storage properties tracked by Yardi Matrix rent parking spaces. That second group is the competitor most often left out of a developer's supply count, a failure mode also examined in our self-storage consultant role piece.

The physical program is consistent across the covered and enclosed formats. Drive aisles of 50 to 55 feet are recommended where spaces are 40 feet deep. Bays run 12 to 14 feet wide, with 12x40 and 14x50 as the standard large sizes and an enclosed RV bay averaging 14x40, or 560 square feet. Clear heights start at 14 feet. Yield is roughly 50 spaces per acre, and most operators consider 7 to 10 acres the practical minimum for a facility that supports its own security, access system and marketing.

The garage condominium deserves a note because it appears in developer plans as a way to recover capital early. Minnesota's Twin Cities hold more than 2,200 units at over 25 locations, with more than 230 sales in 2024, and Arizona resales reached $750,000 to $905,000 per unit in 2025. The pricing data comes largely from one specialist source. For financing purposes a for-sale condominium phase is real estate development, and mixing it into an SBA or USDA storage application complicates eligibility. It is usually cleaner to separate it.

Part II. Demand: count the vehicles, not the sales

The sales cycle is weak

The manufacturers are having a hard year. RVIA's Summer 2026 RoadSigns forecast, prepared by ITR Economics, puts 2026 wholesale RV shipments at a median of 314,000, within a range of 300,000 to 328,100. Shipments were 342,200 in 2025 and close to 600,000 at the 2021 peak. Six months earlier the same forecast series called for growth of 2.8%. Thor Industries reported North American independent dealer inventory of about 79,200 units at April 30, 2026, down from 91,800 a year earlier, guided fiscal 2026 net sales to $9.0 billion to $9.5 billion, and expects fewer than 300,000 retail RV registrations in 2026. Winnebago and Camping World have described similar softness.

Boats show the same pattern. New powerboat retail sales fell an estimated 8% to 10% in 2025, to roughly 215,000 to 225,000 units on NMMA's broad count, and the rolling twelve months through February 2026 came to 214,115 units, down 8.8%. Stern drives fell 20.1%, jet boats 14.4% and pontoons 10.9%. Brunswick guided to flat U.S. retail. MasterCraft, which acquired Chaparral and Robalo in May 2026, grew legacy net sales 11% to $315.6 million in fiscal 2026 through inventory discipline rather than market strength.

Storage follows the fleet

None of that reduces the number of vehicles that need somewhere to sit tonight. Storage demand is a function of units in existence, and the fleet keeps growing in a down sales year because a unit sold in 2019 is still in use. The numbers are large:

11.2 million U.S. households owned an RV in 2021 according to the Go RVing and Ipsos owner profile, a 62% increase over twenty years. RVIA's 2025 media materials cite 8.1 million under a changed methodology. The two should be reported side by side and not read as a decline. A further 9.6 million households say they intend to buy within five years.

The U.S. Coast Guard counted 11,674,073 registered recreational vessels in its 2024 report. NMMA's figure for registered and documented boats is 11.8 million.

Pre-owned boats make up about 80% of unit sales, close to 860,000 transactions in 2024. A used sale moves a boat between households without adding or removing one from the fleet, but it often moves it into a household with different parking constraints.

The owner base is getting younger. Median RV owner age fell from 53 in 2021 to 49 in 2025, and 22% of owners are between 18 and 34. Younger owners are more likely to live in newer, association-governed housing.

Industry sources estimate that nearly 25 million households own an RV or a boat. That figure comes from trade education sources and is best treated as an order of magnitude.

Displacement is the real driver

An owner with a side yard and no restrictions stores at home for free. Paid storage demand is created when that option disappears, and it is disappearing through four channels.

The first is the community association. The Foundation for Community Association Research counts about 373,000 associations in its 2025 Statistical Review, home to 78.1 million people and about 35.2% of the housing stock. About 21.6 million households paid an association or condominium fee in 2024. Most associations prohibit or sharply limit long-term parking of RVs, boats and trailers.

The second is new construction. NAHB's analysis of the Census Survey of Construction shows 64.8% of single-family homes started in 2023 were inside an association, 601,558 homes, and 65.7% in 2024, 651,873 homes. In 2009 the share was about 49%. Every year of new housing is more restrictive than the stock it adds to.

The third is geometry. Side-yard setbacks in new subdivisions have narrowed to as little as 7.5 feet. Backing a modern trailer onto a side pad takes 12 to 15 feet. The vehicles have moved the other way: Class A motorhomes of 26 to 45 feet and fifth wheels of 32 to 36 feet are ordinary.

The fourth is the municipal code. Cities increasingly prohibit RV and boat parking on streets and in driveways, often on complaint-driven enforcement that tightens as neighborhoods densify.

For a feasibility study, this means the best local demand indicators are not RV dealer sales. They are registrations per capita, the share of trade-area housing built since about 2005, the share governed by associations, and the text of the local parking ordinance.

The fleet mix sets the bay mix

Demand data should also drive design. Towables are roughly 88% to 90% of RV shipments. In 2025 that meant 306,191 towables against 36,029 motorhomes and 4,305 park models. About 95% of boats are under 26 feet and trailerable, and pontoons were 33.6% of new boat unit sales in 2025. The fleet is dominated by vehicles that fit a 10x20 to 12x30 space, with a smaller population of long motorhomes and fifth wheels that need 12x40 to 14x50. The same big-rig capacity question governs site counts on the campground side, as set out in RV Park Site Count and Big-Rig Capacity.

The rent data agrees. In September 2025 the smallest parking spaces tracked by Yardi Matrix, 10x20 through 10x30, averaged $7.73 per square foot annualized and rose 5.6%, a record for that size group. Medium spaces of 12x20 to 12x30 averaged $4.92, up 1.5%. Large spaces of 12x40 to 12x50 averaged $3.80, up 1.1%. A site plan made entirely of 14x50 pull-through bays is designed for the least numerous customer at the lowest rent per square foot. The large bays carry the highest monthly ticket and belong in the mix, but a plan with no small and medium spaces should be questioned.

Part III. Supply: small, growing unevenly, and partly hidden

The national count

Yardi Matrix's Fall 2025 report, with data as of October 9, 2025, counted 2,060 completed dedicated RV and boat storage properties on 17,433 acres. The count was about 800 in 2020 and 1,937 in the second quarter of 2025. Part of that growth is new construction and part is expanded coverage as the data provider adds markets, so the series should not be read as a pure construction rate.

Other counts are larger because they measure different things. StorTrack refers to fewer than 5,000 purpose-built facilities under a broader specialty definition. The FindBoatStorage directory lists 10,431 facilities in 48 states in 2026, including self-storage sites with parking and marinas. There is no federal count. Any study that cites a national facility number should say which definition it is using.

The pipeline is shrinking

Yardi Matrix was tracking 51 dedicated properties under construction on 437 acres in the Fall 2025 report, equal to 2.3% of existing supply. The comparable share was 3.3% in September 2024 and peaked at 4% in October 2023. The same report counted 204 projects in the wider pipeline. Portland had the highest under-construction share among tracked metros at 14.9% of existing acreage from two projects, and San Antonio, already the weakest rent market, still had two projects under way. Higher interest rates, steel and aluminum tariffs and tighter bank credit have slowed starts, and sales and development activity are both well below their 2022 to 2024 highs.

Where it has been built

Source: Yardi Matrix, Fall 2025. The national trailing 36-month figure was 13%, and the six weakest rent markets averaged 19.7%.

The competitors a developer forgets

A credible supply inventory for a vehicle storage site has four layers. Dedicated facilities are the obvious one. Parking at traditional self-storage sites is the second and is usually larger in space count than the dedicated supply. The third is informal supply: association-owned storage lots inside master-planned communities, mobile home park and campground overflow, farm and contractor yards that rent space for cash, and peer-to-peer listings. Neighbor, founded in 2017 and the largest peer-to-peer storage marketplace, advertises driveway and lot parking at up to 50% below commercial rates. The fourth is entitled but unbuilt projects, which are found in planning commission agendas and permit logs and nowhere else. The same distinction between physical and economic occupancy that we test in self-storage applies here.

Informal supply sets the floor on uncovered rents. It does not compete with covered and enclosed space, which is one more reason the formats need separate analysis.

Part IV. Rent evidence and how to read it

The national series is seasonal

Yardi Matrix's advertised annualized rate for the main parking sizes was $5.74 per square foot in September 2024, when year-over-year growth was negative 1.1%. It was $5.99 in March 2025, up 1.1% on a same-store basis. It reached $6.38 in September 2025, up 4.4%, the strongest reading since tracking began. Over the same span traditional self-storage went from a decline of 3.5% in September 2024, to a decline of 0.2% in March 2025, to a gain of 0.6% in November 2025.

Two readings follow. Vehicle storage outperformed traditional storage throughout the correction but moved in the same direction, and the metros that led one tended to lead the other. The segment is resilient, not independent. Rates are also seasonal, rising into spring and easing in autumn, so a rent survey taken in May will overstate the annual average and one taken in November will understate it.

Metro spread

Rent growth was positive in all of the top 30 markets, but the range between Los Angeles and Houston is a factor of almost three in rate and more than twenty in growth. The strongest markets are those where vehicle storage has been pushed to the far suburbs and new sites are hard to entitle. The weakest are those with the most recent construction.

What occupancy data exists

There is no national occupancy series for dedicated vehicle storage comparable to REIT reporting in traditional storage. Operators in undersupplied markets report occupancy above 90% and some new facilities report waitlists at opening, tenants stay longer than self-storage customers, and brokers describe tenant bases for specialty enclosed product that extend a couple of hundred miles. These are operator and broker statements. In a feasibility study, occupancy has to be established by direct survey of each competitor: calls, site visits, online availability checks and, where possible, aerial imagery counts of filled spaces.

Part V. A worked example: one 8-acre site

The following is a hypothetical illustration built from the cost and rent ranges above. It is not a study of any real site, and every input would be replaced by local evidence in an actual engagement. Its purpose is to show how the arithmetic behaves. A real engagement of this type is summarized at 108-stall RV and boat storage, Arizona, SBA 7(a).

Program and revenue

An 8-acre site yields 400 spaces at 50 per acre. The program is 200 uncovered spaces, 140 canopy spaces at 12x40 (67,200 square feet under canopy) and 60 enclosed non-climate units at 14x40 (33,600 square feet).

Cost and capital structure

At $6.4 million the project is above the SBA 7(a) loan ceiling once leverage is applied, so the example uses an SBA 504 structure. The borrower is a new business and the property is special purpose, so the equity requirement is 20%: a bank first mortgage of $3,205,440, a CDC debenture of $1,923,264 and borrower equity of $1,282,176. At an assumed 7.25% on the bank loan and 6.25% on the debenture, both on 25-year amortization, annual debt service is about $430,300.

Results

Stabilized debt service coverage is 1.27 times. Yield on cost is 8.5%. Against Class A covered cap rates of 6.5% to 8%, the development margin is positive but not wide. Coverage under the current SOP can be tested with our SBA DSCR calculator.

Three observations matter more than the base case.

The margin is thin in every direction. Any single adverse move of ordinary size takes coverage below the 1.25 times that most lenders want at stabilization. Two together take it to break-even. That is typical of covered and enclosed vehicle storage at current costs, and it is why the rent and occupancy conclusions in the study carry the credit.

Break-even occupancy is about 74%, not 40% to 50%. Treating three quarters of stabilized operating expenses as fixed, the project needs roughly 74% occupancy at base rents to cover expenses and debt service. The commonly quoted 40% to 50% figure is correct for a different project. Run the same 8 acres as a 400-space open lot at $110 per month with no structures, and total cost falls to about $2.05 million, debt service to about $138,000, and break-even occupancy to about 48%, with stabilized coverage above 2 times.

That contrast explains the whole market. The open lot shows extraordinary returns on paper and has almost no barrier to entry, so in any corridor where land is available and zoning permits it, the open lot gets built several times over, the $110 rent and the 88% occupancy do not hold, and the last entrants end up in foreclosure. The covered and enclosed facility has a far less forgiving break-even but faces fewer competitors, serves the customer who cannot substitute a driveway listing, and holds its rents. Neither format is safe by default. The open lot's risk is competition. The covered facility's risk is leverage and lease-up time. The same lease-up arithmetic in conventional storage is worked through in Self-Storage Lease-Up and Absorption.

Phasing

Building the uncovered and canopy spaces first and deferring the enclosed buildings reduces first-phase cost to about $4.43 million, brings it within reach of a 7(a) structure, and produces the same 1.27 times coverage on $377,101 of NOI, with roughly $2 million less capital exposed during lease-up. The enclosed phase can then be financed against demonstrated demand, often as an expansion of an operating business with history, which is a materially easier credit.

Part VI. How these projects fail

Several Texas facilities were sold out of bank foreclosure in 2025 and 2026, including properties taken back by Ciera Bank from their developers and sold as distressed notes. Together with the flat-rent Sunbelt metros, they give a usable record of failure. Five patterns recur.

1. The thesis substituted for the trade area. The developer's market section quoted national undersupply figures and did not count the two other open lots under construction on the same highway.

2. Format without defense. Open-lot or minimal canopy product was built where land was plentiful and zoning permissive. Nothing prevented the next entrant.

3. Lease-up taken from the brochure. Industry sources cite break-even in months 14 to 16 and full lease-up in 24 months. Those are best-case outcomes in undersupplied markets. Projects financed with twelve months of interest reserve on that expectation ran out of cash in the second year.

4. Rents taken from the wrong comparable. Enclosed-unit rates from a coastal metro, or a competitor's posted rate without its promotions, were applied to an inland open lot.

5. Costs fixed before bids. Canopy and steel building prices rose with construction inflation and with steel and aluminum tariffs into 2025 and 2026. Budgets built on per-square-foot figures from two years earlier produced overruns funded by the operating reserve.

Each of these is a feasibility study failure before it is a loan failure. A study that defined the trade area, inventoried all four layers of supply, surveyed actual rates, benchmarked lease-up to local openings and tied costs to a current bid would have flagged every one. The parallel list for fuel retail is in Why Gas Station Feasibility Studies Get Sent Back, and for wash tunnels in Car Wash Feasibility Study: The Six Assumptions SBA Lenders Challenge First.

Part VII. Site and entitlement

Commercial and light industrial zones are the most permissive for vehicle storage, and residential zones almost never allow it. Even in permissive zones the use frequently requires a conditional use permit, and the conditions shape both cost and value: opaque screening and landscaping, paving in place of gravel, lighting limits, caps on vehicle height visible from the road, and stormwater detention sized for a largely impervious site.

Three entitlement risks belong in every study. Moratoriums are the first. The City of Menifee, California, adopted an interim urgency moratorium on RV storage permits under Government Code Section 65858, and similar pauses have appeared in other fast-growing jurisdictions that regard outdoor storage as a poor use of commercial land. Permit expiration is the second. Conditional use permits can carry a term, five years in Ada County, Idaho, and a permit that must be renewed inside a 25-year loan is a repayment risk to be disclosed and mitigated. Land competition is the third. Industrial outdoor storage users want the same flat, accessible, low-coverage parcels and can often pay more, a competition quantified in Industrial Outdoor Storage Land Value.

The same barriers are what protect a facility once it is open. A site in a jurisdiction that has since restricted the use is more valuable than an identical site where the use is allowed by right, and the study should say which situation applies.

On the environmental side, vehicle storage involves fuel, oil and sometimes wash water. Stormwater compliance is an operating obligation, and lenders under the federal programs will expect environmental due diligence scaled to the site's history and the proposed activities.

Part VIII. Capital markets and exit

Yardi Matrix recorded 55 sales of dedicated properties in 2025 through the date of its Fall report, for about $256 million, against 57 sales and $164 million in all of 2024. The high point was 2022, with 151 sales and $556.1 million. Average pricing exceeded $570,000 per acre. Stabilized assets trade between 7% and 10% overall, with newer Class A covered facilities at 6.5% to 8% and older outdoor lots at 9% to 11%. A stabilized RV resort in Abilene, Texas, a related but distinct property type covered on our RV park feasibility study page, sold at 7.75% in December 2025. Marcus and Millichap brokers describe vehicle storage cap rates as trending down as more buyers compete, and no standardized cap rate survey exists for the segment, so exit assumptions should rest on identified transactions.

The buyer pool has deepened. RecNation, backed by Centerbridge Partners and WOJO Capital, runs about 70 locations, has targeted six to eight acquisitions a month, engaged Goldman Sachs to raise acquisition equity, and added a third-party management arm and a consignment business. Ivywild Capital and 10 Federal Storage are active. On the marina side, Blackstone Infrastructure bought Safe Harbor Marinas and its 138 marinas from Sun Communities for $5.65 billion, announced February 24 and closed April 30, 2025, at about 21 times estimated 2024 funds from operations, and Suntex passed 100 marinas after merging with Windward Marina Group in March 2026.

For a single-site developer, the relevance is the exit and the refinance. Aggregators buy stabilized, covered, well-located facilities with clean entitlements and modern access systems. They do not pay Class A pricing for gravel. The study's valuation section should match the cap rate to the format. Refinance paths outside the guaranteed programs are set out on our conventional loan programs and CMBS conduit pages, and the worked example in Class B Self-Storage CMBS Refinance.

Part IX. Program financing and what each reader wants from the study

SBA 7(a) and 504

The SBA does not finance passive real estate holding, and 13 CFR 120.110 lists passive businesses as ineligible. Storage is eligible because the operator is providing a storage service, a treatment that has applied since the SOP revision effective October 1, 2010 and continues under SOP 50 10 8, effective June 1, 2025, and its 8.1 update. RV and boat storage is handled on the same basis as self-storage. The practical conditions are month-to-month rental agreements and an actively managed operation. Long-term net leases of assigned spaces, or a master lease to a third-party operator, move the applicant toward the ineligible side. Because the operating business runs the entire site, the owner-occupancy requirement is met. The lender and the SBA decide eligibility on the specific facts.

The 7(a) program lends up to $5 million and can fund land, construction, equipment, working capital and interest reserve together, with acquisitions typically requiring 10% down. The 504 program combines a bank first mortgage with a fixed-rate CDC debenture and requires 10% equity, 15% where the borrower is a new business or the property is special purpose, and 20% where both apply, which is the usual case for a ground-up facility by a first-time operator. Storage creates few jobs, so 504 applications generally rely on a public policy or community development goal, and the CDC should identify it at the outset.

SOP 50 10 8 does not list required third-party reports. It makes the lender and the CDC responsible for supported underwriting. Where repayment depends on projections, which is the case for every new vehicle storage facility, lenders and CDCs routinely require an independent feasibility study, and the SBA reviewer expects to find one in the file. What that file should contain is itemized by our SBA feasibility study checklist generator, and the qualification standard is discussed in Who Is Qualified to Prepare an SBA or USDA Feasibility Study.

USDA Business and Industry

USDA's guaranteed loan rules are codified at 7 CFR Part 5001. The regulation defines a feasibility study at section 5001.3 as a report by an independent qualified consultant evaluating economic, market, technical, financial and management feasibility, following Appendix A to Subpart D. Section 5001.306 requires such a study for guaranteed loans above $1 million to a new business, allows simplified processing for guaranteed loans up to $600,000 where the lender's own analysis is sufficient, and leaves the Agency authority to require a study in other cases. Loans can reach $25 million. The project must be in an eligible rural area, generally outside any city or town of more than 50,000 people and its adjacent urbanized area, and only the lender applies for the guarantee. The program mechanics are set out on our USDA loan programs page and in The Consultant's Role in USDA B&I Feasibility Studies, with the scope differences against SBA in SBA Feasibility Study vs USDA Feasibility Study and a USDA checklist generator.

Vehicle storage fits this program better than most developers realize. The best sites are often just beyond the metro edge or near lakes, reservoirs and coastal launch points, which is frequently eligible territory, and project sizes above the 7(a) limit are common once canopy and enclosed buildings are included. The same choice on the campground side is worked through in RV Park Feasibility Study: SBA or USDA B&I.

What each reader looks for

Part X. The consultant's workflow

A vehicle storage engagement follows a fixed sequence, because each step limits the next.

Confirm the use is permitted. Zoning designation, permit path, conditions, term and any pending moratorium. If the use cannot be entitled, nothing else matters.

Define the trade area by format. A 15 to 30 minute drive time for uncovered and canopy spaces. A wider area for enclosed and climate-controlled units, supported by evidence such as competitor tenant origin or the absence of any enclosed product in the region.

Build the four-layer supply inventory. Dedicated facilities, parking at self-storage, informal and association lots, and entitled pipeline, each with space counts by format and size.

Measure demand. Households, registrations per capita where the state publishes them, housing age, association share, local ordinance text, and recreation anchors such as lakes, launch ramps and public land gateways.

Survey rents and occupancy. Actual quoted rates by size and format with promotions, observed occupancy, waitlists verified by inquiry rather than accepted from a website.

Set absorption. Net spaces rented per month, by format, benchmarked to recent local openings and adjusted for season of opening.

Test the program. Compare the proposed bay mix to the fleet mix and to the sizes where competitors are full.

Verify costs. Current contractor bids or documented estimates for site work, canopy and buildings, with contingency and a construction period interest reserve.

Project operations. Expense line items, with property tax recalculated on completed value and insurance quoted for the actual hail, wind and fire exposure.

Run coverage and break-even by month through stabilization, and identify the month operations first cover debt service.

Run sensitivities on rent, lease-up pace, cost, expense and interest rate, singly and in combination.

Address program items. Eligibility facts for SBA, the five Appendix A components for USDA, management capability for both.

What the borrower should have ready

Site control documents and survey; zoning verification or permit application; site plan with space counts by size and format; contractor bids; the operator's resume and any management agreement; the proposed rental agreement form; a draft sources and uses statement; and the borrower's own projections, which the study will test, not adopt.

Red flags in a developer pro forma

Lease-up to 90% in 12 to 18 months without a local precedent.

An expense ratio under 25%. The supportable range is 25% to 35%, and property tax and insurance on a new facility can take a large part of that alone.

A single rent applied to all uncovered spaces regardless of size.

A competitor list with no self-storage parking on it.

Annual rent escalations of 4% or more from the first year.

An exit cap rate from Class A covered transactions applied to open-lot income.

No line for the stormwater, screening and paving conditions in the permit.

Undersupply multiples quoted from trade promoters as the market conclusion. Toy Storage Nation's estimate that supply would need to grow about fivefold may be directionally right nationally, and it says nothing about a particular highway interchange.

Part XI. Regional and boat-specific notes

Florida and the Gulf. Florida has about 1.2 million registered boats, a tenth of the national fleet, and led new-boat sales in 2024 at $6.1 billion. Hurricane exposure shapes the product. Since Hurricane Ian in September 2022, dry-stack barns rated for Category 5 winds, haul-out programs and named-storm indoor storage have become marketing features, offered by operators such as Port 32, Meridian Marina and Boathouse Marine Center. Insurance cost is the swing expense line, and Southwest Florida's 19.2% trailing supply growth and Jacksonville's 26.1% call for careful trade-area work.

Texas. The deepest vehicle storage market in the country by property count and the one with the visible distress. Houston has 178 dedicated properties and Dallas-Fort Worth 130. Texas was second in new-boat sales at $2.4 billion. Rents in San Antonio and Houston were flat in the year to September 2025. Feasible sites exist, generally covered product in association-heavy suburbs with restrictive cities, and the screening has to be stricter than anywhere else. See feasibility study consultant Texas, self-storage feasibility study Texas and RV park feasibility study Texas.

Great Lakes and Upper Midwest. Nearly a quarter of the national boat fleet, a short season, and a winter storage business with its own revenue: shrink wrap at roughly $15 to $25 per foot, or $270 to $600 for a typical Minnesota boat. Michigan recorded $1.5 billion of new-boat sales. Indoor heated storage commands a premium, seasonal occupancy swings are wide, and Minneapolis has seen 29.9% trailing supply growth. Regional coverage includes self-storage feasibility study Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. Seasonality is modeled in RV Park Seasonality and Occupancy Timing.

Mountain West and desert Southwest. Phoenix with 71 properties and Denver with 68 are established markets with heavy association housing and year-round RV use. Las Vegas and the Inland Empire share the profile. Hail in Colorado and heat in Arizona both push demand toward covered space; see also self-storage feasibility study Colorado and Nevada.

West Coast. The highest rents in the country and the hardest entitlements. Los Angeles at $14.99 per square foot and the Bay Area at $12.44 reflect land scarcity more than demand strength. Portland's two projects under construction equal 14.9% of its existing acreage, a reminder that a small market can be moved by one or two openings. See feasibility study consultant California and self-storage feasibility study California.

Carolinas and South Atlantic. Regional boat registrations grew 12.4% to 2.2 million, North Carolina recorded $1.3 billion of new-boat sales, and coastal slip waitlists are reported at multiple years. Inland lake markets here are frequently USDA-eligible. See self-storage feasibility study Georgia and Tennessee.

Slips and dry stack. No national waitlist statistic exists. NMMA's boater survey found 80% of boaters experience congestion at their access point and 71% have changed their behavior because of it. Reported waits reach around a decade for a 35-foot slip at Dana Point, California. Lenders generally look for 85% occupancy and a documented waitlist at a marina. Dry-stack market-size figures differ by multiples between research vendors and should not anchor a study. Our marina work is described in The Feasibility Study Consultant's Role in Marina Feasibility Studies and in a 250-stall marine storage engagement in Michigan.

Part XII. Outlook and indicators, 2026 to 2028

The base expectation is continued outperformance against traditional self-storage, with national parking rent growth in the mid single digits led by the coastal metros, and absorption of the Sunbelt overhang through 2027 as the under-construction share stays near or below the 2.3% recorded in the Fall 2025 report. Cap rates for covered Class A product hold or compress slightly. Open-lot rents in overbuilt corridors stay flat.

The better case is a fall in interest rates that revives RV and boat sales, adds to the fleet faster, lowers development debt cost and draws more institutional capital, with entitled sites becoming the scarce input.

The worse case is a recession that leads some owners to sell vehicles, combined with a major hurricane or a lithium battery fire that resets insurance pricing for canopy and enclosed facilities, and a further round of distressed sales from 2022 to 2024 projects.

The indicators worth tracking are specific: the semiannual Yardi Matrix RV and boat report for rents and pipeline, the quarterly RVIA RoadSigns forecast, NMMA monthly sales, state registration releases, the NAHB association share of housing starts, and local planning agendas for the trade area in question. Two consecutive quarters of negative metro parking rent growth should prompt a lender to revisit reserves on any loan still in lease-up.

Frequently asked questions

What does an RV and boat storage feasibility study cover? Entitlement status, a format-specific trade area, a full supply inventory including self-storage parking and informal lots, demand indicators, a rent and occupancy survey, absorption, a review of the bay mix, verified development costs, operating projections, debt service coverage, break-even, sensitivities and the program-specific items required by SBA or USDA lenders. The method is set out in full in the consultant's role in RV and boat storage studies.

How big should the trade area be? A 15 to 30 minute drive for uncovered and canopy parking. Enclosed and climate-controlled units can draw from much farther, in some cases over 100 miles, but only where evidence supports it.

Is RV and boat storage eligible for SBA financing? Yes, on the same basis as self-storage, when it is run as an operating business with month-to-month agreements. Long-term net leases of assigned spaces raise passive-business issues. Eligibility is decided by the lender and the SBA. See our SBA feasibility study consultant page.

Can USDA B&I finance a storage facility? Yes, if the site is in an eligible rural area and the project meets program requirements. A feasibility study by an independent qualified consultant is required for guaranteed loans over $1 million to a new business. See USDA loan programs.

What break-even occupancy should I expect? It depends on the format and leverage. An open lot on modestly priced land can break even near 45% to 50%. A leveraged covered and enclosed facility at current construction costs and interest rates can require 70% or more. Quoting the first figure for the second project is a common and costly error.

How long does lease-up take? Plan on 24 to 36 months to reach 85% to 90%. Faster outcomes occur in undersupplied markets and should be treated as upside.

Should I build open lot, canopy or enclosed? Open lots are cheapest and most exposed to competition. Canopy is the core product in hail, sun and snow markets. Enclosed units earn the highest rent and take the most capital. Many successful projects open with uncovered and canopy spaces and add enclosed buildings once demand is proven.

Do falling RV and boat sales hurt storage demand? Not directly. Storage demand tracks the number of vehicles in existence and the share of owners who cannot park at home. Both are still rising.

What expense ratio is reasonable? Between 25% and 35% of effective gross income for an unmanned or lightly staffed facility. Anything lower needs line-item support.

Method, limits and sources

This study draws on published third-party data available in mid-September 2026. The most recent comprehensive dataset on dedicated vehicle storage is the Yardi Matrix Fall 2025 national report, with data as of October 9, 2025, and figures from it are dated accordingly. RV ownership counts differ between the 2021 Go RVing and Ipsos survey and RVIA's 2025 figure because of methodology. Boat counts differ between NMMA and the Coast Guard. Market-size dollar estimates from research vendors vary by multiples and have been left out or flagged. Monthly rent ranges, development costs, lease-up timing and undersupply claims originate largely with operators, builders, brokers and trade promoters, and each should be verified locally. Garage condominium pricing relies mainly on a single specialist source. Forecasts change quickly, as the six-month swing in the RVIA shipment forecast shows. The worked example is hypothetical, uses assumed interest rates and costs, and is included to illustrate method. SBA and USDA program rules are updated by notice and annually, and should be confirmed with the lender, CDC or USDA state office for each transaction.

This is general market research. It is not a feasibility study of any site and is not lending, legal or investment advice.

Sources. Yardi Matrix National RV and Boat Storage Reports, Fall 2024, Q2 2025 and Fall 2025; StorTrack; RV Industry Association RoadSigns forecasts prepared by ITR Economics, Winter 2025 and Summer 2026, and RVIA shipment reports; Go RVing and Ipsos RV Owner Demographic Profile; National Marine Manufacturers Association statistical abstract, sales reports and boater survey; U.S. Coast Guard Recreational Boating Statistics 2024; Foundation for Community Association Research 2025 Statistical Review; National Association of Home Builders analysis of the Census Survey of Construction; company reports of Thor Industries, Brunswick, MasterCraft, Sun Communities and Blackstone; Marcus and Millichap commentary; Toy Storage Nation; SBA SOP 50 10 8 and 13 CFR Part 120; 7 CFR Part 5001, sections 5001.3 and 5001.306 and Appendix A to Subpart D.

About the author

Sarrah Allen, MAI leads FSC Consulting, Inc., which prepares independent, lender-facing feasibility studies for SBA 7(a), SBA 504, USDA B&I, USDA Community Facilities, USDA REAP and conventional credits. Related reading: the complete guide to hiring a feasibility study consultant, self-storage, cold storage, RV parks and marinas.

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