Questions buyers ask
Who writes a glamping feasibility study my lender will accept?
Loan Analytics writes the study, and Daniel Smith, MAI puts his signature to its conclusion. It speaks to the lender, not to the resort's investors or future guests: its reader is the credit officer, the 504 lender or the USDA lender deciding whether furnished units on rural land can carry the debt. What makes a glamping study acceptable to that reader is evidence the reader can check, and for glamping the obvious evidence is missing, because SBA's loan files do not code glamping as a class. Our study begins instead from the closest class those files hold, RV parks and campgrounds, with 645 7(a) loans for $842.8 million and 281 504 loans for $240.2 million from FY2017 to FY2026. It says plainly that this is a stand-in. It explains which parts of the campground record carry over to a resort of cabins, domes or safari tents: seasonal demand, money spent on roads and utilities before opening, and a guest who drives in for leisure. It names the parts that do not: furnished units, housekeeping between stays, a higher nightly rate and units that wear out sooner than a pad. Then it tests the resort on its own facts, its market, its budget, its permit, its coverage through every month of the year and the collateral the appraiser will find. That order lets the lender see where the SBA record stops and where the study's own fieldwork takes over, which is the line a credit committee will look for first.
Why does this page show RV park and campground loans for a glamping resort?
Because nothing closer exists in SBA's files. SBA records each loan under the borrower's industry code, and glamping has no code of its own; the code that RV parks, RV resorts and campgrounds share is where a resort selling outdoor stays is most likely to land. The fit is strong on the land side and weaker on the building side. Both businesses sell nights on rural acreage to guests who arrive by car, both earn unevenly through the year, and both spend on access roads, water, power and wastewater before taking a booking. A glamping resort then adds what a campground leaves to the guest: the unit, its furniture and linens, and the labor to turn it between stays. Two consequences follow for the study. First, a glamping loan that SBA coded under another industry is not in these figures, so the 645 7(a) and 281 504 approvals on this page are a lower bound on SBA's outdoor-stay lending in the window, not a count of glamping loans. Second, the campground medians of $821,000 and $576,000 describe a class whose usual product is a site for the guest's own rig or tent; a resort whose cost sits in furnished units should expect its request to be compared with those medians and should arrive with a budget that explains any distance from them. The study states both points at the outset, so the lender does not have to discover them on its own.
What will my lender want a glamping feasibility study to show?
A lender reads a glamping study for the risks that the campground record and the resort's own plan expose. Demand comes first: who drives to the site, from how far, at what nightly rate and in which months, measured against comparable glamping and cabin properties rather than against campground pads. Cost comes next, and a glamping budget is heavier than a campground's: the units, the platforms beneath them, power and water carried to each one, and wells and septic designed for lodging-style use, along with the county permit that decides whether the resort is regulated as a campground or as lodging. Coverage follows: net operating income has to meet debt service across the whole year, including the ramp-up seasons and the quiet months, not only the peak weekends that sell the concept. Collateral is the fourth test, because comparable resort sales are few and the appraiser may class tents or domes as personal property valued separately from the land. For an SBA loan there is also the character of the revenue, nightly stays against long-term site rentals, which SBA counts as passive. The record on this page sharpens each test. In the FY2017 to FY2024 cohort the cancellation floors read 13.5% on the 7(a) side and 12.2% on the 504 side, so a lender wants the budget, the permit path and the equity settled before it commits, not discovered after.
How much does a glamping feasibility study cost?
Every price quoted here comes from this site's 2026 fee survey, its record of the ranges that feasibility providers publish for their studies. It sorts SBA studies into bands by complexity. A single-site study for a standard special-purpose asset, a band whose examples include RV parks, runs $5,000 to $12,500. A complex study, the survey's band for ground-up hotels, assisted living, multi-site work, unusual concepts and phased construction, runs $10,000 to $25,000. A study written to USDA's rules in 7 CFR Part 5001, for a Business and Industry or Community Facilities loan, sits in the survey's USDA tier, quoted as $7,500 to $18,750 and above. Any of the three can fit a glamping resort. The purchase of an operating resort, or a campground adding some furnished units, sits nearest the first band. A ground-up resort of cabins, domes and safari tents, built in stages with no operating history behind it, carries the marks of the second. A rural resort that borrows the way the Ohio worked example on this site does, through a guaranteed loan under USDA Business and Industry, belongs to the third. The survey also names what moves a fee inside its band: new construction, which adds a check of the build budget and a ramp counted from the opening date, and thin rural markets, where the comparables must be visited and verified on the ground. Loan Analytics states its own fee for your resort in the scope it returns.
How long does a glamping feasibility study take?
This page gives no fixed turnaround, because the time a glamping study needs depends on facts the scope request settles. Send the resort's plan with your lender's deadline, and the scope Loan Analytics returns carries a timeline set against that date, along with the fee. What lengthens the work is particular to this kind of project. A resort with no operating history needs its ramp built from comparable properties rather than read from its own statements. In a thin rural market the comparable glamping, cabin and campground properties have to be verified in the field, one by one. A resort whose utilities, wells and septic are still being designed needs those costs confirmed before the coverage test means anything. A permit path that is still open, campground or lodging, can hold back the study's conclusion until the county's position is known. A study for a USDA Business and Industry lender is written to that program's own standard, not an SBA lender's. On the other side, the purchase of a resort with booking history and statements, or an existing campground adding units, moves faster, because the demand case starts from the property's own record. The cancellation floors on this page, at least 13.5% of 7(a) approvals and 12.2% of 504 approvals, are a reason to order early: the files do not say why those approvals fell away, but a study started in good time leaves room to fix a budget or a permit before the lender's deadline arrives.
Can a glamping resort get an SBA loan?
The SBA record shows that campground projects get them in volume, under both programs: 645 7(a) loans for $842.8 million and 281 504 loans for $240.2 million from FY2017 to FY2026, with approvals in every year of the window and a yearly 7(a) count that never dropped below 41. Whether a given glamping resort qualifies is for its lender to decide, and the record cannot settle it, because glamping loans are not coded on their own. What the page's sources do settle is the revenue question a lender will raise. Income from short stays is income from selling nights; income from long-term site rentals is what SBA counts as passive, and the lender will ask which the resort earns. A resort of furnished units booked by the night sits on the right side of that line. A resort that mixes in seasonal leases, long-stay sites or units let by the month has to show the split. The study shows it from the booking plan or, for a purchase, from the booking history, and it states how much of the projected income comes from stays measured in nights. It also places the request in the record: a 7(a) loan near the $821,000 median, or a 504 loan near $576,000, sits in the middle of the class, while a request well above them needs its unit costs to account for the difference. With both points answered, the lender's eligibility review starts from documented facts rather than from the resort's marketing.
Should a glamping resort borrow under 7(a) or 504?
The campground record leans to 7(a) on every measure this page prints. 7(a) holds 645 of the class's loans against 281 under 504, $842.8 million of its dollars against $240.2 million, and the larger median, $821,000 against $576,000. In every year from FY2017 to FY2026, 7(a) approved more campground loans than 504 did. Yet 504 has become a real second channel. Its yearly count climbed from 13 loans in FY2017 to a peak of 45 in FY2021 and has not fallen below 26 since; in FY2022 it approved 43 loans to 7(a)'s 66. The program choice changes what the study has to prove. A 7(a) lender on a glamping resort reads hardest for the operating case, nightly rate, occupancy, the off-season and coverage, and in this class the typical 7(a) loan is the larger one, $821,000 at the median. A 504 project leans on land and site work, the part of a resort this page ties to 504, so the study must also carry the real estate case: what the land, roads, utility lines and permanent buildings are worth, and how much of the resort's value sits in units an appraiser may count as personal property rather than real estate. The more of the value that sits in tents and domes rather than in permanent cabins on owned land, the less of the resort that real estate case can cover. The study follows whichever program the lender picked; where that is still open, it shows how the resort reads under each.
How large are SBA loans in the class closest to glamping?
The middle 7(a) campground loan from FY2017 to FY2026 was $821,000 and the middle 504 loan $576,000. Those medians are the figures a credit officer reaches for first, and a glamping request will be held against them. They also understate what each loan has carried in recent years. Set the yearly 7(a) counts beside their dollars and the pattern is plain: FY2018 approved 59 loans for $55.6 million, while FY2026 approved 60 for $92.3 million; FY2020 approved 62 for $65.1 million, while FY2024 approved 61 for $94.3 million. The counts are nearly level and the dollars are not. FY2023 makes the point most sharply, with 68 loans for $114.7 million, close to the $117.6 million of FY2021's record 103 loans. The 504 table moves the same way: 30 loans carried $18.6 million in FY2020, and 30 carried $29.6 million in FY2026. The record does not say why, whether larger parks, higher building costs or more purchases of operating parks drove it. For a glamping study this cuts both ways. A request above the window's median is not unusual against recent campground approvals, and the lender's own files will show it. But the study still has to tie the request to the resort's own cost, the number and type of units, the cost of each with its platform and utility run, and the site work beneath them, because furnished units can push the cost of each site past a pad's, and the lender will want that difference shown line by line in the budget rather than taken on trust.
How has SBA 7(a) lending to campgrounds moved year by year?
7(a) campground approvals ran between 41 and 62 loans a year from FY2017 to FY2020, with FY2019 the low point: 41 loans for $49.7 million, the smallest count and the smallest dollar total in the window. FY2021 broke the range with 103 loans for $117.6 million, the high on both measures. What followed is what a lender reads closely. The count fell back at once, to 66 in FY2022, and has stayed between 60 and 74 since. The dollars did not return to the old range: $77.8 million in FY2022, then $114.7 million, $94.3 million, $116.3 million and $92.3 million through FY2026, every one of them above FY2020's $65.1 million, the strongest year before the peak. FY2025's 74 loans, the second highest count in the window, carried $116.3 million, almost matching FY2021. A glamping study takes three lessons from this table. Campground credit did not retreat after its peak: the count settled near the range of the years before it, while from FY2023 the dollars ran far above anything FY2017 to FY2020 recorded, on counts that rose far less than the dollars did, so the typical loan grew. The peak itself is an outlier, so a study should not treat FY2021 as a normal year when it argues for demand in outdoor stays. And because the record ends in FY2026 with 60 loans for $92.3 million, a lender approving a resort today does so in a class whose loans have run larger since FY2023, and it will ask whether the resort's own revenue supports a loan of the size requested rather than relying on the class's recent habits.
How has SBA 504 lending to campgrounds changed?
504 grew from a low base. FY2017 approved 13 504 campground loans for $8.9 million, and FY2018 approved 16 for $7.4 million, the smallest dollar year in the window despite a larger count than FY2017's. FY2019 is the turn: 21 loans for $20.8 million, more dollars than the following year's 30 loans for $18.6 million. FY2021 and FY2022 then brought the highest counts in the window, 45 and 43 loans, for $30.8 million and $33.2 million. From FY2023 the count settled lower, at 28, 26, 29 and 30, while the dollars stayed high: FY2023's 28 loans carried $34.2 million, the largest 504 total in the window, and FY2025's 29 carried $31.6 million. Recent 504 campground loans are fewer than at the peak, and each one carries more. Two readings matter for a glamping resort. The programs do not always move together: in FY2019, the year 7(a) fell to its low of 41 loans, 504 rose, so a slow year in one program tells the study nothing certain about the other, and the study should be written to whichever program the lender is using. And 504's recent pattern, fewer and larger projects, suits the resort that owns its land and builds roads, utilities and permanent structures on it. A 504 study for such a resort has to set the real estate apart from the furnished units and furniture that wear out sooner, because a resort whose value sits mostly in its units is a different collateral case from the land and site work this page ties to 504.
Which states have the most SBA campground loans?
Texas, by a wide margin: 117 loans for $198.0 million, first on count and first on dollars in the table. Minnesota is second by count with 90 loans and Wisconsin third with 63, followed by Utah with 43, Florida and New York with 42 each, California and Michigan with 37 each, Colorado with 34, Missouri with 29 and North Carolina with 28. The dollar order is different. Florida's $87.7 million is second, Utah's $61.0 million third and Wisconsin's $53.5 million fourth, with California's $50.9 million, Minnesota's $49.2 million and Colorado's $48.1 million close behind; North Carolina's $37.4 million ranks eighth of the states listed, above New York's $29.9 million, Michigan's $28.5 million and Missouri's $27.8 million. For a glamping study, the state row tells the lender how much campground history it can read the resort against. In Texas that history is deep enough to stand on its own. Lower in the table it thins, and the study leans more on the national record and on its own survey of comparable properties. The table also counts loans without dividing them by program, so it cannot say whether a state's campground lending runs mainly through 7(a) or 504; the study answers that from the program the resort's lender uses and, where the site has a state page for the class, from that page's fuller record. Outside the table there is no state row to read at all, and the study says so rather than borrowing a neighbor's.
Why do some states carry far more campground dollars on the same number of loans?
The state table pairs states that tie on count but not on money, and those pairs are the clearest evidence on this page that campground loan sizes differ from one region to another. Florida and New York both hold 42 loans; Florida's add up to $87.7 million and New York's to $29.9 million. California and Michigan both hold 37; California's come to $50.9 million and Michigan's to $28.5 million. The near ties say the same: Utah's 43 loans carry $61.0 million while Wisconsin's 63 carry $53.5 million, Colorado's 34 carry $48.1 million while Minnesota's 90 carry $49.2 million, and North Carolina's 28 carry $37.4 million against Missouri's $27.8 million on 29. On this record campground loans run smaller in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and New York, and larger in Florida, Utah, Colorado, California and North Carolina. The table does not say why: land prices, park size, building costs or a different mix of purchases and new builds could each play a part. A glamping study uses the contrast in two ways. In a state where campground loans run large, a resort's request may look ordinary to the lender, and the study's task is to show that the revenue can carry it. In a state where they run small, a furnished-unit resort may be asking for more than the state's campground loans have usually carried, and the study has to explain the difference from the budget up, unit by unit, before the credit officer turns to the state's history for comfort.
What if my glamping resort is in a state that is not in the table, such as Ohio?
Then the study cannot lean on a state campground record, and it says so. The table on this page lists the states with the most campground loans, down to North Carolina with 28, and Ohio, where the site's worked glamping example is set, is not among them. That does not mean SBA has made no campground loans in Ohio or in any other unlisted state; it means none of them has enough to appear here, and a lender there has fewer local campground files to compare against. In that case the market case is assembled from the site outward rather than from a state statistic. It identifies the population centers that send leisure guests within a drive, the landscapes and attractions that draw them, and the comparable glamping, cabin and campground properties within reach, with their nightly rates, their seasons and the listings and reviews that carry their bookings. It sets the resort's request against the national campground medians of $821,000 under 7(a) and $576,000 under 504, and against the states in the table whose loans run at a similar size, for direction rather than proof. It also gives weight to the program question, because a rural resort may also be weighing a USDA Business and Industry loan, the route the Ohio example follows. That worked example shows how a study of this kind is laid out for a lender, with the cabins, domes and tents of the resort tested against the program financing them, and it is the closest model on this site for a resort in a state the table leaves out.
How often are approved campground loans cancelled before they close?
Often enough that a lender plans for it. For campground approvals made from FY2017 to FY2024, the cancellation floor stands at 13.5% for the 7(a) program, with 12.2% for 504. Both are floors: they count the cancellations SBA's files record, and no rate appears unless its cohort holds 30 loans or more. The cohort ends with FY2024 approvals, so the 74 7(a) approvals of FY2025 and the 60 of FY2026 are not yet in it. For a glamping resort the cancellation floors matter more than the charge-off figures, because they describe the risk that arrives first. The files do not say why approved deals fell away, and cost, permits and equity are all candidates. Each has a glamping form. Cost: a budget that prices the units but leaves out the platforms, the utility run to each unit or a septic system designed for lodging. Permits: a county that treats the resort as lodging rather than a campground, with the rules that come with that. Equity: a sponsor whose contribution was sized to an early budget rather than the final one. The study deals with all three before the lender commits. It builds the budget line by line from the unit type and the site plan, it records where the county permit stands and what the resort is being permitted as, and it shows sources and uses at the cost the study supports, so the approved loan is one the resort can actually close and build.
Have SBA campground loans been charged off?
The charge-off floor is 0.00% under both programs for campground loans disbursed from FY2017 to FY2021, and it should be read for exactly what it is. It is a floor: it counts the charge-offs recorded in SBA's files so far and nothing else, and the cohort is young. It closes with FY2021, the year approvals peaked in both programs, at 103 under 7(a) and 45 under 504, so loans from the busiest stretch of the class's lending are still early in their terms. It also measures campgrounds, not glamping. A resort of furnished units carries risks the campground record cannot show: fewer operating histories for an underwriter to read, money spent on units before any guest has proven the demand, bookings that depend on online listings and public reviews, and units that need replacing long before a gravel pad does. A lender will not take 0.00% as evidence that a glamping loan is safe, and a study that leaned on it would weaken its own case. The study treats the floor as one data point about the class in one cohort. It then tests the resort against the risks the floor cannot reach: occupancy and rate in the off-season, a ramp measured from the opening date, a reserve for replacing units and furniture, and coverage that still holds when bookings fall short of the base case. That is the evidence a credit officer weighs when the class history is too short to answer the question by itself.
How does a glamping feasibility study test demand?
From the guest backward. A glamping resort sells a furnished night to a leisure guest who arrives by car, so the study defines the drive market first: the cities and towns within a weekend trip, and the routes that bring guests to the site. It then builds its comparable set from properties that sell what the resort will sell, furnished cabins, domes, safari tents and similar units, rather than campground pads, and records each one's nightly rates, its open season, its minimum stays and how its bookings move between peak weekends, weekdays and the off-season. Because glamping guests book through online listings and choose by reviews, the study reads those listings for evidence of how fully the comparables fill, and it treats the quality of the resort's own listing and guest experience as part of the demand case rather than an afterthought. The campground record frames this work without replacing it. 7(a) approvals in the class held at 60 or more a year from FY2022 through FY2026 after their FY2021 peak, so lenders have kept financing outdoor stays through the years since; but the record cannot measure demand at a particular site, and the study does not use it that way. The result is a monthly projection of occupied unit nights and average nightly rate, built from the comparables and adjusted for the resort's location, unit mix and opening ramp, which feeds the revenue line that the coverage test and the lender's sizing of the loan both depend on.
What does the study test in a glamping resort's development budget?
Everything that has to be built before the first guest pays, which on a glamping resort is far more than the units. The study takes the site plan and prices each layer: the access road and parking, the platforms or pads the units stand on, the units themselves with furniture, linens and fittings, and the utilities carried to each unit, power and water always and wastewater where units have their own bathrooms. It checks whether the wells and septic are designed for lodging-style use, and whether the soils and the county allow the system the plan assumes. It records the permit route the county applies, campground or lodging, because that choice changes the fire, health and building rules the budget has to meet. And it separates the parts of the budget with long lives, the land, roads and utility lines, from the furnished units, which wear faster and need a replacement reserve in the operating projection. The campground record shows why a lender cares. The class's medians of $821,000 under 7(a) and $576,000 under 504 come from a class built around sites for the guest's own rig or tent, and a resort whose units cost more per site than a pad can push its request past them. The cancellation floors of 13.5% and 12.2% show that approved campground deals do fall away before closing. A budget that survives the study's review is the best protection a lender has against approving a loan that cannot build the resort for its amount.
Will the appraisal support a loan on a glamping resort?
The appraisal is the hardest piece of the file, and the study is written with it in mind. Sales of comparable glamping resorts are rare, so the appraiser may have few direct comparables, and may classify tents and domes as personal property valued separately from the land rather than as part of the real estate. The lender then sees two numbers: what the land and its permanent improvements are worth, and what the units are worth as equipment that depreciates. If the loan was sized to the income of a working resort and the collateral is valued in pieces, the gap falls on the lender's credit judgment. The study helps close that gap in three ways. It documents the income the resort can sustain, from the comparables and the monthly projection, so that an income approach to value has a supported basis. It separates in the budget the permanent improvements, roads, utilities, wells, septic and any site-built cabins, from the units an appraiser may treat as personal property, so the lender knows in advance where its collateral sits. And it records every comparable property it surveyed, which the appraiser can use as market evidence even where those properties have not sold. The campground record bears on this in one way: the 7(a) program holds the bulk of the campground loans, and $842.8 million of the dollars, and a lender writing a large 7(a) loan on a resort with thin real estate collateral will lean all the harder on the operating case the study makes.
Can a glamping resort be financed with a USDA Business and Industry loan?
Rural resorts often weigh it, and the worked example on this site takes that route: a glamping resort in Ohio, built from cabins, domes and tents and carried by a guaranteed loan under USDA Business and Industry, with its whole study laid out as the lender would receive it. This page holds no USDA loan record. Its figures are SBA's, the 645 7(a) and 281 504 campground loans from FY2017 to FY2026, and nothing here measures how many glamping or campground projects USDA has guaranteed. A study for a Business and Industry lender therefore cannot borrow its evidence from the tables above. It builds that evidence from the site, the market and the budget, and it uses the SBA campground record only as a comparison for loan size and outcome, the medians of $821,000 and $576,000 and the cancellation floors of 13.5% and 12.2%, with the caution that they come from different programs and a different set of lenders. The study is also written to a different standard. The 2026 fee survey published here gives studies written to USDA's rules in 7 CFR Part 5001 a band of their own, $7,500 to $18,750 and above. For a resort still choosing between programs, the scope request should say so; the study can then show how the resort reads for an SBA lender and for a Business and Industry lender, and where the two would weigh the same resort differently, before the sponsor commits to either application.
Does a glamping resort's debt service coverage have to hold in the off-season?
Yes, and the slow months are where a seasonal resort's projection is tested hardest. A resort can look strong on the peak weekends that fill its listing photographs and still fail to cover its loan payments in the months when bookings fall away, because the payments do not fall away with them. The study therefore tests coverage across a full year built month by month: occupied unit nights and nightly rate for each month from the demand work, housekeeping and labor that rise and fall with occupancy, the fixed costs of utilities, insurance, listings and maintenance that do not, and the replacement reserve for units and furniture. It measures coverage for the first seasons, while the resort is still building its reviews and repeat guests, and again for a settled year, so the lender sees both the ramp and the plateau. It then lowers occupancy and rate below the base case and reports where coverage breaks. The campground record explains why lenders insist on this. The class earns seasonally, its median 7(a) loan is $821,000 and its median 504 loan $576,000, and the yearly tables show its loans growing larger since FY2023 on counts that changed far less. A larger loan on seasonal income leaves less room in the slow months, and a study that shows the resort can carry it through those months is the one a credit committee can approve.