British Columbia's biggest pension plan is finding yield in unexpected places, including recreational vehicle (RV) campgrounds.
This month Parkbridge Lifestyle Communities Inc., wholly owned by the BC Investment Management Corp., which invests for B.C. public-sector pensions, bought Riverside Resort, a 181-pad RV campground in Whistler.
The resort is on 34 acres and offers a variety of accommodations, including full-service winterized RV sites, partial-service RV and multi-use camping sites, walk-in tent sites and cabin rentals.
The purchase price was not disclosed.
Parkbridge now owns 34 RV campgrounds across Canada, said Lachlan MacLean, Parkbridge vice-president, property operations, including two on Vancouver Island and one in the Okanagan that were all bought in 2012. He added that well-located RV parks can provide annual returns as good as apartment rentals or modular home parks.
“There is more risk, because RV parks depend on seasonal traffic.”
But Lachlan said the number of RVs being bought is increasing because they provide low-cost accommodation for vacationers. For example, a typical full-service RV site at Whistler’s Riverside Resort, the only RV campground in the ski resort community, rents for $58 per night.
“A hotel room at Whistler would be about six times more during the high season,” MacLean said.
According to the Recreational Vehicle Dealers Association, there are now more than one million RVs on Canada’s roads and 14% of Canadian households own an RV.
North American sales of RVs reached 27,960 units in September, up 12.4% from a year earlier and the highest level in nine years. •
