Today I stumbled onto my newest Tenants that have already moved into a home, sold to them by the last tenant that I never met because it was sold to her by a tenant before that all in about 6 months. They all kept using the name of the first person to make their bank deposits so collections weren’t really a concern, just trying to get a hold of the situation. The home is crap and needs a lot of work and I’m annoyed about it. The Tenants had no idea who I was, how much lot rent was, where to pay, etc. and acted offended that I wanted to know who they were and then schedule a time for them to apply for leasing when my translator was available. I informed them that I own the land and would consider allowing them to keep the home here. They look at me like I’m insane. I reviewed my former Tenant’s lease that she bailed on and she didn’t give proper notice, but my lease says I will allow the buyer to apply and if I reject the application I have to explain why in writing. I can’t believe I let my attorney draft that. I hate for these people to be screwed but I just about blew a gasket today when I saw that once again new people have just moved onto MY land like they own the place. The turnover is too fast for there to have been any improvements to the home. And of course since I can’t communicate with them which complicates the situation even more. Every tenant that I’ve sold a home to has amazingly been able to call on my ad and communicate with me and been grateful for the opportunity to get ahead in life and clean and paid on time and I have a good rapport with them and enjoy being their Landlord. So I am thinking about just telling these people, sorry. No can do, move it. And yes, The queen bee got her feathers ruffled today and isn’t happy about it.
I’ve been reading about incorporating “right of first refusal” to pay $500 more than next best offer into my leases and got a form set up for that, but started thinking that I don’t really want to buy these homes and be associated with the resale. I want them gone without me having to incur the costs of evictions or potential discrimination lawsuits. I have so many old homes that I can’t evict all of them at once, I need to do this one at a time to improve my park. So my new plan is to just include language that if a Tenant wants to sell, I’ll make an offer on it that the Tenant can accept or not - or Tenant can sell it to whomever they want - but if its sold to anyone other than me, they must remove it from my property. My average trailer value is about $5,000 so I really don’t care. Because really, anyone that needs to make payments on a $5,000 trailer does not have land to move it to and actually can not afford to move it to another park anyway, nor are there any other parks in my town that would take it. So, I’m sure if I offered $500 bucks total that they may not have any other option than to accept my low offer. On a brighter note, I’m planning to get licensed and start working with better homes.