Controlling Tenants and ranting a bit

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.

This is an old thread, but very applicable to your situation as a way to get some things turned around (see Frank’s responses). I wince when I read your post and hope you don’t have to keep doing this on and off for 5 years. Best of luck!

http://forum.mobilehomeuniversity.com/t/cleaning-up-park/

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Thanks. I’ve been at it for 2 years. I did pay to have the work done for the homes located on the Main Street and this got the city off my back.

Some of the internally located people have made improvements, but some have not. I have found that homes with single men or single women without children are the problem in my park. These are a revolving door of “roommates” and random visitors. I now have a homeless lady bouncing between a few homes of men and the cops have been out a few times. And these types do not maintain anything. They are really just running a roommate boarding house on my property. My families and couples are quiet and plant flowers and if they can afford it, they do try to work on their homes.

My next lease has roommate fees and registering occupants that arrive past 10:00pm by completing a form. I’m literally buying an RV and going to randomly show up at my park and start spending a few nights in my park here and there and watch and once I document some violations I will evict them; the problem was that they just change the name of the owner and all stay living there. The whole pack and the house has to go.

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You are only complicating the matters by introducing language to allow roommates without you first properly screening. You need to control all aspects of the community and disallow any individual that does not meet the standards you set or that does not maintain the properties to your standards.
Time to lay down the law as you suggest and put out the garbage. Once the word gets out your problems will diminish.
Funny how people believe income investment properties is a passive investment. You can never take your eyes off the property. You are either managing the tenants or managing the manager.

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Do you require all adults to be on the lease? It may be a cultural issue, but even in my families only the man will sign the lease.