Hello fellow park owners and soon to be owners:) I am in contract to purchase a 130 lot turn around park and in investigating expenses, found they are paying over $2000/mo for lawn mowing in the summer. I can only deduce that this is due to the need to upkeep the roughly 60% of the park that is empty lots or vacant homes at this point. As you can imagine the empty lots are about half weeds so even when cut doesn’t look that appealing. My first goal in taking over the park is cleaning out the abandoned homes and general park upkeep including making these empty spaces a little less appealing while also reducing some of this lawn expense. I’m searching for ideas for the multiple empty lots that are likely to be empty for quite awhile. I’ve thought about just killing the vegetation, putting down some plastic and covering in gravel for example. I want to make the place look more uniform and clean. Anyone have any ideas or tried anything that worked in the past with vacant lots/areas? Thanks in advance.
@RickB , as per your post:
- “…130 lot turn around park…$2,000/mo for lawn mowing in the summer…”
My Husband and I own the following Turn Around Mobile Home Park:
- Acreage: 11.9 Acres - (back, left portion is wooded…no mowing grass required)
- Total Lots: 65 Lots
- Filled Lots: 34 Lots
- Vacant Lots: 31 Lots
First of all Congratulations on your new Mobile Home Park! How exciting!
Secondly, the Previous Owners are overpaying for Lawn Mowing.
We pay the following for Lawn Mowing and Trimming/Edging:
- $500 Per Month (2 Times @ $250)
Since our MHP is half the size of your new MHP, you should probably be paying around $1,000 per month.
First off I would get a new Lawn Mowing Company.
At first our MHP was so ‘scary’ that it took us a while to find a Lawn Mowing Company. I remember one Company that would not drive past our green space and then quickly turned around and left…never to be seen or heard from again 
.
In addition there were several Lawn Mowing Companies that had no idea how to price mowing a Mobile Home Park (with lots of Vacant Lots). One told us that they could do it for the low, low price of like $2,000 PER MOW…yah…I would like that gig also .
For me…it was/is a simple concept.
The grass is high and I want you to make it low. High to low…not brain surgery.
Secondly, I would buy an Industrial Size of Round-up and spray around all your utilities. You do NOT want them hitting your utilities.
I would not recommend the plastic/gravel option. You might have to dig up your utilities to service or repair them. You do NOT want to have to be digging through plastic and gravel (or even worse…paying a professional plumber to dig through plastic or gravel…our plumbers do not like to dig…they charge big bucks for digging).
We wish you the very best!
I’ve had to deal with a lot of scared mowing companies. In fairness some of these turnaround parks have all sorts of metal junk still in the ground - old mobile home anchors bent over, remnants of galvanized pipe, etc. There is effort to getting that crap out of the ground so that lawn equipment does not get destroyed.
While using roundup around sensitive areas such as skirting is the right way to go - around fence lines, concrete pads I have started using a propane torch. Put a propane tank on a dolly and off you go. You won’t miss your eyebrows. Pro tip - use after morning dew or a light rain to prevent burning wooden fence posts…
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001AUPQVM/ 
Anyway, if you can demonstrate the place is safe to mow the price comes down a lot. @Kristin sounds like she is getting a good deal for their park.
Robots. No not kidding - I’ll get back to y’all in 6 months and let you know how it worked out. Before you dismiss the idea for all the usual reasons (theft, rain, dog poop, expense, maintenance, uneven ground, vandalism) do the research. The model we are getting stops if picked up. The blades fold back if they hit an obstacle so won’t chop fingers off, mows in the rain, sounds a piercing alarm if picked up and also throws a gps signal to tell you who stole it. Plus you can set up multiple bots in different parts of your park and manage them all from one smart phone.
Very popular in Europe with smaller lawns - but some newer models can cover well over an acre and Bel Robotics makes a series designed for industrial sized lawns (parks, sports fields). The ROI looks compelling to me and so we are are starting with one section of common area - going with a Husqvarna Automow 450XL.
That’s great. Any idea how much the big one is? Tried to get a free quote on website and it didn’t work. I have a 40 lot park on 30 acres (one of the main reasons people really like it) and spend 1k a month on mowing 6 months a year. My largest expense.
I also haven’t gotten Bel Robotics pricing - I think they only market to Europe right now so you’d have to call up the company or a dealer (there’s one in London) and see if they will ship. There was a line of Italian bots being sold here designed for big acreage but i think they went away.
Very cool. Which one did you get and how much was it?
Rent the vacant lots to the nearest neighboring home for $25 per month and they have to mow it. When you need the lot back to bring in a new home, you can cancel the $25 agreement. This is a win/win – you get more rent, happier tenants with bigger yards and no mowing cost.
One turn around park near me had weeds way too high. After the purchase the new owner put down limestone and was very liberal with weed killer. There isn’t a blade on site! It’s far smaller than yours, only a 50 lot site but it looks very clean and neat. I’m not sure where you are but limestone has made a good grass killer for us. If you get the weeds cut short then spray them and put limestone on top you shouldn’t need to put a weed barrier. We live in south Louisiana where grass grows through concrete and it works here. We made parking areas in our park by spraying and putting down either gravel or limestone. The limestone wins hands down. I wouldn’t recommend the crushed asphalt unless you have the machinery to press it. I also second @Kristin suggestion about spraying around utilities. Not only will this save your utilities, but the more you spray around things like trees, homes, and utilities the less you should have to pay for cutting. Good luck!