Firing the Manager

We are selling our park soon, assuming the new owners do not want out Managers (a couple) do you fire them in person, send them a text or email? It’s an 11 hour drive to the park for us and they may or may not have an idea we are selling this park so this could be a surprise. They also have keys to the office and a remote control to the storage building.

I would let your manager(s) know that you are selling and that the sale is confidential. So they won’t disclose to the other residents. From there, I would introduce the manager to the new buyers via a conference call. At the end of the day, it isn’t your problem. It is the new owner’s decision whether or not to keep the existing manager. We usually keep the current manager for the transition so you might really put your new buyer in a bind if you fire the existing manager right now.

@charlesd - on the park I just closed on we followed the Frank recommendation of having the old owner fire the manager on the day of the close. That way we were not left in the position of “what to do” with her. We all just sat down in the office together and the old owner terminated her with witnesses (us). Of course in this instance we were convinced she was a thief so in a different case, if she had a great record, it might have been different.

I guess it’s worthwhile to offer a different perspective on that practice. We almost always keep the existing manager in place for the first 2-3 months. For the most part, the existing managers usually know:

  1. the current tenants
  2. the process for filing pay or quits and filing for evictions
  3. the maintenance personnel (we typically use many of the same vendors the previous owner had)
  4. has a relationship with the previous owner (almost all of our sellers provide a little assistance through the transition.)
  5. with the city/county offices

I’m of the mindset that parks fail because of owners and not managers. We usually give the previous manager a shot unless they are truly part of the problem.

We have a different take. The reason the owner in most cases is selling the park is because the current Manager is misbehaving. We usually figure out during the due diligence process who our Manager and Maintenance is going to be and hire them.

There was one instance where we let the current manager continue. However, the manager was grossly overpaid and he retired soon after we took over the park. Overpay is another issue we don’t hire current managers.

In most cases the previous owners themselves haven’t managed well. So you will spend more time unlearning the bad habits of the current manager.

We like to have 2 backups if the hired manager doesn’t work out.

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