Is it possible to manage a mobile home park from a distance or should I find a property closeby. I am finding some deals that look good however they are in other states.
Bill
If it your first park, I suggest it be no more than 5 hours drive. If you have to, you can be there by noon, spend 5 hours on site and be back by 10 pm. Other factors are whether there is an onsite manager and how much work needs to be done in the park. I haven’t been to my park in 3 months but talk to the manager every other day.
I’m a first-time park owner and my property is out of state. It’s not been too much of a problem for me. I have a very good off-site manager who lives 20 minutes away from the property (stay-at-home Mom with extensive property management experience who was looking for a little side income) and an on-site resident greeter who is very reliable (retired pastor) and can show homes for sale/rent.
For the first 7 months of ownership, I was working my day job and only went out there once. The park was stable; the cash came in steadily. No real improvement, but no deterioration either. Over the past 5 months I’ve been doing this full time and am now going on-site one week a month. Working at it full-time and traveling more, I’ve now been able to bring in and do 15 Lonnie Deals, so the occupancy and cash flow are improving rapidly and rewarding my incremental investment of time and money. I’ve got another 4 months’ worth of work, then we are full and I’m ‘done.’
I guess my take-away is that if you purchase a full park where the residents own their own homes, it does not matter much where it is located. Such parks are stable, and easy to manage from afar. However, if your park has significant vacancy, then you’ll need to determine if you have the time to put into the process of finding/moving/repairing/selling homes to fill the park. But once you’ve made the time/money investment and it’s full, you can go back to being an absentee and part-time owner who rarely goes on-site.
My 2 cents worth,
-Jefferson-