For mid sized parks (40-90 spaces) by far my best results in managers have come from retired/semi retired individuals who have a background in some form of management or office work. Husband and wife teams tend to be a nice bonus too.
What are the typical profiles and backgrounds of managers other park owners have found to be a good fit for the position?
For example I have a candidate for a 60 site park who looks very competent, but she already works a full time job at a hospital. The park position is only part time, but I’m a bit concerned she would have trouble juggling everything.
At the 40 space size, you have to work with what you can find. For us, a good fit has been somebody who is honest, can take directions and follow through, and respond to communications in a timely manager ideally through phone or email. Computer skills help too. Once you know what you are dealing with, you can alter your process accordingly.
For example, we have one manager who is honest and does what he is told, but does not take proactive action. We had to remind him to check the rent box regularly because he would “forget.” Eventually we changed our process at that park to have tenants deposit rent directly at the bank. We also have to call him weekly to ask if he completed each task. So, yes, it is not ideal, but the other candidates are worse.
One of our best managers is at another park and is very good at tenant relations and maintenance issues,but cannot enter deposits to the computer correctly (e.g. “196” becomes “169”) causing reconciliation issues. We circled around this by having her take a photo of each deposit and emailing to corporate prior to finalizing the deposit. Again, it’s a small concession to assist an otherwise good manager.
You have to keep in mind that you are limited to your tenant base. at at 90 units you have more than twice the choices of the 40 unit property.
For a small community your best option is usually a tenant within the community. You choose the one that has the best maintained home and lot. This is assuming you do not own a trailer park. If it is a trailer park you may be better off hiring someone not living in the park that can not be intimidated by tenants.