Park Manager Compensation

Do you have any recommendations for compensation for a Manager that lives in the park? We have owned the park for about 9 months and we

are looking for our second Manager, this is very new to us. We have owned house rentals or 5 unit Apartment building, but they were local and we managed them ourselves. We currently live approximately 1000 miles from the Mobile Home Park and at times it has been challenging. I would appreciate any information I can get.

Debbie

Kind of depends on what their duties are and where you live. Could you be a bit more explicit as to what you want them to do and what wages are like in your area? It’s obviously going to cost you less to have a manager in rural Georgia than it would in Las Vegas even if the community is the same size.

One idea I have heard mentioned is to not allow the manager to own their own home in the community. You provide the home as part of their compensation. That way, if they don’t work out, you can get them out quickly. The last thing you want to have in your community is a disgruntled ex-manager whose loyalties are to their neighbors and not to you. Check with your accountant to see if there are any tax ramifications that go along with employer supplied housing for either you or the manager.

Another idea is something I do with the manager in my current community and I also did this in a previous community I owned. I “hire” them through a temp agency. Even though they work for me, they are the true employee of the agency. My (part-time) manager gets $600/month (plus mileage) but I pay the temp agency $775. A monthly transfer from my bank to theirs is all it takes. They take care of all the taxes, bookkeeping, W-2, workman’s comp., etc. I love not having to deal with the IRS or the state insurance fund!!!

Hope this helps.

Rolf

The park is in the state of Washington. We are looking at having them post notices, meet with contractors, getting quotes on work that is needed, getting permits, cleanup and light repairs around the park. We will handle the rent collecting, hiring contractors.

These are the basic things we are looking for.

Where in WA? I may be able to hook you up.

Sunshine,

How were you planning on collecting rent and hiring contractors from 1000 miles away? I’d also be interested in hearing how being a MHP owner from 1000 miles away is working for you since I’m considering buying a park that’s 1200 miles away.

The park I’m interested in has 90% park owned homes and the current manager gets 8% of the rent plus a free (park owned) home - about $40k annual in compensation.

We have all of the rents sent directly to us. We give them til the 10th of the month before we consider them late due to the distance. Some people have been very good about sending them by the 1st. We had a guy living in the park as the manager and that did not go very well. I would send agreements and notices to him and he would get them to the tenants. Right now I’m mailing them directly. As far as contractors go, we would have the manager show the contractor where the work was to be done,

but we basically expressed what we wanted by phone. I’m working with

Landscapers right now and they will be sending me the quotes direct with some schetches. It has worked out for the most part.

We don’t own any of the mobile homes in the park. We do have a house the the manager was living in, but other then that, the tentants own all of there homes.

It has been hard at times, but we try to go to the park a least every 2 months. We meet with as many people as we can while we are there. Our time there is usually extremely busy and never long enough.

Hope this helps

Debbie

when we moved from TX to Florida, I had to have the 22 space park managed remotely and learned some tough lessons. The way I did this is:

  1. After a very expensive lesson on tenants paying cash to resident manager, i bought 500 blank deposit slips and opened a free checking account 2 miles from Park. I arranged for each tenant to receive 12 dep slips and deposit cash directly into my account each month. Lot rent was 225 per month so to differentiate each tenant, #1 was 225.01, #2 was 225.02 etc. The bank was open 7-7 M-S and this did two things… it allowed me to log on and at a glance see who had paid.(cash deposits immediately post) and it gave tenants a receipt for deposit. After a few months, we worked out the glitches and this worked very well.

  2. My manager got free lot rent and had a list of vendors for services needed. a few of these:

Electrician

Plumber

Newspaper for ads

well company

Light company

bug sprayer

lawn maintenance

insurance carrier

As needed, he would contact vendors and using a PO system ok’d the work. I was billed for services and after checking PO (purchase order) paid invoice within 5 days. This took a few months and the power company required a 500 deposit to set up this way. This worked very well.

Tenants were given my contact info and were encouraged to call me collect with problems manager could not or would not address. In 2 years I had 4 calls.

  1. My manger and I e-mailed daily and using digital cameras and scanners and faxes were able to run this puppy with annual visits from me.

The key was to find the right manager. a righteous manager is worth his or her weight in gold. honesty and good communication skills are the key and when this Park sold and funded, he received 4K as a bonus for well done work…

Corey manages a portfolio much (and this is emphasized) larger than this remotely…often from out of the country! distance from home is only a stumbling block if we allow it to be, eh?

Good Luck,

Greg Meade

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