In one of my parks several of the tenant owned homes are fairly dirty (moss growing on the side and/or dirt on the skirting)
Does anyone have any advice on how to best handle the situation and get the homes clean?:
-Pressure the residents and threaten fines
-Buy a park power washer and offer to lend it to them for free
-Just do it ourselves
-Just do it ourselves and bill the resident back
I’m curious how other park owners handle tenant owned homes that are dirty.
Include in your community rules that home owners must maintain the appearance of the exterior of their homes. If you do not like the appearance of your tenants homes you force them to properly maintain them. This may range from spraying to painting to residing. Once you have these standards in your rules you then simply send notices to tenants requiring them to maintain in line with your community standards.
If you wish you could provide the service at a reasonable rate but I would never allow any tenant to use your equipment.
The quality of a community is dependant on the owner including appearance standards in their community rules.
The one we are working on right now, had about 12 POH , so as we went through and power washed and painted all those, we asked the TOH if they wanted their homes power washed, no charge just sign a waiver we weren’t responsible for damage etc. All the TOH but 1 took advantage of it, (And they ended up cleaning their home shortly after ). Built some good will and i don’t think it cost us much at all when we threw it in the package of everything else we were doing.
Thanks Marvel, that gives me the idea to possibly do the washing for the tenants for free during the next rent increase, that could help the increase go down a bit better.
And this was done at about the time a rent increase was taking effect as well but we badly needed to clean up the whole parks appearance.
We schedule a 2week period each year where every trailer gets washed. We send out notices early to remind folks, they schedule a day/ time and the manager confirms the washing actually takes place. If tenant can’t wash the trailer, they are free to hire someone else to do it but all trailers get annual washing.
Tough to establish the 1st year or so. The tenants pushed back a little but now it’s turned into an “event” and most folks help each other out. It’s become the new norm…annually.
Thank you Naomi!
How do you handle it if you have someone who refuses to participate?
Like mentioned above, appearance is part of the Park Standards. If tenant is unable to wash or have someone else wash it, we’ll hire a company to do it and pass on the cost. They can generally find someone cheaper as I will only hire a company with proper insurances, etc. So far, I’ve never had to hire a company to wash.
Noel
We do offer some equipment for people to borrow as we know not everyone has all this equipment, especially new home owners who may not have acquired these tools yet.
We do not want any liability of doing this work ourselves. EG, if the power washer accidentally breaks a window.
We make the homeowner put a $20 deposit and sign a checkout form and waiver. We offer a power washer, electric weed wacker and push mower.
It seems to be going fine for now.
howardhuang33,
We have been thinking about doing something similar. Would you mind sharing your checkout form and waiver?