Are there any problems to adding too many new tenants/homes at a time?

I have recently purchased a 58 lot mobile home park.  It only has 11 mobile homes in it due to a tornado going through and destroying the others.  It is in a college town and the price was right and the owner agreed to owner finance so for me it is a good investment.  My question is concerning the impending closing of a 50 lot mobile home park that is about a mile away from my park. The park is being closed because the land is going to be used to build something ( I don’t know what). Anyway, all the tenants have been given 90 days to find another mobile home park to move their homes to.  The owner of the park is paying to move and set up the mobile homes.  I have been handing out flyers and talking to some of the tenants about my park.  So far I have at least 6 that are interested in moving.  Should I have any concerns about rapidedly increasing the occupancy of my mobile home park?  I can realistically see having 10-15 homes moving in in the next 3 months and I am just trying to figure out if there are things I should be considering or worried about. Thanks,

I would be worried about not taking full advantage of a rare opportunity like this – try shooting for more that 10-15. This could be a life changing deal.

I can’t speak about the effect of a significant rapid influx of homes (though I doubt it would be bad; perhaps chaotic the first few months), but I am curious about how you plan to attract that many tenants. Are you actually offering anything as incentive to move in? This is a tremendous opportunity to provide a much-needed boost to occupancy and I hope you are being way more aggressive in your marketing than just handing out flyers and talking to tenants. Offer a free TV (like the $500 ones you get at costco), a big gift card to a local grocery store or walmart, free or discounted rent for a certain period if they make a long-term commitment, or other things like that. Small “investments” in incentives to attract tenants are trivial compared to the boost in the value of your park if they move in. Getting all 50 to move (or however many are currently at that other park) isn’t likely, but it should be your goal and you should be very aggressive in trying to achieve it.

Have you ever done this, offer free appliances if someone moves their home into your park,
I am going to try it. Offer free stove, fridge and tv if someone were to move their home into my park.
The cash incentive to help pay the moving costs or free lot rent does not work well for me.

You need to offer them a free move. It’s going to cost you around $3,000 to $5,000 per home. But it’s a whole lot cheaper than buying homes yourself and bringing them in. We have done this many times, and it is very effective. What you are proposing, however, is not nearly compelling enough.

I believe he said the owner who is kicking them out of his park is paying the moving and setup costs.

Sorry I missed that. Then I’d out-offer every other park in sheer dollars – pay them $2,000+ cash once the home arrives and is set up. This is not a time to be penny-wise and pound foolish. Every home you miss out on is going to cost you $25,000+ to fill that lot yourself. I don’t think a stove, fridge and TV is a hot enough offer, especially if other park owners are also going after these customers. 

I think this whole “pay for your move thing” comes down to getting in front of the right people. I have tried it on Craigslist with little luck. However I know that of all the parks in my area there HAVE to be people that would love to move to my park for free. (I run nice parks) However they do not know its a possibility. Furthermore if I could get in their living room and talk to them I could get lots of people to do it. I hear all the time about a few parks in particular that have bad management. There must be a better way of getting touch with them. I would not want to send them letters. The park management will hear about 200 letters getting sent to their tenants.