For those that own several parks or lots of pads:Assume your park is not requiring a turnaround effort and is full. Vacancy churn is average. Also assume that there is a park manager paid by free lot rent and 10 bucks
per pad and you have not hired a team of property managers. I realize this will be all over the place depending on each individual park, but what are the management time costs across parks that you see? How much time should I budget per week managing a 30 space park, for example? Involving parks with managers, what are the biggest items you, the owner, spend time on?
So my number comes with a few qualifiers. I use park sidekick to manage my occupancy.I sub-meter water, allocate trash and sewer. gas and electric are billed direct.I collect the money via PO box, and I input the utility numbers to generate the invoices.My manager produces the billing- via park sidekick.I account with quickbooks and print checks.once the park is stable- 6 hours per month with no evictions. Add one hour per eviction per month.
Jim,Is there any particular reason you don’t outsource any of the (basic) bookkeeping via odesk or something similar? It seems like it’d be worthwhile for someone with just one park to outsource simple tasks like that, but in your case you have like half a dozen parks so it’d save a pretty significant amount of time, no? Granted, 6hrs/month/stable park isn’t very time intensive anyway…Thanks.
Up until I reached 5 parks and around 500 lots, I used a part-time bookeeper to do all those functions, with my only duty signing the checks. You can set it up as you like. The bottom line, however, is that it does not take much time to manage a mobile home park, if you use decent systems. For example, we use Rent Manager, have the manager do a weekly “Info Friday” report that they email or fax in, which tells a diary of everything that happened in the park that week, and we watch the collections and sales/rental/rehab report weekly. You’ll also want a system to watch over the water bills to make sure there are no leaks, and stay on top of property condition with periodic videos from the manager or someone else, and dropping by unannounced at least every 6 months.
I do out source many of our operations. What I did was answer the question of what it would look like for just one mobile home park that was 30 spaces in size.
I am in the midst of purchasing a park… Seems like most of the tenants pay cash especially the ones that pay only pad rent $225-275. Plus they pay the owner directly… I wont be around for collecting rent so it wouldn’t be a hard transition for the tenants to get a money order and mail the check to a PO Box… This will add close to a $2 extra for each tenant per month and a bit more effort.Unless I tell the property manager to collect it but I don’t want the property manager to handling and holding cash. If this is the case I would want him to make daily trips to the bank to make deposits… Seems like this transition will either add more work to the tenants or the property manager. At the same time if I hire a property manager this should be part of his day to day activity…
I would suggest having the property manager provide stamped envelopes. When they get money order, they could mail their rent.
They are getting out to cash their check ?
How many lots is this park?
75 lots in 2 parks FrankI am thinking to use one of the smaller vacant homes as an office. Have a drop box for checks only… Either have the property manager collect cash only tenants or change the policy to money orders or personal checks only… Giving all tenants a stamped envelope can be costly on a 75 lot park… But yes the checks will go where you want them to…
You can’t collect cash. We don’t accept it at any of our parks; only checks and money orders. Three reasons for this 1) stops embezzlement 2) keeps a written record for the tenant of every payment and 3) eliminates the danger of someone robbing the office.You can have the checks and money orders given to the manager and the manager then deposit them every day in a bank account you set up. That’s what we do at most of our parks. But mailing them in is a another option. There is a delay when they mail them, and that delay may drive you nuts (the old “the check’s in the mail” scam, etc.)