Some of my bad eggs are breaking the shower knobs in my laundry/shower facility. I can only imagine why they are doing it. Probably spite or to mess with the other tenants ability to take showers. Most renters are extended Stay RVers so I can’t kill the facility for a while yet without risking my cash flow.I’m thinking about setting up hunter cams facing the building entrance to track who comes and goes. Then camp out and check the shower each time a tenant leaves. Anyone got any strategies to catch the vandals? Maybe a 300 dollar reward?
If you have some tenants who have been breaking a few other rules you can always evict the worst tenants. Then the rest of the them will get the message. Making an example of the worst tenants usually does wonders for the park as a whole. The hunter cam could work if you take a bunch of time to do it. If you have time and would enjoy the chase do it, but at the end of the day you have some bad apples and you know it. Give out some eviction notices. Turn this place around. In the long run it will help your cash flow. You think you need the bad apples cash flow, but they are costing you money also, and they are delaying your park turnaround which will increase your cash flow eventually.
First step, restrict the access to the building. Change the lock and require a new key to get in (like park owner’s do with pool gates). Issue keys only to the RVs that need it, and nobody else unless they really need one. Write down the name of everyone who has a key. Tell all of the tenants that you are having vandalism issues and offer a reward for any information on who is doing it. And tell them you are installing cameras to track everyone who goes in (obviously don’t install them in the showers unless you want to go to prison). See if that works. If they still vandalize them – and you think you have an idea 99% of who it is – then non-renew their lease and kick them out and see if it stops. But if you can’t get it to stop, you may have to do away with the showers and lose those RVs who do not have a shower (most of them do, right?).You can’t build a full time job around watching over those stupid showers.
About half of the RVs are fully contained. I’ll give those ideas a shot. I’m looking to subdivide the property and sell off the community building with the residence. Thanks for the great information guys.