My manager is leaving and I need to hire a new one.So far, I have not identified any good candidates that live in the park.I’m planning on advertising on Craigslist, are there any other good places to look?I am thinking of doing a credit check and criminal background check. Has anyone drug tested any applicants?
First question: how much are you paying? Can you afford to hire outside your park? Sometimes, you have to go with the talent that already lives in the park, because there’s no way you can hire someone on the outside to move in and make $500 per month. I have literally hired and fired virtually the entire park population before, because nobody was any good but I could not afford to bring in new talent. I eventually rotated all the way back to the manager I had fired before – and the second time around they were satisfactory.
How in the world can you get anyone to manage a mhc for only $500 per month? I am very well acquainted with a storage facility and its staff as I was a customer for a long time. Isn’t that in violation of labor laws?
The wife was the manager for a LLC, and her husband ended up being the maintenance man for like 10 storage facilities. The wife’s compensation was $400 per week, and a really nice on site 2 / 2 apartment of about 1200 sq ft. It included all utilities, braoadband, cable tv, water, sewer, trash, and local phone service, including a cell phone that could be used for personal as well as business. The job was 44 hour week.
When they came to the facility, it was under 40% occupied. Within 18 months that had moved it to a steady 92%.
You’ve got to go with an existing tenant who already lives in the park. Look for the nicest mobile home, yard and car. That’s your best prospect. If you have no nicer homes, then just go with what you can find. Experimentation will lead to the right choice – but it may be three candidates later.
Understood that. But HOW to you get around minimum wage requirements to pay someone so little without running afoul of the law?
We never pay by the hour. We pay by the job. We have one off-site manager making $350/month to manage a 20-space park. It does not matter if it takes him 1 hours/month to manage (that would be $350/hour) or 100 hours/month to manage (that would be $3.50/hour). We pay by the job, not by the hour.
(Frankly we think he spends about 15 hours/month to manage, so that would put his hourly at $23/hour.)
Best,
-jl-