Anyone on the forum have parks in Illinois? We just purchased a very distressed park and are trying to turn it around as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we have not been able to turn it around enough in the 3 weeks of owning before doing a large rent increase from $205 to $290 which the market dictates.
1.) 24 Month Leases now required but option of month to month leases? Any experience in Illinois
2.) If they have a month to month lease, how often can you increase lot rent in Illinois? 90 day notice I know is required.
3.) Should I wait to send out new leases until park is turned around in a month? OR send out new leases and rules immediately with lot increase in 90 days?
Illinois has special laws for mobile home landlords and tenants.
My read of the Illinois stuff is that you have to offer them a 24 month lease or they have to agree to month-to-month or you have to give them a statement acknowledging they were offered choices and they didn’t sign anything. Your 24 month lease can spell out a rent increase between year 1 and year 2. My good tenants jumped on the 24 month lease and my bad tenants didn’t.
I have also seen that you are required to give tenants a history of the last 5 years of increases and your plans for the next 3 years of increases. It can be a fixed amount, a not to exceed amount, or some formula. I have never done this in almost 3 years.
My tenants had NO idea about any of these requirements, so do what you want with this information. I think you need to get info to the tenants ASAP, they will be expecting change with the change in ownership.
I got into a hairy situation–well, straightforward eviction made complicated by an overly cautious sheriff–and the Illinois Manufactured Housing Association (http://www.imha.org/) was quite helpful to me. As small as my park is, it doesn’t make financial sense for me to join, but they had a board member call me who owned several of the biggest parks in my county and he coached me through the situation. You might look into it…
Thanks for the kind words loricooper. As Chairman of the Illinois Manufactured Housing Association I am always glad to hear the Association being complimented.
I would be remiss however if I didn’t state that membership in most state trade associations is a huge bargain, and that dues for community owners are on a sliding scale. One example of how IMHA has helped community owners this year is the legislation we proposed and lobbied to passage that rewrote the dealer licensing rules and lowered by 50% the dealer licensing fees for community owners with only 1 community in Illinois and dropped subsequent location fees from $1,000 per location to $100.00 The savings alone will more than pay considerable dues.
Before you do anything, spend some money and hire an Illinois attorney to answer these questions (you can probably find one that is educated on mobile home parks through the Illinois MHA). While the forum is terrific, something of this magnitude should only be undertaken with the advice of a real lawyer. We own about ten parks in Illinois, and I would not dare to answer these questions as, if you don’t follow the letter of the law, you may get sued. Even 90% if the right answer will not protect you – it has to be 100% certainty and only a competent attorney is going to give you that peace of mind.
Frank is 100% correct. A good attorney in Illinois is very important. Depending on where the parks are located the rules for operating a park can be very different. About 50% are under state law, and about 50% are under local rules and ordinances. Just make sure the attorney is experienced in mobile home law in Illinois.
Try figuring out the Abandoned Home Act in Illinois without a lot of help for example. There may be less that 5 attorneys in the whole state that are actually expert in it.