Can I get some ideas about how to enforce keeping the park clean? Mainly I am talking about tenants yards (grass cut) and washing the mildew that grows on the siding (contstantly in the humid Houston weather). We have maintenance man for the community areas.
I would like to think that tenants/homeowners would just like to do it out of pride of ownership. But unfortunately the policy has not been enforced and therefore inertia has set in.
Some ideas I have had have been to set a deadline, and then after that deadline tenants are charged, similar to a late fee charge, until it is done. Also, I have thought of just charging them a cleaning fee if they dont do it.
I don’t own a park myself but the parks I work in (corporate owned) give a notice that if your grass is to tall on a certain date every couple of weeks it will be force mowed. They just have the park handyman go around and cut everything that is to tall and then add it to that persons bill. They give notices well in advance so everyone knows what will happen and a few even prefer to just have the park mow it. I would think you could apply the same concept to the mold issue as well. Just make sure this is in your rules (or add it to them) before you start.
Here in Albany, GA at the end of the 1st year of ownership we decided to take over maintaining all the lots to keep the park looking pristene at all times. This accomplished several things, as I said the park looks good all the time, creates interest for new residents because the park is well maintained and we increased the lot rent by $30.00 a month which was easily justied because residents no longer had to maintain their lots, we increased the value of the park with the lot rent increase because we increased the income by $2850.00 a month or $34,200.00 a year.
I don’t recall off the top of my head but it is somewhere in the range of what others have mentioned.
The way I would look at it is do you want to try and force the people to do it themselves OR would you rather you (or actually your workers) do it. To me I like the second option as it brings in a little extra money and makes sure the park looks good. If you don’t want to mess with the hassle make the fee really high and people will have more incentive to do it themselves.