Need Some Serious Advise

mobile home university
1

Hello Everyone and thank you for taking the time to read this.

First off I’m new to posting, but have lerked around here for a little while, but kinda to just jump into my situation.

My Sister and I just inherited my parents Mobile home park, and although we knew it was coming and had some experience in helping running it, we were more help take care of things physically rather than deal with the tenants and the headaches that came with it.

My sister and I are in our early 30’s, so we are pretty young, and we now own a 55+ mobile home park with 0 park owned homes, and only 2 open lots at this time.

The issue we seem to have is that since we’ve inherited it, we seem to run into an issue with the people in the park suddenly in no better terms some of them have lost their minds. We so far have kept the same management as my parents appointed and they seem to be doing a great job, but it seems like they feel that since we are so young, it feels like they are pushing their own perogitive and trying run the park according to the way they want it and see fit, which seems to have some people on edge. For example: We had a home owner who it seems just recently started having all of his guests park in his driveway, in which he already has his 2 car limit, and it is in our park rules that there are to be no more than two cars in a driveway, and they must be functional and have current tags, he claims the 2nd one is funtional, but just isn’t licensed.

But the real issue is that all the people parking in the front of his driveway block vision of people coming into the park and around the corner causing a safety issue potentially, and hte management is hellbent on eviction and it seems doesnt get along with this home owner.

After going out to visit the park we visited this home owner and heard his side of the story, and his disdain for the manager’s of course.

By the end of the meeting, we hopefully established that guests should be parking in the guest parking which is right across from his house, and we would try and make concessions for his sister that comes to visit who has a bad hip and can’t walk well.

We also have had tenant’s starting rumors about us selling the place and also have a couple have someone that lives in the area that is a broker at a local real estate office wanting to talk to us about buying the place,even though we have made no mention of selling or anything of the sort. We recently had a park picnic that we threw for them, and with this couple, when I met the husband, the first thing wasn’t hello, or hi, it was are you interested in selling the place, I have a group of investors interested in buying, and now it seems that this is starting to spread to the other users in the park and i’m assuming causing unrest among some of them. Although, this will be fixed shortly, we will be drafting a letter tomorrow and sending it to every home in the park.

We also have a home owner who is building a deck that goes entirely around her house, and it was never approved and it just blocks any access to water or other lines if something that goes wrong. She has been notified by our management, and when my sister’s husband called because I was at work to talk with her, she said she didn’t care that it was in the rules and isn’t allowed she is going to do it anyway. Now we are forced to move towards an eviction process or else in my opinion if we don’t we set the the standard that you can do whatever you want and we won’t do a thing about it. I ultimately don’t ever want to evict, but I feel if she keeps going down this road we will have no choice. She also, we redid her front yard, and unfortunetly we have a sewage drain that sits int he front that we had redone with bricks around the whole and it was all uniform so that any servicemen that come work on it will know what that is and there is no confusion or delay’s but she without saying anythign removed allt he brick and covered it all with beauty bark as well, and is going to now need to put it back the way it was.

I have another tenant who use to do work on the park for my parents running around saying that we are best friends and he talks to me all the time, and although I don’t know what he using that line for i’m assuming its not a good thing.

And I know that it will be said to read the books and go over the system and visit the boot camps, and this is something we are considering, but at the moment with still dealing with all the legal stuff with inheriting and settling estates, we just dont have the time at the moment.

A little background on myself at least:

I grew up working on rental properties ever since I could walk, I was brought to whatever real estate they had bought and were fixing up, so I’ve seen and dealt with that aspect my whole life. Both my sisster and I own other rental houses, and own small %'s of commercial property, but being the minority owner, it just means we dont have much to do other that sit back and collect checks. I know that my parents loved owning the mobile home park,and wished they did it sooner since my parents use to take vacation’s early in their marriage just to remodel a house to get it ready to be sold or re-rented. So in some sense we are not new to being owner’s or landlords, but when it comes down to it, it feels that being the age that we are we aren’t given the same respect that my parents recieved because of the age difference.

2

It sounds like you have a nice park. It should be relatively easy to find new tenants for the ones you have to evict. My advice is simply to enforce your rules. Don’t be afraid to evict a tenant who is breaking the rules - especially one who is blocking access to water meters, or creating other health/safety violations with a deck that is not approved.

Your situation does not sound quite as bad as the post here on the forum entitled ‘confrontation with belligerent tenant’ - but I’d suggest you read that post and take it to heart.

You create your own problems in this world. Or not. You decide.

-jl-

3

First of all, you’re going to be fine. Second of all, you need to disengage completely from talking to the tenants and getting involved in their personal lives. Parks run on rules and systems, and when you start catering to the tenants – allowing some to bend the rules on a customized basis – it sends the message that the rules are not rigid and everything falls into anarchy. Let the managers run the park and don’t listen to the tenants. Watch only three items on your “dashboard” of park performance: 1) collections rate (should be zero) 2) occupancy (should be 100%) and 3) property condition (should look perfect). If you see these levels of performance going down – just like the oil pressure on your car – then you need to discipline and/or fire the manager. But never talk to a tenant from this day forward. There is nothing they can tell you that you need to be involved in. Sure, they will try and get you involved because they don’t want to follow the rules or collections system. But don’t let them do that. You are simply undermining the manager and making their job impossible. If you feel that you must talk to a tenant,do it strictly in writing so there is a paper trail.

It is natural that there will be rumors that you are going to sell because you’re pretty young and just inherited the park. Disregard them – we get them all the time at every park we own. It’s none of the resident’s business what you’re doing. If they don’t like the park, they can spend $5,000 to move their home out. Until then, they need to pay rent, obey the rules, and leave you alone.

4

Thank you for the reply, I somewhat knew what the answer was, but sometimes I just need to get it all out there and here it from other people as well. It is still a fundamental thing that we will take to heart and not get involved in dealing with 1 on 1 conversations with park guests, let our management do this, and have them enforce park rules, since that’s why they are in place. I do feel that we need to work with our management on how they deal with it, I think at time they can be a little to heavy handed with tenants they don’t like as much as others, but it is something we are aware of and something we can work on.

I am very grateful for the reply’s and advice given, I hope to be a solid contributor on this site and I’m sure I’ll be asking for more advise on just questions that are hard to get answers anywhere else.

Hopefully we will be able to make it out to a boot camp at some point, its something I’m pushing for to my sister when we can find the time, I’m sure sometime next year will work we will wait and see, I might try and pickup the 10/20 book as well as maybe the manager training just to hopefully get everything in this park to where we want it to be, although with our current management we have made a ton of improvements and the park is in far better shape than it was before they were management. Since the old manager was more hands off and was there for questions and to collect rent, these managers have been proactive in fixing issues and making the park beautiful and hopefully getting it to the point where we get the pride of ownership in everyone’s yard and the park as a whole that we are looking for.

5

If you’re new management is as you state the advice you have already received is spot on. I would continue to monitor the managers performance but not attempt to modify their approach. Allow them to work out the issues in their own way. Don’t worry too much about the tenants as it sounds like the only problems are actually with problem tenants. Never shy away from evicting. If tenants are resistant to following the park rules an eviction is the best approach. They will either get the message and adjust their thinking or be gone. Their choice not yours.