In Illinois, I’m required to offer my tenants 24 month leases, although if tenant and I agree I can offer a shorter lease. If tenants don’t opt for the 24 month lease, they should sign a statement saying they were offered the 24-month and chose something else.I went through in September 2013 and offered the 24 month lease and all of my good tenants jumped on it. I failed to provide a statement to the others to sign that they are opting out of the 24-month lease… so I’m getting ready to work on that again now. I DO want to provide all the information and I DO want to be legal and fair but… I feel it’s advantageous to me to have the not-so-good tenants on month-to-month. Right?
Correct.Most judges are very reticent to evict other than for non-payment of rent. So with a longer lease you can get yourself into a situation where you have a tenant that is indeed paying rent, but is breaking every other park rule (loud music late at night, speeding through the park even when children are riding bikes in the street, cars up on blocks, etc.), and there is no way you can get rid of them.Shorter leases allow you to simply non-renew the lease of a resident that is behaving that badly, and then they’ve got to move.-jl-
Lori Cooper, yes…yes…yes…put ALL the Tenants (if they will sign an agreement) on MONTH-TO-MONTH Leases.You can ‘sell’ Month-To-Month Leases to your Tenants by showing them how much money ‘They’ would owe ‘You’ if they had to ‘break’ their 24 Month Lease (ie…for example…let’s say that Lot Rent=$200 and they break their Lease with 10 months left…$200 per month x 10 months broken Lease=$2,000 that the Tenant would owe you…$2,000 is a lot for a Mobile Home Park Tenant to owe and pay…not that you would probably ever see that money, but it would be their responsibility). Have your Tenants also sign a Statement that shows that they understand that either the Tenant or the Mobile Home Park Owner can terminate a Month-To-Month Lease with a 30 Day written notice.Having Month-To-Month Leases takes the ‘invisible handcuffs’ off the Mobile Home Park Owner. They give you the freedom to keep your Tenants in line; which then makes your MHP better; which then leads to better and more stable Tenants; which leads to more ‘real’ money in your pocket :-).We wish you the very best!