Should i try to restart an almost empty park with private water and sewer

mobile home university
1

I have three small mhps in close proximity an 18 and 17 pad park in a small hamlet, on public water and sewer, 21 out of 35 lots occupied and one almost empty 24 pad park on Private water and sewer
The two mhps in the hamlet 1/2 mile apart, on public utilities, 75% of the tenants good to excellent, a couple of good but slow, and 3 bad, 1 crackhouse. I have been paying barely any attention for 18 years every year thinking this will be the year I turn them around. I have upped my game and realize it is going to take some adjustment for the rule breakers to go from no oversight to a full court press.

Here is where the plot thickens. 3.3 miles away I have a rural park with 5 of 24 pads occupied, private water and sewer. It’s a beautiful property. It sits on a 14 acre hill of well drained soils in the Adirondack Mountains. The 24 lots only take 1/2 the property so there is potential for expansion if I can meet regulatory hurdles which I don’t even want to ask about at this time and I might bring resistance just to fill the existing permitted pads. The water lines are PVC mains with copper branches. The septic tanks are concrete, leach fields unknown, overhead electric to three meter boards two of which need replacement, decent crusher run gravel roads. The downside is a new well is needed along with pump house to contain the chlorination equipment which I just replaced in the old pump house. So I didn’t need to buy that again, just mover it. Anytime there is a hiccup in the water system I have the health department crawling up my a** because as a community water system I am held to the same standards as any town of village which I totally understand. When a tenant drinks water from the faucet it needs to be safe.

So here is the question. Should I pay to move the 5 occupied homes into my parks on public W&S and sell the 14 acres (with adjoining 30 acres un-buildable low land). In NYS if I close this park, I have to pay each owner up to $15,000 to move their home which is why I am further ahead to move them and I hesitate to expand it because should I reverse course, I will have to pay up to $15,000 per home to close the park. Thats a double whammy. That is the error of New York State new MHP laws they enacted are inducing me not to create affordable housing.

2

Have you looked into having the new well connected to the existing trunkline so that you can “cut over” from one well to the other? I know this is easier said than done, but it could make the economics work.

That aside, I would want to be really comfortable there is demand to fill in that park before spending the coin.

3

I would move the homes, and sell the land. The risk vs. reward ratio is not favorable in trying to bring that rural park back to life, in my opinion. We have had the exact same situation in the past (when we bought a three park package with two strong and one weak) and while you think it’s strange to kill off a park because they are a rare commodity, the truth is that some parks just need to be developed into a different use. It may be a great property for some other use, but it’s just not investment-grade mobile home park material.