Mobile Home Park Management: Maintaining Your Property

In a previous article, we discussed the importance of choosing good tenants for your property. In this article, we address the issue of the appearance of your property.

In the mobile home park business, your property is your business! You are renting spaces or mobile homes for rent, so keeping your property means you have a desirable product to offer to the public.

Let’s talk about the general maintenance of your outdoor areas. As you probably already know, in the early days of mobile home parks, the term was “trailer park” and the term itself had the connotation of “trash.” This is a dying mentality that is still prevalent in many parts of the country. We are grateful for the parks in Florida and Arizona that began to set the standard for a luxurious and carefree lifestyle. The entire industry was boosted when retirees began to discover the great life available in exclusive mobile home parks.

Before proceeding, keep in mind that if you can find a “trailer park” to buy at a great price, you can easily and inexpensively upgrade that property and change the image quickly. Let me share a personal story with you. We bought the worst looking “trailer park” in town as our first property. Weeds were waist high, half of the RVs had red lights on porches, drunks slept in patios, sewers were closed weekly, cars were riding cats, it was bad! We didn’t know anything about how to run a property, but we knew the price was right. Later we bought 4 more parks in the city and 3 of them were beautiful. Guess what, we made the biggest profit when we sold the improved “junk” parks than when we sold the great ones to start with. The park that we preserve is the original one and is now known as the most beautiful park in the city.

To maintain the value of your property, you must constantly think about “pride of ownership.” If your great-aunt Edna comes to town, you’ll want her to look at your property and be proud to meet you. You also want to attract high-quality residents so you don’t have problems with tenants. High-quality people are looking for high-quality products, so make sure you offer the best property you can offer.

Now, how can you be sure your property doesn’t have the “trailer parking” stigma? Take a good look at the entrance of your property. Then drive around town and look at the types of entrances that other owners have designed. We like to take pictures of our entrance and other areas of the property from time to time, as it gives us the opportunity to take a small step away from our personal involvement and to look fairly at the first impression we are making on potential residents.

First of all, your property must be clean, even on the street that runs through your park. We routinely patrol the street we are on to make sure no one passing by is not looking at the trash someone has thrown from their car. Our place has a flowerbed in front planted with perennials that require little maintenance. To protect from the street, we put in a white drop block wall, giving the spaces extreme privacy and a sound barrier from street noise. Our interior fences are chain-linked, so we plant honeysuckle vines to provide protection along our interior fairways.

If you can afford to pave your streets, this will put you on the desirable list. If you can’t afford paving, be sure to keep gravel on your streets and sites so people don’t have to deal with mud. There is nothing more daunting than having a muddy mess on your doorstep and your tenants will be looking for a new place to live if they have to park in the mud. Gravel requires occasional monitoring, as wet weather will put pressure on it and allow the soil to rise to the surface. Check your common areas like mailbox complexes and picnic areas to make sure the ground coverage is adequate.

Along with paved or gravel roads, driveways, and common areas, weed control would be next on the list. Nothing screams louder that your property is not being taken care of than weeds that are left to grow out of control. Of course, weeds are a constant problem during the summer. As I write this, it is March and one weed in particular has been thriving in the snow since the first week of February. We have tried digging weeds, scraping weeds, pulling weeds, etc. For the past several years we have used a 2 week interval spray program and have found this to be the best treatment. Don’t spray until your daytime temperatures reach 70 degrees. Two winters ago we sprayed in early March thinking we would have a head start and nothing happened. We waste our materials and our work. At this time of year we are clenching our teeth and waiting for the temperature to warm up.

We rake leaves year-round to keep our fences and common areas neat and clean. It works well for us to hire a yard maintenance person throughout the year and keep him on our payroll. You can also hire a landscaping company, but the cost is much higher. If he has his own person, he can check the entire property daily, pick up trash, rake leaves, spray weeds, trim bushes and trees, mow lawns, water plantings, etc. We charge our residents for mowing and weeding in the summer and we can keep that cost to a minimum by using our own people and equipment. On snowy days, after helping to clear common areas, help clean offices and store buildings or help with maintenance jobs scheduled for those days.

This will give you an idea of ​​the ongoing maintenance you will need for your outdoor areas. It may seem a bit overwhelming, but once you’ve done the initial cleaning of your property, maintenance becomes part of a routine that doesn’t take a lot of time or money. During the winter months, we hardly have any outside maintenance, apart from a quick cleaning every day. This is a great business that allows you to have a lot of free time to pursue other interests. That is why we have made this a lifetime business for three generations of our family. If we can do it, you can too!