If you're having problems with park managers... - Posted by Rick_IL

Posted by Dirk Roach on March 09, 2000 at 07:55:04:

Rick
I’m glad that you are sharing this extremely useful tip. Because it is good.
I’m set up with several title companies in my area and something I do is get a property profile for every park I deal with. In fact I update this information on a monthly basis.
The main reason is you never know if there is potential in buying the park. Delinquent Taxes, outstanding debt etc.
Also in dealing with a new park (new meaning you haven’t worked in that particular park before) having base info on an owner can be helpful.
Only once have I ever actually had to leap frog a park manager with an owner. This can be a tricky move. As in any business there is a chain of command, with should be respected. I mean a park owner (be it corporate or not) has a manager in place specifically to handle smaller concerns, such as tenant approval etc.
However if a manager is getting a little high and mighty, or abusing authorthity, often times simply mentioning a higher up (in their businesses structure) can do the trick.
It is card that I am hesitant to play. Most parks, although have a pretty specific tenant approval system in place. However they do allow a certain amount of decision to the park manager. Because of the very nature of their business.
I mean A and B credit folks are often times very desirable, but not nessicerily knocking down the mobile home parks doors. Especially if they have large down payments. If they have great credit and a pocket full of cash, for some reasons they seem to like houses as opposed to the older type mobile homes that we deal in. Go figure.
So you have to be careful in leap frogging PM’s. because if you tie their hands and force them to “play by the book” you may get in this tenant, but the twenty behind him, who may not be as desirable as him, you won’t.
Personally in dealing with PM’s I had much better success in becoming friends with the PM, and working with him/her for our mutual benefit.
Anyhow, your suggestion is good, because I have always found the more info you have on any type of deal the better off you are.
Dirk

If you’re having problems with park managers… - Posted by Rick_IL

Posted by Rick_IL on March 08, 2000 at 23:08:05:

Hey everybody, really enjoyed the conference, and meeting many of the people we see posting so often…

We recently had a breakthrough concerning the mobile home business that I’d like to share.

A recurring topic at the conference and in this newsgroup (though not in the last few days) is “What if the park manager won’t work with me?”. It seemed that a very high percentage of park managers would either not work with us, or would insist that a vague, distant “corporate office” kept rejecting all of our applicants (some with sizable down payments!)

I realized that our main source for finding mobile home parks, the internet yellow pages, was a source that would attract mainly corporate owned parks, and the 40-50 lot independent parks would probably not take this route of promotion.

In the past, I’ve read that a good way to find other, more hidden parks was to consult the fire/police dept. We tried that with no success in this case, but decided to try the county tax office, where we so often have to go to bail out sellers who haven’t paid their property taxes in years.

We asked the clerk if they had a list of parks in the county, and she handed us a 5-page stapled list with ALL parks in the county, along with #of spaces and owner contact info. I told her that would do nicely.

It turned out we only knew about 7 of 27 parks in this county, and every new park I’ve visited is closely held and the manager is happy to work with me.

Hopefully you can use the tax office to your advantage!

Rick Dawson