I am always moved to write when I look around my real world
environment and see smart businesses at work. Today is just such
a day.
I own my own mobile home and my house is parked in one of the
nicest, if not the nicest, mobile home parks in town.
I moved into this park two years ago, and one thing that
attracted us to it was that all lots were large and spacious. Of
course, we also realized that our yard actually consisted of our
lot and the lot next door that had not been utilized in years.
Two months ago, the old park owners sold to some mobile home park
management outfit in Dallas, Texas. Right away, they let us know
that our lot rent would double. We honestly began to consider
whether we would actually pull out of the park, given the pure
absence of services and the higher levels of lot rent. The
previous management had pretty much offered us NO services.
Time has begun to change our perception of these new people.
Services are improving... so much so that we are thinking about
staying at this location, even with the higher lot rents. We now
have trash service for the first time ever, and we no longer need
to do the landscape maintenance ourselves. Although these new
services don’t fully justify the complete rent hike, it is
looking more promising now.
SMART MOVERS
But, the increased rent and services is not my point in writing
this article today.
I am actually impressed with these new folks on the basis of the
maneuvering that they are doing. I am impressed with how they
have changed the profitability of this mobile home park from
their point of view.
For the first few weeks they were here, it was very annoying.
Every afternoon for a few hours, we lived without water. That was
a real pain. But, after four weeks of repairing water lines that
were running to each lot, they were done with the water work.
A few people pulled out of the park, and a couple of people moved
into the park as they were adding new water and sewage lines to
the empty lots in the park.
Last Friday marked a major milestone in the growth of this
neighborhood. Signs began to pop up indicating that people could
buy mobile homes for very reasonable rates. In fact, they could
buy their homes with a down payment equal to half of what I put
down myself.
Then on Saturday, the exodus began in earnest. Four new mobile
homes were moved in on my street on Saturday. Two more rolled in
on Sunday. Monday brought four more into the park. Every day
since last weekend, we have watched four new homes a day roll
into the neighborhood.
On Tuesday, we went through the park and counted the new lots
they had readied for new homes. This park with about 50 homes in
it already, was prepared to receive another 74 new homes. We
figure this park will be packed with new homes in just about two
more weeks.
THE FINANCIALS
Prior to the takeover, this park was generating about $8250 per
month in revenues. The increase in lot rents moved revenues to
$16,000 in revenues. I think most of us will bite the increase,
especially since services have increased dramatically as well.
When all is said and done, this park will be sporting 125 mobile
homes instead of 50, thus increasing revenue to $40,000 per
month, once the new ones have sold to new families.
The most amazing thing about this whole process is that it seems
our new management team have an agreement with a particular
mobile home manufacturer. The manufacturer can permit their homes
to sit in the parking lot at the manufacturing plant, or they can
place then into a mobile home park where the park will operate as
a seller representing the manufacturer.
The seller/park can make a commission off of the sale of the
homes, and they can have an immediate additional income from the
buyer in the form of lot rent.
IN CONCLUSION...
I am just impressed at the smartness of our new management
company.
We have not yet decided whether we will sit it out here or move
to another location. It is still likely that we will move our
home to another location; we just have not decided when. Our lot
rent is now equal to our house payment; and I'm a cheapskate. ;-)
|
