If you've been in the mobile home park or RV park business for very long, you've likely come across your fair share of 'bad' property managers. Have you every asked yourself 'why?' If you chalk it up to incompetence or to just not caring, nobody would blame you. But what if the 'bad' property management is part of a bigger problem (and one that you can solve)?
Before you read on, you might ask yourself if this is actually a problem worth solving. Consider that your property manager(s) impact revenue, profitability, liability, reputation, and the sales price should you choose to exit at some point in the future. In short, your RV park or mobile home park managers play a pivotal role in the financial performance and success of your investment property as well as your own piece of mind.
Understanding the Role of Your MHP Property Managers
A property manager is a linchpin in the successful operation of a mobile home or RV park. Their duties encompass a broad spectrum of tasks that go beyond just collecting rent. They are responsible for:
- Maintaining the property
- Ensuring compliance with health and safety standards
- Resolving tenant disputes
- Marketing the property to prospective tenants
- Collecting rent, issuing late notices, and facilitating evictions if necessary
The role becomes particularly unique and challenging in the context of a mobile home park due to its distinct nature. These managers may be dealing with a more transient population rotating through the area for work projects. They face challenges such as maintaining a stable and positively-viewed community atmosphere, ensuring that park-owned mobile homes are properly maintained, and they deal with industry-specific issues such as space rentals and in some cases, mobile home sales.
Understanding these responsibilities and challenges is crucial for both park owners and managers to ensure the successful operation of the park.
Bad Property Management Can Create Huge Financial Problems For You And Bad Experiences For Your Tenants
When it comes to mobile home parks (MHPs) or manufactured housing communities (MHCs) the property manager plays a vital role in ensuring both the financial success of the property and quality of life for the residents.
Bad or 'sub-par' property management can have serious consequences on both fronts. Residents may experience a decrease in their quality of life due to neglectful property maintenance, while financial performance can suffer from:
- Inefficiencies in managing rent collection and expenses
- Deferred maintenance that becomes more costly with time
- Failing to retain great tenants
- Filling the park with tenants who drive off the great tenants
While doing any of the above can result in a buying opportunity for the next MHP investor, I think you'll agree that is not good for you, the current owner.
What Are Some of The Biggest Complaints About MHP Property Managers?
Living in a mobile home park has its perks, like affordable housing in good locations, but dealing with bad property managers can make life a lot less enjoyable. One of the most common complaints is that maintenance requests take forever to fix, go unanswered, or are poorly addressed.
Naturally, you can imagine how it feels to be ignored or to feel that your request isn't important. That feeling, over time, can be corrosive and can lead to negative online reviews and great tenants who eventually move out of your community.
Another source of frustration is the property manager's lack of properly allowing in new residents. Sometimes, you get lucky and don't have an issue. It's when you get unlucky that's a problem. You risk moving in a tenant who pays the rent late, refuses to clean up their lot, is rude to their neighbors, and who tends to throw late-night parties.
Nobody likes being woken up at 2 AM to the sound of loud, partying neighbors.
In other cases, the manager plays favorites, letting "friends" of theirs get away with breaking the rules while expecting others to abide by them.
Before You Blame Your Employee, Inspect Your Systems
Before pointing fingers at the property manager, it might be smarter to evaluate the systems and procedures you have in place. While it's easy to blame failures on an individual, the root cause often lies within the systems (or more often than not, the lack of systems). This is particularly true if your property manager has:
- Not received adequate training
- Not been given enough clarity about their role and responsibilities
- Not been provided with systems supporting effective management
Poorly or hastily-designed systems can fuel inefficiencies, confusion, and poor performance (even among the most competent and well-intentioned managers).
For example, if you don't have a system to track maintenance requests and how long it takes to resolve them, you are setting yourself up for some of those requests to slip through the cracks.
By the same token, if your system for screening, evaluating and accepting new residents is ineffective (or non-existent), problematic tenants will likely end up living in your community.
Instead of blaming your property manager for issues that come up, it is often wiser to default to a critical review of your systems and procedures.
If you don't have top-notch systems in place that support your manager's various roles, it's worth the time, effort, and energy to design them, test them, and train your property manager on how they work so you can increase the performance of your manager and your property while improving the overall tenant experience.
Why Blaming Your Property Managers' Performance on Incompetence May Be a Huge Mistake
When it comes to poor performance in mobile home and RV parks, it's easy to point fingers and place blame on incompetence. However, the real root cause may start much earlier than that. Poor screening and hiring practices, combined with a lack of proper property management training, can often lead to subpar performance from management staff. What's truly needed is training that's based on what actually works for mobile home and RV parks, but unfortunately, this is often overlooked. Instead of simply blaming incompetence, it's important to address these underlying issues in order to improve the overall success of these properties.
What Happens If Owners & Investors Fail to Fix The Problem?
Mobile home parks offer affordable housing, but they can turn into a nightmare when they are poorly run. We've all seen horror stories in the media blaming the greedy landlord for creating terrible living conditions for the less fortunate among us.
The idea of avoiding such a situation has sparked debates on potential solutions such as government regulation or rating systems. While these solutions might sound good to some, they come with more bureaucracy and red-tape.
I would propose a simpler solution that involves far less red-tape. Train your property managers to do their jobs well and equip them with the tools and systems they need to do so.
By educating your property managers on proven practices that have been tested and vetted in actual parks, you can do your part to improve the reputation of this industry while also benefitting yourself in the process. This solution is simple, but powerful - it has the potential to prevent the emergence of poorly run mobile home parks in the future and ultimately improve the lives of the very residents that depend on these parks for affordable housing.
Training: The Foundation of Competent Management
Proper training is at the core of competent property management, particularly when it comes to mobile home parks. This training needs to be comprehensive, covering a wide array of subjects, from renting spaces and collecting the rent, to understanding the legal aspects of property management (like Fair Housing Laws), to the intricacies of conflict resolution, and to the proper handling of maintenance requests and issues.
While not expected to be attorneys, property managers should be fairly well-versed in tenant-landlord laws, housing regulations, and other related legal matters related to their job. Familiarity with these laws can help mitigate potential legal issues, ensure adherence to property standards, and maintain a fair and lawful environment within the park. Ignorance of these laws can create unforced errors and costly liability.
Conflict resolution is another crucial part of the job. Given the close-knit community nature of mobile home parks, conflicts between tenants can arise. A well-trained manager should possess the knowledge and skills to handle such disputes tactfully and maintain harmony within the park (while also knowing when to step aside and call in the authorities should the situation escalate beyond words). They should be able to handle complaints, mediate disputes, and enforce rules equally and fairly across the board.
In addition, training in how to insure maintenance requests are properly addressed is another critical part of the property manager's job. The manager is responsible for ensuring that the park and its facilities are in good working order. This includes regular inspections, promptly addressing repair issues, and insuring regular maintenance activities happen. Failure to do so can hurt the overall experience of living in your park while doing it well can improve how your residents feel and how they in turn treat your property.
How We Solved The Property Management Training Problem In Our Own Communities
Are you struggling with how to adequately train your mobile home and RV park property managers without putting in countless hours to train them yourself?
We faced the same problem. Then, we realized that 95% of the training was the same every time. We were repeating ourselves with different managers at different parks. Sure, each park has details that are specific to that mobile home or RV park, like the rental rates and which plumber or sewer clean-out company to use, but almost all of the training remains the same.
First, I mapped out all of the areas that managers needed to be trained on to perform their duties exceptionally well. Then, we dragged out our logs and documents, pulled chairs up around a big table, and listed everything that we had run into that could trip up a new manager...
We thought of all the reasons why we had been woken up in the middle of the night. We thought of all the things that had happened that had made us want to quit the business entirely.
It was a big list.
Then, we started mapping out the trainings.
I spent the next 14 months filming and creating what would eventually become Mobile Home Park Classroom. We included solutions to everything on that huge list as well as all of the training that we provided to new managers. It was tedious work, but worth it knowing we would never have to invest 80 hours or more of our time training each new property manager.
Once it was done, the resulting time-savings, performance gains, and confidence-levels of our new managers put smiles on our faces and let us breathe a little easier knowing that our current and future managers would be getting the best training available.
If You Own a Mobile Home or RV Park, Create Your Own Training Program Or Try Mobile Home Park Classroom
By now, you're fully aware of the problems that a bad property manager can create or contribute to, but you're also aware that systems (or lack of systems) are often the real root-cause problem. In general, people want to do their jobs well, but they have trouble doing so if they lack the training or systems they need.
Mobile Home Park Classroom has trainings on how to find, hire, train, and remotely manage all of your current or future property managers using training videos, role-play videos, templates, and one-click answers to the most commonly asked questions (so you property manager doesn't have to wake you up in the middle of the night).
When you invest in the Owners' Edition of the program, you'll easily be able to add all of your current and future property managers. Just add their name and email address and click submit. Within 5 to 10 minutes, your managers will receive login details to their very own Property Managers' Edition of Mobile Home Park Classroom. It's that simple.
Now, you may be wondering if there are other options available. That's a valid question, but I would argue it's the wrong question. The right question is, can other programs guarantee the same level of hands-on experience in mobile home and RV park ownership, management, and training?
Why take the risk?
When you try Mobile Home Park Classroom today, you'll gain access to a comprehensive training library filled with helpful lessons and resources designed specifically for mobile home park owners and their property managers.
Try Mobile Home Park Classroom today risk-free and start taking your business to the next level!
