In a previous article, we discussed the importance of choosing good tenants for your property. In this article, we address 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 “junk.” This is a mentality that is dying hard and 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 carefree, luxurious living. The entire industry was boosted when retirees began discovering the great life available in luxury mobile home parks.

Before you go any further, keep in mind that if you can find a “trailer park” to buy at a great price, you can easily and cheaply update 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 deep, half the RVs had red lights on their porches, drunks slept on patios, sewers backed up weekly, cars stood on jacks, it was bad! We didn’t know anything about running a property, but we did know that the price was right. Later we bought 4 more parks in the city and 3 of them were beautiful. Guess what: we made the most profit when we sold the “poor” upgraded parks than the ones that were great to begin with. The park we kept is the original and is now known as the best 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 want her to look at your property and be proud to meet you. She also wants to attract high-quality residents so she doesn’t have problems with tenants. High-quality people look 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 carry the “trailer park” stigma? Take a good look at the entrance to your property. Then drive around town and look at the types of driveways other homeowners 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 step back from our personal involvement a bit and take an impartial look at the first impression we are making on prospective residents.

First of all, your property must be clean, even on the street that runs through your park. We routinely patrol the street we’re on to make sure no one driving past isn’t looking at trash someone has thrown out of their car. Our place has a flower bed out front planted with perennials that require little maintenance. To protect us from the street, we put up a white wall of settlement blocks, giving the spaces extreme privacy and a sound barrier for street noise. Our interior fences are chain link so we plant honeysuckle vines to provide protection along our interior streets.

If you can afford to pave your streets, this will put you on the wish 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. Nothing is 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 checking, as wet weather will press down on it and allow soil to rise to the top. Check your common areas such as mailbox complexes and picnic areas to ensure adequate ground cover.

Along with paving or graveling streets, driveways, and common areas, weed control would be next on the list. Nothing screams louder that your property is not being cared for than weeds that are allowed to grow out of control. Of course, weeds are a constant summer problem. As I write this, it is March and one particular weed has been bulldozing 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 spray schedule 2 weeks apart and have found this to be the best treatment. Do not spray until daytime temperature reaches 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 labor. This time of year we are gritting our teeth and waiting for the temperature to rise.

We rake leaves year-round to keep our fences and common areas neat and clean. It works well for us to hire a year round landscape maintenance person and keep them on our payroll. You can also hire a landscaping company, but the cost is much higher. If you have your own person, you can check the entire property daily, pick up trash, rake leaves, spray weeds, trim bushes and trees, mow lawns, water plants, etc. We charge our residents for lawn mowing and weeding in the summer and we are able to keep that cost to a minimum by using our own people and equipment. On snow days, after helping to clear common areas, help clean office and store buildings or help with maintenance work 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 require a lot of time or money. During the winter months, we have hardly any exterior maintenance other than a quick cleaning every day. This is a great business, which allows you a lot of free time to pursue other interests. That’s why we’ve made this a lifetime business for three generations of our family. If we can do it, you can too!