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IT SEEMED A STRAIGHTFORWARD ASSIGNMENT: PROPERTY MANAGEMENT AND TRAINING … though it evolved into a eye-opening lesson for the property owner.

A widowed woman and her son retained us to help her re-establish fiscal stability in the forty site manufactured home community she and her late husband owned. Her adult son lived in another state and her husband, who was the property manager for the community, had been seriously ill for the prior year and unable to conduct the business. Other than depositing whatever rent payments arrived and paying overdue bills, the widow knew little about what her husband did but she wanted the business to continue and she wanted to learn about property management.

With her son’s attorney we ironed out an agreement that would have us temporarily manage the property while we trained the widow on community operations. As a means of introduction to her training we had the widow (the community owner) look over our shoulder as we worked with her to create then implement a strategy to get the community on its financial feet.

In consultation with the owner’s accountant, using available bank statements and committing nearly two weeks to develop a fairly reliable and reasonably clear financial picture from the montage of missing and unorganized data. Slowly unpaid bills and overdue rent were identified and rectification commenced.

Residents with outstanding rent fell into a delinquency range of one to ten months. We sought to settle delinquencies through voluntary resident cooperation and use evictions only as a last resort. Payment plans most residents could afford were created. For the few who couldn’t afford the payment plans we found neighborhood organizations to assist them.  The strategy worked in every case but one ― a young couple with rent severely overdue. Every effort to communicate with them was met with silence. The owner tried to reach out to them since the couple had always been friendly towards her. Unfortunately she too had no luck. Weeks elapsed, eviction was started.

Each step in the eviction process saw the owner request more time for them. And at every step we not only explained our desire to avoid eviction but also the realities of the matter, including the absence of their cooperation left no other options. Her son also spoke to her about this. Finally, having obtained the warrant of eviction and having waited the mandatory period for warrant enforcement, the Sheriff arrived and the physical eviction began … then it stopped midway.

While we dislike evictions, the property owner was upset to the point of positioning herself so that she bodily blocked eviction efforts. It took a very long phone call from her son to convince her to let the eviction proceed. Days later she called to apologize, saying there is more to running the community and property management than she thought. She announced her intention to sell the community, and she did.

Lesson learned: It’s not  just collecting and writing checks.

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Need consulting, coaching or problem troubleshooting regarding other single-family or multi-family housing issues? We’ll be pleased to help you. Visit us at the Inhouse Corporation website or contact us at inhouseco@aol.com

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Tags: manager, manufactured home, property management, property manager

This entry was posted on May 18, 2014 at 18:00 and is filed under Manufactured Homes, Mobile Homes, Property Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.