Why I prefer Month to Month Leases

[Logan M.]

I bought my first Mobile Home Park in 2018 and started to realize that every tenant was on a month-to-month lease. At first, I thought this could be a negative but I started realizing a few benefits.

1. Many tenants in MHPs don't care about keeping their credit up when life gets hard and are willing to break their lease regardless of length. You can't force someone to live somewhere or to pay if they just can't.

2. The flexibility to boot problem tenants far outweighs being held hostage by the bad ones.

3. It allows a lot of flexibility with future highest and best opportunities.

4. You can decide when to increase rents.

5. There is nothing cheaper to rent in my market so there are ten potential tenants for each space and because of this, the tenants would be happy being on a month-to-month lease for ten years than finding another place to live with a year lease.

I know some of these sound a little brutal but I would rather leave it up to me to make decisions than have my hands tied. 

[Ned J.]

I do MTM on my SFR properties from day 1. I did that based on the advice of a friend that does evictions.

There is ZERO downside..... if people want to leave, they leave regardless of the lease terms..... and that warm fuzzy feeling of a long term lease is an illusion... you are not likely to see a dime of the remaining lease if they bail.

On the flip I can get rid of them WAY faster at any time I decide.... I have way more power. Long term favors the tenant WAY more that the LL