Mobile Home Park - Convert from Park Owned Units to Tenant Owned?
Hi,
I purchased a mobile home park about a year ago. Things have gone relatively great. There have been a few hiccups as I expected there would, but nothing that I couldn't figure out with some help from my awesome property manager and from this website. I am now getting to the point where I am thinking about looking for park #2.
In searching for #1, I had a lot of criteria that was largely based on the information in this blog, and one of the key things that I was looking for was a park with TENANT OWNED HOMES. This keeps the park owner's (my) maintenance low, tends to attract good tenants with some amount of "pride of ownership", and also keeps turnover low.
That said, in searching for my previous park, probably 80% of the parks that I encountered consisted partially or completely of PARK OWNED HOMES. I have no desire to own the units in my park, but I am wondering if anyone has been through converting a park that owned the actual units into one that consists of tenant owned units? If so, how did that go? Did you try to sell to the existing inherited tenants before listing the homes for sale? If so, how did you structure the offer to them?
I am trying to wrap my head around how large of a time and money commitment this would be, or if this idea is even worth considering. If this option were on the table, I'm sure it would open up a lot more options when searching for my next park, I just want to make sure that I'm properly accounting for the time and cost of the conversion when doing my analysis.
Thanks for any thoughts and ideas!
Cheers!
Cory