All Forum Posts by: Ken Rishel

I would add that many states have statutory maximums that can be charged and that in some areas, counties and municipalities also have restrictions.

 Even if signing is not required in Iowa, if you do not require a signature acknowledging and agreeing to the rules of prospective residents, your case is weaker if the issue goes to court. The better question is why in the world you would not require prospective residents and current residents to sign in order to renew a lease?

With the increased issues relating to Fair Housing, it becomes even more important as almost every set of park rules and leases need revising in order to protect the community in certain issues related to Fair Housing and SACRA.

The Iowa Manufactured Housing Association is planning to tackle this issue yet this year as the fines, penalties, and lawsuits against manufactured housing land lease communities continue to mount.

 See my response above.

Yes. There are later threads in which this is being discussed. At the urging of the lady that owns the rights to Lonnie Skrugg's publications and Lonnie's daughter Rishel Consulting Group spent the money on attorneys to develop a method for Lonnie Dealers to modify their operations and continue to do business legally. To date we have helped over 500 Lonnie Dealers accomplish that and continue to do business and we are continuing to help more each month do the same.

All of this is in adjunct to our main business of helping larger operators set up and operate their own finance companies as well as helping community owners with compliance regarding Fair Housing.

Feel free to email me directly if you would like more information.

 I do have an opinion. In the State of New York, rent-to-own and lease-to-own is considered a disguised credit transaction which requires you to be, or to employ, an MLO and have a Mortgage Lending License along with a complete Compliance Management System. Given New York's draconian licensing laws, you can plan on spending about a year and at least $25,000 to set up a legal operation. Also count on spending another $4-6 k annually of continuing education, bonds, and licensing fees.

There are other and better solutions. Please read some of the many threads on BP regarding manufactured homes and the SAFE Act and the Dodd-Frank Act for more information. Feel free to email me if you wish. The New York Housing Association (MH trade group) will also be able to educate you to a certain extent on these issues and then suggest you need to retain either a specialist law firm or a consultancy like ours to help you.

 Again, I am going to politely suggest you read what has been written before. Many of us get tired of writing the same information over and over again just because someone doesn't want to search for information that has already been covered over and over again.

What you have read about de minimus is incorrect and has been covered here by both myself, our employees, as well as a number of other people who post here regularly. Enforcement has also been covered here for at least five years.

I don't mean to sound unfriendly, but I get tired of retyping answers that are already here.

 You might want to read some my earlier posts on Lonnie Dealers. The world has changed over the last ten years.

There is a Legal component you should be aware of regarding offering financing to consumers. The SAFE Act changed the way even small operators must deal with consumer financing. It has put many small operators out the type of operation you are describing.

There is also the issue of being in Compliance with numerous state and federal laws and the only way to do that in a manner that regulatory agencies will find acceptable is to have a formal Compliance Management System in place and actually in use. The Dodd-Frank Act brought that to the surface. For a lender, that means 22 different laws and regulations at the federal level alone.

That does not mean doing what you propose is impossible - it just means you have to be willing to invest time, effort, and money in getting your operation right or face the fact you are engaged in a criminal activity.

The other question you asked about parks not working with you. It can be done, but there is a right way to do it. Rishel Consulting Group has now trained over 600 Lonnie Dealers how to do this and how to deal with the legalities and compliance issues. The short answer? You are not approaching the right communities and perhaps not approaching them correctly.

Read some of the older threads here on BP on these subjects. I think you will find enough to either convince you to forego what you are contemplating, or to bite the bullet and invest the time and money to get set up correctly before buying homes.

The only way tenants can disagree with a rent increase in non regulated states is to move. 

As Zack mentioned, one would need to know market value. George Allen of GFA Management is a good source of this information as is JLT, a division of Data Comp.

Often, a community owner buying a community will upgrade a community in order to justify raising rents. One of the ways to do this is to replace smaller older homes with new larger homes while upgrading the grounds as well.

19 lots wouldn't excite very many experienced operators except for a small operator with more experience than money. We have client however that bought a 500 site park that was completely empty, with the clubhouse boarded up, the swimming pool filled in with sand, and everything shut off. He is putting in an average of seven brand new homes a week into a community everyone else had given up on.

It is worth noting that many of us have bought smaller (50+) communities and gone to the effort to clean out the community before refilling it with new larger homes and a better class of resident. An empty community would save time and money if there were no reasons that could not be overcome for the community to be vacant in the first place.

 I have no idea what black canvas lots are. The rest of the post also does not make sense to me. Could you clarify your question?