Reflections on the 1st Year

We closed on this park a year ago today. We are having a "Homeowner Appreciation Picnic" later today. We have probably cooked too much food, but better too much than not enough to go around! (The chicken and the cake are coming from elsewhere.) Our refrigerator and the one in the office are filled with salads.

Over the last year we have demolished 2 mobiles and given away one. 6 homes belonging to others have moved out; we have moved 6 in. We bought 3 repos that were in the park when we bought it; one of those had to be re-set since it was ready to be moved out. All homes that we brought in and that we bought have been rehabbed, and all sold - including the one that came in a week ago and still has a hole in the roof! (Of course the buyers cannot move in until we have it done. We are planning their move-in about August 15th.) 5 homes that were abandoned in the park have been rehabbed and sold.

We have one more abandoned home we have recently started work on. There is at least one, that we have never collected a dime of lot rent for, that is in the process of being repossessed by Greentree. It is possible that another will also be repossessed. One current tenant has told us he intends to move his home out in August, plus our attorney will start eviction on one this coming Tuesday.

The home going out next month is because he had to pay late fees in July......the other tenant is not following our park rules. She also lives right beside us, and has a sign in her window that says "ICU Looking". I noticed the sign last Sunday when we got home from church! We obviously got a big laugh out of it and have the appropriate pictures. We doubt she has the money to move her home out of the park; if not, we will ask the city to condemn it so we can tear it down.

Jim has screwed up his knee, which he really started noticing after walking down and back up a hill when we were looking at repos. He is scheduled for arthroscopic surgery in Florida on Wednesday. We bought the home, though! He will have to take it easy for a few weeks, we expect, which slows down the rehab work. We still cannot find someone else to accomplish that in this area.

We hopefully have bought a house out of the park (we have a backup contract on it, and will find out for sure in a week) so will move out in early August. We need to move out since Jim has sold this house too! The buyers are just waiting for us to move out, but have given us downpayment money and been approved for residency.

So, we are making progress. We still have about 38 more homes to move in, though! We expect to begin looking for more as soon as we return from Florida after Jim's surgery. We are also going to lurk around Tony's and Scott's bootcamp - not being attendees, but networking in the evenings with people who are! We want Jim to take it a little easy on the knee for a bit.

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