The Summer Heat

This summer has been incredibly hot in Alabama. We will today break the number of days over 100 since records starting being kept. The heat is playing a big part in park-related business.

We have been getting up at 5 am daily on days when outside work (skirting, porches, etc.) needs to be done. Even that gives us only about 2- 2/12 hours to work outside before the massive heat moves in. We are thoroughly drenched with sweat and ready for the first shower and change of clothes by 8:30 am. Jim routinely changes clothes 3-4 times every day.

The trees we planted last fall, those that are still alive that is, are not yet big enough for shade on the homes. The air conditioners run from early morning (7 or so) continually until midnight or more to cool the house down. While inside during the day (where you HAVE to be) it remains hot even with the air running. It is not conducive to getting much done.

None-the-less, we are progressing, although not at the pace we would like to be. We currently only have one home available for sale, a doublewide that one of our tenant/buyers moved out of. She and her son only moved in during late April, so there was little to do to get it ready for the next buyers: clean, replace a blind, and fix a water line to the toilet. We are also evicting another of our tenant/buyers. The paperwork says we are evicting for non-payment, but the truth is that we have observed too many vehicles going to their home for short periods of time and have had three different residents tell us they believe drug activity is occurring. Putting our own observations together with tenant concerns is pretty powerful.

Jim is now working on the last older home that was here when he came a year ago. It is currently the ONLY home he has to work on, and we skirted it early this week. It was painted and the roof sealed last fall. This morning the air conditioning did not work in the home, so he is stopped until our repairmen come. (We told them to take care of the a/c in houses that are being lived in before they come to fix this one. They will try to be here sometime this week.)

We bought a private 16 x 80 home last week, which will arrive here next week. There is one hole in one wall to fix, and the back door does not open. That should be a quick one to get ready to sell. Yesterday we spent the day looking at Vanderbilt repo units. We plan to bid on a 16 x 80 and a 4/3 doublewide. Although we were looking for a 3/2 doublewide to put at the entrance to the park, this house is very nice and should we buy it will go further back in the park. We have decided that a 4 bedroom home is not the right mix for the front.

Our mailboxes have arrived and we should have the building that will house them built and start using them by the Tuesday after labor day. That will make a significant difference! We also have a lead on a new office trailer. If we actually buy that we will use the current office trailer for storage and tear down the current one being used for storage.

So, we continue moving forward! We have an appointment with a potential buyer of the doublewide today. They are related to residents already living here, so by tonight we may have no houses for sale again until next week when the next one arrives!

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