Sometimes Infill Isn't Enough

We have been working to infill the Troy park for 2 1/2 years now. As I have previously stated, people DO move their homes in this particular area, contrary to popular belief.

The Troy park is a 75-space park. We were up to having 47 of these spaces filled, but one home left last week after we evicted the (original) resident for rules violations.

We are now in the position of having made a decision to move out one of the homes that we own, even though it has been occupied for most of the time since we originally rehabbed it. We have had three buyers in this home in that length of time, and although it is a 1980's home is sound and looks good.

The reason we are moving it out? Our latest tenant committed suicide in this home last week. If we leave it in the park it will undoubtedly stay empty for a long period of time, if we were ever able to fill it again.

The current plan is to sell this home for a minimum amount to another park owner. The park it will go to is a rental park with older homes. Nobody will know the history of this home in his park, thus he will be able to keep it as a money-making part of his business.

Unfortunately, we are losing a home that we thought would be a moneymaking part of OUR business for years! Now we have another empty lot. The upside, of course, is that we will bring a newer, bigger home into the community.

Water - Part II

We have made the decision that having an outside company bill for our sub-metered water is not working for us at Butler Creek.

Our tenants just received their water bill yesterday (12/15)from the reading that was taken on 11/24. There is WAY too much lag time between reading and billing. Their bills are due on 12/31. We have also found the company non-responsive to us.

We have notified our tenants that we have made an arrangement with the sub-metering company and are answering their requests to accept water payments in our office. We are trying to start with a good spin on this. We have had many requests to pay here, but were trying to keep it completely separate. That is obviously not going to work.

Our next meter reading is scheduled for 12/29. We are trying to meet the readings with the billings. We will bill for this water reading on the statement that gets mailed in mid-January for February rent payments, and the middle-man will be gone. Each month we will add a few days to the readings so we will eventually read the meters about the same time the statements are mailed. (For example, we will again read the meters on 2/2.)

We use Rent Manager here, and we can start billing our water using that software. We will also have our part-time office assistant become full-time on January 1 so we can handle the extra volume of work. Since we will not be paying a service charge per resident to the company any longer we can afford to pay our employee for more hours.