Wagler Wisdom

Today ,December 14th , we are well into the Holiday season . Almost all work projects are grinding to a halt . If one prefers not to do something just now , ”We’ll look at it after the Holidays ” , will do it just fine . That can mean up to Jan. 15th or so …….

Now is also a good time to take stock of whatever is important to oneself , Whether it’s one’s weight , or accomplishments , or lack of them ,or nothing at all . Almost everyone in the South takes off a few days , or weeks , or whatever they can swing , in time or financially from their jobs . And start some serious decorating and cooking up of foods of all kinds .

Our daughter last night achieved something we always wanted to do but never have quite managed to find time for . And what was that ?  Ringing the Salvation Army Bell in front of the little red kettle , to raise the change and small bills for their works. Ah, maybe next year , Ho-Ho-Ho.

One of the most astounding things we have found ourselves in this past year is that we now find ourselves the owner-operators of an old fashioned Single-wide Mobile home park ,often as not referred to as a ”Trailer park”. .

We’ve about always landlorded a handful or two of houses  . Over 20 years ago we permanently washed our hands of ever , ever , owning or renting out a trailer , especially single wide ones ,and all the problems they tend to entail with them. and we have faithfully abided by that , until this year , that is .

How this came about , is a bit complicated . An Investor friend held a note to the property , and in this economy it came about that the ”Trailer Park” ripened up to an ownership situation. The hunt for a partner to run the thing ended up at our door .

Twice we rejected the Idea of being involved in it quite vigorously , and with good reasons . The 3rd time was the charm , we suppose , or perhaps the hot summer heat dissipated the oxygen in the air around us , making rational thought hard.

It is a rather small Park , 28 spots in all , about 16 of them producing income when we took it over.  There was one burned out hulk , 3 unclaimed trailers of unknown ownerships , and 2 vacant park-owned ones badly needing repairs ,too.

The previous Park owner had somewhat let things slide , and what seemingly kept the Park habitable was the presence of a number of long term trailer owners who leased the lots only , and were very nice folks to get to  know  .

One older leaser mentioned to me that he had been living in the same spot there for 42 years .  He noted that mostly it had been in his ”newer ”’mobile home . Further conversation revealed that it was a 1975 model year home..

Our first job there was to put up an attractive covered Bulletin Board , which also was the location of the metal lock box for rent collecting.  ”Checks only, No cash allowed ”,was printed up prominently .

We were warned by several Park residents that ”They’ll hook a car and chain to it the first night and bust it open to make sure no cash was in it”.

The ”They ” they were referring to were  several functional druggies who purportedly lived in  there. (Folks who drugged , but still were able to hold jobs).

We were tempted to put a lot of iron and heavy wire mesh all over it , but ended up just neatly bolting it to a post . The first month hardly anyone used the lockbox , but gradually use of it picked up . And no one has tried to bust it up ,yet.

We’ll branch off here and talk a bit about the  supposed hectic life of a Landlord . We keep our work phone on 24-7 , but rarely hear from any tenants except an occasional emergency , like water running where it shouldn’t be , which will happen anywhere .

Otherwise we never expect to hear from any tenants , and when we do we know almost 100% of the time it is an ”angle” call . We always try to act cheery and uncomplicated when we answer , but know that any tenant who calls has his or her very own good in mind . Always .

So, if you rent a house now , you can expect your landlord to sound  cagey and withdrawn when you call him or her.He is expecting a hook in the conversation somewhere .

We once rented a house in Florida several weeks from an old acquaintance . When we left I called her just to thank her again ,and all that. From her stiff phone demeanor you would have thought we had fired up the house or something like that . I’m sure she rushed over to check it out right after we left the place . I got to see the other side of the equation that time .

 

 

 

to be continued

 

 

 

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 4th, 2011 at 9:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.