Featured Articles and Reports for Vol. 3, No. 4, 2012

Alphabetically by Category

COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT & FAIR HOUSING (LEGAL)

• Do You Hear What I Hear? Do you see what I see?

by Nadeen Green

Aha! Now that Christmas carol is going to be an ear worm for those of you in manufactured home community management! Memory devices are great, and maybe this one will keep you and your land lease community staff out of trouble...

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• A New Year's Possibilities

by Eddie Hicks

Starting the new year brings possibilities for land lease community (LLCommunity) refinance and development opportunities.

With all the site built home foreclosures, many families have turned to apartments, resulting in a relatively high occupancy rate in many markets, while at the same time, in those same areas, there may be many vacant LLCommunity homesites.

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• Content Area of Guidelines for Living: Refuse Removal through Rights of Management

by Chrissy Jackson

Happy New year! In December's article on the guidelines for living in manufactured home land lease communities, we covered the topics of Number of Residents to Recreational Vehicles, we covered Guidelines for Living topics,  Number of Residents to Recreational Vehicles. Let's get started with our new topics for January, 2012~

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• What About Your Utility Systems?

by Kurt Kelly, JD

When purchasing a manufactured home community, experienced investors focus considerable pre-purchase due diligence on the community’s utility systems. This infrastructure is a large part of the value of most properties.

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• Rent Control Out at Surf and Sand

by Eric Miller

Rent control isn't such a hot topic in California anymore, except when it comes to 'mobile home' and manufactured housing communities. That's because most communities in the state don't have vacancy control. 

When an apartment turns over, rents revert to a market rate. Manufactured home communities are an exception.

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FINANCING

• Financing more manufactured homes, getting inventory and community financing

by L. A. 'Tony' Kovach

One of the challenges of doing a trade journal is putting an article in a category that makes sense. Some articles could well be in more than one category, but we don't want readers who skim to think we just mistakenly duplicated something! Then there are the resources for getting more of the various types of financing, and that is what this brief article is about!

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GENERAL MANUFACTURED HOUSING INDUSTRY TOPICS

• MLS…Multiple Listing Service for Manufactured Housing

by Boe Davis

For almost 30 years we ran what may have been the only true Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for manufactured home sales in communities. Initially called the Mobile Home Board, then as an association it was called the California Mobile Home Guardians and in its last version it was called MHMLS.org.

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• What I Learned From Santa

by Suzanne Felber

The holidays this year were very special - I was able to do an early Christmas with my amazing new grandson in Florida. My son and his family live in the West Palm Beach area, so we were able to enjoy some beautiful weather, but it was a given there would be no snow in sight.

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• The Texas Playbook

by D. J. Pendleton, J.D.

I had met Tony several times previously at various national events. However, it wasn’t until Tony was kind enough to attend the Texas Manufactured Housing Association's (TMHA’s) recent annual convention in September when I got a chance to talk substantively with him.

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• You Can't Fix It Till You Know It's Broken

by George Porter

This month's topic can apply to a lot of things in the installation and repair of manufactured housing. The bottom line is you have to know what is correct before you can see that there is a need for change or repair.

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• “It's Show Time” in Louisville!

by Ron Thomas, Sr.

It's show time in Louisville at the Kentucky Exhibition Center (KEC). The annual Louisville Manufactured Housing Show (Louisville MH Show) will run January 11-13^th, and this year's line up is simple impressive.

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• Model Homes or Not!

by Katy Weldon

For the past several decades Model Homes have been an important part of the housing industry, including manufactured and modular homes. A model home complex was considered a necessity and major selling tools for most retailers.

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MANAGEMENT

• Improving Corporate Communications

by Tim Connor, CSP

Every corporate client I have worked with for over 40 years has had communication problems or challenges throughout their organization to a lesser or greater degree. Some have been critical issues that had cost them dearly off the bottom line, while others were nothing more than annoying inconveniences that got in the way of employee or department effectiveness.

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MARKETING

• QR Codes—What are they and how can your business use them?

by Beth Monicatti Blank

You have probably seen Quick Response (QR) codes printed in an advertisement, on a product or even online. They are small black and white square boxes with smaller pixilated boxes inside. These QR codes are similar to the UPC barcodes used by retailers to track inventory and price products for scanning.

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• Plan for Success in 2012

by Chris Nicely

The holidays always allow us time to reflect on what is important in our lives and can lead us to consider necessary changes. We consider those things that made us happy, satisfied and helped our business and those events that caused us to question. Each of us has a life centered around a business that is dependent upon a stagnant economy and possibly the worst housing market ever.

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• Use Systems and Discipline for Successful Campaigns

by Jeff Templeton

I was speaking with a respected member of our industry the other day and he said something very obvious, but also very intuitive. What he said to me was, “It’s all about systems and discipline.” A system is a plan, formula or blue print for achieving results and discipline is needed to monitor, adjust and repeat the system to achieve the desired results again and again.

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PERSONAL REFLECTIONS, MOTIVATION and INSPIRATION

• Get out of Auto-pilot

by Tim Connor, CSP

Are you going through your life in auto-pilot? Are you letting your responses and reactions to life’s circumstances and events be dictated by your previous values, attitudes and beliefs or are your responses a result of living in the present?

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• Zig On The Next Hill to Climb

by Zig Ziglar

I recently received an interesting letter from one of our subscribers, quite complimentary. He pointed out that he particularly enjoyed anarticle having to do with success. Then he elaborated on the fact that he has achieved so many things--God has been really good to him--and his question was, "I guess it's like winning the World Series or the Super Bowl.

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SALES

• What's Working in Manufactured Housing Retail

by Chad Carr

On November 13^th – 15th, Rainmaker Consulting hosted what turned out to be one of the most exciting, positive and productive events of the year for the Manufactured Housing Industry – at least for those who were able to attend.

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• Marketing & Sales – The Current State of Affairs and The Strategic Blending Process

by Tim Connor, CSP

If you are paying attention, the social media folks would have you believe that all you need to do to be successful in your business or career today is to be a social media guru with Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

I beg to differ.

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by Tim Connor, CSP

Every corporate client I have worked with for over 40 years has had communication problems or challenges throughout their organization to a lesser or greater degree. Some have been critical issues that had cost them dearly off the bottom line, while others were nothing more than annoying inconveniences that got in the way of employee or department effectiveness.

Read more...