All Forum Posts by: Colin Ghira

I own a mobile home park in Otsego County, NYS and I am definitely concerned with the new laws passed last summer. I have been trying to find local attorneys to help review leases and provide advice on the new legislation, but most don't want to touch it. 

Is anyone familiar with attorneys that might work remotely and are familiar with Mobile Home regulations in NYS? 

Hi Grace, 

Here's my experience on the matter: 

Mobile home parks are not being built mostly because: 

- towns/villages do not want them as they usually have a lower tax structure. Also folks consider them an eyesore (as mentioned). Also some people think they promote increased crime. 

- regulations - NYS, where I invest, just passed some insane piece of legislation, where it makes me think twice about continuing to purchase mobile home parks.

As far as profitability for a mobile home park, you have to run the numbers on every deal. Some make a lot of sense, others do not. And you have to consider the cost of increased regulation (not being able to actually increase rents to market, not being able to evict tenants, etc.). In general, from my experience mom and pop landlords have historically kept rents very low for many reasons (convenience, compassion, not having a desire to make money). This has resulted in an unsustainable model (current rents are not enough to pay for OPEX, cost of financing and have a profit afterwards), so they are very difficult to get in. 

@Melanie Hartmann Good luck with the move! Awesome that you're trying. 

@Sheri Cabral Yes, the deposits are included in the closing, that's more of a common occurrence, so I was expecting that. Thanks for watching out. I will definitely revise future contracts to account for this scenario. 

@Thomas S.  I do agree that in business you should not let personal feelings interfere with good business practices. Now, allowing 2 tenants that have been there for many years, continue to stay for another year at the same rates, is I think an effective business decision and I'm not going to go through all the reasons why on here, because I do believe we are steering off topic. A couple of points though for your future reasoning. Good faith (or goodwill) is something that is paramount in business and I believe is also a legal term. The fact that you don't understand it, doesn't mean that it's not useful. Companies even record goodwill and various intangible assets based on actual accounting rules. Also I wouldn't call a decision someone makes as not rational, because you see, inherently that person has some kind of reason. You might call it not-optimal, or inefficient, ineffective, etc. 

@Thomas S. I wanted to wait one year for the current tenants as a gesture of good faith upon change of ownership. Then I was going to raise the rents. Increasing the bottom line is a priority, of course, but I wanted to balance that with the security of having tenants (only 2 of 5 units were occupied when I signed the purchase contracts). 

@Anthony Wick  - I don't think I would take a vengeful action two years in the future just to spite the previous owners. If they are good tenants, I would just raise the rent and sign an appropriate lease contract. But, this does bring up a good point. You want to protect your old tenants, by creating a strain between them and the new landlord? Very interesting thought process from the seller. 

Thanks everyone for their reply. Well, it's definitely a lesson for the future on modifying contracts. I will try to negotiate with the seller, to see if I can get anything for it. New York doesn't require a notarized lease. Previous leases were one year. 

I'm currently buying a property upstate NY. I entered into a contract in May 2018 and the close is next week. It's a 5 unit building where at the time of signing, 2 of the units were rented to long-term tenants (I think they had 1 year contracts), and 1 had the property manager that was living there for free, in exchange for services. As I'm getting the paperwork for closing I noticed 3 leases signed in June. Two leases for the long-term tenants were signed for 2 year terms and another lease with new tenants for 1 year terms. The problem is that the rentals are way below market and the landlord did this in order to protect their tenants (friends) I'm guessing. In addition, the contracts that they signed are one pagers and don't give any protections to the landlord. Now, I wouldn't have raised the rents for the first year for the current tenants, as a gesture of good faith, regardless. But this whole thing definitely put me in a bad mood. Both the previous landlord and the tenants have not acted ethically, I believe. My attorney is saying that the landlord hasn't done anything illegal. Does anyone have any experience with this type of issues and what do you think is a proper course of action here?