All Forum Posts by: Nathan W.

Congrats on getting the park turned around. It sounds like you have been hard at work and added a bunch of equity to the park in the process.  That is impressive.

I don't have much more to contribute other than the godfather Frank himself and Reid have mentioned.  But I definitely agree with them--nominal price would be best to ensure they have some skin in the game.

Hey all, I have a strange question regarding inspector ethics and civil implications of sharing info. I paid for an inspection on my Mom's house which I am in charge of selling as part of her estate and fixed all the safety/deficient issues the inspector noted.  Small town with only a handful of inspectors and the buyers ended up with the same inspector now that we are under contract and he divulged some info to them that I feel was unethical at the least and potential breach of our contract.

The basement had some pretty bad water leakage issues with what appeared to be black mold on the drywall just above the baseboards in a couple of places. After the inspection, I paid a company to install a basement drainage system that involved trenching out around the perimeter and installing drainage and a sump system.  Pretty good system and we have been bone dry ever since.

Part of that process involved removing the drywall up four feet from the floor and while it was removed I scrubbed any areas that looked dirty or moldy on the cinderblock in accordance with CDC guidelines for mold removal (actually double their guidelines since I scrubbed it with bleach and water once and then a few days later again with detergent and water).  

Drywall team came back in and installed new drywall and painted and did the flooring and buttoned everything back up and the space looks great.  I have no concerns at all about water penetration and mold there now.

But the inspector revealed something regarding mold to the buyer's because their agent asked my agent about it.  My contract with the inspector makes pretty clear he and I are the parties to the agreement and information should not be divulged from that inspection to others.  

What are your thoughts? Anything I should look for here? It hasn't killed the deal yet and the buyers haven't come back asking for anything at this point, but the inspection was just yesterday.

Do you live close to the area? Your profile says PA but you are looking at a 9 (!) space park in NC.  You will eat up all your cash flow, if there is any, just travelling to this park to turn it around.  Lot rents at $250 and running at a 40% expense ratio produces only $16k/year net  Is it worth it for the massive amount of work this place will require?

Looks like a good deal for you and I like your plan to reposition conservatively.

Just make sure that your estimated expenses are taking into account traveling to the property a few times per year, at least until you get everything situated.  Smaller parks screw up your expense ratios since you don't get the same economy of scale as you would a larger park, so that really hurts you on fixed price expenses like that.

Yeah but I just thought there might be a news article, like the one recently where the community got shut down because of Fair Housing Act violations, or maybe some verifiable tangible incidents where someone who had a website got busted for doing something wrong due to that website.  Especially since, as you state, it is now "absolute and indisputable fact".  

Thanks for your time.

That's fair. I'm sure everyone can glean good information from various sources.  I am always just skeptical when someone who has obvious financial interests in whipping up fear and uncertainty spends such a great amount of bandwidth coming into a forum whipping up fear and uncertainty.

Maybe some people actually need to shell out a bunch of dough to "experts" to put a "compliance monitoring program" in place or to have them review the legalese of their websites, and maybe it makes them feel better knowing that even if nobody has ever been prosecuted for the things they are paying money to address, it is still a good investment.  I can't speak for others, but the only time I see these types of issues being brought up are from people that have a financial interest in doing so.

It was just a simple question, not saying I don't like your posts.  Thanks for your resume. 

So no instances of regulators using websites to track down and prosecute MPH owners then?