George Allen / EducateMHC Blog Mobile Home & Land Lease Community Advocate & Expert

March 26, 2020

FORBEARANCE (‘a refraining from the enforcement of a debt, etc.’)

Filed under: Uncategorized — George Allen @ 5:31 am

Blog # 578 @ 26 March 2020; Copyright 2020; www.educatemhc.com

Perspective. ‘Land lease communities, previously manufactured home communities, and earlier, ‘mobile home parks’, comprise the real estate component of manufactured housing!’

EducateMHC is the online national advocate, asset class historian, data researcher, education resource, and communication media, for all land lease communities in North America!

To input this blog &/or affiliate with EducateMHC, telephone the Official MHIndustry HOTLINE: (877) MFD-HSNG or 633-4764. Also email: gfa7156@aol.com & visit www.educatemhc.com

Motto: ‘U Support US & WE serve U!’ Goal: Promote HUD-Code manufactured housing & land lease communities as U.S. main source of affordable attainable housing! Attend an MHM class!

INTRODUCTION: Forbearance trumps foreclosure, in my opinion, any day! But is the price one has to pay (i.e. no eviction proceedings), in this instance, really worth not being able to collect one’s site rent? And how have you been enduring the past few weeks of the coronavirus hiatus? I’m certain there are many interesting tales that’ll come out of this massive national experience once it has passed. Professional property management is not talked about nearly enough in land lease community circles. Bottom line? If you’ve not been trained and certified in one of the three national programs presently available to land lease community owners/operators, you are selling yourself (as sole proprietor) or your firm (as salaried PM exec) far short of your professional property management potential! GFA

I.

FORBEARANCE
(‘a refraining from the enforcement of a debt, etc.’)

“To support multifamily property owners during this national emergency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (‘FHFA’) announced Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac will offer multifamily property owners mortgage forbearance with the condition they suspend all evictions for renters unable to pay rent due to the impact of COVID-19.” Institute of Real Estate Management press release dated 23 March 2020.

II.

& What Have You Been Doing While Hunkered Down?

First off; maybe you haven’t been ‘hunkered down’ during the past week or soon two. Rather, you’re one who’s still able to go to work, enjoyed Spring Break at the beach, or as a prepper – go off the grid somewhere, until the coronavirus threat diminishes and disappears. Good for you – as long as you stay healthy!

Since Carolyn and I are in our mid-70s, our adult kids haven’t given us any choice: ‘Stay home, stay healthy, and enjoy – from afar, the benefits of being grandparents and great grandparents!’ Well, that’s what we’ve been doing since Sunday morning, 15 March. We’ve cultivated a pleasant daily routine together: arising in the AM to enjoy breakfast and some ‘daily quiet time’; followed, in my case, with some relaxing piano playing. Then it’s onto whatever activities we have at hand, ending the afternoons together, working on a complicated 1,000 piece jig saw puzzle of Noah’s ark and many many very small animals.

The unexpected consequence of being ‘shut in’ these past six, almost 11 days now, probably 14 by the time you read this blog posting, has been getting a leg up on several personal/professional writing projects.

First project was to revise and expand a ‘Writing for Publication, Profit, and Personal Satisfaction’ teaching outline I use with novice writers and friends/acquaintances who want to have some, or much, of their musings published. The outline is now ready for the one day Writers’ Conference I’m hosting on 3 August 2020, either at the RV/MH Hall of Fame, or a nearby hotel, in Elkhart, IN. Yes, that’s same day this year’s Class of 2020 (i.e. 10 RV & 10 MH pioneers) will be inducted into the RV/MH Heritage Foundation’s prestigious Hall of Fame. For tickets to the banquet, phone (6574) 293-2344. For more information about the Writers’ Conference, phone me via (317) 346-7156 or gfa7156@aol.com

Next project was to prepare a new (3rd) edition of Collection of Figurative Language & Figures of Speech – a writer’s guide, first penned in 2011, as a tribute to my late mother. As I perused new collected material, deciding what to include or not, came across some examples of lexophile creativity (Lexophiles are lovers of words and word games – synonymous with what author Richard Lederer labels as verbivores). Here they are:

You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish
To write with a broken pencil is pointless
No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery
I’m reading a book about antigravity. I just can’t put it down.
When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble
When chemists die, they barium
England has no kidney bank, but does have a Liverpool
A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months
With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
A bicycle can’t stand alone; it’s just two tired.
And the list goes on and on, but surely you get the drift of the humor and word play. The new edition will likely be ready for distribution at the aforementioned Writers’ Conference.

My perennial project has been an autobiography. Started this more than a year ago, and am pleased the first DRAFT copy has been penned/typed and awaits initial edit. Seven chapters. Boyhood memories; Eastern, Carolyn & Susan; USMC & RVN Years; From Combat Leadership to Business Management (1970-79); A Career in Property Management (1980-2000); Bringing it Together as Writer, Author, Consultant (2000-2020); and, A Personal Swan Song. Still some decisions to make. Have a lot of material to work with (e.g. 350 color photographs from 1968 & 69 in Vietnam), plus business experiences described in 30+ years of newsletter publishing. For now, I’ll be satisfied to effect the initial audit and effect changes to the manuscript. Estimated publication date? Have no idea. Year 2020 would be timely; but 2023 commemorates the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam – making the book all the more marketable; and during 2026, Carolyn and I will, hopefully, be celebrating 60 years of marriage –the common thread through all but one of the chapters in the autobiography. A word of encouragement to you. Like me, you have a story – personal and or corporate – to tell. For help, request a FREE copy of the booklet Who Will Preserve Your Legacy? Answer: You! Not only is this an engaging read (contains excerpts from all ten autobiographies penned by manufactured housing pioneers during the past 70 years), it gives you an outline as to how to proceed with your personal or corporate story! Again, phone or email me today!

In closing this part of blog # 578, here’s a ditty I found in my file:

The demanding person runs into resistance.
The defeated person runs into indifference.
The dedicated person runs in to help!
Author unknown

III.

WARNING!

Be careful what you read, and by whom, about management of land lease communities!

I’ve noticed a spike recently, in one or another of the few print and online trade publications serving manufactured housing and land lease communities. Feature articles are being penned by individuals on the hunt for fee-management contracts of individual properties or entire portfolios. In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with doing so as a marketing ploy. However, know there are far fewer fee-management firms afoot in the land lease community market – compared to conventional garden style apartments, given the average size of such properties is less than 100 rental homesites apiece. This is generally not enough to support a logical percentage fee, unless it’s a turnaround project effected for a set amount during a set timeframe.

The ‘rub’ for me, is the lack of professional property management training and credentials evident among these johnny-come-lately, self-proclaimed fee-management specialists. To put the matter simply: we go to doctors for our medical needs, patronize CPAs for their accounting expertise, and frankly, should be putting our multimillion dollar real estate investments into the hands of individuals formally trained and vetted, by their peers, as bona fide professional property managers, e.g. Certified Property Manager™ (‘CPM’) members of the Institute of Real Estate Management (There are about 125 who claim affinity for our realty asset class nationwide today), Accredited Community Managers™ (‘ACM’) designated by the Manufactured Housing Educational Institute (‘MHEI’), and/or one of the nearly 1,500 Manufactured Housing Managers™ (‘MHM’) trained and certified by EducateMHC.

To learn more about these three professional property management programs, along with their schedules of training classes, access: IREM.org, MHI.org, & EducateMHC.com

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

Powered by WordPress