Ways To Boost Park Revenue (Other Than Lot Rent Increases)

We all know the obvious way to increase park revenue - raise the lot rent to a fair price the market can support.

However, what if you’ve already raised the rent to market or you’re hitting the upper bound of what area incomes can afford.

What are other ways to maximize park profits?

We’ll cover expense savings in another post but today let’s go over some less common ways to boost top line revenues.

Bulk Cable + Internet Contract

If the park is in a large enough MSA you can reach out to the major cable providers to see if they would be willing to sign a wholesale cable deal with your property.

To make this worth the cable company’s time, this should be a larger park or a property that is close to their existing underground cable lines (near other large residential areas).

You then agree to a contractual wholesale (bulk) rate and charge the tenants a retail rate, which would be a line item charge on the tenants monthly bill.

This can be especially powerful if the tenants’ effective rate is cheaper (for cable or internet) than the retail rate they could secure on their own.

This has an added benefit. Many of the tenants will start believing they must pay their rent on time to keep their cable + internet service active.

Now a park owner probably can’t easily disconnect such services over late payments. Yet, collection rates still tend to increase for parks that bundle “essential” services. MHP tenants are not going to live without these services. They pay their phone and internet bills pretty much before every other expense (including rent).

So, it’s not a bad strategy for a park owner to lump their lot rent in with this new utility (internet).

But god help the park owner that doesn’t pay the bulk cable bill on time and whole park’s cable goes out any weekend during Football season.

Solar Farm

We’ve yet to do this ourselves, but we know operators with parks in sunshine states that either lease their land to solar providers or install them themselves. Those that keep the infrastructure sign purchase power agreements with the local utility providers, offset common area electric charges and profit from the excess energy created.

Billboards

Well located parks on major highways are prime candidates for a billboard. These are 100% profit agreements as you typically would contact a billboard company expressing interest, they often they’ll build the sign in exchange for a long-term lease with the park. They handle all the advertising agreements, you just collect the additional rent.

Cell Towers

Same concept as Billboards. The major players here are American Tower, DigitalBridge, and Crown Castle. These leases tend to be more complicated than billboard leases, but a park owner can hire a cell tower leasing specialist to assist. That being said, owners must weigh the added revenue vs. appearance costs. Current and future tenants might not be wild about seeing a cell tower every-time they drive into the community (they are not pretty).

Storage (self-storage + RV)

Adding self storage to a mobile home park is a common tactic to increase revenues. You either build from the ground up (not especially difficult, but expensive and time consuming to secure permits) or you can probably just purchase portal units.

The portal units are similar to sheds that are built with skids, so you can use a tractor to move them around the park. The payback periods on these investments are one of the highest ROI opportunities a park owner has at their disposal.

RV + Boat Storage - boy do mobile home park tenants love their toys. RV + boat storage would typically would involve a gated area of the park, perhaps with security lighting and cameras. This is an easy way to boost income while improving the appearance of a park (RVs are eye-sores if parked besides homes throughout a the community).

Equipment Rentals

Plenty of tenants want to keep their lots clean but don’t have the money, space or desire to own lawnmowers, power-washers, trimmers, leaf blowers, etc. I’ve seen some parks charge tenants ~$25 / month just for access to these items.

Personally, this is more liability + hassle than we’d take on for a little extra income, but to each their own.

Alternatively, you could just have your maintenance staff take care of these lot maintenance items and charge the tenants separately - or write it into your new park rules and do so for the entire park, in exchange for an ongoing maintenance fee.

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Happy Trails,

MHP Weekly