The Southeast: Land of Learning & Memorable Personalities

by George Allen, CPM Emeritus, MHM-Master

As a freelance consultant I often worked in Florida and throughout the Southeast. I “mystery shopped” land-lease communities for portfolio owners/operators, assessed hurricane damage to properties and infrastructure, and taught the basics of home sales, site leasing, and resident relations. I also networked with clients and manufactured housing trade association executives and staff.

Persons and personalities met along the way

Mystery shopping is commonplace for conventional apartment communities nationwide, not so much for and-lease communities.

Why?

Despite the high value of their income-producing properties, property owners/operators are reluctant to spend the money to gauge on-the-job performance of on-site staff, curb appeal, and resident relations. The usual mystery shopping assignment included an unscheduled telephone “visit” to the property to discern how the phone is answered, the smile in one’s voice, and efforts to close, such as an invite caller to visit the property.

I would do a drive-through inspection of the community, photographing marketing shortfalls such as lack of signage, as well as the nature and volume of rules violations, and conduct an on-site anonymous visit and evaluation of sales/leasing efforts by staff in the information center. All of this was reported in written form to the property owner/operator, sometimes followed by an onsite re-training session.

One of my most unusual consulting assignments – ever, involved flying into Miami the day after Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Florida in 1992. My assignment was to assess and photograph damage to my client’s manufactured home communities, and report back to him. My uncle, a decorated WWII veteran, met me at the airport and served as my tour guide. All the way down the interstate, highway signs had been blown away, and exit names were painted on the roadway! In community after community we saw single-section manufactured homes askew, often stacked atop one another, sometimes three deep. Large pine trees, 40-feet tall with two foot diameter trunks, stripped bare of branches. Bulldozers and large-volume dump trucks already were clearing debris, dumping it onto a huge, growing hill, 40 feet tall by 300 feet long. My client lost all the homes in his properties.

Being an itinerant teacher of manufactured home sales, site leasing, and resident relations often followed mystery