The Kangaroo Part 16 – Workampers

By

Stu Silver / “Uncle Zally” Zalman Velvel

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In June of last year, we purchased our first “long distance turn-around” mobile home park. It was a four hour drive, each way, from where we live, and needed a major turn-around to produce cash flow. Among a long list of things to change, was the need to fix up and sell 20 vacant mobile homes that came “free” with the park.  

 

If you do the math, that means when my son and I drove up once a week to inspect the park, if we left at 6 AM, after spending 6 hours on location, with an hour for lunch, we didn’t get back home until 9 PM. (We ate dinner in the car – fast food – during the drive back.)

 

It was a long 15 hour work day. That is why I caution investors on long distance turn-around parks.

 

Well, one day my son and I finished early, and we visited Mike, a former student, who purchased a 300 unit RV park a short distance from our new park. While Mike was proudly showing us around, he pointed to a crew of people who were living in RV’s in the park. He said they were Workampers.

 

“They’re what?” I asked.

 

Know something right now. Just because I have taught more than 5,000 investors how to make money in real estate doesn’t mean this “teacher” can’t get  some really great ideas from his “students.”

 

Workampers are one of those really great ideas.

 

Workampers are usually married couples, but there are some singles, and they are older, with a median age of 53. They travel around the United States in their RV’s and stop off and work at RV parks or Mobile Home Parks while they are traveling. The usual compensation structure is that Workampers get a free full hook-up site in exchange for 20 hours of work each week for the park, from one person. If you employ both spouses, then the second spouse usually gets paid $8/hour for the hours they work.

 

The work structure I just described is not hammered in stone, just a guide.

 

Workampers have a website http://www.hireaworkamper.com/ . The website says “Workampers are adventuresome individuals, couples and families who have chosen a wonderful lifestyle that combines ANY kind of part-time or full-time work with RV camping.”

 

If you have an RV park, or RV sites in a mobile home park, workampers  can be a great way to get work done, while you meet an unusual group of people, many of whom are wonderful and take pride in their labor.

 

We jumped in and became a Workamper employer, paid a reasonable fee, and then ran ads for workampers. We hired four for one of our family parks, and four for our new park, which was 55+. We hired them for the winter months, from December until April, because Workampers are RV’ers, and they love to be in Florida when it’s cold up north.

 

We had them doing landscaping, grounds keeping, and painting vacant mobile homes that we were renovating and then selling. Some worked as helpers to our handymen.

 

We did not put anyone to work in our management offices because our parks are full time, year round parks, and we need permanent managers to run things. There are RV parks that close for 6 months of the year, and they have workampers staff their offices during the 6 months they are open, and that arrangement works out well.

 

Workampers prefer RV parks with lots of amenities, like pools, clubhouses, tennis courts, games, and activities. We started them off at 5 days a week, 4 hours each day, but our workampers liked to work 2 eight hour days, and then a four hour day, and then be “off” the remaining four days of the week. They were a fun loving lot when they were not working.

 

Workampers reminded me of the “hippy” generation – a group full of ideals, and wanderlust. They take great pride in any work you give them, no matter how menial the task, and they do it with their whole heart. They just don’t like to get bogged down in permanent work positions, and when the seasons change, their wanderlust returns.

 

Don’t think they are poverty stricken, either. Many of them drive around in Class A rigs that cost $100,000 or more. Many were successful business people before they became adventuresome.

 

I was sorry to see my workampers leave, and even now, six months later, I smile when I think of them.

 

Cheers, mate!

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