Hernandez estates: Making a big difference

By Patsy Stoddard
Editor

Michelle and Carlos Hernandez are working to make their mobile home estate park a thing of beauty. They purchased the park in January of 2016 and since that time they have been putting a lot of time, energy and love into the park.
Michelle just finished planting flowers around all of the homes in the park. They have four units they rent out.
They also have one space available that can be used for overnight visitors or a long term rental if needed. They also have weekly rates.
Michelle said she also manages Clyde’s Trailer Park and there are spaces there for long or short term rental.
“When we first bought this place it needed a lot of work. There were a lot of junk trailers here and we cleaned them out. There was a double wide that needed to be torn down and also a motorhome. There were just a bunch of old things everywhere. We’ve also completed a lot of work in restoring and remodeling each of the homes in the park that we rent. We gutted the trailers and renovated them. They have new plumbing with top quality water pipes. We’ve put in new sewer lines the old lines had collapsed. Carlos was out there digging them up in the winter.
“We want this to be a really nice place to live. Mobile home parks don’t have a very good reputation. In fact, our neighbors across the street were worried because of how things how been at the park in the past. But, we started cleaning things up and now the neighbors are very pleased.
“We aren’t done yet either, we have plans to put decks on a couple of the rentals and plant more grass to make the yards nicer and larger.
“We have one guest that we’ve fixed up a parking pad for them that’s level. They go south in the winter and in the summer they stay with us. We’ve put a picnic table in for them and she’s been planting flowers and beautifying her spot.
“We have become friends with all our renters. It really is a close little community. I have some steady renters. When we were remodeling I let the renters pick out the colors for the house.
“The trailer park kind of fell into our hands, my husband Carlos has done all the work. We try to help people out who are having a hard time. We’ve been through hard times before too, like when my husband was out of work, so we know what it’s like.
“I know we’ll never get rich owning a mobile home park, but we want to help people out. We had a single mom in here and we helped her.
“We really want to help clean-up the image of trailer parks in Huntington. We want our place to be nice and clean. We also want to rent to families.
“My husband’s family has helped us a lot too. My husband and his brother would get off the graveyard shift and then come to the park and start painting and cleaning up.
“We’ve tried to improve things as money becomes available. I haven’t wanted to get into debt to clean up this place, so we’ve been doing a little at a time.
“We have a newlywed couple that is going to move into the doublewide we just renovated. We are calling our park: Hernandez Estates. We really are working to clean-up the image. We’ve come a long way. We have installed security cameras so we can have a nice safe place for our renters to call home. We have dinners together and our children play together. On the fourth of July everyone in the neighborhood does fireworks.
“It’s been a lot of work, but really fun. We love living here. Carlos works full time at Lila Canyon, but he has done all the work. We’ve been so busy working on the park we haven’t had much time to do anything else. But, now that we are getting things done here, we plan to do some fun things with the kids,” said Michelle.
Michelle and Carlos have two children Nicole and Carlitos. Carlitos means little Carlos. Carlitos is also a very hard worker and he helps his parents around the mobile home estate park.
Michelle welcomes everyone to stop by and see the work they’ve done at the park. “If anyone has people coming in trailers and they need a place to park for the night, come and see us. We try to accommodate and do what we can to see people have a place to park their trailers. We are working on a couple more pads for overnight parking. It’s a work in progress, but we’ve come a long way and we’re really proud of what we’ve accomplished here,” said Michelle.