Word Of Mouth Existing residents are Park Home Life’s best sales assets….

Word Of Mouth Existing residents are Park Home Life’s best sales assets….

ABOVE: Park Home Life’s Head Office is based at one of their two flagship parks, Blunsdon Abbey Park in Swindon, Wiltshire.

Swindon-based residential park operator Park Home Life first established its roots as a mobile home transport company in the 1960s. Some 60 years ago, the family business purchased their first park – Pine View Park in Bedfordshire. The company’s portfolio expanded during the 1980s and 1990s, adding four more parks, before re-branding as Park Home Life five years ago.

Today, the company’s Head Office operates from one of its two flagship parks, Blunsdon Abbey Park in Swindon, Wiltshire, which was acquired by the business in 1997. The original Pine View Park remains part of the portfolio, alongside Orchard Park and Wildwood Park in Gloucestershire, and Hillcrest Park in Wythall, West Midlands. Employing a staff of ten, as well as a number of subcontractors, Park Home Life is led by General Manager, Nick Bond- Powell, who joined the business in 2003.

Nick says the business’ main goal is to aim to provide excellent quality homes with driveways, garages, mains utilities and fibre broadband, in a warm, friendly community. “The residents are at the heart of everything we do,” explains Nick. “If you visit on one of our park open days, you will find our residents serving the teas and coffees, and ‘selling’ the positives of park living to their future neighbours. “Our parks are all about building and supporting that old fashioned community feeling.

We actively encourage activities, and it’s fair to say that the majority of our residents enjoy a fantastic social life!” Social activities for the 50+ community at Blunsdon Abbey Park are centred round the recently refurbished Social Hall, part of a former country mansion that was destroyed by fire in 1904.

The park enjoys a unique setting within the conservation area of the parish of Blunsdon St Andrew to the north of Swindon. Since 2010, Park Home Life has been redeveloping the park’s 85 homes, creating larger plots that are better-equipped for modern needs. New park homes, which border the ruins and parkland of the former Blunsdon Abbey House, now outnumber the original older-style, rental properties.

Seven new plots have recently been completed in the redevelopment of an area known as Main Drive. Each of these plots has been sympathetically constructed to a high specification, and also offers attractive views of the Abbey. A similar re-development programme is underway at Park Home Life’s other flagship park, Orchard Park.

A well-established community in the village of Twigworth, situated on the edge of the Cotswolds, Orchard Park will comprise close to 140 homes when fully developed. The first part of the latest development of 21 new homes called The Ribstons is due to complete mid-April 2020.

As at Blunsdon, every home comes with a private garden, garage and adjacent driveway. Purchasers can choose from different sizes of plots and reserve off-plan for a home of their choice. “We are pleased to work with all manufacturers,” says Nick. “Most of our properties tend to be two bedroom homes from Oak grove, Tingdene and Omar to name just a few, but it’s all about customer preference at the end of the day.”

EXTENSIVE RESEARCH

“Many of our clients do their own extensive research. We had a customer recently purchase a plot on one of our parks who had visited 83 parks before he found the one he wanted to call home!

Our team has a can-do attitude… we will always do everything within our power to keep our customer’s happy.” Having a customer-centric ethos has allowed the business to ride out the difficult trading conditions of recent years. “The last two years have been tough for the housing market in general,” says Nick. “We support and hold the hands of our customers all the way through their property sale and park home purchase. “Now that the country is moving on from Brexit and the general election is out of the way we are optimistic we will see a further rise in consumer and market confidence.”

TURNING CORNERS

ABOVE: The sun sets on another busy day at Orchard Park with the park
office in the foreground.

With the park home industry having mostly turned a corner image-wise, Park Home Life spends a large proportion of its budget on marketing to reinforce the now more accepted positive benefits of park home living.

In Nick’s words, “this, and putting into practice the highest standards on our parks, reaps dividends. In the end, it’s all about customer confidence in our product.” For the future, Nick and his team are focusing on completing their existing redevelopments. “Our redevelopment programme has been a constant now for ten years,” explains Nick. “That’s where our immediate plans lie. Once we get the 21 homes completed at Orchard Park, we will have more of the same on this and our other properties. “We want to bring the latest innovations and quality standards of the industry to our existing portfolio, and make our parks the best they can be. Beyond that, who knows what the future holds…”

Park Home Life
www.parkhomelife.com