Residents of a Mobile Home Park Join Forces to Buy Their Community

Manufactured houses, widely known as mobile homes, are one of the most affordable options for homeownership in the United States, but they typically come with a big risk: You own the house; you don’t own the lot it sits on.

That has made mobile home parks ripe targets for investors, who buy communities and then increase the lot rents to boost profits. It’s a massive industry: manufactured homes account for approximately one in 10 new single-family homes in the United States, according to a 2023 report by the Manufactured Housing Institute trade organization.

To curb investor involvement, the state of Maine ushered in a new law last year that requires mobile home park owners to give advance notice to residents if they intend to sell, giving the community members a chance to buy it themselves.

On Oct. 10, the residents of Linnhaven Mobile Home Center, a community of nearly 300 occupied homes in Brunswick, became the first to succeed in utilizing the new law. They paid $26.3 million to buy the property from their landlord by cobbling together loans and grants from several sources, including the state and the town of Brunswick.

Now, it’s the largest resident-owned community in Maine, giving hope to other owners of manufactured homes. Several other states also have similar laws in place, including Connecticut and New York.