When Liza Fleming-Ives helped the first group of Maine residents buy their own mobile home park in 2009, there was little interest from out-of-state corporate investors in outbidding them.
That’s not true today. More than a fifth of Maine’s mobile home parks traditionally operated by local “mom-and-pop” types are now owned by these investors, according to a Bangor Daily News analysis of state data published last year.
Of Maine’s 32 largest parks, which have more than a third of the state’s mobile homes, 20 are now owned by corporate investors including Sun Communities, Phillips International and Boa Vida, according to a report released by the Brunswick-based community lender Genesis Community Loan Fund on Tuesday.
Most of these investors purchased Maine parks between 2014 and 2024 because these parks offer the highest financial returns among real estate classes, the report found.
“Corporate entities shifted focus away from shopping malls, away from other kinds of assets, and really sort of toward mobile home communities,” Fleming-Ives, Genesis’ executive director, said. “That played out across the country. Then that started to sort of come to Maine as well.”
The report also looked at what happened to lot rents in two mobile home parks — one in Sanford and another in Bowdoin — after they were both purchased by Phillips in 2021. In Sanford, rents increased by 20 percent in three years. In Bowdoin, they increased 53 percent.
“There’s a whole bunch of retired people in this park and they are afraid of being kicked out of their house,” Jerry Highfill, a 79-year-old resident of the Bowdoin park, said. “We’re at our limit.”
By contrast, lot rents in Maine’s 12 resident-owned communities have increased at a slower rate, the report shows. A resident community in Arundel increased rents 33 percent over 5 years. One in Brunswick saw a 31 percent increase over 13 years.
Genesis, which has financially backed all 12 resident purchases, sees that “striking” discrepancy as a sign the state should step in to help more Maine parks transition to a resident model of ownership with funds and legislation.
The group suggests tweaking the 2023 state law that drove an uptick in resident takeovers by requiring owners of parks to require park owners to consider co-op offers “in good faith” to go even further and give residents a first right of refusal. Nine parks have gone up for sale since that law passed, but three of those resident offers have been accepted.
That would run into some opposition. Both private buyers and a Duke economist support tweaking that law to require all bidders in mobile home park sales to disclose their identities. As it stands, in about half of all sale agreements, the identity of the third-party buyer is not known, meaning residents are bidding reflexively on the off chance the buyer is a corporate investor.
Genesis would also back bills working their way through the Legislature that would cap lot rent increases in parks, reduce the capital gains tax for the sale or transfer of a park to residents and replenish the fund that aids resident purchases.
“Maine lawmakers have started to put policies in place, and we’re starting to see the impact of that, but also where we haven’t gone far enough, and where there’s more to be done,” Fleming-Ives said.