Housing
This section of the BDN aims to help readers understand Maine’s housing crisis, the volatile real estate market and the public policy behind them. Read more Housing coverage here.
One Houlton-based company has listed for sale five mobile home parks in The County capable of holding nearly 200 homes in total.
The mobile home parks in Aroostook County hit the market on July 13, all of which are managed by My Home Maine, also known as TBK Northern Maine LLC.
The company has seven northern Maine mobile home parks in its portfolio and describes itself as “a newly aspiring long-term holder of Maine real estate, dedicated to the development, improvement, and enhancement of previously neglected properties,” according to its website.
The largest two parks, Loring Woods in Limestone and Houlton Mobile Home Park in Houlton, are each capable of holding 55 mobile homes. Loring Woods is listed for $395,000 while Houlton Mobile Home Park has a $2.9 million price tag.
Caribou Stream in Caribou and Salmon Brook in Washburn have a capacity of 38 and 21 units, respectively. Caribou Stream has an asking price of $620,000 while Salmon Brook’s is $380,000.
The company is also selling Riverside Motor Court in Caribou, which was once a 19-unit apartment complex until a fire destroyed the property in 2022, displacing 35 people. The listing now describes the site as a 29-pad mobile home park, which carries an asking price of $425,000.
The properties entered the real estate market at a time when Maine has seen a growing trend of mobile home residents buying their parks to keep them out of the hands of out-of-state corporations.
In most of Maine’s mobile home parks, residents own the home they live in but pay rent on the land it sits on. Residents are also responsible for paying their own utilities and maintaining their lot.
The goal of maintaining local park ownership is to ensure residents won’t face untenable rent hikes and the properties remain well-maintained. Drastic and repeated cost increases can be especially crippling to mobile home parks, which have long been a source of affordable housing for residents, including many who may be older, disabled or living on fixed incomes.
A state law passed in 2024 requires park owners to give residents first refusal when they intend to sell. The rule was put in place after corporate investors bought numerous parks across Maine in recent years and repeatedly raised rent fees for residents.
Resident groups throughout Maine, including Cedar Falls Mobile Home Park in Bangor, have successfully bought their parks using this new law.
The park owner must now give all mobile home owners and MaineHousing, the state housing authority, 60 days written notice of an intent to sell. The owner can’t enter an agreement to sell a park during that 60-day window.
A park owner can list a property before notifying residents, but must tell mobile home owners the price, terms and conditions of any acceptable offer the owner receives and wait 60 days before accepting an offer. This gives park residents the chance to organize and submit an offer, if they choose.
MaineHousing hadn’t received any notice of the owner’s plan to sell the five mobile home parks as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Scott Thistle, spokesperson for the agency.
Neither TBK Northern Maine LLC nor Tony Brettkelly, the contact person on all five of the mobile home property listings, returned requests for comment on Tuesday.
Another 23-unit mobile home park, Del-Wood Mobile Home Park, in Caribou has been listed for sale for $375,000 since May. That site, which is licensed for 36 pads, is owned by Idaho-based Rockford Park Investments, which owns more than 20 parks throughout the country, including seven in Maine.