$293 million has bought twenty New Hampshire communities since 2016
$293 million has bought twenty New Hampshire communities since 2016
2026-09-15 · New Hampshire · Compliance · Reported — unconfirmed
Reported. Out-of-state investors have bought 20 New Hampshire manufactured home communities holding more than 3,800 homes, for $293 million since 2016, according to New Hampshire Business Review.1 Across New England, 27 parks holding more than 5,200 units are private-equity owned. We were not able to trace the underlying dataset to its source, so the figures are reported rather than verified.
Who owns what
Sun Communities, which runs roughly 300 communities nationally, owns six New Hampshire properties: Brook Ridge in Hooksett, Crestwood in Concord, Farmwood Village in Dover, Hannah Village in Lebanon, the Hemlocks in Tilton, and River Pines in Nashua.
The price series that explains the buying
Over the decade, reported median sale prices rose 301 percent for manufactured homes, against 125 percent for single-family homes and 128 percent for condominiums. A home at the Hemlocks was listed at $320,000 — excluding the land lease.
That last detail is the whole economics in one number. A buyer pays a single-family price for the structure and then pays rent on the ground under it, to an owner who sets that rent. The structure appreciates; the ground rent is a claim on the appreciation.
The counter-movement
New Hampshire Community Loan Fund has created 152 resident-owned communities in the state, against roughly 350 nationally supported by ROC-USA. Cotton Farm Village in Danville converted in June 2025; Albany Acres in Carroll County converted in June 2026. Each conversion runs through RSA 205-A:21, the 1983 opportunity-to-purchase statute.
What the 1983 statute does, and what it does not
RSA 205-A:21 requires a park owner to give residents notice before a sale and an opportunity to purchase. Willful non-compliance exposes the seller to the greater of $10,000 or 10 percent of the sale price, capped in the aggregate.2
What it does not do is give residents a right of first refusal at a price they can meet, or time to organize, finance and close against a cash buyer. It gives them a window. Whether a group of residents on fixed incomes can turn a window into a closing depends almost entirely on whether a lender is standing by — which, in New Hampshire, means whether the Community Loan Fund is involved.
That is why New Hampshire's conversion count is so far ahead of every other state's. The statute is not rare; the financing infrastructure is.
What this means for a New Hampshire condominium board
The transferable lesson is about who controls a recurring charge that a homeowner cannot refuse and cannot hedge.
In a park, that charge is lot rent and the operator sets it. In a condominium, the analogous charge is the assessment, and the board sets it — but the board is elected by the people who pay it, and in New Hampshire unit owners have a statutory route to reject a board-adopted budget, though the threshold is demanding. The governance structure is the protection, and it is the thing the park residents are buying when they convert.
Which means the condominium version of this risk is not an outside investor. It is a board that has stopped being contestable — uncontested elections, proxies collected by incumbents, a budget adopted with no meaningful owner participation. The mechanism that makes a resident-owned community safer than an investor-owned park is the same mechanism that is doing nothing in a condominium where nobody runs for the board.
The federal response, and its odds
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen filed the Manufactured Housing Community Sustainability Act on May 20, 2026 as S. 4613; Rep. Chris Pappas co-sponsors the House companion, H.R. 8988, filed May 21. It would create a 75 percent federal tax credit offsetting capital gains where a community is sold to residents or a nonprofit instead of to another investor. Both sit in committee.
The design is a deliberate attempt to fix the gap in RSA 205-A:21: it does not give residents more time or a better price, it makes selling to residents worth more to the seller. Whether it moves in this Congress is another question; neither bill has a scheduled action.
What to watch next
The 2027 session convenes January 6. One relevant legislative service request is on the House list — LSR 2027-0012, Rep. Rosemarie Rung, on disclosure of rights and responsibilities during the sale of a mobile home in a park — with a title and no text. Nothing on that list proposes to strengthen RSA 205-A:21 itself.
Watch also the Attorney General's consumer-protection investigation at the Meadows of Hopkinton, and the Joint Economic Committee's inquiry. Both are asking, in different forums, whether existing law reaches the conduct these acquisitions have produced.
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