A seasonal park still owes eighteen months' notice
A seasonal park still owes eighteen months' notice
2026-09-15 · New Hampshire · Courts
What happened. On July 17, 2025 the New Hampshire Supreme Court decided Dobens v. Fagnant, 2025 N.H. 31, Belknap County, No. 2024-0111, reversing and remanding.1 Countway, J.
The facts
A trust owned a seasonal manufactured housing park operating roughly May 15 to October 15 under RSA chapter 205-A. Tenants signed year-to-year seasonal lot agreements. Between the 2021 and 2022 seasons the owner decided to convert the park to recreational vehicles only. He did not renew one household's agreement and returned their rent cheque uncashed. Then, on July 7, 2022, he told all tenants the park would be "closing its gates on October 31, 2022" — under four months' notice to remove a manufactured home.
The trial court held the tenants were mere holdover tenants whose tenancy expired October 15, 2022, so no long notice was owed.
What the Court held
Reversed. RSA 205-A:4, VI permits termination for "[c]ondemnation or change of use of the manufactured housing park," and RSA 205-A:3, III then requires written notice to remove "within a period of not less than … 18 months."
Seasonal parks are inside the chapter. "Reading RSA chapter 205-A to exclude seasonal parks would require us to read an exception into the statute that the legislature did not see fit to include, which we decline to do." The Court noted that the legislature expressly carved out seasonal and vacation rentals elsewhere, at RSA 540:1-a, IV(b), and did not do so here.
The home on the lot keeps you a tenant. "Throughout the off-season, when the plaintiffs were not occupying their unit but it nonetheless remained on the site, the plaintiffs were tenants." And: "Because the plaintiffs' unit remained on the site, the plaintiffs continued to be holdover tenants after October 15, 2022."
The conclusion: "Because the defendant provided less than four months' notice requiring the plaintiffs to remove their unit, the defendant violated RSA 205-A:3."
The remedy the reversal opens up
The trial court had denied Consumer Protection Act damages and fees under RSA 358-A:10 for one reason only: it had found no RSA 205-A violation. With that finding reversed, the Court remanded for further proceedings on unfair-or-deceptive-practice remedies and attorney's fees.
That is the live exposure in the decision, and it is worth naming precisely. RSA 358-A:10 provides for damages and fee-shifting. A change-of-use notice that violates RSA 205-A:3 does not merely fail; it can carry a Consumer Protection Act claim behind it.
Across the entire window, this is the clearest fee-shifting exposure any New Hampshire community operator faces from a reported decision.
The policy the Court restated
Quoting its own 1995 decision in Laro v. Leisure Acres Mobile Home Park Associates: "[w]hen a tenant is evicted from a mobile home park, the mobile home is 'evicted' and removed as well."
That sentence explains the whole statutory design. Eighteen months is not a courtesy period; it is roughly what it takes to find a lot, arrange a move, or sell a home that can only be sold to someone the park will accept. Four months is not.
Why it reaches beyond parks
Two transferable points for New Hampshire common-interest communities generally.
Seasonal operation does not create a seasonal statute. New Hampshire has a great deal of seasonal residential property — lake communities, ski-area condominiums, campgrounds that have become year-round in everything but the water system. The Court's reasoning here is that a statute applies to seasonal property unless the legislature said it does not, and that the legislature knows how to say so when it means it. A seasonal condominium association has no basis to treat an occupancy-keyed obligation as relaxed in the off-season.
Possession can continue when occupancy does not. The tenants were tenants because their home stayed on the lot, not because they were living in it. That distinction — between occupancy and the continuing presence of property — recurs in association disputes about storage, parking, unoccupied units and seasonal closures.
What a resident-owned community should take from it
A New Hampshire resident-owned cooperative is the park management for these purposes. If a cooperative ever contemplates a change of use — converting lots, closing a section, reconfiguring for a different housing type — the eighteen-month notice runs against it exactly as it runs against an investor owner, and so does the Consumer Protection Act exposure.
That is easy to lose sight of in a community where the board and the residents are the same people. The statute does not ask who owns the park.
What to watch next
The remand on damages and fees. A reported New Hampshire figure for RSA 358-A:10 relief in a park change-of-use case would give the next dispute a number to reason from, and there isn't one now.
Watch also whether this decision reaches the Attorney General's consumer-protection investigation at the Meadows of Hopkinton, which proceeds under the same chapter, RSA 358-A, on a different theory — conduct said to strip residents of equity rather than a defective change-of-use notice.
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