A lot-rent cap and 90 days to buy your park: the bill that died in 26 days
A lot-rent cap and 90 days to buy your park: the bill that died in 26 days
2026-09-21 · Wisconsin · Legislation · Did not pass
Wisconsin's most detailed manufactured-home-community bill in years was introduced on February 26, 2026 and dead by March 23. It never got a hearing. What it contained is worth knowing precisely, because the press accounts of it conflict and both are partly wrong.
2025 Assembly Bill 1049, with Senate companion SB 1027, came from Representative Jodi Emerson and Senator Jeff Smith. The Legislature's own record ends it with the standard line: “Failed to pass pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 1,” March 23, 2026.1
The rent cap, as the bill's own analysis states it
“The bill prohibits a mobile or manufactured home community owner or operator from increasing rent, fees, service charges, or assessments for any 12-month period unless the owner or operator provides notice to the community residents at least 90 days before the effective date of the increase, the increase does not exceed the average percentage change in the U.S. consumer price index, and the owner or operator has not been found to be in violation of any applicable health or safety law or regulation. Under the bill, if the average percentage change in the consumer price index is lower than 2 percent, the aggregate increase in rent, fees, service charges, and assessments may not exceed 2 percent. If the change in the consumer price index is more than 4 percent, the aggregate increase… may not exceed 4 percent.”
So: CPI-indexed, with a 2 percent floor and a 4 percent ceiling, and 90 days' notice.
There was an escape hatch for “any extraordinary increase in operating expenses,” but a demanding one. It required an itemised financial summary to residents, a right to request a meeting, and a right to complain to the Department of Safety and Professional Services or sue — with the owner bearing the burden of proof. And: “If DSPS attempts to resolve the matter by mediation, but the community owner or operator refuses to participate in mediation, the proposed increase is void and unenforceable.”
The two notice periods that got conflated
Reporting on this bill has variously described a 60-day notice requirement, a 12-month notice requirement, and a right of first refusal. The bill's own analysis separates them cleanly, and none of the three descriptions is quite right on its own.
Twelve months, before closure or change of use: “Under the bill, a community owner must give written notice at least 12 months before closing the community or changing the use of the community. A community owner must also give written notice if the owner lists the community for sale, receives a written offer to purchase the community, or is served with a foreclosure complaint… The notice must also include a description of the rights of the residents… and pertinent sale information, such as the price and terms of any offer received.”
Ninety plus ninety, on a sale: “after providing the required notice, the community owner must provide residents 90 days to make an offer to purchase the community and secure financing. If the residents make an offer to purchase and secure financing, the community owner must provide residents an additional 90 days to close.”
And it is an opportunity to offer, not a right of first refusal — nothing in the bill required an owner to accept or match. What it did require was process: “The bill requires a community owner to negotiate with residents in good faith for a purchase agreement and to allow residents a commercially reasonable due diligence period and access to information necessary to make an informed decision regarding the purchase.”
Residents could assign that right “to a local or state government, tribal government, state agency, housing authority, or nonprofit organization with housing expertise for the purpose of continuing the use of the community.”
The reported 60-day figure is not supported anywhere in the bill's analysis.
The tax subtraction, and why it names homeowners associations
“The bill allows a mobile or manufactured home community owner to claim an income and franchise tax subtraction equal to the income the owner receives from the sale of the community to a homeowner's association, cooperative, or membership organization, any group composed entirely of homeowners, a nonprofit organization, or a nonprofit affordable housing developer if the sale is approved by more than 51 percent of the residents of the community.”
That is the route by which a Wisconsin manufactured-home community becomes a resident-owned common-interest community — and the entity it would most often become is the kind of nonprofit membership corporation that Wis. Stat. § 779.70 gives a statutory maintenance lien to, subject to an eight-mill cap and a membership vote.
Other provisions included mandatory annual DSPS inspection of every manufactured home community, repeal of DSPS's authority to delegate permitting to a city, village or county, a resident complaint channel to DSPS, an owner-developed natural-disaster evacuation plan requiring municipal approval, an emergency-shelter construction precondition on sale, forfeitures of not more than $1,000 per violation, and a private civil action for aggrieved residents.
The law that did pass, and the one that was vetoed
Wisconsin did change manufactured-home law this session, twice, in the other direction from AB 1049.
2025 Wisconsin Act 67, enacted December 9, 2025 from 2025 Assembly Bill 424, rewrote the lease rules in § 710.15. Every site rental must now be by written lease, and § 710.15(1m) provides that “Every lease shall be for a term of at least one year unless the resident or occupant requests a shorter term and the operator agrees to the shorter term, except that if a resident or occupant fails to sign and return a lease or lease renewal, the operator may elect to hold the resident or occupant on a month-to-month basis.” Section 710.15(3)(a) bars an operator from denying, or altering the terms of, a lease “solely or in any part on the basis of the age of the mobile home or manufactured home,” and § 710.15(5r) requires “at least 90 days' written notice to all known residents and occupants prior to permanently retiring the community or a site from the rental housing market.”2
2025 Assembly Bill 549, on manufactured home sales and certificates of title, passed both houses and was vetoed March 27, 2026; the override failed May 13, 2026.
Our Wisconsin governing statute page covers how these communities sit relative to chapter 703, and assessment limits covers the resident-owned side.
What to watch next
Only one principal registered a position on AB 1049: the Wisconsin Housing Alliance, Against, notified February 27, 2026, reporting six hours of effort. Nobody registered in favour.
A companion measure, AB 1192 / SB 1144 — forfeitures for community owners violating regulation requirements, with revenue directed to WHEDA compliance grants — also died on March 23, 2026. Wisconsin's manufactured-home communities therefore enter 2027 with Act 67's lease protections, no rent cap, and no purchase right.
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