Lori Fournier calls her three-bedroom home at Meadows of Hopkinton her utopia.
In the six years since she moved in, she has remodeled the manufactured home to be everything she ever wanted, even installing an ADA-compliant walk-in shower to accommodate her disability.
But after Sado Parks, a Michigan-based investment firm, purchased the housing park in December, Fournier, 57, finds herself in a position she never anticipated — planning to sell.
“I love living here, I’d live here until I die,” she said, as her voice cracked under the emotion of it all. “But I think it’s going to be a contentious relationship with this owner, and that’s my fear. I don’t want to move, but I have to.”
Fournier and her neighbors aren’t going quietly. With several houses already on the market and others preparing to sell, they’ve attempted legal action against Joel Mazur, the chief executive officer of the investment firm.
A group of residents filed a consumer complaint with the New Hampshire Attorney General, accusing the new owner of “unfair and deceptive practices to strip residents of their home equity and eliminate affordable housing.”
Mazur said he has not seen the complaint and declined to comment.
They pointed to a sharp increase in lot rent for new residents from $680 to $1,285 per month.
In manufactured housing communities, residents own their homes but lease the land underneath them. They are also responsible for paying property taxes to the local municipality, making monthly lot rent a key factor in maintaining affordability.
The increased costs for those moving has forced homeowners like Jean Lightfoot to slash their asking prices just to attract buyers. Many residents who move to the housing park are retirees stretched thin on fixed incomes.
Lightfoot had planned to list her 1,448-square-foot home at $238,000, but the new rent structure upended those plans. By the time she put it on the market last month, she’d already reduced the price to $199,500.
Even with the lower asking price, she said it’s still hard to sell.
Lightfoot said the moment buyers learned about the $1,285 monthly lot rent and a $33 trash fee on top of it, they walked away.
“Every house that I know has been listed here in the Meadows has ended up lowering it,” Lightfoot said.
No safety net
For years, the Board of Manufactured Housing, operating under New Hampshire’s Office of Professional Licensure and Certification, solved disputes between park owners and tenants.
It could intervene when owners charged excessive entrance fees, blocked home sales, or pressured residents into accepting a selling price they hadn’t chosen for themselves.
Evictions and rent increases, however, fell outside its reach.
Then, in 2023, the board was dissolved entirely, leaving residents with fewer protections
State Sen. Tara Reardon, an advocate for resident-owned housing parks, said that when it comes to fighting rent increases, tenants have just one option: a mediation board controlled by the park owners’ association.
“I’ve never known of a resident group to ever win a rent mediation here in the state of New Hampshire,” she said. “Unfortunately, I think these residents were interested in purchasing, and it was sold out from under them. There probably needs to be some reform right now.”
Residents at the Meadows of Hopkinton and its sister community, Deer Meadow in Hopkinton, had hoped to purchase the parks themselves when they were put up for sale.
Despite matching the offer submitted by Sado Parks, residents lost the bid to purchase the park.
Just across the state line in Massachusetts, residents have far stronger protections: some cities and towns have enacted rent control bylaws.
Owners of manufactured housing parks in those communities must obtain approval from a local board before raising rents.
Sandra Overlock, a member of the Massachusetts Manufactured Homes Commission, has watched the same pattern play out again and again with out-of-state corporations.
“They have their investors to pay, and the more they jack up the rent, the more value the land is per unit,” she said.
Home values drop
Manufactured housing communities across New Hampshire charge widely different lot rents, with many corporation-owned parks demanding significantly higher monthly fees than locally-owned communities.
At Great Brook Village in Belmont, residents pay California-based Oakshire Capital more than $1,100 a month in lot rent.
Several homes for sale in the community have reduced their selling prices. It mirrors the trend at the Meadows of Hopkinton.
At Crestwood properties in Concord, Michigan-based Sun Communities charges $608 in lot rent.
Rob Dapice, executive director of the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, attended a meeting last month where residents of the Meadows of Hopkinton voiced frustration over rising rents and management changes since Sado Parks purchased the property.
“It’s not like every rent increase is some sort of miscarriage of justice,” he said. “But the really severe rent increase for new residents is making it very difficult for them to sell their homes.”
Manufactured housing has long been viewed as one of the most attainable paths to home ownership and a good way for seniors to keep costs down in their later years. But high lot rents, especially in investor-owned communities, are making that promise riskier.
Affordable housing advocates argue that resident-owned communities are one of the best ways to keep costs stable and protect homeowners from sharp rent increases.
“The new rent for new residents is really sort of out of line with what other parks in the area charge. It’s going to be impossible to sell their homes for what they had been valued at,” Dapice said. “I think the exceptional nature of the rent increase would suggest that it would be helpful for Sado to provide greater transparency on what’s driving that.”
For many residents, the complaint filed with the attorney general’s office represents hope that state officials will take notice and that new legislation could eventually provide stronger protections for manufactured housing residents.
Fournier said she’s putting off selling her home until next year because she can’t bring herself to drastically cut the value of a place she’s poured her savings, time, and heart into.
“I’m going to try and hold on to it in hopes that we can get legislation passed or get some kind of help with the government, and that they might be able to help those of us that are in this situation,” she said.
Over the years, she has transformed the space room by room, building custom bookshelves, installing cabinetry in the family room, and replacing the carpets for $8,000.
As painful as it is to consider leaving her neighbors, community, and home she loves, Fournier says there has been at least one unexpected bright spot in all of this.
“The best thing that’s come out of this is I have gotten to know so many more people in this park,” said Fournier. “I will continue to fight for this park as long as I am here, but I am also going to look out for myself. We’re still fighting for the park as a whole.”
