Rose Culver didn’t want to waste anyone’s time.
The real estate agent was straightforward about the costs when she listed Tom Ryerson’s home at the Meadows of Hopkinton manufactured housing park, but prospective buyers balked at the price of leasing the land the house sits on: $1,285 a month, nearly double what current residents pay.
Culver received about 20 calls related to the listing but only gave a handful of showings.
“A lot of the calls that I got were, ‘Is this really the real rent?’ And then, they’d be like, ‘No, I’m not interested,'” she said.
Under the park’s new ownership, residents say their costs are increasing and it’s becoming more difficult to sell their homes.
Michigan-based investment firm Sado Capital purchased the Meadows and another manufactured housing park in Hopkinton last year for $12.8 million. The attorney general’s office is now investigating the company’s business practices, according to Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill, after residents filed a complaint with the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Bureau last month.
In it, residents accuse Sado Capital and its CEO, Joel Mazur, of “engaging in unfair and deceptive practices designed to strip residents of their home equity.” Doing so, they argue, has chipped away at one of the few affordable housing options left in New Hampshire.
“He has no interest in the business of running a mobile home park,” said Jean Lightfoot, a resident who is trying to sell her home and signed onto the complaint. “All he wants is to suck every last dime he can out of us.”
Sado Capital implemented a $5,250 monthly income requirement for income buyers, a $1,285 security deposit and nearly doubled lot rents from $680 to $1,285, according to the complaint.
Mazur did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Previously, he has said higher rents will fund future improvements to the park and help his company earn a return on its investment.
Even after slashing his initial asking price from $229,000 to $179,000, Ryerson could not sell his home and took it off the market, Culver said.
Lightfoot, who has paid off her mortgage, planned to sell her home to fund a move to a senior living community when she turns 80 this fall. Now, she worries she’ll lose money on the sale.
“Everybody’s all about affordable housing and that kind of thing, and this just makes it completely unaffordable and disadvantages people that need help,” Culver said. “The people that have lived there for so many years and relying on that so-called investment and then not even being able to recoup their money, I just think it’s a little shame — more than a shame.”
Not all residents are looking to get out immediately. Joan Mirantz, who’s been at the Meadows for 16 years, likes where she lives. She’d hoped to die there, but is now thinking about selling a few years down the line if prices and the new ownership continue the way they’re going.
“I can’t afford to buy anything anywhere else now anyway, so I can hold off for a while,” Mirantz said. “I’m hoping that we’re going to get somewhere.”
‘Control of their own destiny’
The formal complaint is just one lever that Meadows residents have pulled to fight the new ownership and practices that they believe violate state law.
They’ve pleaded with their state legislators, executive councilor and have even elevated the issue to the federal level.
“We’re too old for this,” Lightfoot said. “We shouldn’t be spending our old age doing this kind of thing, but we’re still not going to let him get away with it.”
Congressman Chris Pappas visited Lightfoot’s home on Thursday to hear from residents about their concerns. Hopkinton is not in his district, but Pappas is running for U.S. Senate this year.
“What they’re doing here is just predatory in nature,” Pappas said. “There’s no reason that this should be permitted.”
Pappas and U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen are working on federal legislation to incentivize sales to park residents over other landlords by allowing a 75% tax credit when a manufactured housing community is sold to a resident-owned cooperative. People should be “in control of their own destiny,” he said, and residents like Lightfoot and Ryerson should have the first opportunity to buy the land where they live.
“We need to be working hand-in-glove, from the federal and state level, to make progress, to address the housing crisis that we’re seeing,” Pappas said, “including addressing the corporate private equity influence that we’re seeing in housing that’s making it less affordable and is causing a lot of consternation here at this park.”
Legislation like that could have made a difference at the Meadows, where residents tried to band together and form a resident-owned cooperative to buy the park. Their offer was turned down, they said.
Lightfoot said forming a cooperative would’ve delivered a sharper rent increase to current residents, but even then, the adjustment would have felt more manageable.
“It was fine because I said, ‘It’s going to go into the park,'” Lightfoot said. “We’ve got mortgages to pay, and that’s fine … At least we’ll have control of it.”
U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan is investigating corporate owners of manufactured housing communities across New England, including those in Hopkinton, reviewing how their businesses practices have affected residents.
On the state level, residents said they’ve engaged local lawmakers Rep. David Luneau and Sen. Tara Reardon. They’re considering filing legislation related to manufactured housing parks next year but said they want to see the attorney general’s findings before making a move.
Residents also have the ear of Liot Hill, their executive councilor. She said that while many of her constituents are struggling to afford increased costs above the board, manufactured home owners are getting a “double whammy” by paying lot rent on top of mortgages and property taxes.
For now, she’s keeping tabs on the investigation.
“Once we hear more from them about their findings and if they make any recommendations,” Liot Hill said, “then we’ll see if there’s some formal action that the Council can take.”
