You Own It!
Our ROC-NH team helps residents of manufactured-home (mobile-home) parks in New Hampshire preserve their affordable homes and create stronger, vibrant communities.
Form a Resident-owned Community (ROC)
We provide loans, training, and coaching to help resident cooperatives buy and manage their communities. N.H. contains nearly 150 ROCs, containing about 9,000 affordable homes. Your community could be one of them.
We work ONLY for homeowners and ROCs, not for investor or family park owners, or for outside buyers.
Your Park Being Sold?
When you learn your park is being sold, New Hampshire law gives you just 60 days to decide whether to form a resident cooperative and offer a competing purchase-and-sale agreement. During this 60-day period, the park’s seller must negotiate in good faith with the cooperative about buying the park. If interested, the cooperative must offer a purchase-and-sale agreement matching the competing buyer’s price.
Contact us today to get started! You might not get this opportunity again.
Know Your Rights
Good news! New Hampshire law gives you more rights than you may think you have. You and your neighbors might even be able to buy the park and run it yourselves, as a resident cooperative. Call our ROC-NH team to understand your rights and your options.
The type of sale being proposed determines how quickly you need to respond.
The Owner Wants to Sell to the Residents
This is usually very good news. It often means your current owner doesn’t have an offer from another buyer, and possibly prefers to sell it to the residents. This can happen for a variety of reasons, most often the owners wish to retire or simply to get out of the manufactured-home-park business.
The decision process for residents is mostly the same, but without the immediacy of a 60-day deadline (though the owner might set a deadline for other reasons), and without a competing offer you need to match.
The Owner Has a Purchase Offer
In New Hampshire, every park owner who receives a signed purchase and sale agreement for the land must notify every tenant by certified mail that he or she intends to sell the park. N.H.’s legislature passed a law in 1988 to give manufactured-home-park residents the opportunity to control the land under their homes.
If you receive a Notice of Park Sale, contact ROC-NH immediately at (800) 432-4110 to learn what this could mean for you and your neighbors!
Why? From the date you and your neighbors receive that notice, state law gives you just 60 days during which the owner must negotiate in good faith with the tenants about buying the park. If you and the other tenants decide to try to buy the park, you must offer a purchase-and-sale agreement within that 60-day window.
The ROC-NH team has decades of experience helping park residents work within this 60-day deadline to become owners of their park.
Co-ops Put Residents in Charge
In New Hampshire, manufactured-home cooperatives (co-ops) are corporations whose members — the homeowners — own and operate their park as a nonprofit. Each home is individually owned, but the land under the homes is owned by the co-op.
How We Help
ROC-NH has more than 40 years experience helping homeowners buy their parks and manage them as ROCs. We’ll assist your cooperative as long as you need us — starting with our first conversation.
Whether to buy and manage your park is a huge decision — for you today and for future generations of homeowners in your community. We’ll provide guidance and connect you with the experts you need to make well-informed decisions. Among other things, we’ll train your boards of directors and help you with:
Creating committees and defining their responsibilities
Developing bylaws, policies, etc.
Creating financial/business plans, budgets, bookkeeping, etc.
Finding legal assistance, engineers, and other professionals, if needed
If the co-op decides to buy the park and the owner accepts the offer, we’ll arrange the financing. We always try to structure the loans to have as little impact as possible on lot rents.
Managing a community is hard work, so we stay by your side — well after the papers are signed. We conduct Boot Camps for the leaders of new cooperatives and, with ROC USA®, offer a variety of in-person and online trainings that any ROC member can participate in.
Learn MoreWhy Buy Your Park?
In a Cooperative Community, the Residents Have Control
Control and Stabilize Your Rent
An investor-park owner is looking to make a profit. Your rent pays for more than just the park’s operating costs — it also generates a profit for the owner.
When a cooperative owns a park, members control and stabilize the rent. Rent only increases when the operating costs increase, residents want to set more money aside for reserves, or they want to make improvements to the park.
Security Against Park Sale or Closure
A park’s owner has the right to sell or close it at any time. State law does requires park owners to give their tenants notice of a park sale and negotiate with them in good faith if they submit an offer within 60 days. Park owners must also give tenants 18 month’s notice if they are going to close a park.
When a cooperative owns a park, residents never again have to worry about their park being sold or closed.
Develop and Set Your Park Rules
A park’s owner makes the rules, and they often don’t reflect the desires of the residents.
When a cooperative owns a park, the members develop and vote on their own rules.
Control Your Repairs and Improvements
A park’s owner decides when and how things like water lines and roads are repaired or improved. Tenants have no say in those decisions but pay for them through rent increases.
When a cooperative owns a park, members have control over what repairs and improvements are made, how they are made, when they are made, and how they are paid for.
Real Mortgages Available for Homes
Fair, fixed-rate mortgage loans aren’t available to homeowners in investor-owned parks because of the possibility that the park might close.
When a cooperative owns a park, fair and fixed-rate home purchase, equity, and repair loans are available through our Welcome Home Loans.
In addition, fixed-rate conventional financing is available for homes in Fannie Mae-approved cooperatives through our Home Preferred loans.
ROC Success Stories
Read about the process and benefits of forming a ROC from ROC residents we’ve worked with.
My favorite part of living here is the freedom of ownership. When we first bought the park, I remember my first feeling, that no one could take this away from me. I owned it.
I knew this could be a really nice place if everything was fixed. This is me fulfilling a dream. I know what this place can be.
There’s no words to explain how I feel - the gratitude and gratefulness. It’s wonderful to live like this. I can actually go in my own kitchen and cook dinner. Or boil water to have a cup of coffee- imagine that!
Park Owner: Sell Your Park to Your Residents
Since 1984, ROC-NH has helped owners sell their New Hampshire mobile-home parks to residents. Many park owners contact us, and their homeowners, when they’re considering selling. This gives the park’s residents time to learn about the operational, organizational, legal, and financial issues associated with park ownership and to decide whether to submit a purchase offer.
Other park owners notify residents after receiving another offer — solicited or not — from a potential buyer. Such offers trigger New Hampshire’s Opportunity to Purchase Law, which requires a 60-day notice to residents of the intent to sell and good-faith negotiations with the tenants regarding their potential purchase.
In either case, our expert trainers and conversion specialists can facilitate the conversation, negotiation, and transaction between park owners and residents, leading to a satisfactory sale.
Contact Us
Contact ROC-NH’s Real Estate Broker and Housing Cooperative Specialist, Richard Weisberg, to discuss selling your park to your residents.
Call Richard: (603) 856-0709
Email RichardStay Up to Date
Subscribe to our newsletter to get regular updates on projects, impact, and our latest insights.