New data on Maine’s mobile home parks could aid in fight against investors
Ja-Lynne Mobile Home Park in Auburn on June 16. (Libby Kamrowski Kenny/Staff Photographer)
The Maine Office of Community Affairs has released a cache of data about the state’s mobile home parks that advocates say will be crucial in ongoing efforts to protect residents against the out-of-state private equity firms that have been snapping up parks and dramatically raising lot rents.
Historically, data surrounding mobile homes has been almost nonexistent.
The Maine Manufactured Housing Board, which oversaw mobile home licensing and inspections until this year, tracked the number of licensed parks (475), but that’s about it.
Legislators, regulators, state officials and park residents have been kept in the dark about the number of lots or residents, the median lot rent, and what share of the communities are owned by out-of-state corporations.
The new information from the Maine Office of Community Affairs, which this summer took over the manufactured housing board’s duties, answers nearly all of those questions.
“At one point we didn’t even really know where all of the parks are,” said Rep. Cassie Julia, D-Waterville.
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That data, which park owners are now required to submit in order to get licensed, was released Monday.
“For lawmakers, a big barrier to creating laws that offer real protections is lack of information,” Julia said. “Data is really important if you’re trying to pass effective laws.”
The lack of data has also been frustrating for groups like the Genesis Community Loan Fund, which has worked for years to help residents purchase their parks when they go up for sale, said executive director Liza Fleming-Ives.
Having that information available to the public will be “significant,” she said, “for people who care about this housing and making sure that mobile home communities continue to serve as affordable places for people to live.”
Maine’s 475 licensed manufactured housing communities hold a total of 19,348 lots, according the new dashboard.
Statewide, the average lot rent is $479 per month.
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The data is sorted by county, but users can also zoom in on particular parks or municipalities to see whether a park is resident-owned, the average lot rent and which state legislators represent the residents.
ADDRESSING AFFORDABILITY
Park residents, often low-income families or seniors on a fixed income, own their homes but not the land they sit on.
“Mobile” home is a bit of a misnomer — moving a house can cost thousands of dollars and even if someone did have the money, there has historically been no easy way to find out where they could go.
So residents are essentially powerless against rent increases.
It’s something Julia called “captive tenancy.”
“One of the biggest problems with rent increases going up sky high through the roof very quickly is that even if somebody … can afford to move their home or they have the resources to move their home, there’s literally no easy way of finding a new place to go,” she said.
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But now, that information is readily available. Of the state’s nearly 20,000 lots, 2,383 are currently unoccupied, according to the dashboard.
“This opens up a great avenue for people to shop around for new parks to move to,” Julia said.
It also presents opportunities for more infill development as the state works to meet its goal of building tens of thousands of new housing units in the next few years.
The dashboard shows that there are 59 parks that have at least 10 unoccupied lots, which “can be tool for policymakers and housing advocates to strategize about programs and initiatives that can support putting manufactured homes on the empty lots in parks,” said Hilary Gove, director of the Housing Opportunity Program for the Office of Community Affairs.
TRACKING OWNERSHIP
While the new data shows which parks are owned by residents, it does not identify which ones are owned by out-of-state private equity firms.
A 2025 report from the Genesis Community Loan Fund found that 20 of the state’s 32 largest parks were owned by large-scale companies including Sun Communities, Phillips International and Boa Vida.
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That means that more than a third of the state’s mobile homes are in parks owned by large-scale corporate investors. And it could be even more.
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Meanwhile, there are 14 parks owned by resident-run cooperatives, which cumulatively have 1,046 lots.
Hidden Circle in Jay, a community with 31 homes, is the latest community to be purchased by residents, and it’s the first to take advantage of a new state law giving residents the right of first refusal when their parks go up for sale.
The Hidden Circle Residents Cooperative closed on the $1 million sale July 30.
Starting next year, the community affairs office will add two more ownership categories, allowing the agency to track purchases and rent increases across communities owned by residents, small-scale and large-scale investors.
RENT TRENDS
Residents among Waldo County’s 426 lots pay an average of $602 a month, the highest in the state.
Penobscot and York Counties have the greatest number of lots in the state, with 3,473 and 3,365, respectively. The average monthly lot rent in Penobscot County is $460, while it’s $566 in York County.
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Per park, the averages vary widely, even within the same community.
In Sanford, for example, one of the town’s seven parks charges $350, while another four charge up to $900.
Sanford City Councilors in May approved a rent stabilization ordinance that restricts the frequency of rent increases and limits how high those increases can be.
The new limits were passed following reports from residents in Marshbrook Estates who said their rent at the 38-home park had doubled in just five years
The York County city joins a growing list of municipalities weighing or passing some form of rent relief for mobile home park residents after multiple statewide efforts have failed in the Legislature.
“It is shocking to see how high some of those lot rents are,” Fleming-Ives said, adding that many residents have experienced double-digit percentage increases in just a few years. “I just think it’s alarming to see what residents are facing.”
As more data is added each year “it’ll be so valuable to see the trends,” she said. “It just feels like an exciting beginning.”
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Tagged: housing, housing prices, maine legislature, mobile home park
Hannah is the housing reporter at the Portland Press Herald, covering all aspects of Maine’s housing crisis - real estate and development, home ownership and rental issues and the lack of both affordability. More by Hannah LaClaire
