An Act to Improve the Process for Mobile Home Owners to Purchase Their Mobile Home Park
Summary
LD1067 would change the process by which mobile home owners, acting together or through a mobile home owners’ association, may seek to purchase the mobile home park where they live. The bill raises the threshold of owner support needed to make an offer from 51% to 60% of occupied mobile homes owned by the resident or a family member, and it requires that the offer include a purchase and sale agreement. If the park owner accepts the offer, the resident group would have to secure financing within 90 days of execution of the agreement.
The bill also adds a new limit on outreach by a mobile home owners’ association, prohibiting it from contacting a mobile home owner more than three times about the association’s effort to purchase the park. The stated purpose is to improve the purchase process, but the practical effect is to make resident-led acquisition efforts more procedurally demanding while also restricting repeated solicitation of owners.
Impact
If enacted, LD1067 would amend Maine’s mobile home park resident purchase provisions in the state’s housing laws by increasing the resident support threshold for initiating a purchase offer and by imposing a contact limit on associations. These changes would affect mobile home park residents, resident associations, and park owners by tightening the conditions under which a resident group can pursue a purchase and by setting a shorter, more formalized financing timeline after acceptance of an offer.
Sentiment
The available voting history suggests the bill did not advance, as the House accepted a majority ought not to pass report by a 20-13 vote. That vote indicates more opposition than support in the chamber at that stage. No committee transcript is available, so the broader discussion record is limited, but the vote outcome suggests the proposal was viewed skeptically by a majority of members.
Contention
The main points of contention appear to be the higher ownership-support threshold and the new restriction on how often a mobile home owners’ association may contact residents. Supporters likely viewed the bill as clarifying and streamlining the purchase process, while opponents may have seen the 60% requirement as making resident purchases harder to organize and the contact cap as an unnecessary limit on association organizing and communication. The financing deadline and the requirement for a purchase and sale agreement may also have been seen as adding structure, but potentially reducing flexibility for resident groups.
An act to add Sections 798.11.1 and 798.11.2 to, to add Article 7.5 (commencing with Section 798.83.1) to Chapter 2.5 of Title 2 of Part 2 of Division 2 of, and to repeal Section 798.80 of, the Civil Code, relating to mobilehome parks.