Great Brook residents at odds with new owner over multiple rent hikes
BELMONT — Residents of Great Brook Village, a 55-and-older mobile home park, are sparring with the park’s new owner over lot rent increases.
Tenants have called the multiple increases over the past year unprecedented and are questioning their legality. The property management company contracted by the owner highlighted record-level inflation as a primary contributor to increased maintenance costs and, therefore, rent. Residents are skeptical due to what they say is a lack of adequate services and a potential violation of previous agreements.
“To make money on the backs of the people that live in the park with these different rent increases and justify it with inflation is just wrong,” said park board president Liz Gammon. She noted that traditionally, park residents only experienced one rent increase per year. “Within a four-month period, my lot rent has gone from $681 to $725, and we’re expecting a rent increase in January. In past practice, that’s never been done. It was usually a $15-$25 rent increase.”
According to residents, the lot rents are much higher than neighboring parks. One, for example, charges $400-$500.
Gammon was not the only resident to complain of increasing rent hikes in one year. Some residents, like David Cincotta, are considering selling their homes in response.
“I’ve had three buyers back out,” Cincotta said. “I told them I’d pay the difference for the first two years.”
Despite Cincotta’s offer, he’s had no takers. Even Cincotta himself experienced multiple price increases during the closing process when he initially moved in last summer. His potential buyers also experienced rent hikes before they even pulled the trigger.
“When I first purchased, [lot rent] was $618. By the time I closed, it was $691. We got the notice for the increase to $746,” Cincotta said. “One of my buyers was told it was going to be $816. From last July to now, that’s nine months. Four jumps in rent and it’s over $200.”
Two years ago, the park was purchased by Bradley Pereira, owner of Oakshire Management, a Connecticut-based company incorporated on March 8, 2021. Oakshire did not return numerous calls for comment on this story.
Gammon noted that Pereira’s lawyers were reexamining an agreement with “tier one” renters.
“They’re over the top,” resident Ron Cole said. “The rules for the park are that they have the legal right and notification. He can increase the rent, so to speak, once a year. This year he decided he could do it twice. The excuse he used is that expenses have increased to the point where he needs to notify that it has to be done. Bradley has overstepped his bounds, as far as the residents of the village are concerned. That’s why we’re upset. He’s not communicating in good faith.”
“Bradley said he’d be there once a month to talk and take concerns, but we have not seen him since he visited prior to buying the park,” Gammon said.
Cole demanded that Pereira meet with residents himself, rather than communicating via a property manager.
Pereira has still communicated through property management companies, cycling through two so far. The third and current property manager is Imperial Properties, founded and operated by Matthew Dennehy, a soft-spoken former National Guard infantry soldier and helicopter pilot.
“He is very familiar with everything that’s going on,” Dennehy said of Pereira. “We talk regularly. I don’t know that there’s necessarily a big benefit to him showing up. It takes a little bit of time for residents to see us as the one who is their contact person.”
Dennehy met with residents March 17 to hear their concerns and address their questions. During the meeting, residents expressed anger, frustration and confusion around the rent hikes.
Dennehy addressed what questions he could, but said he didn’t have enough information to fully answer the residents, such as the exact formulas used to calculate the rent hikes.
Many attendees remained skeptical.
“The formula for figuring [the rent increase] out, we have no clue what that is,” Gammon said. “That was not shared with us or Matthew, based on his explanation at the meeting.”
There are different tiers of ownership, along with a wide range of leases, making addressing each grievance a bit complicated. Many of the leases date back to the creation of the park in the 1990s.
“Those same leases are the ones we have today,” Dennehy said. “My normal recommendation is, ‘Let’s put everybody on the same one, we’ll streamline it and make it nice and easy.'”
For whatever reason, that didn’t appear to be the direction the new owner wanted to take. Instead the two companies, Oakshire and Imperial, work with a variety of leases from different eras with varying modifications and tiers.
Both at the meeting and in a separate interview, Dennehy pointed out exponential costs for landscaping services in the past two years as a contributor to the increased lot fees.
“The landscape cost has probably more than doubled,” Dennehy said. “We’re actually in the process of rebidding the contract right now, so when it comes up for renewal, we’ll put out a proposal to local landscapers and get them to compete on price.”
Dennehy added that some landscapers have more than tripled their prices. Despite these steep cost increases, residents during and after the meeting expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of the work.
“I now have to wear gloves to use my wheelchair to get up and down my ramp because the bushes completely overhang my ramp. Otherwise, I tear my hands to shreds,” one resident said during the meeting. “It’s unacceptable. I moved here at 55-plus so my wife would not have to shovel, mow and plow ourselves out, and we do.”
“They were supposed to trim the trees and bushes from the original contract from a prior landscaper. None of that was done,” Cincotta said. “They eventually had a special guy come in to cut some of the dead ones. If we touch the bushes, we get fined. But we pay someone else to do it, but no one is doing it.”
Some residents believe that Oakshire made a poor investment by overpaying for the park and is now offloading those losses onto residents.
“He first bought the place for $4.4 million,” Cole said. “Way too much money.”
Mobile home parks have become a hot ticket item for investors across the country. Forbes Magazine recently highlighted the usually low tenant turnover, limited supply thanks to zoning laws, and the high degree of control an owner has over rent as enticing boons for investors.
According to Mobile Home University, a site dedicated to training investors in this niche real estate arena, mobile home parks have “the highest return in real estate.”
Due to zoning laws, there are a very small number of mobile home parks, relatively speaking, in the United States, and companies like Blackstone, Berkshire Hathaway and the Carlyle Group have gotten in on the lucrative action.
“New Hampshire is one of those places where it’s ‘not in my backyard.’ Nobody wants the mobile home” parks, Dennehy said of zoning ordinances. “Frankly, I think we need more of these communities because there is no affordable housing.”
Prior to the acquisition by Oakshire, Gammon and other residents said the park had an in-house landscaping and maintenance staff. With the change of ownership, both the management and landscaping duties went to separate contracts.
What’s happening at Great Brook isn’t new for either mobile parks or property managers, like Imperial.
“Landscaping is probably our No. 1 issue that we talk about across communities,” Dennehy said. “Condos, HOAs, those types of communities, even cooperatives. It’s a common theme that we’re always bidding out landscape contracts. You got the low end and the high end; everybody wants to pay for the low end, but then they always complain about the service. There’s just nobody that wants to pay for the high end.”
Both sides are still searching for an affordable solution.
“I don’t want to get to a point where we kind of destroy the progress we’ve made,” Dennehy said. “I want to be able to work with the residents.”
The board, meanwhile, has started a petition to get the New Hampshire Manufactured Housing Authority involved.
“Maybe with a new owner. We can’t use past practice,” Gammon said. “I think that is what’s got some residents very concerned; these increases are exponential.”