Manufactured
              Housing
 New Hampshire

Introduction

On January 24, 2002, the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund (Loan Fund) celebrated the mortgage closing of Freedom Hill, the state's fiftieth manufactured-housing cooperative

To celebrate this milestone, the Loan Fund invited many of the key players in the development of manufactured-housing cooperatives to an event at the Concord Community Music School in Concord.

New Hampshire Community Loan Fund manufactured-housing-park poster.

Honored at the event were the New Hampshire Office of State Planning, the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston — three key partners in the conversion of manufactured-housing parks to cooperatives in New Hampshire.

Senior Vice President David P. Parish and First Vice President John T. Eller accepted the Loan Fund's Outstanding Affordable Housing Finance Products Award on behalf of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston.

The award cites the Bank for providing New Hampshire members with long-term, fixed-rate advances to ensure stable financing for the state's manufactured-housing parks and their low- and moderate-income tenants.

With the help of the New Hampshire Loan Fund, the Bank of New Hampshire, and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, residents purchased the Freedom Hill park in Loudon from a private owner and converted it to a cooperative.

Freedom Hill was the fifteenth — and largest — manufactured-housing park financed by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston's Community Development advances.

Since the early 1990s, more than $10 million in the Bank's Community Development advances have been used in New Hampshire to convert manufactured-housing parks to cooperatives.

Since the early 1980s, the driving force behind the conversion of these parks to cooperatives has been the Loan Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides loans and technical assistance to economic-development projects for low- and moderate-income people.

The Loan Fund also played a critical role in lobbying for the 1988 legislation that now provides residents with a 60-day window of opportunity to buy a park before private buyers have the chance to purchase it.

In 1984, the Loan Fund used a loan from the Sisters of Mercy to finance its first cooperative — the Meredith Center cooperative in Meredith. Since then, the Loan Fund has been directly involved with more than 40 of the state's 53 cooperative conversions and has provided training and technical assistance to all of them.

In the late 1980s, local banks began actively financing park-cooperative conversions, says Paul Bradley, manager of the Loan Fund's park-cooperative program.

(Left) Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston Senior Vice President David P. Parish receives the housing award from Loan Fund Program Manager Paul Bradley.

Mr. Bradley says a sea change occurred in the early 1990s when the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston began offering an Amortizing advance, which became a critical component of the financing structure.

Today, says Mr. Bradley, Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston Community Development advances are the "key resource for financing co-ops."

Creating a cooperative is a collaborative process that involves park residents, nonprofit organizations, and financial institutions.

"What's unique is the cooperation between the Loan Fund, the Bank of New Hampshire, and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston to get these deals done," says Tom Potter, vice president at the Bank of New Hampshire.

Other members that have used the Bank's Community Development advances to finance park conversions in New Hampshire include:

• Laconia Savings Bank
  

• Concord Savings Bank
  

• Fleet National Bank
  

• First National Bank of Portsmouth
  

• Citizens Bank New Hampshire
  

• CFX Bank
  

• Merrimack County Savings Bank

Converting the parks to cooperatives provides more long-term security and control for park residents, who in the past have owned their homes but not the land on which they rest.

The Loan Fund is currently planning to expand its services by helping consumers locate mortgages to finance the purchase of manufactured homes.

"Our goal is to develop a secondary mortgage market that delivers rates that meet the security needs of lenders, but also produces a good home-financing product for our home owners," says Mr. Bradley.

Other Support for Manufactured Housing
The Bank's Affordable Housing Program (AHP) has also provided support for manufactured-housing cooperative conversions in Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.

The AHP has supported the following park purchases and rehabilitations:

• Birchwood Manor Mobile Home Park, Milton, Vermont, 2000
  

• Blueberry Heights Mobile Home Park, West Greenwich, Rhode Island, 2001
  

• Boston Road Mobile Home Park, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1996
  

• Medomak Trailer Park, Waldoboro, Maine, 1992