The residents of a mobile home park in Loveland, many of whom are retirees or seniors, are working to buy the property themselves after they were notified of the sale this spring.
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The listing price for the Sunset Park Manufactured Home Community is$44.5 million. The 24-acre park hosts 164 double-wide homes.
Residents found out about the sale in April, when a ‘notice of intent to sell’ was sent out.
According to the document, residents would have 120 days to put together financing and make an offer to Legacy Communities LLC, the park’s current owner.
Since then, a committee has started the formal process of submitting a bid, including gathering the required 51% of resident signatures on a petition.
Now, they are trying to put together a down payment.
“We've talked to different lenders, and the big thing seems to be price, at $44.5 million,” said resident Tim Fritch.
Fritch said lenders have been hesitant to move forward.
“So that's the issue. That's a lot of money for residents to come up with,” he said.
At a recent committee meeting at Fritch’s home, residents sat in a circle in his living room, taking notes while he updated them on lenders, the property appraisal and outreach to government officials.
“My goal is to get us in here to be resident-owned, so we control everything that goes on,” Fritch told the group.
‘We’ve lived here for 20 years’
Generally, mobile home residents can own their homes but not the land underneath them. The hope at Sunset Park is to change that by becoming a resident-owned community.
A law passed in 2020 gives Colorado mobile home parks the chance to make an offer when their property is put up for sale. At least 19 resident-owned communities are now spread across the state, from populated Larimer County to rural La Plata County.
Sunset Park is a 55-and-older community. Longtime resident Ben McGuire is nervous about the sale.
“We’ve lived here for 20 years. Our concern is, if a developer takes this over, we will lose our house,” McGuire said.
McGuire is worried a developer could buy the property to turn it into something else, leaving homeowners with few options. Legacy Communities LLC, the owner of the park, didn’t respond to KUNC’s questions about Sunset’s future.
Resident Bonnie Berry said she recently went back to work as a medical courier to afford her rent — the nearly $1,200 monthly fee for the land under her home.
“Yeah, I should be retired by now, but I can't,” Berry said. “I'm 78 years old. I work. I have to.”
Berry feels sure rent would increase under a new owner.
There is some evidence to support that belief, according to Kelly Giraud, a professor of land economics at the University of New Hampshire.
“The biggest striking thing is the monthly fees,” Giraud said.
Her research, detailed in two papers published in 2006 and 2025, has found that overall, rent or fees tended to be lower at several resident-owned communities compared to investor-owned communities in New Hampshire.
Residents also worried less about rising costs and displacement. Homes in the resident-owned communities sold faster.
“We found both times that there was a much higher satisfaction rate in the resident-owned communities,” Giraud said.
The studies did show, however, little difference in the reported condition of homes at both types of communities.
Giraud has also heard about growing pains when residents become property managers. In surveys, she found there can be drama.
“It's just like any association. You think of a neighborhood association or a condominium association. You're going to have different personalities,” Giraud said.
‘We don’t want to go anywhere’
For Sunset Park residents, the stakes of this deal feel high; mobile homes function as affordable housing, especially in Northern Colorado, which is in an affordability crisis.
Fritch said the residents at Sunset Park are willing to take on the challenges of ownership.
“I mean, our concern is we want to stay here. We don't want to go anywhere. Everybody is too old to go anywhere,” he said. “There's no place to go, period,” he said.
Since the committee meeting in early August, the group has gotten some good news.
Earlier this summer, residents filed a complaint with the Colorado Department of Local Affairs about the listing price for the property, under the Mobile Home Protection Act. The agency is considering it, which means residents now have more time to work on the purchase.
