A Win for Resident-Owned Communities
By Lauren Williams on 04/13/2011 @ 11:15 AM
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following post appeared in Foundations, our quarterly newsletter for our partners working to expand affordable homeownership through manufactured housing. Since then, a New York Times article mentioned the Unadilla, NY, community and the prospects for success offered by resident-owned communities.
“The Sprinters” from Meadow Valley and PathStone
On October 29, I’M HOME partner PathStone Corporation facilitated the resident co-op purchase of Meadow Valley Manufactured Home Park in Unadilla, New York—creating the first ever resident-owned manufactured home community in the Southern Tier of New York and the first community in the state to have been converted to a co-op out of a foreclosure auction. The $755,000 purchase of this 54 home site community was financed by ROC USA™ Capital and an application is pending with the New York Housing Finance Agency for below-market financing for a portion of the purchase price.
“I arrived home one day to learn our park was going to be foreclosed on,” said homeowner Ruth Baker. “I told my husband right then, ‘Well, we have to go out and meet the neighbors and figure out how we can buy the place as a group’,” she noted. “My husband said that it was unrealistic to think we could raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from [our neighbors] and then, two days later, someone from PathStone was at my door!”
Under Ruth’s leadership and within two weeks of the first meeting, two-thirds of the homeowners signed on as members. Three weeks later, they were on the Courthouse steps in Cooperstown, with their lawyer doing the bidding to buy their community. Two bidders pushed the bids up but the co-op’s number won the day at 10 percent below market value!
1200 G Street, NW
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