New Mexico lawmakers say they’ll reintroduce bill to help mobile home owners buy their own parks

New Mexico lawmakers said this week they intend to try again to enact a law that would help mobile home park residents purchase their communities amid rising out-of-state ownership.

Maria Griego, economic equity director at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, told lawmakers on the interim Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee on Tuesday that other states, including Colorado, have “resident-owned community” legislation that aims to help mobile home park residents buy and collectively run their own communities.

Such a law would require owners to notify residents of a mobile home park, as well as the state Mortgage Finance Authority, of any purchase offer the owner intends to accept.

Residents would then have the option of buying the properties instead if they were able to make a competitive offer within a reasonable time frame.

Griego described the bill as necessary to counteract a growing trend of out-of-state buyers extracting profit from mobile harm park tenants, who own their homes but not the land underneath them. They are vulnerable to sharp rent increases because moving their homes is expensive, often costing owners up to $20,000, Griego said. 

In Bernalillo County, which has the most mobile home park residents in the state, more than 9,000 households live within 75 mobile home park communities. According to data Griego presented, 70% of those parks have out-of-state owners, and 10% are private equity firms. 

“Historically, manufactured home communities were mom-and-pop owned or locally owned, and in fact, a lot of times you would see owners living in the park with other residents,” Griego said. “But that has changed with the onset of private equity.”

Statewide, more than 350,000 New Mexicans live in mobile home parks, and 15% of the state’s housing stock is mobile homes. That’s triple the national rate of 5%, Griego said. 

A group of five Democratic lawmakers in 2025 introduced House Bill 426, which would have required owners to give New Mexico mobile home residents an opportunity to buy their mobile home parks. The bill passed the House of Representatives but later did not receive a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

State Sen. Debbie O’Malley (D-Albuquerque) said she intends to resurrect the legislation during the upcoming session in January.

“We have a situation where folks are really kind of trapped in a situation that they can’t really get out of,” O’Malley said. “It’s a predatory process that’s really hurt folks.”