The residents of Boise de Sioux at their first pre-purchase meeting in 2023 at the Breckenridge (MN) Public Library.
The homeowners of Bois de Sioux Mobile Estates, the only manufactured home park in Breckenridge, MN, recently purchased their 75-site manufactured home community and formed Bois de Sioux Cooperative, Minnesota’s thirteenth resident-owned manufactured housing cooperative and the 16th within Northcountry Cooperative Foundation’s service area.
The purchase of the community concludes an over seven-month process that began with NCF reaching out to the owner of Bois de Sioux Mobile Estates about his interest in selling the community to the residents.
In order to secure the $1.1 million needed to purchase the community, NCF assisted the residents of Bois de Sioux through forming a multifaceted partnership between Minnesota Housing and NCF’s newest subsidiary, the Cooperative Loan Fund. Minnesota Housing provided funding to the project in two different ways. First, Bois de Sioux received a $536,800 grant from the Manufactured Home Community Redevelopment (MHCR) Program. Established by the Minnesota Legislature after a successful advocacy effort by NCF, the MHCR program is run by Minnesota Housing and provides funding to manufactured home communities to replace and improve their community infrastructure.
In the case of Bois de Sioux, their grant was for the replacement of water and sewer services, to repair electrical service boxes, to make street improvements, to demolish old garages, prepare vacant lots, and improve surface drainage. While this grant was not used directly to purchase the community, it helped pay for necessary infrastructure improvements that the cooperative would have had to pay for otherwise. In that way, it reduced the amount of money the cooperative needed to borrow, thereby making it less expensive for the residents. Second, Minnesota Housing provided the mortgage loan to the Bois de Sioux Cooperative for the purchase of the community.
Minnesota Housing has recently started lending on manufactured home park purchases by residents, offering competitive interest rates that ensure long-term affordability for homeowners. However, to make the purchase even more affordable for the residents, NCF used its Cooperative Loan Fund (CLF) to provide “gap financing”. While Minnesota Housing offers an affordable loan product for resident purchase, often their loan will not cover the entire purchase price of the community. As such, the CLF can provide low-interest loans to help cover that “gap” and not only make the purchase a reality, but also reduce the cost of the purchase to the residents.
Bois de Sioux is the second manufactured home cooperative to use a CLF loan in order to purchase their community, with the first being Emerald Pines Cooperative in Alexandria, MN. In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature appropriated $10 million directly to NCF to establish a revolving loan fund for manufactured home park purchase by residents. The CLF is carrying out that mission and has successfully helped two communities become resident-owned cooperatives in 2024.
Now that Bois de Sioux has officially become cooperatively owned, their board of directors has set their sights on attracting new residents to the community and filling vacant lots with new homes. Due to another successful advocacy effort by NCF, the Minnesota Legislature has appropriated $10 million to create a new affordable mortgage product for manufactured home purchases in the state. While this is not yet available, it is hoped that this well help all manufactured home cooperatives in Minnesota attract new residents, as the loan payments on new home purchases will be much more affordable.
