Sandcastle Estates, Sunset Acres, and Brookside, Southeast MA

Sandcastle Estates is a 55+ active adult community and manufactured housing park in North Attleborough, Massachusetts, a town on the Rhode Island border with a historic downtown and vast rural and suburban areas. Sandcastle Estates hosts 172 manufactured homes made semi-permanent through porches, screening, landscaping, and more. The community has sidewalks, a resident clubhouse, swimming pool, tennis courts, and a fire pit. In 2019, Legacy Communities purchased the property for more than $13 million, more than four times its assessment at the time. Leases increased 12% the following year. Two and a half years after the purchase, another investment firm offered nearly $19 million for the park. In response, state legislators introduced a bill to provide rent stabilization in the town, though that legislation has not proceeded. Instead, Sandcastle Estates residents voted to purchase the park themselves, matching the offer at around $19 million. The resident-purchase would still result in substantial rent increases to cover the mortgage, but it would remove the property from further speculation. Shortly after buying Sandcastle Estates in 2019, Legacy Communities offered to purchase Sunset Acres and Brookside, two manufactured housing parks in Plainville, Massachusetts, a town adjacent to North Attleborough. Sunset Acres and Brookside Village are both 55+ communities of semi-permanent manufactured homes. Sunset acres hosts 225 manufactured homes and Brookside Village hosts 69. Having seen the impact on Sandcastle Estates, the residents of both communities voted to purchase their parks. To make this happen, residents worked with nonprofits and Community Development Financial Institutions to aid the process of becoming a cooperative and financing the purchases.
  • Foxboro Sun-Chronicle, “Residents of Sandcastle Estates in Attleboro dreading pending sale” (July 19, 2021).
  • Foxboro Sun-Chronicle, “Plainville mobile home parks now owned by tenants” (July 16, 2020).
  • Planet Money, “Mobile Home Parked,” https://www.npr.org/2021/08/06/1025557463/mobile-home-parked 
ROC USA Capital, “Brookside Residents Association Featured In NPR Planet Money Episode,” https://rocusa.org/news/brookside-residents-association-featured-in-npr-planet-money-episode/
Sandcastle Estates, a retirement community in North Attleborough, MA with manufactured homes and community amenities (including a clubhouse and pool).