Five mobile home parks in central Vermont are scheduled to be auctioned later this month. Below is an excerpt from a recent article in the Times Argus that details the sale:
Five 50-year-old mobile home parks that collectively account for nearly 25 percent of the lots that can be leased in Washington County will be the subject of a court-ordered auction next month. The auction, which is set for 10 a.m. on April 17 at the Capitol Plaza in Montpelier, will cap a protracted legal battle that began in 2002 when park owner R&G Properties defaulted on a $2.15 million loan it obtained two years earlier. Nearly 13 years, one complicated bankruptcy and at least two trips to the Vermont Supreme Court later, R&G Properties is on the verge of losing the five mobile home parks that it hasn’t had much to do with for nearly a decade. The mobile home parks — four in Berlin and one in Northfield Falls — have been managed by a court-appointed “receiver” since 2006 while the foreclosure case was working its way through the court system. That arrangement lasted for longer than John Wilking, of Neville Companies Inc. in South Burlington, expected when the court assigned him the responsibility of managing the mobile home parks that will soon be sold to the highest bidder, or bidders. “It’s been a while,” said Wilking, who noted he recently ran into the former employee who he assigned to manage the properties back in 2006. “I didn’t recognize him,” he said. “It’s been that long.” Though Neville Companies has become familiar with the parks and its tenants over the years, Wilking said he would consider it a conflict of interest to bid on any of them. If they all sell — he expects most will, though there will likely be multiple buyers — Wilking said he could be two months away from shedding an assignment that he accepted nearly nine years ago. “We’re expecting that by the end May we’ll be done with our duties,” he said. If one or more of the parks don’t sell that could change, according to Wilking, who acknowledged some of the properties are more attractive investments than others, but all have sparked interest as word of their looming availability became public. The parks collectively account for nearly 150 of the 607 mobile home lots in Washington County, including 51 in the Northfield Falls Mobile Home Park on Route 12.
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