New Jersey park sale — resident rights
New Jersey gives residents a true right of first refusal when a manufactured home park is sold. This page is the resident side of that law: what triggers it, who must be told, the exact clocks, and how a purchase actually gets organized — computed from the national survey of state purchase laws and the statute it cites.
Trigger: Owner offers the community for sale (§ 46:8C-11); or owner receives a bona fide offer the owner intends to consider or counteroffer (§ 46:8C-12)
Who must be told: Department of Community Affairs; the local municipal clerk and mayor; nonprofit affordable housing organizations that asked the Department to be listed; and each resident homeowner
Who can act: Resident homeowners acting through a resident homeowner group, with the consent of 51% of the resident homeowners
Households needed: about 51% — see who can act, below, for the exact form it takes.
| Step | Clock | What the statute says |
|---|---|---|
| sign a contract to buy (when the owner offers the park for sale) | 120 days from the owner’s notice | Within 120 days of the notice, with 51% of resident homeowners consenting. The contract must include a reasonable financing contingency of at least 90 days; the owner may require returnable earnest money of up to $50,000. |
| send the owner a proposed purchase agreement (when the owner received a bona fide offer) | 120 days from the owner’s notice | Within 120 days after mailing of the notice, with a statement that 51% of resident homeowners consent. If no other agreement is reached, the owner is deemed to have agreed to sell on the notice terms, with a financing contingency of at least 90 days and an optional returnable earnest money requirement of up to $50,000. |
If the deal changes later — meet a later same-or-lower price offer: residents get 30 days counted from that new offer, not from the first notice. If the owner later offers the land at the same or a lower price, homeowners have an additional 30 days to meet it — 60 days if more than three months have passed.
Date these deadlines from your notice →
Assigning the right: Residents may assign the purchase right — typically to a local government, housing authority, or nonprofit that will keep the park a park.
The 120-day windows plus a financing contingency of at least 90 days do not yield one fixed total window to closing in the statute as summarized, so totalWindowDays is null. Separately, whenever a resident homeowner group makes any offer, the owner must consider it and negotiate in good faith (§ 46:8C-12.2). With 51% consent, a homeowner group may assign its rights to the local municipality or housing authority, a state agency, or a nonprofit corporation or cooperative, to keep the property as a manufactured home community.
Park sold or closing anywhere else? The Park-Sold Deadline Checker covers all 22 purchase-law states, and the guides hub links every state's park-law and title pages.
See the $39 Manufactured Home Playbook
One payment, yours to keep. Everything inside →
Rule: N.J. Rev. Stat. §§ 46:8C-11 to 46:8C-13 (see also §§ 46:8C-15, 46:8C-16, 46:8C-21). Source: National Consumer Law Center, Summary of State Manufactured Home Community Purchase Laws (September 2026).
Verified October 2026. State data verified October 2026 — re-checked quarterly.
General information about how the process works in your state — not legal advice. For a contested eviction, a park-sale fight, or a title dispute with a lienholder, a local attorney or legal-aid office is the next step.