Two out-of-state investment companies that are buying up trailer parks are among six nationwide under congressional scrutiny.
The Joint Economic Committee launched a probe Monday into the firms, which hold large stakes in mobile-home parks.
The panel fired off letters to a half-dozen companies seeking information about evictions, rent increases and profits at firms acquiring the properties.
Two of the firms that have holdings in Maine, the BoaVida Group and Philips International, have allegedly raised rents more than 50 percent since 2021.
In Bowdoin, Philips International added the Mountain View Estates Mobile Home Park to its nationwide inventory in 2021.
Since acquiring the 46-acre property, Philips, which owns seven trailer parks in Maine, has raised lot rent four times, according to News Center Maine.
Besides its Bowdoin property, Philips also owns parks in Wells and in Biddeford, and in Sanford where it owns four.
Philips International officials argue the rent increases are simply to keep up with operational expenses. A spokesperson for the company last year cited increased insurance costs and property taxes.
BoaVida last year expanded its Maine holdings when it bought Country Lane Estates and Stetson Brook Estates in Lewiston for $22 million.
BoaVida on its website boasts of “providing low-cost homeownership.”
“More than four million manufactured homes in the United States are located in communities in which residents often own their homes but rent the land beneath them, which can make residents particularly vulnerable to changes that the landowners may make,” the committee’s letter to the trailer park investors says.
Between 2023 and 2024, rents in these communities grew more than five times the pace of rent growth in traditional apartment buildings,” congressional members said in their letter.
Manufactured-housing communities have been “ripe targets for investors, who buy communities and then increase the lot rents.”
Other firms that received letters include Alden Global Capital, Legacy Communities, Patriot Holdings and Sun Communities.
