Malta Gardens residents weigh buying park as sale nears

The owner of the Malta Gardens mobile home park on Route 9 in Malta is moving toward a sale, and the people who own homes there are organizing to buy the park themselves. Homeowners received a notice of right of first refusal from the park’s management team on Monday, Sept. 21, according to The Daily Gazette, the step New York law requires before a park can be sold to an outside buyer.

The park’s owner, the Solomon Organization of Summit, New Jersey, would not confirm the accepted offer price or name a buyer, the Gazette reported. A spokesperson for the owners told the paper that any transaction is expected to be with the homeowners or with “an operator of similar manufactured home communities.”

Malta Gardens by the numbers

The Times Union has called Malta Gardens Saratoga County’s largest mobile home park. Here is what the public record and the local reporting show.

• The park has 407 lots on Taddeo Road off Route 9. The Gazette counted about 340 families living there, and the Times Union put the number at nearly 350 households.
• The Solomon Organization bought the property for $22,762,000 in 2005. The property’s total assessed value in 2026 was $16,390,056, according to Saratoga County property records cited by the Gazette.
• The homes were built between 1979 and 2020, and most of them before 2010, according to the same county records.
• Residents use Mechanicville mailing addresses, but the park is in the Town of Malta.

The two papers do not agree on the size of the land. The Gazette described the park as 103 acres, while the Times Union described it as roughly 126 acres. We have not been able to reconcile the two figures.

How the sale has unfolded

The sequence below comes from the Gazette, the Times Union and the broker’s marketing materials.

1. Bids on the park were due July 9, 2026, according to a listing from the commercial real estate firm Berkadia, which the Times Union also cited.
2. On Aug. 25, the management team told residents by email that the park would be going up for sale, the Gazette reported.
3. On Monday, Sept. 21, homeowners received the notice of right of first refusal.
4. By late September, residents had formed the Malta Gardens Tenants Association, with Kristina Hardy Allen as interim president, the Times Union reported Sept. 25.
5. Starting Sept. 28, property inspectors were scheduled to review individual sites, including meters, utility hookups and the outside condition of homes, according to a notice described by the Gazette.

Residents say the order of those dates is the problem. Allen told the Times Union that residents learned bids had been collected nearly two months after the July deadline, and that the August notice did not include the price or the material terms of the sale, which a fact sheet from New York State Homes and Community Renewal says the law requires. “We are flying blind,” she told the paper.

The owners say they are following the law. A spokesperson told the Times Union that the information is being shared directly with the appropriate parties as the Real Property Law requires. Homes and Community Renewal, the state housing agency that oversees these sales, said in a statement to the paper that it had no information showing the park had been sold or was in negotiations, and that it is monitoring the situation.

What state law gives residents

Section 233-a of the state’s Real Property Law gives homeowners in a manufactured home park the first chance to buy it. The main terms are these.

• The owner’s notice has to state the price and the material terms and conditions of the sale, and tell homeowners they have the right to organize.
• If homeowners do not have an association yet, they must tell the owner within 60 days that they intend to buy.
• An association needs written consent from more than half of all the park’s homeowners.
• Homeowners then have 140 days to deliver a signed offer that matches the price, terms and conditions, and the owner cannot accept another offer during that time.
• If the owner later lowers the price or changes the terms substantially, homeowners get another 30 days to match.

The law does not require an owner to split the land into lots for individual homeowners. Allen told the Times Union that the tenants association already includes more than half of the park’s homeowners, which is also the bar Homes and Community Renewal sets for its grants to residents buying a park.

How residents could pay for it

Residents are looking at two sources of money, according to the Times Union: state grants from Homes and Community Renewal and a possible loan from ROC USA, a New Hampshire nonprofit that helps manufactured home residents buy their parks. ROC USA helped residents of Kayadeross Acres in Milton do the same, the paper reported. Allen said paying off a shared loan could cost less than what some residents pay in rent now, though not all of them.

The broker’s listing shows what outside buyers are being told. Berkadia described the park as 81 percent occupied, with rents about $165 below market and seven leased commercial units that bring in added income. MHVillage, a site that markets homes in existing parks, put the average rent at Malta Gardens at $480 a month in figures the Times Union cited last year.

What the town says

Malta Supervisor Cynthia Young told the Times Union the town cannot do much to help. She said any buyer would have to keep the land as a manufactured home park, because the property is a planned development district and only a zoning change could alter its use, and that the current Town Board has no interest in making that change.

Residents have reasons to watch closely anyway. A 2023 draft of Malta’s comprehensive plan described the park as reaching the end of its useful life before that language was removed, and the town issued two rounds of code violations at the park last year, the Times Union reported. Allen also told the paper that a recent run of violation and eviction notices from the owner is taking up residents’ time; the owner said violations are sent in the ordinary course of business and under the lease.

Why it matters beyond the park

Our read: Malta Gardens is one of the few places in southern Saratoga County where a working family can still afford to own a home, and the right of first refusal was written for exactly this kind of sale. Allen told the Gazette that if residents were eventually forced out, the effect would reach the towns of Malta and Ballston and the Ballston Spa school district, because families there cannot afford rents elsewhere. John Amirault, who has lived in the park for 23 years, told the paper it is the only home his son has really known.

State Attorney General Letitia James came to Saratoga County in May to talk about that right to buy, the Times Union noted. The county has more mobile home parks than any other in the state, according to the paper.

What happens next

Several things will decide how this ends, and we will follow each of them.

• Whether the tenants association delivers a matching offer inside the 140-day window the law allows.
• Whether residents see the full price and terms. The association says it has not; the owner says the information is going to the appropriate parties.
• What Homes and Community Renewal does with its monitoring, and whether its grants and a ROC USA loan can cover a deal of this size.
• Whether the park’s planned development district zoning stays in place, which Young said the current board has no interest in changing.

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