Pictou County-based Twin Rivers Properties announced its purchase of Bible Hill Estates in Bible Hill after sealing the deal for $3.3 million last Friday.
The family-owned company says that Bible Hill is Twin Rivers’ largest purchase to date and includes 260 mobile home lots plus four mini-homes located on the property. At time of writing, 60 of these lots are vacant.
“There will be no change in rent. They recently had a rent increase,” said co-owner Blair van Veld. “We’re pretty fair landlords in terms of rent increases.”
He added that Twin Rivers typically focuses on making its operations more efficient to increase profits instead of hiking tenants’ rent.
Van Veld said that the Bible Hill property was one of the largest yet that had not been bought by its regional rivals such as Killam Properties.
Twin Rivers now owns more than 1,000 rental units throughout Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island and is one of the largest land lease community owners in the Maritimes.
The company says the new Bible Hill property gives it a significant market share in the Truro area and greatly increases its Nova Scotia market shares.
Twin Rivers now has a presence in every major market area from Sydney to Bridgewater along with locations in Miramichi, N.B., and Summerside, P.E.I.
However, the company has not been able to expand into Halifax Regional Municipality, as companies such as Killam already run many rental units there and there is little else for sale.
Van Veld said the few HRM properties that are listed for sale will offer only a limited rate of return.
Nonetheless, given that Twin Rivers is a father-son operation, they have come a long way when compared to major companies like Killam, which is a publicly traded firm that owns roughly 20,000 units.
As yet, Blair and Tony van Veld have no plans to float itself on the stock market.
“We have a little ways to go,” said van Veld.
