A resale reaches a park owner as a form with a ten-day clock on it: miss the clock and you have consented, refuse on the wrong ground and you can face an order, a compensation claim and a penalty. This post is for owners and caretakers who answer that form, and for buyers of a park, because every assignment keeps the existing rent on the rent roll. Section numbers come from the BC Laws consolidations of the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act (the Act) and its Regulation, current to 27 October 2026.
Can a resident sell their home and pass on the pad tenancy?
Usually yes, and what the buyer gets depends on whether the tenancy is assigned. An assignment takes the owner's written or deemed consent, a director's order, or a term already in the tenancy agreement (section 28(1) of the Act). It suits a buyer who wants the existing rent and terms, and a seller who wants off the agreement. A new tenancy agreement suits a buyer only if the rent works at whatever the owner sets. As the owner you get ten days and a short list of grounds, and you cannot insist on the second route.
What does the request have to look like?
A compliant request is in writing, signed by the home owner, on the form the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) director approved, and served early enough for you to answer before the proposed effective date (section 44 of the Regulation). The form is RTB-10, Request for Consent to Assign a Manufactured Home Site Tenancy Agreement.
Section 44(3) of the Regulation lists the contents, and they are most of what you need to decide: the buyer's address history with landlord contacts, two personal references, signed consent to reference checks and a credit report, proof of age in a 55-plus park, and the buyer's signed agreement to comply with the tenancy agreement and rules. The seller adds the current rent, the effective date of the last legal increase and any outstanding orders or notices.
A bare letter should not start the ten days, because sections 45 and 46 of the Regulation apply only to a request on the approved form (s.44(1)). Section 47 says you must still consent, refuse on a listed ground with your reasons, or promptly tell the home owner that only a compliant request will be considered. I would do the third, in writing, the day it arrives. A retyped form with everything in it may still count (section 10(2) of the Act), and an RTB-10 with gaps may too, so in both cases answer inside the ten days.
The Section 42 closure rules, the three tiers of compensation, municipal redevelopment policies and the real timeline. Free.
Read the redevelopment guideHow long does the owner have to answer, and what if they say nothing?
Ten days, and silence is consent. Your written answer must be prompt and must reach the home owner within 10 days of your receiving the request (Regulation s.45(1)(c)). If it has not arrived by the end of the 10th day, your consent is conclusively deemed to have been given (s.46(1)), provided the home owner can show proper service (s.46(2)). The two of you can agree in writing to a later, specific date (s.45(3)).
The answer goes on section G of the same form, and how you send it matters, because the test is when the home owner receives it. Unless it actually arrives sooner, receipt is deemed as follows (section 83 of the Act, section 60 of the Regulation):
- Handed to the home owner: the day you hand it over.
- Ordinary or registered mail to the home owner's residence or forwarding address: the fifth day after mailing.
- Mailbox, mail slot or door at the home owner's residence, or a fax number or email address given for service: the third day after.
Mail it after day five and, unless it arrives early, you have consented. Hand it over and write down the date. A seller who has moved may not live at the pad: use the home owner's address in section B of the form.
Page 6 of the RTB-10 gives the example for the request itself: sent by registered mail on the 1st, it is deemed received by the 6th, so your answer is due by the end of the 16th, earlier if it reached you earlier. A form left with your agent also counts as served (section 81(b) of the Act), so a caretaker who acts as your agent needs to recognize an RTB-10 and get it to you that day. Leaving your answer with the seller's real estate agent is not service on the home owner.
When can an owner refuse?
Only on a ground listed in section 48 of the Regulation, because section 28(2) of the Act limits you to that list. For an assignment, the grounds are:
- Reasonable grounds, on relevant information, to conclude the buyer is unlikely to comply with the tenancy agreement or rules.
- Reasonable grounds, on credit information, to conclude the buyer is unable or unlikely to pay the rent.
- No buyer meets the age requirement, in a park where every site is reserved for tenancies with at least one tenant aged 55 or older, as the Human Rights Code permits.
- The buyer will not live in the home and either intends business use or has purchased more than one home in your park.
- The tenancy is monthly and the home has been removed or destroyed.
- You could not reach the buyer's references, after promptly telling the home owner and making every reasonable effort, including with replacements, and so lack the information to decide.
- The home owner owes rent arrears or an amount due under a director's order.
- The home does not comply with housing, health and safety standards required by law.
Your answer has to name the ground and give the source and nature of the information behind it (Regulation s.45(2)). An old home that meets the standards is not a ground, and neither is a rent you would like to see higher.
A home owner who thinks you got it wrong can apply for dispute resolution, and the director can order that the tenancy may be assigned (section 58(1)(g) of the Act). The director can also order compensation for a loss caused by a refusal that breaks the rules (s.60, and Policy Guideline 19, part I).
A March 2026 Castanet column by an Okanagan real estate agent says hearings can take six weeks or longer and that there is no prescribed penalty for an unreasonable refusal. The offence list in section 87 of the Act does not name a wrongful refusal, but the director may order a monetary penalty for contravening any provision of the Act or Regulation (section 80.3(1)(a) of the Act), up to $5,000, and separately for each day a contravention continues (s.80.4). I cannot tell you how often the director uses that on a refusal, and I would not build a plan on it never being used.
Can the owner charge a fee, raise the rent or require a new agreement?
No to all three as a condition of consent. A landlord must not charge a tenant anything for considering, investigating or consenting to an assignment (section 28(3) of the Act), and breaking that is an offence with a fine of up to $5,000 (s.87(1)(h)). So the credit report is your cost. Standard term 6(1), in the Schedule to the Regulation, adds that you must not receive a benefit for giving consent, directly or indirectly.
The rent stays where it is. When a home owner assigns, the buyer becomes the tenant and the agreement continues on the same terms (Regulation s.49(1)). Standard term 5(1) runs the 12 months from when the rent was established or last legally increased, even for "a new tenant by way of an assignment", and the RTB's information sheet says the next increase keeps its scheduled date. So the buyer's arrival does not delay your next increase, which comes on three full months' notice at the annual limit.
Nothing in Part 7 of the Regulation lets you swap the agreement for a new one as the price of consent. The Act allows an increase a tenant agrees to in writing (s.36(1)(c)), but I read a higher rent traded for your signature as the benefit term 6(1) prohibits, and section 5 makes an attempt to contract out of the Act or Regulation of no effect.
What happens if a resident sells without asking?
If the seller purports to assign without consent, you can end the tenancy for cause, on at least one month's notice. The trigger in section 40(1)(h) of the Act is a purported assignment without your written consent or a director's order, so a sale on its own may not be enough. The tenant has 10 days from receiving the notice to dispute it (s.40(4)).
The RTB's information sheet warns that the seller could be held responsible for what the new owner does, and that a buyer who moves in without consent could lose the tenancy.
Before you serve, check that the agreement does not already authorize assignment (s.28(1)(c) of the Act) and that you have not missed a request and consented by silence. My first move would be a letter telling the seller an RTB-10 is required. If no ground under section 48 of the Regulation applies you would have to consent anyway, and a letter costs less than a hearing over one pad.
When a home sells and stays, is it an assignment or a new tenancy?
It is an assignment if the seller asks for one and no ground in section 48 of the Regulation stops it, and then the rent stays. The other branch is in the RTB's information sheet, dated January 2020 and still posted: if the home remains and the tenancy is not assigned, landlord and buyer must enter into a new agreement, and the landlord can set the pad rent at whatever rate it deems appropriate.
That does not give you a rent reset on a resale, because the route opens only if the seller does not ask or you lawfully refuse. The Castanet column says operators sometimes refuse strategically, perhaps to push for a higher rent on a "new" tenancy. A refusal without a real ground under section 48 of the Regulation is what section 28(2) of the Act prohibits. If you refuse a buyer for credit on Monday and offer them a new agreement at $100 more on Tuesday, I would not want to defend that at a hearing. Whether an agreement signed under that pressure would hold is a question for an arbitrator, and nothing I have read settles it.
The clean reset is a pad where the home has gone. A monthly tenancy with the home removed or destroyed is a ground to refuse (Regulation s.48(f)), and once that tenancy has ended the next tenant signs a new agreement at a new rent.
The inputs from my valuation post show what an assignment and a clean reset do to value: $550 average pad rent and a 6% cap, with all 30 pads occupied (that post has 28). I have added a market rent of $650, the $100 gap in my seller's guide, as an assumption and not a reading of any market.
| One pad | Pad A: home sold in years 3 and 7, both assignments | Pad B: home removed, new tenancy at market |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly rent after the event | $550 | $650 |
| NOI added per year | $0 | $1,200 |
| Value added at a 6% cap | $0 | $20,000 |
I held both rents flat and left out that post's credit loss and reserve to keep the arithmetic in view. Pad B also earns nothing until someone brings in a new home: a year empty would cost $6,600, five and a half years of the uplift.
Across the park, a model that assumes three of the 30 homes sell each year (my number, for the arithmetic) and that each sale closes a $100 gap on a different pad adds $3,600 of NOI and $60,000 of value a year on paper. Ten years of that equals the $36,000 and $600,000 my seller's guide puts on a $100 gap, and if those sales are assignments, none of it arrives. That is why I underwrite from in-place rent, and why the owner's lever is the lawful increase on every site, every year.
What should a buyer of a park check?
Every resale in the current owner's time. I ask for each RTB-10 and the park owner's response, and I match the rent and last increase date in section D of the form against the rent roll and the increase notices. That sits in the tenancy file audit, in the first condition period. These would stop me:
- A rent that jumped at a sale. An assignment does not do that by itself, so ask whether a new agreement was signed. A tenant can deduct or recover an increase that does not comply (section 36(5) of the Act), and the Act's definition of landlord includes successors in title. Whether that reaches a given new agreement is a question for your lawyer, but the rent on the roll may not be the rent legally in place.
- A name on the rent roll with no agreement or consent behind it. A missing RTB-10 is not proof of a problem, because the form itself says the Act does not require it, but the file should then hold a written consent, a director's order or a term that authorized the assignment.
- A fee charged for consent (section 28(3) of the Act).
- A refusal with no stated grounds, or an open dispute. I want those covered in the seller's warranty on RTB proceedings.
- A request in progress at closing. The ten days do not stop for your closing date, so find out who is answering it and by when.
If you own a park, these files are what a buyer will read, so keep every RTB-10 and response with the tenancy agreement. To see what your rent roll supports, send me the details. Buyers will find the rest of the framework in my guide to the Act.
The Act does not apply where the home and site are both rented to the same tenant (s.4(a)), and the RTB points those to the Residential Tenancy Act. The Act generally does not apply on First Nations reserve land either, as my redevelopment guide explains.
I am a licensed real estate agent, not a lawyer, and this is a summary of the Act and Regulation, not legal advice. Get counsel before you refuse a request or serve a notice on a specific pad.
Logan focuses exclusively on mobile home park transactions across British Columbia with CDW & Associates at RE/MAX Commercial Advantage. He holds a Diploma in Urban Land Economics from UBC Sauder and is a CCIM candidate.