A four-to-seven-year process governed by the MHPTA, the municipal Tenant Protection Bylaw layer, and the 2023 to 2025 statutory changes. Written for park owners and investors evaluating a redevelopment.
Closing a manufactured home park in British Columbia to build something new is a four-to-seven-year process governed by overlapping provincial and municipal requirements. It starts with a $20,000-per-tenant statutory floor before a single shovel hits the ground, and in higher-policy municipalities like Surrey the per-tenant cost is now closer to $250,000.
The Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act (MHPTA) mandates 12 months' notice and escalating compensation obligations. Municipalities increasingly layer on their own enforceable Tenant Protection Bylaws (TPBs). The 2023 to 2025 legislative changes have tightened the regulatory environment, expanding penalties for bad-faith closures and elevating municipal policies from guidance documents to enforceable obligations.
The regulatory path is navigable but slow, expensive, and politically fraught. This guide maps every stage so owners and investors can underwrite redevelopment with realistic numbers, not floor numbers.
The Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act (SBC 2002, c. 77) is the governing statute. It applies wherever a tenant rents a pad site but owns their manufactured home. Where both the pad and the dwelling are rented, the Residential Tenancy Act applies instead. (Buyer-side context: Understanding the BC MHPTA.)
A landlord may end pad tenancies for redevelopment only when both of the following conditions are met at the same time:
In practice, that means two-to-three years of municipal approvals before a single tenant receives notice, then 12 more months before the park is empty. Holding costs run the whole time.
The compensation framework set by regulation and case law operates in three layers. A complete redevelopment budget has to include all three.
The closure framework has been actively tightened. Any redevelopment underwriting done before late 2023 is now stale. The relevant changes:
The provincial MHPTA establishes minimum standards. BC municipalities increasingly adopt their own MHP redevelopment policies, and Bill 16's TPB authority has elevated several of these from guidance documents into enforceable bylaws.
| Municipality | Policy / Bylaw | Key requirements | Notable feature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surrey | Policy O-34A + TPB No. 21788 (2025) | Greater of $160K or BC Assessment + $60K; lifetime monthly payments up to $1,500 | Most battle-tested policy in BC |
| Coquitlam | MHP Redevelopment Tenant Assistance Policy | Full Tenant Relocation & Assistance Strategy with rezoning application | First BC municipality; cited as UBCM model |
| Nanaimo | Manufactured Home Community Relocation Assistance | Compensation greater than or equal to assessed or appraised value | Uses Bill 16 authority directly |
| West Kelowna | 2024 strengthened policy (post-Shady Acres) | Council-driven expectation of right-of-first-refusal and full relocation support | Reactive to Shady Acres (2024) |
In Surrey, the per-pad compensation is now an order of magnitude above the statutory $20,000 floor. A 30-pad Surrey park's compensation alone can exceed $5 million before construction begins.
Four BC precedents that shaped the current landscape:
Every redevelopment in BC moves through the same five phases. The order matters because the legal sequence is rigid: rezoning bylaw must be adopted and the development permit must be issued before tenant notices can be served. The 12-month displacement clock cannot start until that point.
The 12-month displacement clock cannot start until rezoning and all permits are fully secured. In practice this means two to three years of holding costs before a single tenancy ends. Underwrite the holding cost line carefully.
The $20,000 base is a floor, not a budget figure. Market expectations are moving toward full BC Assessment value and beyond. Surrey's $250,000 buyout at Crispen Bays represents the current high-water mark. Municipalities with Bill 16 TPBs can now enforce these levels.
Parks on First Nations reserve land fall entirely outside the MHPTA. Residents in those parks have a different (and often less protected) set of rights, and redevelopment underwriting on reserve-land parks works under a different framework. Consult a lawyer with reserve-land experience.
In contested rezonings, council decisions increasingly turn on the perceived adequacy of the relocation package and community-benefit contributions. Owners and developers who offer above-floor compensation typically receive faster approvals; those who do the minimum tend to experience the longest, most contested rezoning processes.
Whether you are a long-time owner thinking about exit options, a developer evaluating an acquisition, or an investor underwriting redevelopment optionality on a stabilized park, the right early-stage analysis can save years of timeline and meaningful capital. I work on both sides of the table on BC park redevelopments and I am happy to discuss a specific site.
If you are considering selling rather than redeveloping, the Seller's Guide walks through how BC parks are priced and what a clean sale looks like.
Whether you are at the feasibility stage or already deep in a rezoning, the early-stage analysis is where most of the savings (and most of the avoidable mistakes) are. Send me what you have and I will tell you what I see.