The building itself can be bought and sold like any other structure. What sits underneath it — owned land, a rented pad, or a land-lease community — changes almost everything else about the transaction, and it is not always obvious from the listing photos which one you are dealing with.
Key takeaways
A mobile or modular home can sit on land the owner outright owns, or on a pad they rent from a park owner under a separate tenancy agreement — and the second arrangement is common enough that a listing agent has to confirm which one applies before pricing, marketing or even describing the property accurately. Where the pad is rented, the buyer is really purchasing two different things in one transaction: the home itself, and an assumed or new tenancy agreement for the site it sits on.
In British Columbia, a rented manufactured home site is governed by its own legislation, the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act — confirmed current as of this writing — not the ordinary Residential Tenancy Act. Reading the Act directly: section 2(1) applies it to “tenancy agreements, manufactured home sites and manufactured home parks,” while section 4(a) carves out the case where the home itself, not just the pad, is rented to the same tenant — that arrangement falls outside this Act. The notice periods it sets are specific and differ from BC’s general residential rules: a tenant ending a periodic tenancy gives one month’s notice (s. 38(1)); a landlord ending for non-payment of rent gives 10 days (s. 39(1)); a landlord ending for cause gives one month (s. 40(2)); and a landlord ending because the park is being converted to a non-residential use gives a full 12 months (s. 42(2)).
MPAC’s own description of a mobile home park confirms the different Ontario answer to the same question: Ontario mobile home park site tenancies are governed by the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 (RTA), the same statute that governs ordinary residential tenancies — there is no BC-style standalone mobile home statute in Ontario. MPAC also flags that the RTA specifically does not apply to sites that are seasonal or short-term, such as resorts, tourist camps, campgrounds or seasonal trailer parks — a distinction worth confirming before assuming standard tenancy rules apply to a particular park.
MPAC assesses an entire mobile home park under one roll number, with the individual occupants listed as tenants rather than each home carrying its own separate assessment on the notice — the same treatment applies to a land lease community. A buyer expecting a property tax bill that looks like a conventional single-family assessment will not get one; MPAC values the land using an income approach and the individual homes using a cost approach based on comparable sales, but the resulting notice covers the whole park, not the individual pad. An owner who wants a breakdown for their specific unit has to request it directly from MPAC or the property manager.
CMHC offers a dedicated insured mortgage product built specifically for “financing for prefab, modular and manufactured homes,” described on its own homeowner and small rental mortgage insurance page (1 to 4 units) — confirming that this financing category exists and is a live CMHC program, separate from its multi-unit rental products. Whether a specific lender will treat a given home as real property eligible for a conventional mortgage, or as a chattel financed more like a vehicle, depends heavily on the tenure underneath it: a home on owned, deeded land is a far more straightforward financing conversation than the identical home sitting on a rented pad in a land-lease community, where the lender is really financing an asset that can be moved and that sits on land the borrower does not own. Confirm a specific lender’s appetite before quoting financing timelines to a buyer.
Where the home sits on a rented site, a sale is really two transactions running together: a sale of the structure, and a new site tenancy that the park owner or landlord typically has to approve for the incoming buyer, much as any assignment of a residential tenancy requires landlord consent. A buyer who agrees to purchase the home without confirming upfront that the park will accept them as the new site tenant — on the park’s own screening terms, not the seller’s — can close on a structure they have nowhere to legally keep. Build that approval into the Agreement of Purchase and Sale as a condition, not an assumption.
A rented pad under a long-term arrangement shares some of the same economic logic as other leasehold tenure — see leasehold, and what a buyer should ask for the remaining-term questions that apply whenever a buyer does not own the land under the structure they are purchasing.
A buyer is comparing two mobile homes listed at similar prices. The first sits on a quarter-acre the owner holds in fee simple, with no park or pad tenancy involved — a conventional mortgage lender treats it much like any other rural home on its own lot, subject to the usual well and septic questions covered elsewhere in this cluster. The second sits in a land-lease community on a rented pad, assessed by MPAC as part of the community’s single roll number rather than individually, with the site tenancy itself governed by the RTA. The buyer’s mortgage broker needs to confirm upfront whether any lender will finance the second property at all on conventional terms, since the buyer is purchasing a home without the land under it — a materially different underwriting question than the first property, even though both homes could look identical from the street.
No. MPAC’s own description confirms Ontario mobile home park site tenancies run through the ordinary Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, not a standalone statute. British Columbia is the province with its own dedicated Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act.
If it sits in a mobile home park or land lease community, the whole property is assessed under one roll number with occupants listed as tenants, per MPAC’s own guidance — not as an individual assessment for that specific home. A homeowner on their own deeded lot gets an ordinary individual assessment.
Not every lender, and not always on conventional mortgage terms. CMHC does maintain a dedicated product line for prefab, modular and manufactured home financing, but appetite for a home on rented land specifically should be confirmed with a specific lender or mortgage broker before an offer is written, not assumed.
The tenure underneath the home changes the tenancy law, the tax notice and the financing — worth confirming all three before you set expectations.
