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Letters  

Missing point of form

Re. Anthony Shephard’s column Selling manufactured homes (Castanet, March 27)

Anthony Shephard misses the most important point in lauding the government's Request to Assign a Manufactured Home Site form (RTB-10).

A manufactured home community owner is renting the land to the owners of manufactured homes and, no different from an apartment building, the community owner must consider the reliability and suitability of potential residents before making the decision to rent a site to them or not.

The ability to assign a tenancy agreement prevents a community owner from declining a request to assign the tenancy agreement for a myriad of reasons, (e.g. the buyers have pit bull dogs, the buyers have an aggressive attitude, the buyers are known drug dealers) There is a long list excluded from the grounds for declining on the RTB 10.

Most often, the community owner wants to ensure new tenants will be responsible community members who treat their neighbours and management with respect.

The RTB10s value is to realtors, not home sellers, current residents or community owners. Many realtors circumvent the law requiring only home owners to submit the form to the community owner or manager by making up the form themselves, and submitting it to the community owner who may not be conversant with the law. The realtor's only interest is to get a quick sale at a rent well below market.

Rent controls have impacted manufactured home community owners much more negatively than apartment building owners, as residents in manufactured home communities generally live there for decades resulting in current rents than can be 50% or 75% below current market rent.

The average turnover in a rental apartments is about 2.5 years, allowing the owner to set the new rent at market rates. Also, an apartment tenancy agreement cannot be assigned without the building owner or manager approving the new tenants—without restrictions on the decision-making.

Also, work on the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act began in 2002. The act didn't come into force until Jan. 1, 2024. As past CEO the Rental Owners and Managers Society of B.C. and past executive director the Manufactured Home Park Owners Alliance of B.C., I was directly involved in the work to create it

Al Kemp



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