Ontario mobile homeowners struggling to sell properties accuse park owner of using tactics that break the law

Some homeowners and Realtors are accusing a private equity firm that owns mobile home parks in Ontario of using questionable and illegal tactics to raise lot rents beyond what many can afford, making these once affordable homes nearly impossible to sell.

"People have to pay until they either walk away from these homes or they die. They have no choice,” said Monique Mitts, who wants SunPark Communities held accountable for how she says it handled the sale of her late mother's mobile home in Quinte West.

Mitts, who lives in Trenton, quickly got an offer after putting the mobile home in Skyview Estates for sale.

Skyview Estates is run by SunPark Communities, the manufactured housing division of Toronto-based Firm Capital Properties, a private equity real estate firm. SunPark oversees six mobile home parks across Ontario and one in Calgary.

SunPark Communities has the right to match any offer in the sale of a home at one of its parks, in what's called the right of first refusal. So Mitts emailed SunPark about the impending sale and asked the company to transfer the tenancy to the potential buyer, should it not wish to exercise its right.

Transferring the lease was crucial because it meant the sale could be made without a major change in the monthly lot fee that would be paid by the purchaser. A landowner can’t refuse a lease transfer without permission from Ontario's Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB).

When a lease is transferred, the owner can only raise the rent by $50 above what the previous tenant paid, unless the property owner gets approval from the LTB for a higher increase.

Mitts said it took a lot of back and forth to request transfer of the lease, but SunPark refused the buyer. According to Mitts, she found out later that the park “tried to negotiate with the buyer.”

She said a SunPark manager tried to ask the buyer to offer her $30,000 less, in return for mutually decided land fees. CBC reviewed the email communications between Mitts and the company — in one email submitted by Mitts, the buyer wrote that the manager approached him to “lowball” the offer to Mitts.

CBC spoke with more than a dozen people in SunPark communities in Ontario about their dealings with the company. Four Realtors and four residents say they experienced the company throwing up roadblocks in order to stop lease transfers so it could raise land leases.

Many of these homes were mobile at the point of installation but now are referred to as manufactured or modular homes. They’re usually listed for under $200,000 each. 

According to the latest figures by the Canadian Real Estate Association, the average price of a home sold in November across the country was just over $682,000. 

Cheryl Carrier, Mitts’s Realtor, said she has seen such practices in both the Quinte West and Peterborough parks “at least eight times” in the past couple of years.

“I would have to say in my experience, each transaction has some attempt to do something that is illegal from the office's standpoint of negotiating a higher rent,” she said.