Renting Out Community-Owned Manufactured Homes and Complying with The Landlord Tenant Law (Part 8)

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This is part 8 of my blog series about renting out community-owned manufactured homes and complying with the landlord tenant law.

Violation of Rules/Lease

Notices for a violation of rules and/or lease covenants are also different between owner-occupied tenancies and community-owned rentals. In an owner-occupied manufactured home, management must give the resident homeowner at least one 7-day notice of a rule violation and then a 60-day notice to terminate tenancy for the rule violation.

In a community-owned rental, if the tenant has violated a covenant in the lease, the community owner need only to provide the tenant with a 3-day notice to perform Covenants or Quit (if the violation can be cured) or a 3-day Notice to Quit (if the violation cannot be cured). An unlawful detainer action can be filed immediately after the 3 days are up if the violation is not cured and the tenant remains in possession.

* For specific inquiries regarding a filing a notice or other legal matters that you may have, you’re welcome to visit my California Mobilehome-RV Park Owner’s legal services page.

Renting Out Community-Owned Manufactured Homes and Complying with The Landlord Tenant Law (Part 6)

This is part 6 of my blog series about renting out community-owned manufactured homes and complying with the landlord tenant law.

Community-owned rentals are not provided the additional protections of the MRL. In a community-owned rental, as long as the proper notice requirements are met and there is not an ordinance or rent control in place which restricts termination, community-owned rental tenancies may be terminated for any non-discriminatory reason. In most instances no reason for termination need be given.

If the tenancy is a period tenancy (i.e., month-to-month) community owners need to give at least the period term to terminate the tenancy. For example, in a month-to-month tenancy for under a year, a 30-day notice needs to be given. In a month- to-month tenancy of over a year, a 60-day notice to terminate tenancy is required. No notice to terminate tenancy is needed at the expiration of a fixed lease term (i.e., 10/1/08 – 10/1/09) unless otherwise indicated in the lease and the landlord may file an unlawful detainer action immediately if the tenant remains in possession after the lease expires.

* For specific inquiries regarding a mobilehome law matter that you may have, you’re welcome to visit my California Manufactured Housing Community Owners legal services page.

The Unlawful Detainer: Land Mines of Delay Tactics and Affirmative Defenses

Many manufactured housing community owners and managers have been through the unlawful detainer process, but not all of them have encountered just how different and difficult one unlawful detainer action can be from another regarding time frames, discovery and even trial. If you are lucky, your encounter with an unlawful detainer action took approximately 3-4 weeks and ended nicely in a default judgment without the need to go to court. This article will walk you through the non-default unlawful detainer action and address some of the options that resident/tenants have to delay the process and to make the unlawful detainer action a long, expensive experience.

In discussing the difficult unlawful detainer trial, this article will address the delay tactics taken by residents (“resident defendants”) and/or their attorneys and the affirmative defenses that can be raised to complicate the issues, as well as post-trial motions and appeals that delay returning possession of the premises to the community owner (“owner”).

Please visit this link for the full article originally published in the WMA Reporter: Legal Lines – Delay Tactics.pdf