This is the headline to an article published in a free Park Homes Magazine issued by a well known national estate agents specialising in park home sales. The article reads…….

“With many older homes that come onto the market after the owners have died or gone
into sheltered housing, there is an increasing need for executors’ relatives and those who inherit the home for expert advice. Seekers offer a fixed fee service which includes handling negotiations with the site owners, offering advice on value and even organising the paperwork to facilitate a speedy sale back to the site owner”.

Sounds a good idea doesn’t it? Especially if you have been trying to sell your late parents home for many months and had your buyers repeatedly put off by an unscrupulous park owner determined to obtain the home for himself at the pittance price he has offered you. But before you consider taking advantage of this “service”, there are certain facts that you should be made aware of……..

(1)….. What exactly qualifies an “OLDER HOME”.?  (See also Warning Bulletin No. “How old is old”)
Over TEN YEARS is the age at which a Park Home is regarded as being an OLDER HOME according to Alicia Dunne, Director of Policy for the National Park Homes Council (NHPC),  one of the Park home Industry’s governing bodies in her article published in the Park & Holiday Homes magazine recently.  This is also the age criteria which appears to be being widely adopted by park owners nationwide.

(2)….. This advertising article could also be very misleading to an innocent beneficiary not conversant with park home law,   as it implies that the home cannot be sold to anyone other than the park owner and that the park owner has the right to buy it back, which is completely contrary to the Mobile Homes Act 1983/2006. Should the beneficiary engage this company’s services to arrange terms with the park owner to buy back the home, having first paid the fixed fee demanded up front, what guarantee would the beneficiary have that the amount received for the home was anywhere near the true value of the home?  If the home is over 10 years old and classed as an older home it will be very safe to assume that the park owner, especially the unscrupulous variety, would not pay much more than scrap or offsite value, which would probably amount to approximately £2,000 if you were lucky. It is very unlikely that the sum received by the beneficiary would be anymore had they sold it to the park owner themselves.  Quite what the reference to “organising the paperwork to facilitate a speedy sale back to the site owner” means we don’t know as a park/mobile home is a “chattel” and purchased in exactly the same way as a can of baked beans. The park owner gives you the money and you give him the home and hand back the agreement (contract). The only paperwork involved is your receipt to the park owner for the money.

The fact that these specialist park home estate agents have introduced this new service is creating the “presumption” in the mind of the innocent relative,  who has been left the older park home, (over 10 years remember) in the late homeowners will, that they are obliged to sell the home back to the park owner. It will certainly be seen as the only way out for those who have neither the funds or the will, to undertake the necessary legal action, become desperate to be rid of the home, having suffered months or even years of frustration and expense,  having had every potential buyer illegally put off from buying by an unscrupulous park owner determined to obtain the home for himself thus depriving the helpless relation of their inheritance.

For anyone considering investing their life savings in a park home which they have been led to believe they can one day pass on to their relations after they have gone, think again you could be leaving your nearest and dearest a millstone round their necks.

If you have past or present found yourself in this situation Please let PHRAA know. We need your evidence to present to Government, if we are to get this law changed. All information treated in confidence.

Compiled for PHRAA by Ron Joyce, General Secretary. PHRAA        June 2007.