Practically every day PHRAA receives a call from a distraught Park Homeowner wishing to sell their park home for whatever reason. We are also receiving an increasing number of calls from the relatives of homeowners who have sadly passed away leaving their nearest and dearest with the task of selling the home bequeathed to them. In both cases it is common these days for the park owner to illegally state that he will not allow the home to be sold as it is too old even in cases where the homes have been recently totally refurbished and in perfect condition throughout.
But how old is too old? Ask the site owner this question when paying him the £100,000 - £350,000 for the brand spanking new luxurious park home and he will assure you that it will last for ever. But Alicia Dunne, Director of Policy for the National Park Homes Council, (NHPC) (one of the two Park Home Industry’s governing bodies) in her article published last year in the Park & Holiday Homes magazine, gave the age at which they regarded a park home as old as being OVER TEN YEARS, yes you read it right, 10 years. So what does this mean to a park homeowner who having invested his life savings in a park home when 10 or 15 years later, through declining health, declining mobility due to age, death of a partner, no longer able to carry out the necessary maintenance on the home or can no longer drive making shopping trips very difficult is forced to sell the home in order perhaps to move nearer to the family or enter sheltered accommodation and needing the money raised from the sale of his home, (less the dreaded 10% of course) to finance their future life.
Imagine the devastating effect on the elderly and vulnerable homeowner on being told by the park owner that he will not allow them to sell their home as it too old and will have to be removed from the park. He will then offer them a derisory figure of probably a few hundred pounds,( £300 for a home professionally valued and marketed at £87,000 is an example) knowing that they will eventually have no option but to accept due to the fact that the law governing park homes gives the park owner the right to vet any prospective buyer the helpless homeowner may have.
Although completely illegal the unscrupulous park owners practice of the blocking of a homeowners right to sell by taking full advantage of his right to vet incoming residents, by turning away every prospective buyer, is widespread throughout the industry and as any homeowner in this position will know to their cost, is almost impossible to stop under the law as it is today. That’s rubbish park owners cant do this I hear you say. Try believing that when you have been forced to move into other accommodation particularly that provided by the Local Authority, such as Sheltered Accommodation, who will, if that alternative accommodation is not occupied by a stipulated date, withdraw the offer. This means that the helpless homeowner is faced with either losing his alternative accommodation or having to pay the pitch fee and other charges for the park home he cannot sell, plus the rent and other charges on his new home. The unscrupulous park knows that the longer he continues to block the homeowners attempts to sell, that it wont be long before he is able to force the homeowner to either sell the home to him for a pittance or abandon the home. Either way the park owner wins, the homeowner is left destitute having been deprived of the equity tied up in their home.
Remember, you may be living in a new home now, or just about to purchase, and think it can’t or won’t happen to you. Think again, the new homes of today are the old homes of tomorrow. Pay your £100,000 - £350,000 today for a park Home that the trade regard as too old to allow you to sell when it becomes over 10 years old.
It should also be remembered that not only is the home becoming older, but you also. Will you be in the position either financially or physically to fight for your home in 10 or 15 years time.
Ron Joyce. General Secretary. May 2007
