Renting The Lot, Owning The Home

ORC 4781.40 — thirty days notice, and the right to organise

Owning the home and renting the ground underneath it is an arrangement the ordinary landlord and tenant chapter does not fit, so Ohio wrote a separate one for it. A person in this position is not a tenant in the usual sense: moving out means moving a building.

ORC 4781.38

Thirty days written notice before anything goes up, and nothing during a term. No fee, charge, assessment or rental fee may be increased, and no rule changed, without the operator specifying the date it takes effect, and that date has to be not less than thirty days after written notice of the change and its effective date has gone to all tenants and owners in the park. Separately, none of those may be increased during the term of a rental agreement at all.

ORC 4781.40

Organising with the other residents is protected by name. A park operator may not retaliate by raising rent, cutting services, refusing or threatening to refuse to renew, or bringing or threatening an action for possession, because a resident complained to a government agency about a building, housing, health or safety code violation, complained to the operator about a breach of the operator's own duties, or joined with other residents to negotiate or deal collectively with the operator. That third one is written into the statute rather than implied by it.

ORC 4781.40

What the operator does	What the chapter says
Raises the lot rent	Not less than thirty days written notice, and not during a rental agreement term
Changes the park rules	The same thirty days, with the effective date specified
Raises rent after a code complaint	Named as retaliation
Refuses to renew after residents organise	Named as retaliation
Starts an eviction	Runs under the eviction chapter and the park chapter together

The operator's duties sit in their own section, and the residents' duties sit in the one beside it. Both are worth reading together, because a retaliation argument usually meets an argument that the resident was in breach first.

ORC 4781.38

“When was the written notice given, and what date did it name.”

ORC 4781.40

Eviction from a park runs under the eviction chapter alongside this one and has its own notices and timings that are not on this page. Abandonment of a home, the sale of a home in place, and the transfer of a park to resident ownership each have their own provisions. Whether a notice was adequate, whether conduct was retaliation, and what a park may lawfully charge are questions for a licensed Ohio attorney, and legal aid offices across the state handle manufactured home park cases.

Sources for this section (2)

ORC 4781.40 — Rent and rule changes in a park, and the retaliation a park operator may not engage in
ORC 4781.38 — What a manufactured home park operator owes a resident

Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Talk to a licensed Ohio attorney about your situation.

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