Renting the Lot, Owning the Home
ORC 4781.40 — thirty days notice, and the right to organize
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.
Who handles this in Ohio: legal aid programs, lawyer referral and the state offices, listed in the Ohio directory.
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.
Organizing 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.
| What the operator does | What the chapter says |
|---|---|
| What the operator doesRaises the lot rent | What the chapter saysNot less than thirty days written notice, and not during a rental agreement term |
| What the operator doesChanges the park rules | What the chapter saysThe same thirty days, with the effective date specified |
| What the operator doesRaises rent after a code complaint | What the chapter saysNamed as retaliation |
| What the operator doesRefuses to renew after residents organize | What the chapter saysNamed as retaliation |
| What the operator doesStarts an eviction | What the chapter saysRuns 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.
“When was the written notice given, and what date did it name.”
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. Applying it to a particular situation is the work of a licensed Ohio attorney.