Eviction of tenant-owned home requires park owner to pay to move home

Hi, I’m in my first year of park ownership, and things are generally going well due to buying a turnkey park from a highly competent/ethical previous owner with a good onsite manager in place.That said, today a new situation for me reared it’s head.  We’ve got a tenant far enough behind on lot rent to start pushing for an eviction.But they own their home, and state law requires that the park owner pay to move the home.This would seemingly give me less leverage than with a park-owned home.  Can’t just push them out and re-lease to someone new.  I think the tenant might not have the easiest time finding a new park for the home, but who knows…One option would be to offer the tenant a price for the home less than or equal to moving charge, so that at least I wouldn’t also have to find a new home for the spot.   The home is not in great shape, and under other circumstances it would be unlikely I’d want to buy it.Would love to hear some thoughts/options from the more experienced crowd.Regards,High Plains Drifter

There’s a big gap between theoretical law and what really happens. File an eviction on the tenant, and most likely he will run off and abandon the home before you even go to court. File for a writ of possession, and he will still have to box his things under the supervision of the constable, so he’ll run off before that happens, too. In either case, the home becomes abandoned and you will then follow the methodology to take the home as abandoned property. In that one-in-a-million occurance where the tenant will not run off, you can buy the home. If even that fails, then you can leave it up to the court. Here’s the real story of what happened in an East Texas court that I owned a park in. I get the writ. The constable says “OK, you have to pull the home out, you can’t just throw the tenant out, right?” I say “yeah, I read the law and it says that I’m required to remove the home from my property, just like you do the personal effects on a regular writ. So I"m going to have the home hauled out to the curb – on to the public right-ow-way, just like you do with the personal effects – and leave it. So don’t worry, I’m going to put it on the curb.” The constable realized what that meant – I was going to block the road with the abandoned home, at which time the city would have to find a way to tow it off and secure it. So he tells me “OK, let’s just throw the guy out and leave the home here”. We have not had to tow a home out in years in any of our 100 parks. That’s because the tenants always run off rather than have the constable meddling in their affairs (remember that many of the same folks who do not pay rent also accidentally don’t pay their traffic tickets, etc. so they have warrants on them and the LAST person they want to see at their door is a cop).

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@frankrolfe
We are going through this right now, evicting a tenant who owns their home, also in Texas, like your example.
Sec. 94.203. EVICTION PROCEDURES GENERALLY. (a) A landlord may prevent a tenant from entering the manufactured home lot, evict a tenant, or require the removal of a manufactured home from the manufactured home lot only after obtaining a writ of possession under Chapter 24.

Looks like this says explicitly that we can require the removal of the home. The constable is saying its our responsibility to move the home.

COURTS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT DON’T ALWAYS SEE EYE TO EYE. Consult an attorney. I once heard of a landlord in Oklahoma that got a tractor and put the mobile home on the street. OOOOOPS. If you feel a little for the person, offering him a couple hundred dollars or whatever you feel is reasonable just to get him to go.