Buying or Selling A Home
Park homes are not equivalent to bricks and mortar, and the procedure for buying and selling a park home is not subject to the usual conveyancing protocols.
The Government fact sheets “Buying a Park Home” and “Selling a Park Home” give some basic guidance to the process involved, Links are shown below to obtain printable copies of these documents and forms.
Although using professionals such as solicitors and surveyors is not compulsory for park home transactions, both the government and LEASE strongly recommend that you seek your own independent legal advice from a specialist in park homes.
Is a park home a personal chattel under section 55(1)(x) of the Administration of Estates Act 1925?
The definition of personal chattels in section 55(1)(x) of the Administration of estates Act 1925 means, broadly, tangible movable property (the definition was modernised by section 3(1) of the Inheritance and Trustee Powers Act 2014). Therefore, whether a park home is a movable property or immovable may depend on the extent to which the home is fixed to the land and, also, whether the owner also owned the land on which the mobile home was sited. It would also depend on construing the term in the context of the will as a whole.
In Caddick and another v Whitsand Bay Holiday Park Ltd (2015) UKUT 63 (LC) the upper Tribunal ( Lands Chamber ) considered whether a park home was a dwelling under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 or a chattel. It was concluded that it was a chattel, and not a building, because the structure could be removed from the land without causing material damage to the structure.
However the House of Lords decision in Elitestone Lts v Morris (1997) WLR 687 held that a bungalow was attached to the land and not a chattel because of the degree and object of the annexation t the land. In that case the structure could not be removed from the land without demolishing it and was, therefore, not a chattel.