We're trying to encourage a non-paying resident to leave our newly purchased 50-lot mobile home park (all Park-Owned homes) that we recently bought. We posted a 30-day Notice of Non-Renewal on her door July 27th. Now after being served papers by the sheriff, in an appeal to the judge she writes that the lease we have is not the current one; her lease goes through April 2023. I'm not sure if the previous manager gave us all the paperwork so there might indeed be another more current lease in effect. (We haven't written new leases with tenants yet -- we did ask for applications and photo IDs so we can screen who's here and decide if we want to continue renting to folks.) If there is a lease in place with a previous owner (we haven't signed a new lease with this tenant), are we bound to the previous lease's provisions? Obviously she needs to pay so the court case is not a big concern to me. However, we do have another tenant who has a lease that is written through April 2023 who is paying and whom we don't really want to stay on the property.

I do not know AR law. And knowing your state law is important!

Generally speaking, a lease binds the new owner of the property. When you bought the property, the Seller should have provided you with all existing leases and with an accounting of all deposits.

As you already noted, if this non-paying tenant gets evicted for non-payment, the existence of a current lease is not really material. But you need to give the proper notice for non-payment, and not a notice of non-renewal.

In my state, I would tell you to start over with a Pay Rent or Quit, because the non-renewal notice would not be valid if there really is a current lease.

As to the other tenant, the one who pays, you cannot evict without grounds. You can post a Notice of Non-Renewal in proper time (60 days, at a guess) before the lease is up and try to get rid of the tenant you do not like.

Here is how I would deal with your situation. I would get MY new lease in place with everyone who resides in the MHP. For this individual that refuses to sign or that is not offered a lease to sign. They still need to be made aware of the terms of your lease. The remedy for non compliance with lease terms are of course spelled out in the lease.

Sisco, if new owner (Aimee) presents the new owner's lease, the existing tenants can reject it. The existing tenants have all rights and obligations set forth in the old owner's lease. Aimee can change the lease provisions only when the old leases are up (unless the existing tenants agree to the new lease terms.)

Existing tenant cannot be evicted for non-compliance with Aimee's lease provisions if the existing tenant has not agreed to the new lease.

Questions for our lawyer -- thank you, All.

Next time, require during escrow as a condition of sale that an estoppel certificate will be provided to tenants to confirm the terms of their rental agreements.

Simply put it's kind of like "object now or lose the opportunity later on".

Then you would not have all sorts of claims either phoney or real being asserted months after your acquisition of property.

What I'm trying to discern is, if we have tenants who are unwilling to sign a lease that we might offer them, would you think that we would have success in court getting them gone if we show that they refused to abide by the park rules, for instance bringing in guests that stayed more than 3 days that weren't on the lease, etc.

Now we're concerned because we don't know how many more tenants have longer-term leases that weren't given to us before we bought the property.