How does the land lease get assigned to a buyer when I sell my mobile home in Ontario?

Selling a home in a land-lease community involves two separate steps: transferring ownership of the physical home to your buyer, and assigning the site lease so your buyer becomes the new tenant of the land it sits on. Part X of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 specifically addresses this kind of assignment, generally allowing a resident to assign their site tenancy to the purchaser of their home, subject to the operator's ability to apply reasonable approval criteria to the incoming resident, similar to how assignment works in other tenancies.

In practice, this means the sale isn't complete just because the buyer has paid for the home and taken a bill of sale — the operator typically needs to review and approve the buyer as the new tenant, and a new or assigned lease document needs to be put in place for the site itself. Timing these two processes together matters, since a buyer who owns the home but hasn't been approved as the site tenant can be left in limbo. Anyone selling in a land-lease community should start the lease assignment process with the operator early, alongside the sale of the home itself, rather than treating it as an afterthought once a buyer is found.