Indiana Mobile Home Park Laws

Indiana Mobile Home Park Laws — Lot Rent and Evictions (2026)

By Oleg Kachko · Updated August 22, 2026

✓ Law Verified August 2026

Indiana mobile home park laws are their own world: you own the home, you rent the ground, and a separate set of rules, different from ordinary landlord-tenant law, decides what the park can charge, when it can evict, and what happens if the land is sold out from under the whole community. This guide covers those rules in plain English, verified against official Indiana sources as of August 2026.

Indiana Mobile Home Park Laws at a Glance

The law that governs parks NONE — Indiana has no comprehensive mobile home park landlord-tenant act. Lot tenancies are governed by two separate bodies of law: IC 16-41-27 (Health, Sanitation, and Safety: Mobile Homes — licensing, sanitation, ejection, and park-closure notice) plus 410 IAC 6-6 (Mobile Home Community Sanitation and Safety), and ordinary landlord-tenant law at IC 32-31. A 2004 bill (HB 1423) that would have created a true mobile home lot tenancy chapter was introduced but never enacted, so many websites citing an “Indiana Manufactured Home Communities and Mobile Home Parks Act” with a 90-day rent notice are describing a bill that died.
Notice before a lot rent increase UNVERIFIED as a park-specific requirement — no Indiana statute sets a mobile-home-park lot-rent-increase notice period. In practice, for a month-to-month lot tenancy the park must give at least 30 days written notice (one full rental period) to change terms or end the tenancy under IC 32-31-1-1 and IC 32-31-1-4; during a fixed-term written lease, many tenants can hold the park to the stated rent until the term ends unless the lease itself allows mid-term increases. Read your lot lease first — in Indiana the lease usually controls, and any longer notice written into it is enforceable.
Cap on lot rent increases NO CAP — Indiana has no rent control and no statutory percentage limit on lot rent increases, and local rent control is effectively foreclosed because IC 16-41-27-32 bars local licensing and regulation of mobile home communities. Unlike New Jersey (3.5 percent) or Oregon (about 6 percent), an Indiana park may raise lot rent by any amount at the end of the rental term.
Eviction notice periods Nonpayment of lot rent — 10 days written notice to pay or vacate under IC 32-31-1-6, and the notice is void if you pay the full amount owed within those 10 days (IC 32-31-1-7 gives the required wording). Month-to-month or at-will lot tenancy terminated without cause — 30 days (one month) written notice under IC 32-31-1-1. Year-to-year lot tenancy — 3 months notice before the end of the year under IC 32-31-1-4. A written lot lease can set a different notice period, and Indiana courts generally enforce what the lease says. No notice is required for a lease that simply expires by its own terms. After the notice runs out the park still must file an eviction case in your county court and get a judgment — self-help lockouts, utility shutoffs, or towing your home without a court order are not allowed, so if that happens, check with your court right away.

Why Park Living Has Its Own Rulebook in Indiana

You own the home (titled through the Indiana BMV as a manufactured/mobile home) but rent only the lot underneath it, so a lot eviction does not just cost you a lease — it can force you to move or abandon a structure worth far more than the rent.

Indiana does not give lot renters the enhanced grounds-limits, relocation payments, or purchase rights that states like New Jersey and Oregon give;

instead you get ordinary tenant protections plus three park-specific layers: the park must hold a state license from the Indiana Department of Health if it has 5 or more homes (IC 16-41-27-18), the park must keep a register of every home and title (IC 16-41-27-31), and the park owes you 180 days notice before closing (IC 16-41-27-35).

One practical trap many homeowners hit: the park may also hold a statutory lien on property in the community under IC 16-41-27-29, similar to an innkeeper’s lien, so unpaid lot rent can become a claim against your home — if you get a lien notice, you may want to talk to Indiana Legal Services or a private attorney quickly.

Owning the home while renting the ground under it creates a kind of leverage no apartment landlord has: moving a manufactured home typically costs thousands of dollars, and many older homes cannot be moved at all without falling apart.

Lawmakers know that “just move” is not a real option for park residents, which is exactly why Indiana mobile home park laws give lot renters protections apartment tenants never get, limited eviction grounds, longer notice periods, and rules about what happens when the park itself changes hands.

Lot Rent Increases: Your Rights Before You Pay More

Required notice: UNVERIFIED as a park-specific requirement — no Indiana statute sets a mobile-home-park lot-rent-increase notice period.

In practice, for a month-to-month lot tenancy the park must give at least 30 days written notice (one full rental period) to change terms or end the tenancy under IC 32-31-1-1 and IC 32-31-1-4; during a fixed-term written lease, many tenants can hold the park to the stated rent until the term ends unless the lease itself allows mid-term increases.

Read your lot lease first — in Indiana the lease usually controls, and any longer notice written into it is enforceable.

Is there a cap? NO CAP — Indiana has no rent control and no statutory percentage limit on lot rent increases, and local rent control is effectively foreclosed because IC 16-41-27-32 bars local licensing and regulation of mobile home communities. Unlike New Jersey (3.5 percent) or Oregon (about 6 percent), an Indiana park may raise lot rent by any amount at the end of the rental term.

Whatever the number on the notice, read it against the rules above before paying. An increase served with short notice, or one that violates a cap where Indiana has one, is challengeable, and park residents who organize respond far more effectively than neighbors acting alone. Many states saw lot-rent fights turn into new legislation in the last two years for exactly this reason.

The Park Cannot Evict You for Just Any Reason

Indiana does NOT limit park eviction to a short list of just causes the way most park acts do.

IC 16-41-27-30 lets a park owner, operator, or caretaker eject a person for three specific reasons — nonpayment of charges or fees for accommodations, violation of law or disorderly conduct on the premises, and violation of the Indiana Department of Health rules for mobile home communities — but that section sits on top of, not in place of, general landlord-tenant law.

Under IC 32-31, a park may also end a month-to-month lot tenancy for no stated reason at all by giving proper notice, or refuse to renew a fixed-term lot lease when it expires.

Retaliation and discrimination are still unlawful: the federal and Indiana Fair Housing Acts apply to lot rentals, and you may be able to raise retaliation as a defense if the eviction followed a health complaint about the park.

This list matters enormously: it means a park in Indiana cannot simply non-renew you to free up the lot the way an apartment landlord might. If an eviction notice arrives, check it against the legal grounds first, park evictions fail in court most often because the stated reason is not on the list, or the notice skipped a required warning step.

If the Park Sells or Closes

When the park is sold: NONE — Indiana gives residents no advance notice that the park is for sale, no right of first refusal, no window to organize and make an offer, and no resident-purchase or opportunity-to-purchase statute. Indiana is one of the states absent from the National Consumer Law Center’s list of manufactured-home notice and right-of-first-refusal laws.

A sale does not terminate your lot lease — the buyer takes subject to it — but once your term ends the new owner may raise rent or end the tenancy on the ordinary notice above. Bills to require sale notice to residents have been proposed and have not become law.

When the park closes: 180 days written notice before the community closes, under IC 16-41-27-35 (added by Senate Enrolled Act 148 of 2020, effective July 1, 2020). The notice must be in writing to each resident — verbal warning does not start the clock — and the 180 days runs from proper delivery.

Relocation assistance: 0 — Indiana law provides no relocation payment, no moving-cost reimbursement, and no state relocation trust fund for displaced lot renters, unlike several other states.

IC 16-41-27-35 also confirms the park is not barred from evicting a homeowner or enforcing its lien during the notice period, so the 180 days is not an absolute shield. If a park pressures you out early or never gives written notice, that section provides remedies and you may be able to sue; the Indiana Attorney General has previously reached a settlement with a park that forced residents out.

Fees the Park Can and Cannot Charge in Indiana

UNVERIFIED for entry fees, exit fees, transfer fees, and guest fees — Indiana has no park act limiting or barring them, so they are governed by your lot lease.

Utility markups ARE limited: a park that sub-bills water, sewer, gas, or electric from a master meter must follow the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission’s landlord sub-billing rules at 170 IAC 15, under which total charges billed to all residents may not exceed the park’s master utility bill, administrative fees may not exceed 4 per month for water and may not be charged at all for electric,

and every bill must itemize charges and carry the required IURC complaint-rights statement.

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If you think your park is billing more than it pays the utility, you may be able to file a complaint with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. Park liens on your property under IC 16-41-27-29 can also be asserted for unpaid fees, so dispute charges in writing rather than just withholding.

The park’s side of the bargain: Under 410 IAC 6-6 and IC 16-41-27 the park must maintain a licensed, sanitary community: a safe potable water supply on every occupied lot maintaining at least 20 psi during peak demand (410 IAC 6-6-2), sewage disposal to a public sewer where reasonably available or an approved private system with manholes at intervals of no more than 400 feet (410 IAC 6-6-8),

electrical service to every occupied lot, and rule-compliant streets and parking spaces, minimum lighting, refuse disposal, gas facilities, ground anchors, community buildings, and any pool.

No occupied home may remain on a lot lacking conforming water, sewage, and electrical service. IC 16-41-27-16.6 requires weather radios and smoke detectors.

Since July 1, 2025, if a water utility sends the park a disconnection notice, the park is in violation of its statutory duty to supply water as of the day it receives that notice, and the utility must notify both the park owner and the Indiana Department of Health at least 30 days before shutoff.

Indiana Department of Health field staff inspect roughly 1,100 licensed communities, and residents can report conditions to the Environmental Public Health division; the park’s license runs 4 years and can be denied, cancelled, or hit with civil penalties under IC 16-41-27-25.

The Trapped-Equity Problem and How to Protect Yourself

The economics of a mobile home park in Indiana are unlike any apartment: you own the home, but moving it typically costs thousands of dollars, often more than an older home is worth, and many parks will not accept a home past a certain age. That is why lot-rent disputes feel so different here: walking away is rarely a real option, and park owners know it.

The law is what balances that power gap, which makes knowing the exact notice rules, fee limits, and eviction grounds in Indiana worth more to a park resident than to almost any other kind of tenant.

Protect yourself the way the long-time residents do: keep every rent notice and rule change in writing, photograph the condition of your lot and the park’s common areas a couple of times a year, and read the community rules before signing anything, in most states the written rules you were given are what a court will hold both sides to.

Selling Your Home Without Losing Its Value

When it is time to leave, most residents sell the home in place rather than move it, and this is where park rules matter most.

Many states limit a park’s power to block an in-place sale: the park can usually screen the buyer the way it screens any new resident, but it generally cannot force you to remove a home just because you are selling, and it cannot demand a cut of your sale price unless it actually acted as your sales agent.

Get the park’s buyer-approval requirements in writing early, keep the lot rent current through the sale, and never sign a rule change mid-sale without reading it, a home that can stay on its lot is worth far more than one that has to be moved.

The Strongest Protection Is the Lot Next Door

Everything about park life is shared, the roads, the water lines, the rent schedule, the fate of the land itself. That is why the single most effective move a park resident in Indiana can make is joining or forming a residents association. A park owner can ignore one complaint about a rent increase; ignoring a letter signed by sixty households is a different decision.

Associations are also how residents use park-sale rights in the states that grant them, organized communities have bought their own parks across the country, usually with help from nonprofit lenders who specialize in exactly this.

Keep your own records the same way any tenant should: the lease for your lot, every rent notice, every rule change, photos of anything the park fails to maintain. Indiana mobile home park laws reward the resident who can show a judge dates and documents, and most disputes never reach a judge once the park realizes you have them.

Recent changes in Indiana: HEA 1477 (P.L. 175-2025), effective July 1, 2025, made a park’s receipt of a water-utility disconnection notice an automatic violation of its duty to provide water, let a court appoint a receiver when a park has not paid utility bills for more than 90 days, and barred local plans from categorically excluding manufactured homes as permanent residences.

The last major resident-protection law before that was SEA 148 of 2020, which created the 180-day park-closure notice at IC 16-41-27-35.

Indiana has had no rent-cap fight and no enacted lot-rent-notice, park-sale-notice, or right-of-first-refusal law through the 2026 session — proposals on sale notice have not passed.

Indiana Mobile Home Park Laws: Quick Answers

Can the park raise lot rent whenever it wants? The Indiana mobile home park laws above set the notice rules, and any cap, that apply before an increase is valid.

Can the park make me remove my home? Only for the legal grounds listed in the Indiana mobile home park laws, and only through the court process, never by padlock or tow truck.

Do apartment tenant rights apply to me? Partly. The Indiana mobile home park laws are their own chapter, and this page plus the state guides linked below cover both layers.

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Official Indiana Sources & Resources

Making Indiana Mobile Home Park Laws Work for You

The Indiana mobile home park laws only protect residents who use them, and parks count on most residents never reading the act. Read your lot lease against this page, calendar every notice deadline the moment a letter arrives, and talk to your neighbors, nearly every protection in the Indiana mobile home park laws gets stronger when residents act together.

If the park ignores the rules, the state agency and local legal aid both handle park disputes, and a written complaint citing the act gets a very different response than a phone call. Under the Indiana mobile home park laws, the resident with documents and neighbors is never as trapped as the park hopes.

This guide to indiana mobile home park laws was last verified against official sources in August 2026. Lot-rent caps and park-sale laws are moving fast in many states, re-check before acting on a deadline.

More Indiana Tenant Rights Guides

Disclaimer: This guide is informational only and is not legal advice. Landlord-tenant laws change and vary by city and county within a state. Verify current rules with your state, your local court, or a free legal-aid office before acting. If you are facing eviction, contact a local tenant attorney or legal-aid organization right away.

Renting? Protect your belongings — compare renters insurance at Home Insure Guide. Divorce involving a lease? See Divorce Help Guide. Unsafe housing / toxic mold injury? Some cases qualify — see Mass Tort Info.