Manufactured Home Amendments – First proclamation date announced and new Regulations made

There have been two important developments in the implementation of the Manufactured Homes (Residential Parks) Amendment Act 2024 (Amendment Act).

First proclamation date announced

First, the Governor in Council has proclaimed that 20 February 2025 will be the commencement of the following provisions of the Amendment Act:

• sections 31, 47 and 48 – which create various new requirements concerning the registration of residential parks, the residential park register, the park website and comparison document, cancelling registration, and offences relating to unregistered residential parks;
• section 49 (except for the new sections 199 to 202 that it inserts) – which are transitional provisions relating to residential parks already registered under the existing record of residential parks; and
• section 51(2), which are various new defined terms, but only to the extent it inserts definitions affected person, comparison document, emergency plan, information, information notice, internal review, internal review decision, original decision, QCAT information notice, registered, residential park register and unregistered residential park.

The new application for registration and comparison document forms have not yet been released, but we anticipate that this will occur in due course.

New Regulations made

Second, the Governor in Council has made the Manufactured Homes (Residential Parks) Amendment Regulation 2024, which also commences on 20 February 2025.

The Amendment Act provides for various additional requirements to be made by Regulation in relation to the registration of residential parks and the comparison document, and these new Regulations do that.

As to the application for registration, the application must also include the following information in addition to the information set out in Section 18A of the Act:

• a copy of any development approvals for the planning and construction of the residential park required under the Planning Act 2016 and obtained by the park owner;
• whether the residential park will contain types of accommodation in addition to owner-occupied manufactured homes;
• details of any other residential parks owned by the park owner;
• a copy of any template site agreement or sale contract used, or to be used, by the park owner; and
• an estimate of the proposed site rent, or the proposed range of site rent, payable by a home owner in the first year of operation of the residential park.

The above information will also be recorded in the residential park register for each park that is registered, as well as:

• the comparison document; and
• whether the residential park has started operating and, if so, the relevant date.

A residential park is exempt from the requirement under section 18G(1) of the Act to maintain a website for the residential park if it has not more than 15 sites.

Lastly, various additional information to be included in the comparison document is prescribed covering matters such as:

• identifying information (such as name, address, contact details etc);
• residential park information (such as status of development, number of sites, types of accommodation, pet restrictions, general increase day, etc);
• fees and costs (such as mandatory fees, optional services, facilities for additional fees, etc);
• utilities (such as utilities not included in site rent, how utilities are supplied to sites, etc);
• residential park land and facilities (such as parking spaces, security and safety features, accessibility features, day-to-day management of the park, etc); and
• miscellaneous (such as insurance, home owners committee, accreditation, etc).

Park owners will need to monitor for further updates to ensure that they are ready for the commencement of these requirements on 25 February 2025.