The transfer complaints were legislated on, directly

Delaware acted on the first theme, and the timing is worth noting: the reforms were signed September 3, 2025 — just after this reporting period closed.

Senate Substitute 2 for SB 56 (85 Del. Laws c. 206) rewrote 25 Del. C. § 7013. On the right-of-purchase problem specifically, the community owner's premium moved from 1% to 10% above the buyer's contract price, with a seven-day non-extendable response window and a 5% nonrefundable deposit to exercise. Failure to respond means “the right to purchase the home expires.”

On the death-and-transfer problem, the Act added a definition of “Heir,” barred termination of a lease due to a tenant's death in defined circumstances, barred a summary possession action for at least 90 days after death, and provided that a community owner “may not prohibit an heir with only a partial ownership interest… from residing in the community,” with partial occupancy not a subletting violation. Our report on that package sets it out in full.

Whether those changes reduced the complaint volume is not yet knowable. The FY2026 report is not published as of this writing.

The lot-boundary question the office says is unresolved

This is the most legally interesting item in the report, and the office is right that it is open.

Delaware's adverse-possession doctrine has been applied to community land twice in the past eighteen months, in opposite directions, and the hinge in both was whether the record owner ever asserted ownership or control. A civic association quieted title to two boat ramps its own deeds had failed to convey, on decades of open exclusive use. Townhome owners lost the same claim against their association because a predecessor's use had been permissive — “A use is adverse or hostile if it is inconsistent with the rights of the owner.”

Neither case involved a leased lot, and that is exactly why the office's question stands. A manufactured-home resident does not own the lot; they lease it. Adverse possession runs against an owner, and a tenant's use of ground beyond the leased boundary is use under a lease rather than against it. Whether a community owner's decades of acquiescence in a shed or fence beyond the plat line changes anything is, as the office says, unclear — and we found no Delaware decision answering it.

What a resident in that position can rely on is narrower: § 7018(b) constrains arbitrary or capricious enforcement of occupancy and use rules. That is a challenge to the manner of enforcement, not a claim to the ground. And Chancery held in January 2026 that a resident who is neither the titled homeowner nor the leaseholder cannot invoke it at all.

Why nobody asked for formal mediation

We do not know, and the report does not say. Two readings are available from the document itself, and they point in opposite directions.

The benign reading is that informal resolution worked: 22 of 37 complaints resolved without a CPU referral after the office got involved, which is a real hit rate for education and informal mediation.

The less comfortable reading is that residents did not know the option existed. The report supplies support for that too. Delaware requires the DOJ to hold two informational meetings per county on the Lot Rental Assistance Program, and the office states plainly that “attendance at the events was extremely poor.” Eight events for the whole year drew 84 people.

A remedy nobody requests is either unnecessary or unknown, and the same report contains evidence for each.

The disclosure document, revised

One concrete output worth flagging for community owners: the office reissued A Summary of the Delaware Manufactured Homes and Manufactured Home Communities Act, marked “REVISED SEPTEMBER 2025” and “This Summary Must Be Provided to Prospective Lot Lease Tenants.” The revised edition adds sections on DOJ enforcement and on legal assistance through the Attorney Fund.²

Both the January 2025 and the September 2025 editions are still linked from the office's page, so a community owner handing out the older version may be using a superseded document. Check the cover date.

Which office to contact

Keeping these straight matters, because sending a complaint to the wrong one loses time.

The Manufactured Housing Ombudsperson (Brian S. Eng) covers leased-land manufactured home communities under Chapter 70 and also signs the Attorney Fund report. The Common Interest Community Ombudsperson (Christopher J. Curtin) covers HOAs, condominiums and cooperatives under DUCIOA and files a separate annual report on a different statutory schedule.

A homeowners association inside a manufactured home community — and Chapter 70 contemplates them, giving them standing to petition for rent arbitration — deals with the manufactured-housing office, not the CIC office.

What to watch next

The FY2026 report is the document that will show whether the September 2025 transfer reforms changed the complaint mix. Watch also whether the lot-boundary question reaches a court: it is squarely presented, it recurs whenever a community changes hands, and nothing in the 2026 legislative session addressed it.