Your Commercial Building Has Sat Vacant Too Long: Toronto’s Chapter 632 Duties vs. the Vacant Building Registry Model Elsewhere in Ontario
No form arrives, no invoice, no registry — which is exactly why owners miss Chapter 632 until a compliance order lands. Here is the duty, the escalation ladder, and how registry cities like Hamilton differ.
Does Toronto make you register a commercial building that has sat vacant for months?
No. Toronto has no vacant-building registry and charges no registration fee. It regulates vacant property under Chapter 632 (Property, Vacant or Hazardous), a duty-based regime rather than a registration one. You never file anything, but the moment a building sits empty you must secure it — board the openings, keep intruders out, and disconnect utilities once it has been vacant 90 days. Miss that and the City can order the work, do it and bill you, and fine you up to $50,000 (up to $100,000 for a corporation). The register-and-pay model lives in other Ontario cities such as Hamilton.
Source: Toronto Municipal Code, Chapter 632 (Property, Vacant or Hazardous), § 632-3 and § 632-10 (in force March 1, 2023)
I am Arthur Zhao. The owners who get caught by this are rarely careless — they are usually sophisticated, holding a building dark on purpose while a redevelopment or a re-tenanting works itself out, and waiting for the City to tell them what to do next. In Toronto the City never does: there is no vacant-building registry, no form, no annual fee — just a standing duty under Chapter 632 that officials enforce by doing the work themselves and billing you for it. Move the same building to Hamilton and the model inverts into register-pay-and-inspect. This piece maps both regimes, sorts out who is actually on the hook once a commercial lease is in the picture, and keeps all of it clear of the Vacant Home Tax it so often gets confused with.
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The Trap Isn’t a Missed Form — It’s the Silence
If you are holding a building dark for a redevelopment or a stalled lease-up, here is what sets Toronto apart from many North American cities: no one mails you a registration form, and no one sends an annual invoice. There is nothing to file. To an owner used to jurisdictions that run vacant-building registries, that silence reads as nothing to do here — and that is precisely the misread. Chapter 632 of the Municipal Code is a standing duty, not a filing. It attaches the day the building empties, whether or not anyone from the City has ever contacted you, and it stays attached the whole time the space is dark. Any structure over 10 square metres under the Building Code Act, 1992 is in scope — office, warehouse, plant, or house, with no carve-out — and Toronto draws the power from its own City of Toronto Act, 2006, not the Municipal Act, 2001 the rest of the province relies on.
ℹ️One line to carry into every vacancy decision: the City has no opinion on how long you leave a building empty — only on whether the empty building is sealed and safe. Leaving it dark is your business; leaving it open is the City’s.
Vacant-Building Duty vs. Vacant-Home Tax vs. the Rebate You Lost
Three separate things land on vacant commercial property, and owners keep watching the wrong one:
The Vacant Home Tax (Municipal Code Chapter 778) is residential-only — it will never appear on a warehouse or an office tower. The end of the commercial vacant-land tax rebate shows up as a line on your property-tax bill: the Province let municipalities scrap the rebate on vacant commercial and industrial land, so it is money, not safety. Chapter 632, the subject here, is neither of those — it is a life-safety and policing standard about whether the empty shell is sealed against fire and trespass. Your accountant sees the first two; the third only surfaces when a by-law officer or a neighbour does. This article is about the third.
Two Regimes: Which One Governs Your Building?
Who Actually Carries the Duty — and the Securing Spec
Before the how, settle the who — because on commercial property it is often not the landlord. Chapter 632’s definition of OWNER (§ 632-1) sweeps in any lessee or occupant who, under the lease, is bound to repair and maintain the premises. On a triple-net (NNN) lease that routinely leaves the securing duty with the tenant — including a tenant who has already gone dark and stopped caring about the space. If you are the landlord, do not assume the officer will chase the tenant; if you are the property manager, know which party you are securing on behalf of. Get it named in the lease. Then the § 632-3 standard is:
• Board every opening that provides entry — plywood at least 12 mm thick, firmly fastened (nails at least 50 mm into wood frames, 38 mm self-tapping screws into metal frames, spaced no more than 150 mm), or block them with brick and mortar.
• Finish the boarding in a colour reasonably compatible with the building’s exterior — no bare plywood left showing.
• Past 90 days vacant, disconnect or secure every utility so a burst pipe or a torched panel cannot damage your property or the neighbours’ next door.
• Heritage buildings are exempt from those specs and take the modified standard in Chapter 629, § 629-48.
• Where the site is an immediate danger, fence it under § 632-4.
The Escalation Ladder, and What Each Rung Costs
Enforcement is not a single fine — it is a ladder, and every rung adds cost:
1. An officer can enter and inspect at any reasonable time and demand relevant documents (§ 632-6).
2. Finding a violation, the officer issues an order to comply (§ 632-7, under s.385 of the City of Toronto Act, 2006) — and that order can compel you, at your own expense, to commission a licensed Ontario professional engineer (P.Eng) to report on what compliance requires. That power was added in March 2023 and is a real line item for a commercial file.
3. Leave the order unanswered and the City can do the work itself — board, clear, fence — then charge it back to you (§ 632-8).
4. On conviction the fine reaches $50,000 for a first offence and $100,000 after; a corporation faces up to $100,000, and any director or officer who knowingly concurs in the offence is personally guilty (§ 632-9, § 632-10). By the time you reach rung four, the fine is usually the smallest number in the file.
⚠️Holding the asset in a numbered company will not move the liability off the people running it. Under § 632-9, a director or officer who knowingly lets the contravention ride is personally guilty alongside the corporation — which makes the securing duty a board-level item, not a maintenance footnote.
Crossing the City Line: Hamilton and Oshawa
Move the asset off Toronto soil and the model can flip to one where you must act first. Two verified examples:
Hamilton (Vacant Building Registry By-law No. 17-127): once a building is vacant more than 90 consecutive days you must register it every year (and within 30 days if the City notices you first). The fee runs about $1,301/year — $340 administration plus roughly $961 including HST for inspections — and triggers four exterior inspections annually; buildings of four or more units must post the owner’s name and phone number on a white-background sign. Non-compliance carries a first-offence fine of $10,000 for an individual and $50,000 for a corporation.
Oshawa (Vacant Building Registry By-law 15-2024): a $250/year registration fee covering the permit and all inspections, plus $150 to apply for an exemption; the owner must hold at least $2,000,000 in third-party liability insurance naming the City as additional insured, and inspect the property every 14 days with a log.
Brantford, Ottawa, and St. Catharines run their own registries too, with thresholds and fees that vary widely. For a multi-city portfolio, the takeaway is blunt: the regime follows the municipal line the building sits on, so check each one.
💡 My own read, after watching how these files actually blow up: the danger for a portfolio owner is never the registry form that does not exist in Toronto — it is the building you secured once, eighteen months ago, and have not looked at since. A duty regime is complaint-driven and drive-by-driven; the first you hear of a problem is usually the order itself, and by then the cheap fix — a plywood sheet and a utility shut-off — has become an engineer’s report and a City crew billing you. Budget securing, a quarterly walk-through, and a lease clause naming the responsible party as ordinary carrying costs. That is far cheaper than being the test case.
- Toronto Municipal Code, Chapter 632 (Property, Vacant or Hazardous), § 632-1, 632-3, 632-7, 632-9, 632-10 (in force 2023-03-01)
- City of Toronto — Property Standards (official page)
- City of Hamilton — Vacant Buildings Registry, By-law No. 17-127 (official page)
- City of Oshawa — Vacant Building Registry, By-law 15-2024 (official page)
ℹ️This article is general information, not legal advice. Vacant-building rules vary by municipality and change over time — rely on the current by-law of the city where your property sits, and confirm your situation with that municipality or your lawyer.
Your Unit Is Empty. Your Tax Bill Isn’t: What Happened to Ontario’s Commercial Vacancy Rebate →Industrial Outdoor Storage: Why the Zoning By-law May Quietly Forbid the Yard Use You’re Counting On →Turning Empty Offices and Warehouses Into Homes: In Ontario, Building Code Part 11 Is the Real Gatekeeper →First-Time Renter Guide →
Frequently Asked Questions
We hold buildings in several municipalities — do I really have to check the rules city by city?
Yes. There is no province-wide vacant-building regime. Toronto runs a duty-based model under Chapter 632 (secure it, nothing to file); cities like Hamilton and Oshawa run registries you must file into and pay for. The same vacant building carries different obligations across a city line, so the working rule is to check the current by-law of every municipality where you hold vacant space. (Source: Toronto Municipal Code Ch. 632; City of Hamilton By-law 17-127.)
Our tenant vacated mid-lease and stopped maintaining the unit — is securing it now our problem as landlord?
Not necessarily yours alone. Chapter 632 § 632-1 defines OWNER to include a lessee or occupant who is required to repair and maintain under the lease, so on a triple-net lease the securing duty can remain the tenant’s even after they go dark. But the City can also serve the registered owner, so in practice a landlord cannot simply ignore it. Confirm in the lease who secures a vacated unit — before a vacancy forces the question.
No one from the City has contacted us — is there anything we actually have to do right now?
Yes. The Chapter 632 duty is self-executing: it applies from the day the building is unoccupied, with no notice and no grace period. Keep intruders out, board the openings to spec, and once the building passes 90 days vacant, disconnect or secure the utilities (§ 632-3(E)). Waiting for a letter is not a compliance plan — the first letter is often the order itself.
If this escalates, what is the realistic exposure — not just the headline fine?
Larger than the fine. On conviction an individual faces up to $50,000 (up to $100,000 for a repeat) and a corporation up to $100,000 (§ 632-10). But the order can also compel a professional engineer’s report at your expense (§ 632-7), and if you do not act the City does the work and bills it back (§ 632-8). The fine is frequently the smallest line in the file.
Does an insurance certificate or a security plan satisfy Toronto the way it does in registry cities?
No — Toronto asks for neither. Registry cities such as Oshawa fold liability insurance and inspection logs into registration; Toronto has no registration, so there is nothing to submit. What Toronto measures is the physical result: the building sealed to the § 632-3 spec and the utilities handled at 90 days. Compliance here is judged on-site, not on paper.
Arthur Zhao
Real Estate Broker · FRI · ABR · SRS · PSA · MCNE · E-PRO · CLHMS & GUILD Elite · REAIS
VP & Branch Manager, Bay Street Group Inc.
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