Late Fees, NSF Charges, Key Deposits: What Can an Ontario Landlord Legally Charge a Tenant Beyond Rent?

In Ontario, most of the fee schedule stapled to a lease is unenforceable the moment it is printed. Here is the line the Residential Tenancies Act draws between what a landlord may charge on top of rent and what is void by default.

I’m Arthur Zhao, a real estate broker who has spent 12 years working with landlords and tenants across the GTA. The version of this question that reaches me is almost never asked before the money moves — it is asked after. A tenant scrolling three months of bank history spots an extra debit sitting next to each rent payment; a landlord who has quietly collected a monthly charge starts to wonder whether it was ever allowed. By the time anyone asks, the money is usually already gone — and a clock most people have never heard of has started running.

That clock is one year: Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act lets a tenant apply to get illegally collected money back, but only within a year of when it was taken. So this article works backward from the money that already changed hands — what a landlord is actually permitted to charge on top of rent, what the Act flatly prohibits, and how the remedy works before the window closes.

The starting point: rent, and almost nothing on top

The Act’s default rule is deliberately broad. Under s. 134(1), no landlord shall directly or indirectly collect or require from a tenant — or a prospective or former tenant — a fee, premium, commission, bonus, penalty, key deposit or other like amount of money, whether or not it is refundable. The same section also bars charging for goods or services as a condition of granting or continuing the tenancy on top of lawful rent, and bars splitting the rent into pieces that add up to more than the lawful total. s. 134(2) closes the obvious workaround: superintendents, property managers and anyone else acting for the landlord are bound by the same rule, so routing a fee through a management company changes nothing. And s. 134(1.1) makes clear a landlord cannot charge rent for a period after the tenancy has ended and the tenant has moved out.

A fee clause in your signed lease does not settle it

A natural objection is: but the tenant signed a lease that lists these fees. Under the Act that does not rescue the charge. s. 4(1) provides that a provision in a tenancy agreement that is inconsistent with the Act or its regulations is void — not voidable, not enforceable-until-challenged, but void. So a lease clause imposing a charge the Act prohibits has no legal force, even with a signature under it. This cuts both ways: a landlord who relies on such a clause is relying on nothing, and a tenant who agreed to it is not bound by it.

Late fees: a penalty the Act leaves off the list

Late-payment fees are the single most common charge I see printed on leases, so they deserve a clear answer. A fee triggered purely by paying rent late is, in substance, a penalty — and penalty is one of the exact words s. 134(1)(a) prohibits. It is also absent from the regulated exemptions below. Put those together and the statutory reasoning is straightforward: a lease clause imposing a flat late fee is void under s. 4. This is reading the statute, not reporting a tribunal ruling — I am not telling you how any particular case would be decided, only what the words of the Act and its regulation say. Separately, unpaid rent itself is not a lost cause for a landlord: arrears of rent can be pursued through the Landlord and Tenant Board (s. 87(1)), and the arrears process does recognize a financial institution’s NSF charge and an NSF administration charge as allowed by the Board (s. 74(4)). The route is the Board’s process — not a self-applied penalty.

What a landlord actually can charge: the regulated short list

The exceptions to s. 134 live in one place — s. 17 of O. Reg. 516/06 — and the list is short and specific:

• An NSF administration charge of not more than $20 for a cheque that does not clear.
• The bank’s own NSF charge — the amount the landlord’s financial institution actually charged the landlord for the returned cheque, passed through at cost.
• A refundable key, fob or card deposit, so long as it is genuinely refundable and no greater than the expected direct replacement cost of the key, remote or card.
• Extra keys or cards the tenant asked for, charged at no more than direct cost.
• Replacement keys at direct replacement cost — except where the replacement is needed because the landlord changed the locks on its own initiative, in which case the landlord wears that cost.
• A payment that settles a court action or a Board application between the parties.
• A unit-transfer charge of not more than $250 for moving a tenant between units — but only in specific building types, not as a general right.

Notice what unites the list: each item is either a genuine pass-through of a real cost, a refundable deposit tied to replacement cost, or a narrowly defined exception. None of them is a profit centre, and none of them is a penalty for paying late.

On the list vs. void by default

“Admin,” “cleaning,” “pet,” “extra occupant”: where the add-ons land

Most creatively named fees are just the prohibited charge wearing a different label. An “administration fee” for preparing a lease or processing a renewal is a like amount of money under s. 134(1)(a). A charge for an extra occupant, or a required payment for a service as a condition of getting or keeping the unit, runs into s. 134(1)(b), which bars requiring payment for goods or services as a condition of the tenancy on top of lawful rent — and s. 134(1)(c), which bars slicing rent into components that total more than the lawful rent. The label on the line item does not control; what controls is whether the Act or O. Reg. 516/06 actually permits that charge. If you cannot point to a specific exemption, the default in s. 134 governs, and s. 4 voids the clause. (Actual damage a tenant causes is a separate matter handled through the Board’s process, not through a pre-set fee on the lease.)

Already paid something you should not have? How the Act lets you recover it

The Act does not just prohibit these charges — it gives a way to get the money back. Under s. 135, a tenant or former tenant may apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for an order that the landlord, a superintendent or an agent repay money collected or retained in contravention of the Act. The door is wide: s. 135(2) extends it to a prospective tenant, and s. 135(3) to a subtenant, so someone who paid an unlawful charge before ever moving in, or a subtenant overcharged by a tenant, can apply too. What you are applying for is an order to repay — this is the remedy the Act makes available, not a prediction of how any particular application turns out. There is one hard limit to watch: s. 135(4) bars an order on an application filed more than one year after the money was collected or retained. Miss that window and the remedy closes.