Renting Your House to Students in Ontario: Which Parts of the Residential Tenancies Act Actually Apply to You

The student-residence exemptions you have heard of are built for the college, not for you. As a private landlord near a campus, the Act has three different off switches for student housing — and only one of them is yours to reach. Here is where you actually stand.

I’m Arthur Zhao, a Toronto real estate broker. Here is a question that comes up whenever a house near a campus gets rented to students: can the lease simply say the tenant agrees to move out when the school year ends? The instinct is that it should — the arrangement is seasonal by nature. Under Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act, the plain answer is that a move-out term signed at the start of a tenancy is, as a rule, worth nothing (why, below). But there is one rarely-mentioned exception a private landlord can actually reach: an agreement between the landlord and a post-secondary institution under s.37(7). That exception is a useful way into a larger question — where does a private landlord renting to students really sit under this Act? The answer is that the Act has three different kinds of off switches for student housing, and a private landlord sits in one very specific place among them.

Start Here: The Default Is the Full Act

A private, off-campus unit rented to a student is a residential tenancy like any other. Nothing about the tenant being a student, on its own, changes that. The exemptions people associate with “student housing” have to be earned by specific facts; none of them is triggered by the word “student” by itself.

The rest of this article walks the three places the Act can switch off, arranged by how much each one switches off — the whole Act, then a string of rules, then a single rule. Read in that order, the pattern becomes plain: the first two switches are built around the institution, which leaves the private landlord in the ordinary lane unless one specific fact is present.

Switch One: The Whole Act Off — Built for the Institution’s Own Residence

The broadest switch turns the entire Act off. Under s.5(g), the Act does not apply to accommodation provided by an educational institution to its students or staff — but only when both of the following are true:

• (i) the accommodation is provided primarily to persons under the age of majority, or all of the major questions related to the accommodation are decided after consulting a council or association representing the residents; and
• (ii) the accommodation does not have its own self-contained bathroom and kitchen facilities, or is not intended for year-round occupancy by full-time students or staff and their families.

The two limbs are joined by and: fail either one, and the unit falls out of this full exemption. But notice who the whole provision is about — accommodation “provided by an educational institution.” A private landlord is not an educational institution, so s.5(g) does not reach a private landlord at all.

There is a second whole-Act-off switch that can touch a private landlord, and it has nothing to do with the tenant being a student. Under s.5(i), the Act does not apply where the occupant has to share a kitchen or bathroom with the owner — or the owner’s spouse, child or parent, or the spouse’s child or parent — and that owner or relative lives in the same building. This is the live-in-landlord or homestay situation. It switches off the whole Act, but it turns on sharing with the owner, not on the tenant holding a student card.

Switch Two: A String of Rules Off — Also the Institution’s, Not Yours

The middle switch does not turn the whole Act off; it removes a specific list of rules. Under s.7(1), paragraph 5, where an educational institution provides a unit to a student or staff member and the unit is not within the s.5(g) exemption, a named set of the Act’s provisions simply do not apply. Among the ones on that list:

• the guideline that caps an annual rent increase (s.120), and applications for an above-guideline increase (s.126);
• the rule against charging more than lawful rent (s.111);
• assignment of a tenancy (s.95);
• the one-month compensation owed on a landlord’s-own-use or purchaser’s-own-use termination (s.48.1, s.49.1);
• the three-months’ compensation on demolition, conversion, or repair-and-renovation terminations (s.52, s.54);
• the residency and compensation protections tied to condominium conversion and severance (s.51, s.55, s.56).

The list runs longer than this, and s.7(2)(b) adds one more removal — the twelve-month rule on rent increases (s.119) does not apply to these units either.

The point for our reader is the same as before: this partial exemption attaches to a unit “provided by an educational institution.” A private landlord’s unit is not one of these, so switch two — like switch one — passes the private landlord by.

Switch Three: The Act Fully Applies, and Only One Rule Is Off

The narrowest switch is the one that finally involves a private landlord. Here the Act applies in full, and a single rule is turned off.

Start with the rule itself. Under s.37(4) and (5), a tenant’s notice to terminate, or an agreement to terminate, that is signed at the time the tenancy is entered into — or as a condition of entering into it — is void. That is precisely why a lease clause reading “the tenant agrees to move out at the end of the school year,” signed on day one, is as a rule worth nothing: the Act pre-empts it.

Section 37(6) switches that void-rule off for post-secondary students living in (a) a residential complex owned, operated or managed by — or on behalf of — the educational institution, or (b) a unit provided by a non-profit housing co-operative primarily to post-secondary students. Institution-run, or co-op — still not the private landlord down the street.

And then there is s.37(7), which is the one place in this whole scheme where the private landlord finally appears by name. It gets its own section next.

The One Switch a Private Landlord Can Reach: the s.37(7) Agreement

Under s.37(7), the void-rule in s.37(4) and (5) does not apply to a unit if the landlord has an agreement with one or more post-secondary institutions and that agreement meets three conditions:

• the unit is rented only to students of the institution or institutions that are party to the agreement;
• the landlord complies with the maintenance standards set out in the agreement;
• the rent charged to a new tenant does not exceed the previous tenant’s lawful rent plus the permitted guideline increase.

When all three hold, a pre-signed move-out term stops being automatically void — which means the seasonal, end-of-term turnover the arrangement depends on can actually be built in. This is the answer to the question the intro opened with: the “move out when the year ends” term, useless in an ordinary lease, becomes workable inside a qualifying s.37(7) agreement. It is the only switch on this whole list that a private landlord holds the key to.

The Strings Attached to That One Switch

The s.37(7) route is real, but it is not a free pass. Three further provisions fence it in:

• s.37(8) — the maintenance standards written into the agreement cannot be lower than the standards the law would otherwise require. You cannot use the agreement to contract down on upkeep.
• s.37(9) — if the landlord breaches any of the agreement’s terms, the agreement is terminated. When the agreement falls, the exemption falls with it, and the unit drops back under the ordinary void-rule.
• s.37(11) — either party may terminate the agreement on at least 90 days’ written notice.

So the exemption lives only as long as the agreement does, and the agreement is both conditional (breach ends it) and terminable (either side can walk away on notice). Whether a particular agreement actually qualifies under s.37(7), and how it should be drafted, is a legal question — worth putting in front of a lawyer or a licensed paralegal before you rely on it.