Got an N12 or N13 and Want to Leave Sooner? The 10-Day Notice and Your Compensation

One short paragraph on the landlord’s form lets you go early. The Residential Tenancies Act decides what happens to the money when you do.

I’m Arthur Zhao with AZ Real Estate Partners. Below the termination-date rules on both the N12 and the N13 sits a short paragraph with its own heading: “A tenant can give 10 days’ notice to end the tenancy.” A tenant who opens the form to find one date — the day they have to be out — can read right past it.

That paragraph is the Residential Tenancies Act’s early-exit right. It appears three times in the Act, in nearly identical words: s.48(3)–(4) for a landlord’s-own-use notice, s.49(4)–(5) for a purchaser’s-use notice, and s.50(4)–(5) for demolition, conversion and major renovation. It lets you end the tenancy before the landlord’s date. What the form leaves unsaid is what happens to the compensation the landlord owes when you take it up — and the answer sits in the wording of the compensation sections, not on the form.

When no compensation is owed at all

Start with the exception, because it is narrow. Under s.48.1(2), the landlord does not have to pay compensation or offer another unit if a notice under s.48 — the landlord, a spouse, a child or parent, or a caregiver moving in, which is Reason 1 on the N12 — meets all three of these criteria:

• the notice is given on or after the day the amendment came into force, which the e-Laws amendment table records as September 21, 2026;
• the termination date in the notice is at least 120 days after the notice is given; and
• the termination date is the day a period of the tenancy ends or, for a fixed-term lease, the end of the term.

Miss any one of the three and s.48.1(1) applies in full. The exception is written into s.48.1 only. A purchaser’s-use notice (N12 Reason 2) is compensated under s.49.1, which has no matching exception, and the N13 compensation sections, s.52 and s.54, have none either.

Every one of the three criteria is a fact about the landlord’s notice: when it was given, how far out its date is, and where that date falls. You can read the answer off the form you were handed.

Where compensation is owed, and how much

The amount depends on the section the notice was given under, and for an N13, on the size of the building. It is not always one month.

• N12, Reason 1 (landlord’s own use), outside the 120-day exception: one month’s rent, or another rental unit acceptable to you — s.48.1(1).
• N12, Reason 2 (purchaser’s own use): one month’s rent, or another acceptable unit — s.49.1(1). This notice is only available for a residential complex with no more than three residential units, or a condominium unit, that the landlord has agreed to sell (s.49(1) and (2)).
• N13, demolition or conversion to a non-residential use: three months’ rent or another acceptable unit if the complex has at least five residential units; one month’s rent or another acceptable unit if it has fewer than five — s.52(1) and (2). Neither applies to a demolition ordered under another Act.
• N13, repairs or renovations: s.54 sets four amounts, depending on the size of the complex and on whether you have told the landlord in writing that you want to move back. That choice is covered further down. None of the four applies to work ordered under the Residential Tenancies Act or any other Act.

Each section gives the landlord the same alternative: instead of paying, offer you another rental unit that is acceptable to you.

Leaving early: how the N9 works

The Act’s wording is broad. A tenant who receives the notice “may, at any time before the date specified in the notice, terminate the tenancy, effective on a specified date earlier than the date set out in the landlord’s notice”, and the date in the tenant’s notice must be at least 10 days after the tenant’s notice is given (s.48(3)–(4), s.49(4)–(5), s.50(4)–(5)).

The forms tell you how. Both the N12 and the N13 say you must use the LTB’s Form N9, Tenant’s Notice to End the Tenancy. The N9 itself confirms that where the landlord has given an N12 or N13, its termination date can be 10 days or more after you give it, and “does not have to be the last day of a rental period.” The regular N9 rules — 60 days’ notice for a monthly tenancy, ending on the last day of the period — are the ones this exception sets aside.

Two lines on the N9 deserve a second read. You must move out and remove your belongings by the date you put on it; anything left behind after you move out by that date is no longer yours, and the form says the landlord may dispose of it. And under s.37(2), when a notice is given in accordance with the Act and the tenant vacates in accordance with it, the tenancy ends on the date in that notice — here, your N9 date.

The landlord’s notice vs your N9

What leaving early does not change

Two dates now exist: yours on the N9, and the landlord’s on the N12 or N13. The Act ties the money to the second one. Section 55.1 says that where compensation is required under s.48.1, 49.1, 52, 54 or 55, the landlord must pay “no later than on the termination date specified in the notice of termination of the tenancy given by the landlord.” Moving out sooner does not move that deadline earlier, and nothing in the section makes it disappear.

The same logic runs the other way for the 120-day exception. According to the Residential Tenancies Act (s.48.1(2)), all three criteria describe the landlord’s notice. If that notice meets them, leaving early does not earn back compensation the Act never required. If it does not — under 120 days, a date that is not the end of a period, or a purchaser’s-use or N13 notice — the compensation obligation remains in the text, payable by the landlord’s date.

To be plain about the limits: this is a reading of how the sections are worded. We did not find an LTB guideline or decision addressing early move-outs on these notices, so treat it as the starting point for a conversation with your landlord, not a guarantee of payment.

Renovation notices and the right of first refusal

If your N13 is for Reason 2 — repairs or renovations extensive enough to need a building permit and vacant possession — you have a right of first refusal to move back in when the work is done (s.53(1)). The N13 repeats this in a note under Reason 2.

The right has conditions:

• You must give the landlord notice in writing before vacating the unit (s.53(2)).
• You must tell the landlord in writing about any change of address (s.53(4)).
• For a tenant’s notice given on or after the day s.53(2.1) came into force — September 21, 2026, per the e-Laws amendment table — the landlord must tell you in writing, without delay, the estimated date the unit should be ready, any change to that estimate, and when it is ready (s.53(2.1)).
• If the unit becomes ready on or after that day, the landlord must give you at least 60 days after it is ready to exercise the right (s.53(2.2)).
• The rent on return can be no more than what the landlord could lawfully have charged had your tenancy not been interrupted (s.53(3)).

The rent deposit and the last rent period

Section 106(10) requires the landlord to apply your rent deposit to the rent for the last rent period before the tenancy terminates. Interest on the deposit is paid annually at the guideline rate under s.106(6).

An N9 under this exception does not have to end on the last day of a rental period, so your final day may fall partway through a month you have already paid for, or that the deposit is meant to cover. The Act has no section setting out a day-by-day rent calculation for this situation, and you should be wary of anyone who presents a formula as the rule. What you can do is settle it with the landlord in writing before you hand over the keys: what is owed for the final period, how the deposit is applied, and whether anything comes back to you. If money the Act does not allow the landlord to keep is retained, s.135(1) lets a tenant or former tenant apply to the LTB for an order that it be paid back.

Afterwards: s.135 and s.57

Two applications stay open to a former tenant.

Unpaid compensation — s.135. A landlord who is required to compensate under s.48.1, 49.1, 52, 54 or 55 and does not is deemed to have retained money in contravention of the Act (s.135(1.1)). A tenant or former tenant can apply for an order that it be paid (s.135(1)). No order is made on an application filed more than one year after the money was retained (s.135(4)).

Bad faith — s.57. A former tenant can apply if the landlord gave the notice in bad faith, the tenant “vacated the rental unit as a result of the notice” or of an application or order based on it, and the named person did not move in (or the work was not done) within a reasonable time (s.57(1)). The application must be made within one year of vacating (s.57(2)); the LTB form is T5 – Tenant Application – Landlord Gave a Notice of Termination in Bad Faith. The Board’s possible orders under s.57(3) include the increased rent you pay for a one-year period after vacating, general compensation of up to the equivalent of 12 months of your last rent, reasonable moving, storage and similar expenses, an abatement of rent, an administrative fine, and any other order it considers appropriate.

One open question for an early leaver: we found no LTB statement on whether a tenant who left on their own N9, after receiving the landlord’s notice, is treated as having vacated “as a result of the notice.” The wording of s.57(1) is all there is to go on, and a licensed paralegal or lawyer can tell you how it applies to your facts.

Before you hand over the N9

Grouped by the piece of paper each item belongs to.