Rental

Your Tenant Put the Unit on Airbnb Without Asking: What an Ontario Landlord Can Actually Do

A tenant lists your Ontario rental on Airbnb and pockets the spread. Two remedies under the Residential Tenancies Act run in parallel — eviction for unauthorized occupancy (with a 60-day trap) and the illegal-charge offence. Here is how each one works.

Your Tenant Just Filed for Bankruptcy: Does Ontario’s Arrears Process Still Work, or Does Federal Law Freeze It?

Your tenant filed for bankruptcy in Ontario. Does the federal stay freeze your arrears process? The dividing line between pre-bankruptcy arrears and rent that comes due after — and where a landlord actually ranks when the estate is paid out.

How Warm Does an Ontario Rental Have to Be? “20 Degrees” Is Three Rules Stacked, Not One

Your Ontario unit feels cold, your landlord says it’s fine — who’s right, and who has to prove it? It rarely comes down to the thermostat. Heat is only a required vital service from September 1 to June 15 (O. Reg. 516/06 s.4(1)); the bar inside that window is 20°C, read 1.5 m off the floor (s.4(2)); and if you control your own thermostat and the main system can reach 20°C, s.4(3) takes that guarantee off your unit. The duty that always applies lives in RTA s.20(1) and in municipal by-laws — Toronto demands 21°C. Broker Arthur Zhao covers who proves what, what the law says about summer heat, and the two ways to force a fix.

Is a Retirement Home a Tenancy? Ontario’s RTA Never Uses That Word — It Uses “Care Home”

Worried a parent in an Ontario retirement home is stuck with house rules instead of tenant rights? The Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) never uses the words “retirement home,” and its one exclusion list, s.5, names only long-term care homes — not retirement residences. So your parent stays a full tenant under the Act’s working label, “care home,” with the extra Part IX protections that follow. The one catch is s.148, a power to move a resident out for rising care needs — but it is hedged by a two-part test and mandatory mediation, not a free hand. On top sits a second regulator, the RHRA under the Retirement Homes Act, 2010, which by s.52 cannot override the RTA. Broker Arthur Zhao maps how the two layers fit.

My Landlord Took Away My Parking — LTB or Small Claims? The Jurisdiction Split (and the One-Year Clock)

Landlord pulled your parking, or started billing for it on the side? Whether you fight it at the Landlord and Tenant Board or in Small Claims Court turns on one thing: was the parking part of a residential tenancy. If it was, parking is a service or facility under RTA s.2(1) — file a T3 rent reduction (s.130) or a T2 for substantial interference (s.29), claim a value-based amount (O. Reg. 516/06 s.39, never a flat percentage), and move inside the one-year limit (s.130(5)). Standalone parking is not a rental unit, so the LTB steps aside and Small Claims takes over. Ontario broker Arthur Zhao maps the dividing line.

You Fired Your Building Superintendent. No, You Can’t Just Change the Locks — How Ontario’s RTA Really Handles a Super’s Unit

Fire your building superintendent and you still cannot change the locks on the suite that came with the job. Under Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act a superintendent’s premises is a rental unit (s.2(1)), and a tenancy agreement expressly includes a licence to occupy — so “it’s only staff housing” doesn’t take it outside the Act. Part V then moves fast: s.93 ends the tenancy the day employment ends, gives one week to vacate, and lets the landlord charge nothing for that week — but s.94 still requires a Form L2 at the Landlord and Tenant Board to evict. No lockouts. The one kind of employee housing genuinely exempt is farm-worker accommodation under s.5(b). Arthur Zhao, licensed broker, on how the rules actually run.

Your Tenant Pulled the Battery Out of the Smoke Alarm — Are You, the Landlord, on the Hook? Ontario’s Ongoing Fire Code Duty

Who answers when a tenant disables the smoke alarm and a fire follows — the tenant, the landlord, or both? Under Ontario’s Fire Code (O. Reg. 213/07), disabling an alarm is an offence for anyone (6.3.3.6), but the maintenance and testing duty is fixed on the landlord alone (2.13.1.2, 6.3.3.2) and can’t be handed to the tenant in the lease. What you owe during the tenancy — annual and change-of-tenant testing (6.3.3.8), the manufacturer-instruction handover (6.3.3.4) — and whether a pulled battery is an N5 or an N7 under the RTA. Broker Arthur Zhao explains.

You Got the Eviction Order for Rent Arrears — Paying It Off Doesn’t Always Save You in Ontario

Facing an Ontario eviction order for unpaid rent? Section 74 of the Residential Tenancies Act gives three separate chances to pay and stay: before the order issues (discontinued), before it becomes enforceable (void, with no limit), and before the sheriff enforces it (set aside). Only the last is capped at once per tenancy. Broker Arthur Zhao maps what you owe at each stage.