The Landlord and Tenant Act in Ontario: A Landlord’s Guide to the RTA

What is the Residential Tenancies Act?

The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 is Ontario’s residential-tenancy statute. It sets the rules for rent, deposits, maintenance, entry, notices and evictions, and it applies to most private residential rentals in the province: apartments, houses, condo units, basement apartments, and rooms in rooming houses. The Landlord and Tenant Board resolves disputes under it, and only the Board can order an eviction. If you were looking for a statute literally named the Landlord and Tenant Act: Ontario retired that name decades ago, and the RTA is what replaced it.

Some arrangements fall outside the Act: the Board’s renting in Ontario overview excludes shared-kitchen-or-bathroom arrangements with the landlord and commercial premises, and many rent rules do not reach student residences or public housing. Renting a room in the house you live in? The exemption test is the whole ball game - worked through in the room rental agreement guide.

What are a landlord’s core responsibilities?

Five landlord obligations run for the whole tenancy, whether or not the lease mentions them. This is the operational version of the statute.

Scroll the table sideways to read the full requirement.

Breaching the big ones is not only a Board matter. Ontario lists rental housing offences that the Rental Housing Enforcement Unit prosecutes, including refusing a rent receipt, withholding a vital service, entering a unit for a reason the Act does not allow or without the required notice, and charging illegal fees such as a damage deposit. As of August 2026 the maximum fine is $100,000 for an individual and $500,000 for a corporation, doubled from $50,000 and $250,000 by the 2026 amendments.

When can a landlord enter the rental unit?

With 24 hours’ written notice, for one of the reasons the Act lists, at a stated time between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. The notice has to say why you are coming and the date and time you will arrive. With proper notice you may enter whether or not the tenant is home. There is no version of this where you knock and let yourself in because you own the place.

Both lists come from LTB Interpretation Guideline 19, which sets out sections 26 and 27 of the RTA.

How often can a landlord inspect the property?

The Act sets no number. It sets a purpose test instead: you may enter on 24 hours’ notice to inspect whether repairs are needed, and the inspection has to be reasonable. A seasonal walkthrough of a house you rent out is ordinarily reasonable. Monthly inspections of a quiet apartment are not, and a pattern of them is the kind of conduct that gets characterised as substantial interference with reasonable enjoyment under section 22 of the RTA, which LTB Guideline 6 covers. Book inspections on a schedule you could defend out loud, keep the notices, and do the inspection you said you were doing.

Can a landlord come on the property without notice?

Only in four cases: a genuine emergency, the tenant consenting at the moment you enter, a cleaning duty written into the tenancy agreement, or showing the unit to a prospective tenant once the tenancy is ending, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. and after a reasonable effort to tell the tenant when. Every other entry needs 24 hours’ written notice. Two traps catch landlords repeatedly. First, a tenant asking for a repair is not consent to enter: Guideline 19 states that a landlord may not enter without notice to perform repairs even where the tenant requested them, unless the landlord obtains the tenant’s consent. Second, entering the wider property, the yard, the driveway, the shared basement, is not entering the rental unit, but if it happens often enough it lands under the same reasonable-enjoyment heading.

Can a landlord say no to overnight guests?

No. Ontario’s standard lease guide names a term that does not allow guests, roommates or additional occupants as void and unenforceable, and Guideline 6 gives interfering with a tenant’s right to have visitors or occupants at the rental unit as an example of conduct that breaches section 22. You cannot cap the number of nights a guest stays, charge a guest fee, or require guests to sign in. What you can do is act on what a guest actually does: damage, noise, or an occupant who has quietly become a permanent unauthorised resident are separate issues with their own remedies.

How long does a landlord have to make repairs?

A reasonable time, measured against how serious the problem is. The Act sets no fixed deadline and the LTB does not apply one. Guideline 5 says all legitimate requests must be answered within a reasonable time, and that what counts as reasonable turns on the seriousness of the state of non-repair, its possible effects on the tenant, and the availability of materials and contractors. It also endorses triage: it is reasonable management practice to answer maintenance requests in the order of their urgency, water leaks before a loose wall tile.

Not knowing is a weak defence and a shrinking one. Guideline 5 accepts that a landlord is not liable for unexpected results of a problem they were unaware of and could not reasonably be expected to know about, but it adds that a tenant should not be awarded less relief because they reasonably believed other tenants had already complained or the problem should have been obvious to the landlord or their staff. A written intake channel that you actually read is the cheapest protection available.

The other half of the section is the tenant’s. Section 34 of the RTA makes the tenant responsible for repairing undue damage caused wilfully or negligently by the tenant, other occupants, or people they let into the complex. The statutory term is worth learning, because landlords argue the wrong one: the Act never says “wear and tear”. The question the Board asks is whether the damage is undue - worn carpet, small nail holes and tired paint after years of ordinary living are not, and compensation restores what was there rather than upgrading it. The tenant is responsible for ordinary cleanliness unless you agreed to do it.

How long does a landlord have to fix mould?

There is no mould-specific clock, but there is a mould-specific standard. Ontario’s maintenance standards regulation, O. Reg. 517/06, requires that interior cladding of walls and ceilings be maintained free from holes, leaks, deteriorating materials, mould, mildew and other fungi. Those prescribed standards are made for the purposes of section 224(1) of the RTA and fill a gap: where a municipality has its own property standards by-law, the LTB’s maintenance brochure confirms that the municipal by-law is what applies. Either way, visible mould is a state of non-repair on its face, and because it is a health issue it sits at the urgent end of the triage. Treat it as: inspect within days, find and fix the water source, remediate, document. Painting over it fixes nothing and the stain comes back as evidence.

How often does a landlord have to paint in Ontario?

On no schedule at all. Neither the RTA nor O. Reg. 517/06 sets a repainting interval, and no Ontario rule requires fresh paint between tenancies. The obligation is the condition, not the calendar: peeling, water-stained or damaged surfaces have to be dealt with whenever they occur, and your municipal property standards by-law displaces the provincial standards where one exists. Cosmetically tired paint after a long tenancy is a business decision, not a legal one, and you cannot bill the outgoing tenant for it as damage.

Does a landlord have to pay for a hotel during repairs?

Not automatically - the RTA contains no duty to house a tenant while you fix something. What exists is exposure after the fact: under the LTB’s maintenance and repairs process a tenant files a Form T6, and the Board can order a rent abatement, the repair by a deadline, and the tenant’s reasonable out-of-pocket expenses - phrased broadly enough in Guideline 5 to cover alternative accommodation where your breach made the unit uninhabitable.

The separate case is work so extensive the unit has to be vacated, which is an N13 notice with 120 days and statutory compensation rather than an ad-hoc arrangement. That path is covered in the guide to ending a tenancy in Ontario.

What rights does a landlord have under the RTA?

The Act is not one-directional. Landlord rights under the RTA are four enforceable powers, each with a procedure attached.

1. 1 Rent, in full, on the day the lease says. A maintenance dispute does not suspend it. The LTB’s maintenance and repairs brochure is blunt: a tenant should not withhold any part of the rent even if they feel maintenance is poor or a necessary repair has not been done. Unpaid rent is an N4, and only the Board can turn that into an eviction order, enforced by the Court Enforcement Office rather than by you.
2. 2 One rent increase every 12 months. The rent increase guideline is 2.1% for 2026 and 1.9% for 2027, calculated from the Ontario Consumer Price Index using June-to-May data and capped at 2.5%. You need Form N1 and at least 90 days’ notice before the increase takes effect, and at least 12 months since the last increase or the start of the tenancy. Section 6.1 exempts some units from the guideline, but read the test carefully: what has to have been first occupied for residential purposes after November 15, 2018 is the building or the addition, not the unit. New buildings, additions to existing buildings and most new self-contained units carved out of an existing house qualify; a unit inside a 1990 building does not become exempt because you renovated it. Community housing and long-term care are separately out, and the rent agreed with a new tenant on turnover is set freely. Worked examples and the above-guideline route are in the 2026 rent increase guideline guide.
3. 3 Applications to the Landlord and Tenant Board. L1 for eviction and arrears for non-payment, L2 for eviction on other grounds, L9 to collect arrears without eviction, plus the above-guideline increase application. The LTB forms page is the only place to get current versions.
4. 4 Ending a tenancy on legal grounds. N4 for arrears, N5 for interference or damage, N12 for personal use with 60 days and one month’s rent in compensation, N13 for demolition, conversion or major repairs with 120 days and one to three months’ rent, or an N11 agreement at any time. The LTB brochure on ending a tenancy carries every notice period, and the step-by-step ending a tenancy guide covers the applications.

Every one of these rights runs through a form and a waiting period. There is no self-help version: no lock change, no utility shut-off, no removing belongings.

Do Ontario leases renew automatically?

Yes, and nobody has to sign anything. When a fixed term ends, the tenancy continues on the same terms as a month-to-month tenancy if rent was paid monthly, weekly if it was paid weekly. Ontario’s standard lease guide states it directly: the end of an agreement does not mean the tenant has to move out or sign a renewal or a new agreement in order to stay. You cannot require a renewal signature, and refusing to sign one is not a ground to end the tenancy.

You may agree to a new fixed term if both of you want one, and rent still changes only through the guideline process. In practice month-to-month continuation is the normal state of an Ontario tenancy, not an edge case, and the security-of-tenure rules are the same in both.

What changed in the RTA recently?

The Board published an operational update on June 30, 2026 covering amendments from the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act (Bill 60) and the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, 2023 (Bill 97). Some took effect July 1, 2026 and others are scheduled for September 2026. Four matter to a working landlord.

How to become a landlord in Ontario: the compliance checklist

Six stages, in order. Each one is where landlords lose money when they skip it.

1. 1 Screen within the law. The Ontario Human Rights Code governs what you may ask and how you may decide. The rental application guide covers Form 410, what you can request, and what you cannot.
2. 2 Use the standard lease. Mandatory for most private residential tenancies signed on or after April 30, 2018. If you do not provide it, a tenant who asks in writing must get it within 21 calendar days, and if they do not they may withhold one month’s rent and keep it if the lease still has not arrived 30 calendar days later. Sign it, and give the tenant a copy within 21 days.
3. 3 Take only the legal deposits. Rent deposit capped at one month or one rental period, whichever is less, applied to the last period. Refundable key deposit only, and no damage or pet deposit. Pay interest on the rent deposit every year at the rent increase guideline rate, which is 2.1% for 2026 and 1.9% for 2027. This is the most commonly missed obligation in the Act: it accrues annually whether or not anyone asks, and the clean way to handle it is to offset it against topping the deposit up to the current rent each year.
4. 4 Maintain, in writing. One channel for requests, a dated acknowledgement, a booked trade, a record. Heat of at least 20 °C from September 1 to June 15 under O. Reg. 516/06 s. 4, and never a vital service interrupted. Check your municipality first: Toronto requires 21 °C from October 1 to May 15, and a by-law standard that is higher is the one you have to meet.
5. 5 Increase rent properly. Form N1, 90 days, 12 months since the last one, guideline amount unless the Board approved more.
6. 6 End it lawfully. The right N-form, the full notice period, the compensation where the Act requires it, and an LTB order before anyone moves out involuntarily.

Where to check the law yourself

Four sources answer almost everything, and all four are free. The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 on e-Laws is the statute itself. The LTB guide to the RTA is the plain-language version. The Board’s interpretation guidelines tell you how members actually decide. And Ontario’s guide to the standard lease is the best single summary of rights and responsibilities in the province. Everything in this article traces to one of them.