What to know
- Ontario tenants on month-to-month leases must usually provide 60 days notice before moving out, while tenants on fixed-term leases may still owe rent for the remaining months if they leave early.
- A landlord can seek compensation through the Landlord and Tenant Board, but they must prove they tried to re-rent the unit after the tenant moved out.
- Tenants may avoid penalties by assigning their lease to another person or subletting the unit, though different legal responsibilities apply to each option.
- Tenants dealing with issues like pests, harassment, or poor maintenance may be able to end their lease early through the LTB, but should document all communications and problems with the property.
From family emergencies to unexpected work opportunities, many situations could prompt a sudden move. But what happens when your rental contract is holding you up?
Rental contracts can feel like a double-edged sword. While they can protect tenants from wrongdoings, they also come with certain responsibilities.
Most standard lease agreements in Ontario include an initial one-year contract, requiring the tenant to stay put for at least one year. But when life doesn’t follow a planned script, you never know when you might need to move out.
Now Toronto spoke with Karen Andrews, a staff lawyer at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO), to find out what happens if tenants need to end their lease early.
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What happens if you need to leave before the notice period?
Usually, the amount of notice required for tenants in Ontario to move out depends on the duration of their lease agreement.
Those who have a month-to-month contract or whose one-year lease was rolled out to a month-to-month tenancy would need to legally give their tenants 60 days’ notice before moving out.
Meanwhile, under a year-long contract, it is expected that the tenant will stay in the rental until the end of the lease. Those who need to move out at the end of that period would also need to give 60 days notice before the contract is automatically renewed to a month-to-month one.
But what happens if you’re not able to give enough notice?
According to Andrews, tenants who aren’t able to give notice before moving out might need to compensate their landlord for it.
If the tenant decides to take them to the board, a month–to-month tenant might be asked to pay 60 days of rent in compensation. Meanwhile, those leaving a one-year lease might need to pay the additional months left on the contract.
“If you’re on a lease for a year and you leave three months into it, the landlord will then say, ‘You owe me nine months’ rent,’” the lawyer said.
What are tenants’ options when leaving early?
Although there are ways the landlord might request compensation for early lease termination, tenants also have some options when it comes to ending the contract without being on the hook for payment.
Firstly, the tenant might find somebody to assign their lease to. In this case, they would need to notify the landlord that that person will be taking over the contract, and the landlord has seven days to approve them.
“If the landlord does not consent, then the tenant can give their 30-day notice [to terminate the lease],” she adds.
Another alternative is finding someone to sublet the unit to. In this case, this other person would move into the unit; however, the original tenant would still be the one in the contract, being ultimately responsible for making sure rent is paid.
“Sublet is different from assignment, because if you’re a tenant and you assign the tenancy, you are giving the tenancy away to somebody else,” she explained. “[In a] sublet, you’re letting somebody else live there [and] pay the rent, but you, the tenant, are still responsible.”
In this case, if the landlord refuses the sublet, the tenant also has the right to notify the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) and ask for a lease termination.
What if your roommate needs to move?
When a lease agreement includes more than one tenant, all tenants are required to fulfill their responsibilities within the lease.
In case one of the roommates moves out before the contract ends, Andrews says it would fall on all existing tenants to deal with the early termination.
If they are not able to find someone else to take over the leaving roommate’s part of the lease in time, the responsibility to cover the missing rent would fall on all existing tenants, who would need to sort out a solution among themselves.
“At the end of the day, it’s a joint tenancy, but the landlord will want the money. If one roommate says, ‘I’m here, and I’m just paying half the rent,’ the landlord is going to say, ‘I don’t care, I want the whole rent from you.’ So that’s the problem with roommates, you’re both responsible for the whole rent,” she said.
What if no one takes over the lease?
If no one is able to take over the lease, that doesn’t automatically mean the tenant is on the hook for compensation.
According to Andrews, the landlords themselves are responsible for doing whatever they can to find somebody to re-rent the unit to from the moment they receive notice that the tenant will move out.
If no one takes over the lease until the original tenant moves out, and the landlord wishes to seek compensation, they would have to prove to the LTB that they took action to re-rent the unit but weren’t able to do so. That responsibility is recorded in Ontario’s Residential Tenancy Agreement and is known as the duty to mitigate.
If the landlord is not able to prove they’ve in fact tried to rent out the unit, then the lease would be terminated and the tenant wouldn’t have to pay any compensation.
For that reason, the lawyer recommends documenting all communications with the landlord and even seeking proof that they are indeed trying to re-rent the unit.
“Make sure you communicate with your landlord. Make sure you have evidence about why you’re leaving early. Make sure you have evidence about what the situation is and whether the landlord agreed to a sublet or an assignment,” she said.
“Get your friends to check out the building and make sure there’s a ‘for rent’ sign on the property. And sometimes you might want to get a friend to phone in to say, ‘I’m looking for a place,’ and you want to make sure that the landlord says ‘yes.’”
If the tenant needs to move out due to issues with the landlord or rental property, including harassment, pests, or lack of maintenance, they can also notify the LTB to have their lease terminated early.
However, in that case, it is also important for the tenant to document the issues, so they can prove them in front of the board.
“If I were in a year’s lease and I realized halfway into it that they were bad cockroaches that the landlord wasn’t dealing with, I’d have to prove that I contacted the landlord about it… [and] the landlord didn’t do anything about it,” she said.
“[Then], I would leave. I would file for a repair application at the board… It’s going to get to the board in a year, and I’m going to go back and say, ‘I want you to terminate my tenancy from the day I left.’”
