Ontario Standard Lease
For most personal residential tenancy agreements, the standard lease is needed for new agreements signed on or after April 30, 2018. The Ontario standard lease establishes a deal between the property owner and the renter when it is complete. As mentioned, as part of its legislative change of the Residential Tenancy Laws, the Ontario government has passed a law requesting all rentals to be in a Standard Form Lease Agreement (“Ontario Standard Lease”).
Luckily, the conditions of this new agreement are not retroactive and do not negate OREA or other forms of lease automatically, but there are implications to be mindful of.
What is in the standard lease
The Ontario standard lease has almost 17 section that we just mention them in this article and if you want to know more information about these sections, click here.
- Parties to the agreement
- Rental unit
- Contact information
- Term of the tenancy agreement
- Rent
- Services and utilities
- Rent discounts
- Rent deposit
- Key deposit
- Smoking
- Tenants insurance
- Changes to the rental unit
- Maintenance and repairs
- Assignment and subletting
- Additional terms
- Changes to this agreement
- Signatures
Is the Ontario standard lease changeable?
You cannot change any section of the standard lease, and it must print with all elements. But according to section 15, you can add valid and enforceable terms. These must be explicit and transparent in the language. For example, you can add terms about smoking prohibition, the number of occupants, having pets and other similar conditions.
Why landlords must be aware of the Ontario standard lease?
This needs only the most essential tenant details and most of the information in the paper is about “tenant rights” and how tenants should secure themselves. But there is a hole in this agreement when it comes to the protection of the landlord. The lack of clarity needed leaves landlords wide-open to many issues during and after a rental agreement.
Actually, the Ontario standard lease is all about renters and doesn’t show any concern about landlords. But somehow, landlords can protect themselves from feature problems. The solution is in section 15 “Additional terms”. According to this section, landlords and their tenants are allowed to agree on items in an “attached form”.
It is necessary for new landlords to know, that you can not attach terms that do not obey the Residential Tenancies Act. For example, these conditions are allowed to be in the lease:
- Request a deposit of damage
- Late rent financial punishments
- Controlling the rental visitors
- Making tenants leave at a particular time
- forcing tenants to be responsible for maintenance
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