Is An Ontario Tenants Rent Ever Late??

The Residential Tenancies Act makes it illegal to charge a tenant a late payment fee. If you are forbidden from charging a late fee is the unpaid rent even considered late??




Rent is due on the first of the month. If it’s not paid on the first, on the second I serve the tenant an N4 to collect the rent owing. This notice gives them until the 16th to pay or move out. If they don’t do anything, on the 17th the landlord can file an L1 application to have the tenant evicted and terminate the tenancy and collect the money owing. This costs $170.00.

Filling out and serving the N4 has costs involved that are not recoverable. The time spent filling out the documents, printing them, serving them etc. If we were allowed to charge a late fee these costs would be covered by the late fee.

Tenants know there are no penalties for paying their rent late. Landlords can’t charge a late fee when the rent is late and we can’t charge interest on outstanding balances.

While the rent owing and the application fees are recoverable, in most cases they aren’t collectable. Time preparing documents and going to hearings are not compensated.

When all is said and done deadbeat tenants owe landlords a lot of money. Trying to collect what is owed is another story. Then there’s those bleeding heart types that think the tenants are always right. The ones that think if the tenant can’t afford the rent the landlord should let them live rent free. We are not a charitable organization whose mission is to house people rent free and pay their heat and hydro so they can spend their money on the really important stuff – beer and restaurants.

Rent Guarantees

In Ontario landlords can ask for a rent guarantee. It’s perfectly legal to ask a tenant to have a third party guarantee their rent will be paid.


Welfare and Disability will quite often send the rent portion of a tenants cheque directly to the landlord. This arrangement is not a rent guarantee because the tenant can change this at any time without notifying the landlord.

In the Human Rights Code, Regulation 290/98, 2. (1) A landlord may require a prospective tenant to obtain a guarantee for the rent. By requiring a rent guarantee the landlord is somewhat protected. I say somewhat protected because you still have to collect from the guarantor if the tenants fails to pay their rent.

As a landlord we are now going to be asking the majority, if not all of our new tenants to get a rent guarantee. In doing this if the tenant defaults on their rent payment we have another person we can legally go after for payment.

From April 1 2008 to March 31 2009 the Landlord and Tenant Board received 85,840 applications under the Residential Tenancy Act. Of these 92% were filed by landlords while only 8% were filed by tenants. Of the applications filed by landlords 59,053 were L1’s to evict the tenant and terminate the tenancy for nonpayment. These applications cost landlords $170.00 each. Ontario landlords spent over $10,000,000.00 just in application fees to evict nonpaying tenants.