Ontario's Housing Crisis: A Landlord Panel Breaks Down What's Really Happening

Introduction and Cross-Podcast Collaboration

Hey everybody, Kevin Breitner here, one of the hosts of What Landlords Need to Know, also with Rob Di Lisi from Stonegate Legal Services and Kayla Andrade with Front Lobby and Ontario Landlord Watch. This is a bonus episode where the three of us are having a conversation with another podcast host, a colleague — mortgage broker and investor I’ve known for over a decade, Neil Silvert, and his Your Grey Matters podcast. We were invited to chat with him, the three of us, and this is that conversation.

Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for listening. Don’t forget to share this with another landlord out there. Bye for now.

Hi everybody, I’m Neil from the Your Grey Matters podcast. We’ve built this podcast to introduce you to important people — great people doing great things, disruptive technologies, different ways of doing things that help people. Tonight we’re doing something a little different: we don’t just have one great guest, we have three of them, and we’re diving into a subject that’s big news in this country — Canada’s housing. Where are people going to live? Can they afford to buy? Are they able to sell? Tonight we look at what happens when you want to rent.

These three people sitting here are three of the best, most experienced people you could find, and I highly recommend every one of them to you for information. Let me tell you quickly who they are.

Expert Panel Introductions

The first is Kevin Breitner — you can guess which one he is, he’s the one with the red hat. I’ve known Kevin for many years. Kevin is CEO and founder of Complete Real Estate Solutions and Investments, lovingly known as CRESI — a real estate team powered by RE/MAX, with a real group of professionals and investors offering everything you need for residential, commercial, and investment real estate, plus a great product to help landlords manage their properties. Kevin also hosts the Ontario Landlord Series podcast, which you’re going to hear about tonight.

With Kevin, we’re really lucky to have Kayla Andrade — well known in the real estate world, a dedicated advocate, landlord consultant, and ambassador for Landlord Credit Bureau and Front Lobby. She founded Ontario Landlords Watch, a grassroots advocacy organization that supports landlords, tenants, and taxpayers by addressing rental housing market challenges and legislation.

And we’re also lucky to have Rob Di Lisi — managing partner and licensed paralegal for Stonegate Legal Services Professional Corporation. He’s a real estate investor and a terrific educator, and he works with landlords to help manage risk and build sustainable rental businesses. Everybody, welcome to the Your Grey Matters podcast.

Thanks for having me. For those of you watching on the CRESI channel, you already know about Kevin Breitner and this great show — Kevin, I’m glad to be on your show too. Neil and I actually crossed paths for the first time over a decade ago, since Neil is a licensed mortgage broker and real estate investor, as well as the host of Your Grey Matters, where he speaks to people with a bit more gray hair than I have about what they need to do in their later years to set themselves up. So thanks for having me on, and I appreciate being on mine.

Thank you very much, Kevin, I really appreciate this. So Kevin, I wanted to ask — what drew you into this space, and why do landlords trust you so much? Because they do.

Kevin’s Service-First Approach to Real Estate

Two really good questions. What drew me in — I think it’s being service-oriented. I started in the restaurant industry, and a lot of what I learned there we still use in our customer service model today with how we take care of landlords and tenants. I like that people don’t have to worry about what they’re doing — that’s what motivates me.

It came naturally in the transition from helping families move around the city into helping investors with pre-construction and investment real estate. We then got into managing their properties so they didn’t have to worry about the day-to-day, and it grew further into building the team around me — including these two amazing people — so landlords get the right, up-to-date information to make an educated, informed decision for their specific situation.

That’s quite a lineup on your show — I’m thrilled to meet Kayla and Rob myself. Kayla, you’ve become a real voice for landlords in Ontario — what pushed you to create Ontario Landlords Watch? Tell us about Kayla.

Kayla’s Journey from Water Billing to Housing Advocacy

Thanks so much, Neil, for having me on and being part of Kevin’s series every month — I appreciate it, and I appreciate the opportunity to keep that voice going, because it’s not just about me speaking, it’s about the people who support me too. Ontario Landlords Watch started back in 2010, when the City of Cambridge made landlords responsible for their tenants’ delinquent utility bills. We drafted a petition to try to stop it at the provincial level after hitting a wall municipally, and it got a lot of traction. Then people from the community came back to me asking for help fighting the Residential Tenancies Act issues at the Landlord and Tenant Board. I took a pause and realized it wasn’t just about water billing — there’s a bigger issue landlords are facing, and if landlords are facing it, tenants are too, and in turn taxpayers are paying the price for the mismanagement of the housing crisis we live in. That brought everybody together through a Facebook group, where I try to keep the community informed about anything happening in housing and support them through their journey as landlords in Ontario, because it’s very difficult.

Thank you for that. Rob, you work on the front lines managing rental properties — in your opinion, what’s the number one issue facing landlords today? Also, does a landlord or tenant even need a paralegal or a lawyer to rent nowadays?

Rob Identifies the #1 Landlord Challenge: LTB Delays

I’ll start with one I know Kayla shares the passion for — the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board. That’s probably the stone in the shoe for every landlord, because as landlords — and I’m a landlord myself — we provide housing, we do our best, but when a tenant doesn’t do their part, we now have to wait to get through the Landlord and Tenant Board, which can take four, six, eight months if there are delays, just to be heard. The board talks about access to justice, but this isn’t justice when you’re choking the people providing the housing.

Kayla, you can chime in, but the small landlord is the majority of the people providing housing — it’s not the big mega-corporations. If you strangle the individual investor, they’ll back out of renting rental properties, and the government will have a bigger issue. As for hiring a lawyer — you can, but in landlord-tenant work, it’s usually done by a paralegal rather than a lawyer, because lawyers typically work in the higher courts while paralegals advocate in the smaller courts, known as tribunals. Our office advocates strongly for landlords, and people like Kayla advocate on the front lines with government, while Kevin manages the properties, doing his due diligence dealing with these tenants.

Fair enough — and speaking as an entrepreneur myself, what I wonder about is whether it’s still worthwhile for the landlord with all these rules, regulations, and government involvement at the provincial and increasingly federal level. Can you still make money, can you have a nice life? Because normally entrepreneurs don’t keep doing something they can’t win at. But we need housing, and we need it to be affordable.

Can Landlords Still Make Money in Today’s Market?

I’ll jump on that one — you’re right that we need housing. Is it a good business to still be in? Not at today’s numbers and what’s coming, at least not in this province — it may be better elsewhere in the province, or in the States. There’s a lot of government involvement at the provincial level that’s supposed to be harmonizing and fixing what’s going wrong in the industry, and now the federal government is getting involved too, plus the municipal governments, who’ve been handed the affordability crisis and are coming up with their own bylaws and policies — landlord licensing, water billing, short-term rental bans, and eviction bans that prevent landlords from evicting tenants to complete renovations, even though the goal is supposed to be safe housing.

A lot of this comes down to multiple levels of government not speaking with each other or with the stakeholders. They may speak with developers, who are also struggling to get projects funded, and nonprofit housing providers are struggling too, even though elected officials keep pointing to nonprofit housing as the solution — though it’s worth asking whether those organizations are truly nonprofit given some of the salaries involved. It looks better on a politician’s resume to support nonprofit or private landlords, so we have to stop bringing politics into the housing industry and focus on access to justice for both landlords and tenants.

It’s a tough issue, Neil, because everybody needs a roof over their head, whether they own it or rent it — it’s something we all have to work on together as housing providers and investors. As Rob mentioned, it’s really the smaller landlord that matters now, not the big REITs and apartment corporations. It’s individuals buying pre-construction condos, or keeping a property they moved on from, and renting it out to singles or families. Kayla, is it still a good time to do this? You said no, the numbers aren’t there right now.

That’s right — we do this for the numbers, it is an investment, we do it with money to make money. But the way to protect yourself right now is to turn a single-family property into a multi-family, where municipalities are allowing a minimum of three units — that protects you from non-payment situations, since you’re getting multiple rent payments instead of just one, spreading your risk across more properties. Rob, when I look at property management costs, repairs, ongoing taxes, permit delays, mortgage rates, investor requirements, and the legal help you need on top of it — why does it have to be this hard just to put a roof over people’s heads and make money? I mean nothing negative toward politicians by asking that — wouldn’t it be better for everyone if homes were easier to get and afford, at a rate landlords can still manage and afford to maintain?

The Reality of Rental Property Investment Challenges

Absolutely — I’ve experienced this myself as a landlord. I’ll say something that might sound a bit off, but I don’t think everyone should be a landlord. A lot of people become landlords thinking it’s a hands-off, passive investment — you hear that from certain TV personalities — but it is not a hands-off, passive investment at all. Some of the small downtown Toronto condos being used as rentals aren’t even really investment units — they’re 300 square feet, not even hotel-room sized, and the people buying them to flip aren’t really investors or landlords, they’re trying to take advantage of the market.

If you’re going to be a landlord, you have to treat it like a business — there will be good times and bad times, and you need to understand the legal side, the programs and companies out there like Front Lobby and Open Room, and work with people who understand the Residential Tenancies Act, like an experienced property manager.

Based on what you just said, Rob — and I’ll admit my ignorance here, because my real estate investing has always been passive, since I don’t know how to fix a pipe or a toilet — nobody can survive if everyone has purely passive income in real estate; somebody has to fix and offer something. So is there no legal requirement or training required to become a landlord, the way I have to requalify every year to keep my mortgage license? How can you earn rental income without having to earn the right to do it — or am I off base?

Should Landlords Require Licensing and Training?

Don’t give the government any ideas — right now we’re struggling to find people who even want to be landlords in Ontario, so adding a mandatory education course could make that worse. A lot of new landlords don’t know about N-forms or the rules around when you can and can’t collect rent that’s owed. When I first became a landlord myself, I didn’t know there was a Residential Tenancies Act and a Landlord and Tenant Board I had to pay attention to — that’s the rulebook we’re all supposed to be following, but the government doesn’t clearly hand landlords a “here’s your rulebook” the way they hand tenants a guide to their rights. Every landlord ends up learning from their own mistakes, or other landlords’ mistakes, and joining investment groups to grow their portfolio — and that’s where people like Kevin, Rob, and I step in to say, “here’s what the Residential Tenancies Act says, here’s what the Landlord and Tenant Board does, here’s how it’s broken.” A lot of it happens through trial and error, and thank goodness for Google, because that’s often where landlords find the right resources to get through their troubles.

Educational Resources: Landlord Mastery Guide

Rob and Stonegate Legal Services put together a downloadable PDF called Landlord Mastery, which we give away for free on our website — Rob gives it away because we want landlords to be educated and informed, and that’s a great resource. That’s what we always try to do with our talks and podcasts, and with our investor summits, to keep educating and informing investors, whether real estate or otherwise, bringing in different professionals to keep that education going.

A lot of the coaching programs out there for investors only talk about how to buy — because that’s where realtors make their money, on the buy and sell side. As soon as someone buys, it’s like they get patted on the back and told “go get ‘em, tiger, you’re a landlord now,” with no idea what to do next. That’s what we’re trying to fix, to make it a better place for both tenants and landlords, because they have to work in conjunction.

This is really important, because the three of you are creating a service for the community of landlords, and possibly tenants too — almost a self-policing community that gives people the structure they’re supposed to follow, because it is about making money responsibly, alongside the costs, fees, damages, and insurance involved. I’m a complete neophyte on this, but I love what you’re doing, because people could become discouraged from becoming landlords, and we need landlords — we need people offering housing. So I’m curious: do Ontario’s government policies discourage people from entering the rental market as landlords? Is there a problem there?

Government Policy Disconnect Analysis

There is a problem — there’s a disconnect between the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, the Attorney General, the Minister of Social Services, and municipal government and the stakeholders. There’s a report expected around October, and the question is whether they brought it to the stakeholders first — did they have a conversation before putting this into legislation? No, they didn’t. We keep putting the cart before the horse. It shouldn’t be this hard to communicate with elected officials at the provincial level about what’s happening — the loopholes tenants are using, and also the fact that tenants can’t get their hearings at the board either, because it’s bogged down with items that don’t need a full hearing.

We’re trying to get our voices heard, to sit down and analyze what’s happening at the Landlord and Tenant Board and figure out how to make it fair for both landlords and tenants — because if we can address the affordable housing crisis properly, we’ll save taxpayers money too. Recent news has Barrie declaring a state of emergency over housing, citing tent encampments, violence, and drugs. There are motions in Cambridge trying to prevent the city from clearing encampments because of extreme heat. We have to start analyzing what’s actually happening and get everyone on the same page, because clearly it’s not working, and the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Absolutely. I want to ask about the role rental housing is playing in solving this crisis — is it a long-term reality for Canadians now, or more of a bridge to homeownership?

Rental Housing: Bridge to Ownership or New Reality?

I think rental used to be a bridge to buying — now for a lot of people, it’s just what they have, it’s the only thing available. People are falling into a rental trap because the cost of living is so high, and saving for a down payment — speaking just for Toronto, with the average home near a million dollars — can take a very, very long time. Two lifetimes, unless the bank of mom and dad helps out, which I’m seeing a lot of right now.

A few years ago, 33% of Canada paid rent — that number is closer to 40% now, if not higher, and it’s going to keep growing. I think over the next 10 to 20 years we’re going to see the dividing line of owning real estate shift our demographics into lower, middle, and upper classes. Canada is such a new country compared to the rest of the world in terms of real estate. We went through a huge price run-up in recent years that a lot of people mistook for the new normal — the speculators Rob mentioned, the ones who got into pre-construction, are now facing billions of dollars in losses across GTA condo speculation as this condo market corrects. In my 13 years in real estate, we never hit the housing targets the Ontario government wanted until the last two years, and now we’ve actually surpassed those targets by roughly 10,000 units a year — but we have an abundance of units because people aren’t closing on them, they’re walking away instead.

There’s money and deals to be had, but I think a lot of people are making poor decisions because they’re not educated about their options — someone willing to walk away from hundreds of thousands of dollars on a purchase might instead have brought on an investor and closed the deal, getting through the next five to ten years, because real estate is a get-wealthy-slow strategy, not a get-rich-quick one. People over the last few years really thought they’d buy a house this year and it’d be worth $50,000 or $100,000 more the next — that has to change, and it’s going to affect our economy.

Kayla quoted Einstein a bit ago about the definition of insanity, but what you just described is really the same thing. So here’s what I heard: we need homes, landlords can’t afford to buy them, investors don’t know how to buy them, they walk away, meaning nobody’s living in them, and there’s no formal training for landlords, which I’d think should include financial education, mortgage knowledge, and the legal side. So for a lot of people it’s too hard to figure out — the folks in Ottawa are saying we need more homes, and landlords are saying we don’t know how to do this. Is that fair?

How Government Mindset Created the Housing Problem

That’s perfectly fair — but we have to ask how we expect the same mindset that created the problem to solve it. That is a problem with government, isn’t it — usually it’s entrepreneurs and everyday people who come up with the real answers, but it’s hard to get through to people who won’t change their mindset. We’re talking provincial and municipal government here, but with the housing story getting bigger, is the federal government helping at all, or slowing the process down by adding another layer of bureaucracy?

The National Housing Strategy has been a proven failure — we knew it would be, and the government’s own numbers over the past four years have shown it. Who’s taking responsibility for that failure? And do we really need all three levels of government interfering in this industry? I’ve spoken with elected officials at the provincial level who told me profit shouldn’t be a bad word, and that government shouldn’t be in the business of housing — and then, ironically, that same person is no longer the associate to the Minister of Housing. So there needs to be clarity on who’s actually responsible and accountable. When municipal governments are doing things like rent-eviction bylaws, short-term rental bans, and landlord licensing, and water billing shifted onto landlords, where is the province stepping in to say municipalities can’t do this? When the province does something right and municipalities do something wrong, they end up playing tug-of-war with each other. Someone has to come to the table and actually decide. Ideally we’d want government out of it and let the private sector do what it does best, but that’s a wish list for another day.

Federal Housing Strategy Failures

The way the country’s been heading, we’ve moved away from free enterprise and entrepreneurship — that’s my own political read on the last decade. But let me think back — I remember watching cartoons as a kid, and one thing I recall is Snidely Whiplash, the villain landlord who was only there to hurt tenants and steal their money, where profit was treated as inherently bad. Is that still the belief driving landlords getting scapegoated in this housing crisis? Is there any sanity out there, or do they still get a bad rap?

I think they get a bad rap — people assume every landlord is a multimillionaire who can easily absorb an extra mortgage, when really the majority of small landlords are just a young couple who bought a second house and kept their first condo as an investment, or a couple trying to build a retirement fund with a second property, and they’re now just regular people getting hurt by their own investments. It’s all over the news — landlords having to sell their home because a tenant in their secondary property isn’t paying rent, and the bank just takes whichever property it can. We’ve also had cases of tenants being properly evicted who still won’t leave.

Landlords get painted as greedy, but not everyone is going to be a homeowner — some people just don’t have the down payment, the credit, or the income to support a mortgage, so we’ll always have a population of renters, and we need landlords willing to put everything on the line, take on the risk, and put their credit on the line for that tenant. What tenants need to understand is that landlords are tenants too, in a sense — we still owe that money to the bank, we still pay the mortgage rate and the interest, and a lot of the properties landlords “own” are technically still owned by the bank, especially with the Bank of Canada’s unpredictable rate moves. Landlords are essentially tenants of the bank. We just need to come together at the table with solutions instead of more complaints — I think a lot of elected officials, landlords, and tenants know the issues; it’s about coming together and creating real reform.

Rob, I’ve read, and I believe it’s true, that most tenants are good tenants — we don’t want to paint the picture that anyone who moves into a rental property is a bad person who won’t pay or ruins the place. That’s not true. My understanding is most tenants are really good. But when you do have to evict, the costs for landlords pile up fast, and the system doesn’t seem to protect landlords well. What do you actually find with tenants?

Good vs Bad Tenants: The Reality Check

I have two categories of tenants — the worst of the worst, the ones you see on Facebook or Instagram in these landlord-and-tenant groups, and tenants where it’s really not the tenant’s fault at all, because the landlord doesn’t know what they’re doing. I agree that not all tenants are bad — I’m a landlord myself and I’ve had very few real problems, aside from one issue in the past that’s a story for a different episode. When people call our office, it’s usually because of the bad-tenant cases, but even those fall into two categories: the genuinely bad ones, and the ones stuck with a landlord who doesn’t know how to maintain the property or communicate, with no clear rules or structure, so the tenant ends up in a bad situation through no fault of their own.

The majority of the ones I personally see do fall into the “really bad” category — the ones who damage property, know the system, don’t pay rent, and aren’t afraid of Front Lobby or Open Room because they know how to work around it, and there’s too much information out there teaching people how to loophole through somebody else’s life savings.

Kevin, you’re onto something there — people don’t fear it because they know how to find the naive, uneducated landlord who won’t do a credit check. That’s why I became a Front Lobby ambassador — I want these landlords to know that tenants with bad credit are counting on them not checking. It’s time to put them into the credit bureaus through the system, and educate other landlords to run their own credit reports rather than accept one from the tenant, since those are often falsified, along with work references. Tenants are gaming the system because they know rent reporting has become more common in Ontario, Canada, and even the US, so our job now is to educate landlords: do your own credit checks and report tenants, because there need to be consequences.

I had a tenant, almost six years ago, whom I reported to the credit bureaus, and he’s now come back saying he’s not the same person he was, wants to make payment arrangements, and wants it off his credit because it’s the only thing stopping him from finding housing for himself and his two daughters. I replied that he owes a certain amount, and I’m willing to settle for 50% and report it as paid in good standing — a generous offer, but there are consequences to his actions, and that’s the piece our government hasn’t really addressed. If I stole $100 worth of gas, I’d be charged. If I can steal $50,000 from a landlord by knowing how to work the system — through the delays, the reviews, all the way to Superior Court — all it’s doing is dinging my credit. There need to be real consequences for people’s actions; that’s the only way they’ll learn.

That’s right, and every other industry has consequences for non-payment, with policies backing up collections. So, Rob — what safeguards and strategies should landlords put in place from day one?

Day One Protection Strategies for Landlords

Day one, get familiar with the RTA — the Residential Tenancies Act, the legislation that governs landlord and tenant matters. Qualify the tenant thoroughly, including using a service like Front Lobby, and if you’re not an experienced landlord, hire someone like Kevin who understands the ins and outs of the law, so you’re safeguarded and doing your due diligence rather than going in blindfolded. I’ve worked with Front Lobby, not directly with Kayla but through their program, and it’s actually good for tenants too, since they can build good credit through positive rent reporting. One of the best stats I share with landlords is that when we run Front Lobby with our own program, about 68% of tenants love being able to positively rent-report — that tells you the other 32%, about 3 in 10, don’t plan on paying their rent reliably all the time.

So when you’re vetting someone, you’re really choosing the best out of 7 applicants, not the best out of 10 — it’s not a bad-tenant list, it’s about accountability, and about rewarding the good tenants who paid through COVID and everything else. The system also lets landlords remind tenants easily when rent is due, and update the record so tenants aren’t stuck with a debt they can’t work off — it helps report payment plans to the credit bureau, and you can even report a co-signer’s good credit through Front Lobby. I’m hoping the Attorney General sees this is something our industry needs to bring transparency and accountability back to housing. Our federal government has talked about rent payments contributing to credit, without addressing the negative side — more needs to be done by elected officials to highlight these tools so landlords feel comfortable investing in this market, because it is risky. Give landlords the tools they need to succeed.

Neil’s Final Thoughts on Housing Solutions

Agreed. As we wrap up, we’ve heard from three amazing experts, right on the front line of Canada’s housing crunch — Kevin, Kayla, Rob. If you need something, a good place to start is Kevin Breitner — he knows what’s going on, knows how to talk to people, and has a big heart and an even bigger brain. I’ve known these three for years, and I recommend all of them.

What’s clear to me from today is that landlords are playing a crucial role in providing homes, period, full stop. As entrepreneurs, they know how to navigate the minefield of owning and renting out properties — but like any entrepreneur, if it’s not profitable, they’ll move on to something that is, and in this case that means fewer homes. We need a way to support these entrepreneurs — landlords, specialists like these three — and for government to make it easier to put roofs over people’s heads by protecting the people willing to do it. Thank you to the three of you for joining the Your Grey Matters podcast — we’re honoured to have had you, and everybody, we’ll connect you with Kevin so you can reach out if you need to.

Thanks for tuning in, everybody, we appreciate you. Thanks, Neil. And thank you, everybody — we hope you have a roof over your head tonight, and we’ll see you again on the next Your Grey Matters podcast. Have a great week.

Hey everybody, thanks so much for joining us this week. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you’re finding it informative and useful, make sure to like, subscribe, share with a friend so that we can keep getting the information out there to Ontario landlords, and keep on joining us. We’ll see you next time.