Fixing Ontario's Rental Market: Tools Every Landlord Should Know About

Introduction & Current Landlord Challenges

Hey everybody, welcome back, Ontario landlords. Today’s podcast dives into what every Ontario landlord should really start thinking about. We’ve talked before about landlording being a business — and the other side of that is understanding and utilizing the tools and systems around us.

The system right now leans in favor of tenants. The goal isn’t to make it unbalanced in the landlord’s favor, just to make it a little more fair for everybody. Nobody should have to wait months for a hearing to figure out what’s going on, whether it’s not paying rent or not receiving rent. That’s the biggest issue at the LTB — non-payment of rent is almost certainly the most-filed application. There are different tools and systems out there, and things that are changing, so today’s guest is Kayla Andrade, an advocate for Ontario landlords for years.

Kayla is a passionate advocate and experienced landlord consultant, an ambassador for the Landlord Credit Bureau’s Front Lobby, and works on clarity around building controls with a results-driven approach. She has successfully supported landlords across local and provincial levels, helping them navigate complex policies and changes. As founder of Ontario Landlords Watch, a grassroots organization and Facebook group, Kayla has built a platform that champions landlords, tenants, and taxpayers by addressing key issues in the rental housing market and advocating for balanced legislation. She started her journey as a landlord at just 18 years old and has grown her portfolio to include multiple properties.

The Water Billing Crisis Origin Story

Kayla’s advocacy started when the City of Cambridge made landlords responsible for tenants’ delinquent utility bills, which led her to connect with a lawyer in Toronto and start a petition. That petition kept coming back to her from landlords and property managers asking for help fighting the Residential Tenancies Act and the Landlord and Tenant Board. The water billing issue showed up not just in Cambridge but across the province, and it communicated a broader need for assistance in the housing industry. The rules, she found, are definitely in favor of the tenant, and because of the Landlord and Tenant Board it has gotten a lot worse — landlords are very vulnerable in Ontario, and many are trying to get out of the business because the rules and regulations have tilted too far in one direction.

It’s now landlords’ job to understand the issues, recommend solutions, and communicate with the people in power — whether that’s an MPP, city staff, or the Attorney General who oversees the Landlord and Tenant Board. It’s not just the province with policies that affect housing; municipalities matter too, and landlords have a voice and a say.

One of the biggest issues is that landlords are having a hard time collecting rent, and it takes months to get to the board. With non-payment of rent on a single-family home, the landlord is 100 percent responsible for the mortgage, which makes it very hard on them.

Tackling Non-Payment Issues

Kayla’s view: because non-payment-of-rent applications are the number-one application at the Landlord and Tenant Board, the board needs to streamline that process. There are currently 53,000 applications backlogged at the LTB, largely because of the high volume of non-payment-of-rent applications. If a tenant hasn’t paid a single dollar in six months with no payment arrangement in place, there should be a way for the landlord to file for an expedited hearing or order — an ex parte order.

At the same time, there are products and services such as rent reporting that help make tenants understand there are consequences to not paying rent. Landlords already face fines from the Ministry of Housing, the city, and the Landlord and Tenant Board — there need to be consequences for tenants who abuse the system too, which is where rent reporting through Front Lobby comes in: it can show that not paying rent on time impacts a tenant’s credit, while paying on time builds it, along with a tenancy record that future landlords will want to see.

The Landlord and Tenant Board is under enormous strain right now because tenants know they can wait 12 months or longer if they know the loopholes — the “professional tenant” problem. That’s different from tenants or landlords who are legitimately affected and whose matters should be heard faster than six to eight months, whether for non-payment of rent or a tenant-side issue like pests in the unit. Most landlords do the right thing, but some don’t fix properties or act quickly enough when tenants raise a genuine issue — at the same time, the board shouldn’t be signaling that tenants can withhold rent for any reason. Rent should always be paid; a landlord always owes their own mortgage payment whether or not rent comes in.

Tenants now have the opportunity to bring maintenance concerns to a non-payment hearing to try to justify not paying rent, but nowhere in the Residential Tenancies Act does it say a tenant can withhold rent for no maintenance or poor maintenance. If a tenant isn’t getting service from their landlord, they can file their own application (often for free) or contact their city’s bylaw department, which can investigate and give the landlord a timeframe to address the issue.

As a property manager, calls for help tend to come in two ways: either the landlord doesn’t want to be involved in the day-to-day from the start, or something has already gone wrong and help is needed to fix a soured situation. Once a situation sours, a tenant may take advantage, feeling entitled because it’s their home — even though it’s not their house; they don’t own it, they’re paying to live there. In one case, after taking over a property, a full home inspection was done alongside a city worker, and while the tenant’s list of complaints was long, most of it was fabricated — only a couple of small things actually needed fixing.

New Tools for Landlord Protection

There are different tools available now: Front Lobby offers screening and rent reporting, Open Room is another option, and there’s been talk of Equifax getting more directly involved with the province so tenant payment history connects to actual credit. Right now it’s too easy for tenants to walk away from a payment plan without consequence, leaving landlords stuck — the goal is figuring out how to make that more equal.

With the amount of immigration coming in and the number of people growing up here looking to get into their own places, there’s a lot of movement, and we need the housing. The private sector fills the gap for tenants who can’t be homeowners, since government (i.e., taxpayers) can’t afford to keep building, managing, and subsidizing government housing on its own. If government policy discourages private investors from investing in Ontario, and instead encourages them to invest elsewhere, that’s a warning sign — and it’s part of why we’re seeing more tent encampments, tied to bad housing policy and mismanagement of the housing crisis.

The Landlord and Tenant Board is reportedly considering sharing its data with credit bureaus, but in the meantime landlords can proactively do monthly rent reporting — reporting good debt or negative debt without needing an order or the tenant’s consent. This still surprises people; a TikTok video on the topic got over 76,000 views with people asking whether that’s even allowed. It is. This is part of why a bill called “Cutting the Red Tape and Building Ontario” matters, and why landlords should encourage their MPP, whatever party they belong to, to support it.

The Reality of Home Ownership

Not everyone who rents is a “bad tenant” or a professional tenant — the horror stories are what travel, but 40 percent of the country pays rent, and they’re not all bad people; many simply can’t afford a home. In a 2018 study, Canada had the most people per capita of any country in the world who owned real estate under the age of 35. That signals lending was made too easy: people came out of their parents’ homes and bought a starter (or even a million-dollar) home right away, instead of renting for a while first, the way many people used to.

It’s a great thing to own real estate — it opens doors as an investor and remains one of the best investments a person can make. But too many young people bought and owned real estate too soon, and correcting the resulting imbalance is part of today’s housing challenge, tied back to interest-rate policy and lending rules over the past decade.

Front Lobby and the credit bureau relationship help here too: paying rent on time can improve a tenant’s credit, and not paying on time can negatively impact it.

Front Lobby & Credit Bureau Solutions

Some landlords worry rent reporting will be time-consuming, but it isn’t: a landlord creates the lease, enters the tenant’s information into the system, and payments are reported on time and in full every month to the Landlord Credit Bureau and Equifax. The landlord only needs to log in periodically to confirm the reporting is accurate, or to report a debt — no order or tenant consent is required to report a debt. Tenants get rent reminder emails too, which actually encourages them to pay earlier.

Landlords can also check a prospective tenant’s credit score and credit report through Front Lobby before move-in, and can report a former tenant’s unpaid rent or utilities going back up to six years, not just a current tenant’s payments (damages can’t be reported without an order, since damages can be disputed, but unpaid rent and utilities can be). Advertising that a rental does monthly rent reporting also discourages professional tenants from applying and attracts good tenants who want to build their credit.

The fee structure runs around $186 for a filing fee, and about $239 for a year to report on 20 leases — which can cover multiple people on a single lease. It’s a small cost relative to helping crack down on professional tenants. Front Lobby can be used by individual landlords or by property managers on behalf of all the landlords they represent, and it’s specifically aimed at avoiding tenants who purposely take advantage — as opposed to tenants who run into genuine hardship.

Selecting a tenant carefully matters because once someone is in, it’s very hard to get them out unless they choose to leave. Being active, informed, and aware — and connecting with people like Kayla or reaching out through CRESI — helps landlords make the right decisions for their specific situation. Joining the Ontario Landlords Watch Facebook group is one place to start getting that information and support.

Education is the key to any successful business, and getting that education before a problem arises means it may never become a problem in the first place. Making sure everyone is connected strengthens the whole community.

Thanks so much for joining us today, Kayla, and thanks to everybody out there listening — we’ll talk to you soon. Bye for now. 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, and 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.