Tenants, Occupants, and Guests: Who's Allowed to Live in an Ontario Rental

Introduction and Overview

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode for Ontario Landlords here with our Landlords Series podcast. I’m Kevin Breitner, host alongside a good friend, Stonegate Legal Services paralegal extraordinaire, Mr. Robert Di Lisi. And we’re here to talk to you today about occupants, tenants, guests, the difference between them, how the rules and regulations work, how people can be added to leases.

Anyways, let’s get into it — let’s bring in Mr. Rob to start off with: what is the difference between them, and how does that look?

Legal Definitions: Tenants, Occupants, and Guests

So when we get into occupants, roommates, or guests — for the landlord, it doesn’t matter what they are, because they’re not tenants. When you sign a lease, the person who signs the lease is the tenant. Now in the Ontario Standard Lease, there’s a section for occupants — that’s saying who else is going to be occupying the property. An example would be if I’m living there with my wife and kids — the kids are not of the legal age, so they’d be occupants, while me and my wife would be tenants. What people need to know is that occupants can change without permission of the landlord.

So tenants can have guests for any length of time. They can have occupants for any length of time. They can have roommates for any length of time, without the permission of the landlord. What the landlord needs to be concerned about, which is the most important thing, is you never, ever accept rent from anyone other than your tenant. Because if you do, you don’t want to be in a position where they claim they are tenants. So it’s very, very clear: you must only accept rent from your tenant. Now, I’m going to jump in — tenants are responsible for the damage caused by their guests. So if an occupant or roommate does damage, it is the responsibility of the tenant. The tenant may also be responsible if their guests commit illegal acts. Landlords may give a guest a trespass notice if they interfere with other tenants or the landlord, and tenants may face legal consequences if their guests cause substantial interference.

So the question I get asked all the time: if I rent out a three-bedroom house to a couple and they want to bring people in, do they have to notify the landlord? The answer is no, they don’t have to do that. Do you want to expand on anything else?

Tracking Property Occupants: What Landlords Can Know

Yeah, I think that’s a great start, and you hit the nail on the head — the tenants are still responsible for everything their guests, roommates, or occupants do while living with them. The way we always work things with our leases is we want to know who’s all living in the house, whether occupants, tenants, kids — not that we ever want this to happen, but if there was a fire and everything burned down, we would have to know who was inside, pets, everything. I want to know. I know I can’t stop them from adding people, but we always want to know, one, for just knowledge, and at the end of the day in case we ever need it, we want to know who’s in the home. Keep in mind, they don’t have to give you ID — just remember that.

Okay, I’ve never — yeah, I’ve never asked for ID, it’s just been, well, boyfriend moved in, his name is Jim.

Utility Split Case Study: When Occupancy Changes

We had upstairs tenants who were a couple. The downstairs new tenant coming in was a single gentleman coming in with one child, and they decided, before it went on the lease, if it was one person they’d split the utilities 60% upstairs, 40% downstairs, and that’s how they were going to go. Fast forward, the gentleman moved in his mother and two other of his kids a couple months later — life changed for him, and they all came to live there since they had the space. The upstairs tenants thought this wasn’t fair — now they’re definitely using more water than us, they’re here all day, we go to work — what’s the situation, can the landlord do anything at all, and what about the tenants upstairs?

No — so the thing is, if you’re on a percentage, it’s on percentage no matter how many people live there. When you rent out a unit, you’re renting out the unit, not how many occupants are there. I’ll pick on my wife because she’s a female — I find women take longer showers, more showers, so if you have a female, and this is generalizing, yeah the water’s going to go up because of more usage, but if it’s on a percentage of 60/40, whatever it is, no matter how much that bill is, it’s still going to be 60/40. The only time a landlord should be worried or concerned about how many people are in the property is if it goes against the bylaw — an argument would be a one-bedroom condominium, you can’t put five people in a one-bedroom condo, that goes against the bylaw, so you can file in accordance with that bylaw or call the bylaw officers. But if it’s a one-bedroom condo and I get a girlfriend and want her to live with me, I do not need to inform the landlord at all.

And you’d honestly say it doesn’t matter to the landlord either?

Occupant Impact on Property Management

No — what’s the prejudice to the landlord if they’re getting paid rent? Now the argument could be that there’s more wear and tear, but here’s the thing — if I lived in a one-bedroom condo and you came to visit me, you’re a guest, we’re going to watch the game, you leave, the next day another friend comes over — what’s the prejudice? Unless we party hard and break the rules and create damage and problems, other than that, the landlord should really just be concerned with whether the rent is being paid, is it being paid on time, and is the noise at a minimum so it doesn’t interfere with anything.

Changes in Occupancy: Landlord Notification Rights

That can change anytime, right — like I joked, if I get a new girlfriend, I guess what you want is for me to let you know, hey Kevin, just letting you know Josie left, now this person is here — and again, I don’t have to do that.

Yeah, no, fair enough — like we say all the time, as long as rent’s being paid and everyone’s going okay, there’s no complaints, that’s what they want, they just want their home to themselves. The main thing I want everyone to understand is that a tenant can have guests or occupants without the landlord’s permission. I get a lot of landlords who tell me they brought in a boyfriend or girlfriend without my permission — they don’t need your permission.

Yeah, nope, definitely knew that — I’ve always just wanted to know names for the bodies of who was in there. May I go off on something else, do you mind?

Joint Tenancy Explained: When One Tenant Leaves

Okay, here’s another thing people need to know about occupants. Let’s say you have two people on a lease — that’s called a joint tenancy, correct? Let’s say two people are a couple and they break up — one person, let’s say the female, says “I’m going to be leaving, Kevin, here’s my notice, I’m no longer going to be part of the lease.” That lease now continues with the other tenant, so that other tenant is now 100% liable for the rent. But if he gets a new girlfriend or someone to live with him, that would be considered a roommate, occupant, or guest — it’s not part of the lease. A lot of times people ask if they have to add that person onto the lease — well, you can, but you don’t have to, because they’re just part of living there, not part of the lease. And that girlfriend could change — so why add them to the lease? The only reason landlords want to add them to the lease is because they want to raise the rent, and you can’t do that.

Student Housing: Strategic Lease Structures

With roommates and stuff like that, Rob, let’s talk a little about student housing. This is an interesting strategy for investors — there’s money to be made dividing up rooms and renting them out room by room. Some say it’s most profitable to rent that way, because you’re getting a maximized return after dividing up the area, and students are paying up to six, seven hundred dollars a room right now, and unlimited Wi-Fi, that’s all they really need. But how would you set up a student housing property properly if you had, let’s say, five rooms and five students, and student Mary says, “I have me and four other girls that want to come live and rent your house” — what’s the best way for a landlord to do that?

I gotta be careful here, because I don’t want to give legal advice on exactly how to do it, and I get these calls, but what you need to be concerned about is where the property is, because there are some areas — I’m not going to mention the names of the districts — but the way I would do it is I wouldn’t put them on one lease, I’d put them on individual leases. The reason being, if you have five people on a lease for a university or college program of three years — some are three years, some two, some four, some stay longer, some shorter — well, if you have five people on the lease and two graduate and want to come off, those three remaining people are now 100% responsible for the lease, but they can bring in guests, roommates, or occupants, and that continues until the last person on the lease is the only person on the lease, and now you have other occupants or guests. For however many years, you’re only raising the rent by the guideline, whereas what landlords want is that as a tenant leaves, they raise it to market value. So if you do individual leases, as one person leaves, you’re doing a new lease for a new person at the new rate, not the previous rate. Now, this is where I was getting to — there are some areas in the GTA that won’t allow that, because they’ll say that’s a rooming house. So you’d need to check with the bylaws of that particular city. I did talk to a lady with student housing around a university about this — she said that’s what she wanted to do, but the city wouldn’t allow it. But to me, that would be the better way, because as a tenant leaves, you get a new tenant, a new rate, and a new lease every time you get a new student.

Yeah, we’ve helped a couple landlords with student housing — that’s exactly what we did. We had five rooms and labeled them A, B, C, D, so tenant Bob was staying in 123 Main Street, Room A, and Sean was in 123 Main Street, Room B. That way, the rest of the area is common areas — and I hope I’m correct about this, but for common areas, the landlord doesn’t need to give 24 hours’ notice to check in, where they do need to for the private rooms.

Common Areas vs Private Spaces: Access Rules

That’s correct — for common areas, you don’t have to. Now the argument is, well, if it’s a common area, can you put a camera there? And that’s where I don’t feel comfortable — let’s say a kitchen is a common area, it’s not right to have a camera in the kitchen, and the reason I say that is, sometimes when I wake up in the morning I’m not fully dressed, and if you have females there, or even if not, anyone — it’s not right to have cameras in these so-called common areas.

No, never any cameras inside the house, always outside — but the landlord wanted to know just for their own purposes, since they live by students. But anyway, that’s what I said — it’s common areas, you don’t need a camera, but you do need to give the 24 hours’ notice to enter, still need to post it or get permission to come by the property. They’re students, and it’s perfectly legal.

Student Housing Risks and Rewards

But in all fairness, if you’re going to rent to students, you have to understand there are going to be some things going on that you might not love. If you’re doing it because it’s more lucrative, you have to know there’s more risk — more headache, but more money. There’s more turnover, right, students come and go, you’re always having to fill a room. My younger brother is out in Windsor, he lives in a duplex where we rent out the upstairs to three different students and he stays downstairs in the basement, and the three units upstairs are always having one empty because someone’s coming in or going out — it’s a lot. But again, you’re charging by room at a good price — even in Windsor now there’s $600 a room just for a bedroom. So student rentals are what they are — everybody has their own preference for their investment strategy. Like I said, more money sure, but way more headache, and I think as landlords we want it to be as passive as possible. If we get great tenants in place who need a nice home, that’s a great way to hold long-term, and you can leverage it and do other things with it as long as the tenancy continues. I think that’s been a really good conversation today. Rob, is there anything else we want to hit on?

We covered everything we need to cover.

Key Takeaways for Ontario Landlords

Yeah, so folks, simple story: it doesn’t matter who your tenant wants living in the property with them, as long as it doesn’t affect the bylaw — that’s really what it is. Once your tenant is on paper, they are in, it’s now their home, and you’re going to have an income property. That’s the way to think of it as a landlord — you don’t need to know everything going on, as long as everything’s still going properly with rent being paid and things not being disturbed for everybody else around them. We’ll leave it there.

Thanks so much for joining us this time — we’ll catch you again for another episode where we’re out there trying to make sure Ontario landlords understand and know everything that’s going on, because we don’t want any misinformation or incomplete information circling around. So here we are — thanks so much for joining us, and we’ll talk to you soon.

Legal Disclaimer

Please remember, while we are professionals, this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The advice shared may not apply to your unique situation. Always seek personalized advice from a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

Closing and Subscribe Reminder

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