By A.J. Keilty, President, KEILTY Realty Management
Yes, but only for a reason the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 allows, and only after you have given the tenant at least 24 hours' written notice stating the reason, the date, and a time of entry between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. You do not need the tenant's consent once that notice is properly served. You do need one of the specific reasons listed in section 27. Entering without notice is limited to a genuine emergency, a tenant who consents at the moment you arrive, scheduled cleaning written into the lease, or showings to prospective tenants after a notice of termination has been given.
That is the short version. The details matter more than most owners expect, because illegal entry is one of the easiest ways to hand a tenant a winning application at the Landlord and Tenant Board, and as of 2026-07-01 the maximum fines for Residential Tenancies Act offences doubled. An individual now faces up to $100,000 and a corporation up to $500,000 per offence, according to Ontario's rental housing offences page. The LTB also refreshed its own guidance on entry on the same date.
Section 27 of the Act lists the reasons that support entry on 24 hours' written notice:
Section 27(2) adds one more: you, or a registered real estate broker or salesperson you have authorized in writing, may enter to show the unit to a potential purchaser on 24 hours' written notice. There is also a narrower right under section 36.1(4) to inspect a tenant-installed air conditioner to confirm it is safely installed, is not causing damage, and complies with municipal property standards.
Notice what is not on that list. Curiosity is not a reason. Checking whether the tenant has an unauthorized pet or an extra occupant is not a reason. Neither is a general desire to see how the place is being kept. If your notice says "routine inspection" and nothing more, and the tenant challenges it, you are relying on the Board accepting that the inspection was genuinely about the state of repair and that it was reasonable. That is a thin place to stand.
Section 26 covers four situations:
The trap here is repairs. A tenant asks you to fix a leaking tap. You show up two days later with a plumber and no notice. Under the LTB's Interpretation Guideline 19, a repair request does not by itself authorize entry without notice. You still need either 24 hours' written notice or the tenant's consent at the door. Most tenants will simply say yes. Some will not, and those are exactly the tenancies where the paperwork ends up in front of an adjudicator.
No. It means 24 consecutive hours. Notice served at 3:00 p.m. on a Friday supports entry at 3:00 p.m. on a Saturday. Weekends and holidays count.
The notice must be delivered using one of the methods in section 191 of the Act or Rule 3 of the Board's Rules of Practice. Handing it to the tenant, leaving it in the mailbox, or sliding it under the door all work. A text message does not, unless the tenant has agreed in writing to receive documents that way. Email is a common source of failed notices in our experience, so confirm what the lease says before relying on it.
Specific enough to be useful to the tenant. Where you know the time, state it. Where you cannot, Guideline 19 permits a reasonable window, and what counts as reasonable depends on how much control you have over the work and who is doing it.
If your own maintenance technician is replacing a toilet flapper, a tight window is expected. If the gas utility has given you a four-hour arrival window, you can pass that same window on. The Divisional Court drew the outer boundary in Wrona v. Toronto Community Housing Corporation: a nine-hour window for an annual smoke alarm inspection did not comply with the requirement to specify a time of entry. Practically, treat anything past four hours as a risk, and anything approaching a full day as non-compliant.
Yes. Once valid notice has been given, the right of entry does not depend on the tenant being present. The tenant may stay in the unit while you are there, and many do, but their absence does not cancel your notice.
Only if your notice does not meet the requirements. A tenant cannot refuse simply because the time is inconvenient. Guideline 19 is direct about the tenant's obligations once notice is valid: do not interfere with the entry, do not interfere with you or your agents, and take whatever steps are needed to provide access to the rooms where work will happen, including safely restraining pets.
If a tenant with valid notice blocks entry repeatedly, that is a maintenance and compliance problem, not a reason to force the door. Document each attempt, keep serving proper notices, and if it continues, an L2 application on the basis that the tenant has substantially interfered with your lawful rights is the route. Kicking the door in is not.
The Act gives the right of entry to the landlord. A superintendent, a property manager, or a contractor you have hired may enter on your behalf. Where the person doing the work is an outside trade, Guideline 19 says the landlord or superintendent should attend with them to let them in. In other words, handing a lockbox code to a drywall crew and going about your day is not the intended arrangement, even though it happens constantly.
There is no number in the Act, which is precisely why this becomes an argument. Guideline 19 tells landlords to make reasonable efforts to limit entries to those actually necessary, both for repairs and for inspections. If the Board concludes the entries were unnecessary or unreasonable, it can find harassment, interference, or substantial interference with the tenant's reasonable enjoyment of the unit.
A useful test before you serve a notice: could this entry have been combined with the last one, or the next one? If a unit is getting three separate visits in a week because nobody sequenced the work, you have created an exposure that has nothing to do with the repairs themselves.
The tenant files a T2, an Application About Tenant Rights, which covers illegal entry under sections 25 to 27, changing locks without providing keys, harassment, and substantial interference. The filing fee is modest, currently $48 online, and the tenant has one year from the event.
The remedies the Board can order include a rent abatement for the affected period, an order to stop the conduct, general damages, out-of-pocket costs, and an administrative fine. Abatements in illegal entry cases are commonly reported in the range of 10 to 50 per cent of rent for the affected period, depending on how serious and how repeated the conduct was. The Board's Interpretation Guideline 6 notes that a minor disruption for a brief period does not normally justify an abatement, so a single mistimed visit is unlikely to cost you much. A pattern will.
Separately, illegal entry is a provincial offence, prosecuted in court rather than at the Board. That is where the doubled maximums under section 238 come in. Prosecutions are uncommon and the maximum is a ceiling rather than a starting point. The ceiling still doubled this summer, and the LTB's 2026-06-30 operational update sets out the legislative changes now in force.
There is no mandatory LTB form for entry, which surprises people. You write it yourself. Include:
Keep the copy. In an entry dispute, the question is almost never what you intended. It is what you can prove you served, and when.
Almost every illegal entry finding we have seen started as a scheduling shortcut, not bad faith. A contractor had a cancellation and could come today. A furnace inspection got bundled with a quick look at the basement. A seller's agent wanted to pop by before an open house. None of that reads as malicious. All of it is entry without valid notice.
The fix is boring and it works: every entry generates a written notice, every notice gets logged with its service method, and no trade attends without one. That discipline is easy to describe and hard to maintain across a portfolio while you also have a job. It is one of the quieter reasons owners move to professional management, and it shows up in the same column as vacancy and maintenance costs when you run the numbers on our property management versus self-management comparison or the vacancy loss calculator.
KEILTY manages residential and commercial rentals across Ontario, from Kingston and Belleville through Peterborough, Oshawa, and Ottawa. Our fee is a flat monthly rate per unit rather than a percentage of rent, which means it does not climb as your rent does. Current numbers for single-family homes are on the single-family rental page, and buildings and communities have their own pricing on the small multi-family and apartment communities pages.
If you want the related reading, our guides on what landlords can legally ask during tenant screening and Ontario's renovation eviction rules cover two other areas where the paperwork decides the outcome.
Not sure whether your current entry practices would survive a T2? A free rental evaluation covers your rent position, your lease, and how your unit is actually being managed. You can also reach us here.
Ontario property management with published pricing, same-day answers, and no surprises. Since 2003.
300-80 Queen Street
Proudly Canadian Owned