By A.J. Keilty, President, KEILTY Realty Management
If you are filing for non-payment of rent (an L1 application), the Landlord and Tenant Board is currently scheduling hearings in roughly three months, and the full process, from filing to a sheriff enforcing the eviction order, typically takes four to six months from start to finish. If you are filing for a landlord's-use eviction (N12/L2) or a tenant-fault eviction (N5 or N7 paired with an L2), plan for six to nine months from filing to hearing, longer if the tenant contests the application or asks for a review. Below is the timeline broken out by application type, what actually drives the delays, and what an Ontario rental owner can do to keep a case from stalling.
An eviction in Ontario is never a single event. It is a sequence of legally required steps, and each one has its own clock:
The application type you file determines how long the middle step, the scheduling wait, will take, and that is the biggest variable in the whole process.
Non-payment of rent is the fastest-moving eviction type at the LTB, and it has gotten faster over the past two years as the Board has prioritized it. As of 2026-04-14, Tribunals Ontario's published service standards show L1 and L9 applications being scheduled in roughly three months from the date the application is received. Add the 14-day N4 notice period before filing, and the time from an order for a hearing to enforcement by the sheriff, and most landlords should plan on four to six months from the first missed rent payment to a unit being back in their control, assuming the tenant does not pay, does not move out voluntarily, and does not raise a defence that triggers an adjournment.
Filing an L1 application costs $186 through the Tribunals Ontario Portal, or $201 by mail, courier, or in person, as of 2026. Filing online is both cheaper and faster to process, since it skips the mail-in queue.
A tenant can void an N4 notice by paying the full amount owing before the termination date on the notice. Even after that, if the landlord has already filed an L1, the LTB can still hear the case, since the notice being voided does not automatically cancel the application, but it commonly leads to the case being resolved without an eviction order if the tenant is now current. Owners who track arrears closely (through a proper rent ledger, not a memory of who paid what) are in a much stronger position if the case does go to a hearing.
Applications other than L1 and L9, which include the L2 applications used for N12 (landlord or purchaser wants the unit), N5 (substantial interference), and N7 (serious impairment of safety), are scheduled more slowly. Tribunals Ontario's own service standards put average scheduling for these at roughly five to seven months, and in practice, six to nine months from filing to a hearing is a realistic range once you account for local hearing capacity and any request for an in-person versus written hearing.
N12 applications carry extra scrutiny because of past abuse of the "landlord's own use" ground. The landlord or purchaser must genuinely intend to occupy the unit, must pay the tenant compensation equal to one month's rent (or offer another rental unit) before the termination date, and can face significant penalties, including an order to compensate the tenant up to 12 months' rent, if the LTB later finds the claim was not made in good faith. If you are considering an N12 for a KEILTY-managed unit or any Ontario rental, document the reason in writing before you serve the notice.
For a full walkthrough of renovation-driven evictions specifically, including the newer municipal rental-replacement licensing rules that now apply in several Ontario cities, see our guide on renovating a tenanted unit under the N13 rules.
The Board's active caseload peaked at roughly 53,057 files in December 2023. According to Tribunals Ontario's own annual report, that number had fallen to approximately 41,465 by 2025-03-31, a reduction of about 26 percent even as the Board received a record volume of new applications. That is real progress, and it is consistent with what many landlords are reporting for L1 cases specifically.
That said, take the headline number with some context. Tribunal Watch Ontario, an independent watchdog group, has publicly questioned how some of the LTB's reported figures were calculated and noted that data in at least one annual report changed after it was tabled, without a clear public explanation. And averages hide a lot of local variation: a straightforward L1 case in a region with LTB hearing capacity can move faster than the averages above, while a contested N12 in a busier region can run well past nine months. Treat the published service standards as a planning baseline, not a guarantee.
Most of the delay that owners experience beyond the LTB's own scheduling backlog is self-inflicted, and it is avoidable:
A six-to-nine-month process means months of lost or reduced rent, plus the cost of eventually turning over and re-renting the unit. Owners weighing whether a case is worth pursuing, or trying to understand the real financial exposure of a stalled eviction, can model the lost income using our vacancy loss calculator. For owners comparing the time cost of handling LTB applications themselves against having a manager handle notices, filings, and hearing prep, our breakdown of property management versus self-management walks through where the hours actually go. If a tenant has stopped paying and you are not sure which application applies to your situation, our detailed guide on what happens when a tenant doesn't pay rent covers the N4-to-L1 process step by step.
The LTB's published service standards are provincewide, but hearing capacity is regional, and local boards in busier areas can run behind the average while smaller regional offices sometimes move faster. If you own rental property in Kingston, Belleville, Cornwall, Peterborough, or elsewhere across Eastern Ontario, or in the Ottawa or Toronto regions, your realistic timeline will track the application-type ranges above, but it is worth asking your paralegal or property manager what they are seeing on recent filings in your specific area, since that local, current-quarter experience is a better guide than any provincewide average.
If you are dealing with a non-paying or problem tenant and want an honest read on your options, or if managing the notice-and-filing process yourself is eating more time than it is worth, request a free rental evaluation or get in touch with KEILTY. We handle Ontario eviction filings and LTB hearings for owners across the province every month, and we can tell you plainly what your specific timeline is likely to look like.
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