By A.J. Keilty, President, KEILTY Realty Management
You are responsible for the tenancy from the moment the previous owner died. Not from the day the lawyer calls you, and not from the day title is registered in your name. The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 defines a landlord to include the heirs and personal representatives of the owner, so the role transfers with the death itself. Nothing about the tenancy restarts.
That single fact decides nearly everything that follows. The rent increase clock keeps its old anchor. The deposit the tenant paid years ago is still the deposit. A complaint about a repair the previous owner ignored is still live against the unit. This post works through a tenanted single-family house in Brockville that has passed to a family member. It names the provision behind each answer, because almost none of this sits where people look for it.
The short version.
Yes, and it survives without a gap. There is no moment at which the house is simply a house.
One threshold check comes first, though. Section 5 opens "This Act does not apply with respect to," and then lists what is outside it, including living accommodation where the occupant shares a kitchen or bathroom with the owner. An inherited house with a lodger in it may not be a tenancy under this Act at all, and nothing below applies until that is settled.
Two provisions do the work. The first is the definition in section 2 (1) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, which provides that "landlord" includes "the heirs, assigns, personal representatives and successors in title of a person referred to in clause (a)".
The same subsection defines "person" to mean, among other things, "an individual in his or her capacity as a trustee, executor, administrator or other legal representative". The verbs differ and the difference matters: "landlord" is defined with "includes" and is open-ended, while "person" is defined with "means" and is a closed list that happens to name the estate roles. Between them, an estate trustee and a beneficiary are both already inside the words.
The second is section 18, headed "Covenants running with land", which reads: "Covenants concerning things related to a rental unit or the residential complex in which it is located run with the land, whether or not the things are in existence at the time the covenants are made." The lease obligations are attached to the property, not to the person who happened to own it.
It is worth being precise about that section number, because it is easy to get wrong. Section 17 is headed "Covenants interdependent" and is a different rule about breach. Section 18 is the running-with-the-land rule. The Act itself confirms which is which: section 49.1 (2) opens with the words "Despite section 18", so when the legislature wants to displace the running-with-the-land rule, it points at 18.
Then section 13 (1): "The term or period of a tenancy begins on the day the tenant is entitled to occupy the rental unit under the tenancy agreement." The tenancy is keyed to occupation. Nothing in sections 13, 17 or 18 keys it to ownership. A new owner cannot restart it, whether title arrived by inheritance, by purchase or by registration of a transmission.
Because it genuinely does not deal with the subject, and knowing that saves you looking.
We ran the search over the enacted body of the Act. "Dies" appears twice, "death" seven times, "deceased" once, "estate" eight times, "executor" eight times, "personal representative" twice, "heir" twice and "successor" once. The words "survivor", "intestate", "devolve", "beneficiary", "inherit", "bequeath" and "next of kin" appear zero times between them.
Every one of those hits points somewhere other than where an inheriting owner is looking. Sections 91 and 92 are the opposite case, the death of the tenant rather than of the landlord. Section 91 (1) deems a tenancy terminated thirty days after the death of a sole tenant. We have written that side up separately in what happens when a tenant dies in Ontario. The rest are care home provisions or the section 2 (1) definitions.
So the landlord-side machinery in the whole Act is the four categories in clause (b) of the definition of "landlord", heirs, assigns, personal representatives and successors in title, together with section 18. Everything else about how the property reaches you is in a different statute, and that is the Estates Administration Act.
The personal representative, and the Act and the estates legislation agree on it from opposite directions.
Section 2 (1) of the Estates Administration Act provides that all real and personal property of a deceased person "devolves to and becomes vested in his or her personal representative from time to time as trustee for the persons by law beneficially entitled thereto". So between the death and the distribution, the estate trustee holds the house, and the Residential Tenancies Act definition of "person" already reaches an individual acting as a trustee, executor or administrator.
For a tenant, this is the part that is genuinely confusing, and it is worth handling well. Rent is still due, on the same day, in the same amount. What changes is who it is paid to and how that is evidenced.
Send the tenant a short written notice before the next rent day. Name the estate trustee, give an address for service, and give the payment details. That one letter heads off the confusion that follows a death. It costs nothing and it is the single cheapest thing on this list.
It came with the unit, and the Act is not silent about this even though it is silent about the death itself.
Section 106 (4) provides: "A new landlord of a rental unit or a person who is deemed to be a landlord under subsection 47 (1) of the Mortgages Act shall not require a tenant to pay a rent deposit if the tenant has already paid a rent deposit to the prior landlord of the rental unit." You are a new landlord. You cannot ask for the deposit again because you never received it.
Section 106 (10) then tells you what it is for: "A landlord shall apply a rent deposit that a tenant has paid to the landlord or to a former landlord in payment of the rent for the last rent period before the tenancy terminates." Note the words "or to a former landlord". The obligation is written to survive a change of owner.
The obligation that gets missed is the interest. Section 106 (6) makes it payable annually, "at a rate equal to the guideline determined under section 120 that is in effect at the time payment becomes due". Section 106 (9) gives the tenant a remedy that needs no application and no hearing: where the landlord fails to pay the interest when it is due, "the tenant may deduct the amount of the payment from a subsequent rent payment".
That is why this one is worth doing in your first month rather than your first year. A tenant exercising section 106 (9) does not file anything, does not warn anybody, and simply pays less rent. If you have not reconstructed when the deposit was paid and when interest was last paid on it, the first sign of the arrears may be a short cheque. You would then be arguing about a period when you did not own the building.
There is an offset on your side, and it is the thing that shrinks the bill. Section 106 (7) lets the landlord deduct from that interest "the amount, if any, by which the maximum amount of the rent deposit permitted under subsection (2) exceeds the amount of the rent deposit paid by the tenant", and the deducted amount is deemed to form part of the deposit.
On an inherited long tenancy the deposit may have been taken years ago, at a much lower rent. Where that is so, the top-up owed to you and the interest owed to the tenant can cancel each other out. Do the arithmetic before anybody writes a cheque.
Ask the estate trustee or the previous owner's records for three things: the amount of the deposit, the date it was paid, and the date interest was last paid. If the records do not exist, say so to the tenant in writing and agree a figure rather than guessing in silence.
Several, and none of them paused for the death or reset on the transfer.
Start with the maintenance obligation, because it is the one with a limitation period attached. Section 20 (1) provides that a landlord is responsible for maintaining the complex "in a good state of repair and fit for habitation and for complying with health, safety, housing and maintenance standards", and section 20 (2) applies that even where the tenant knew of the problem before entering the agreement.
Section 29 (2) sets the window on a tenant's application: "No application may be made under subsection (1) more than one year after the day the alleged conduct giving rise to the application occurred." Read what that is measured from.
It runs from the conduct, not from the change of owner, and there is no tolling provision and no reset on a transmission. If the furnace in Brockville failed on Tuesday 2026-02-10 and was left, the tenant's application is in time until Wednesday 2027-02-10, regardless of who owned the house on either date.
The sharper provision is section 30 (1), and it has to be stated carefully, because it is not automatic. It applies where "the Board determines in an application under paragraph 1 of subsection 29 (1) that a landlord has breached an obligation under subsection 20 (1) or section 161", and the Board then "may do one or more of the following". So it takes a tenant's application and a Board finding. A municipal work order, sitting in a drawer, does none of this by itself.
Where the Board does go there, three of the paragraphs bite an owner. Paragraph 6 prohibits charging a new tenant more than the last lawful rent. Paragraph 7 prohibits giving a notice of rent increase. Paragraph 8 prohibits taking an increase already noticed. Each runs until the landlord has completed the outstanding work. The work that counts is the work orders and ordered work the Board found related to a serious breach of a health, safety, housing or maintenance standard.
That is a discretionary order resting on a serious-breach finding, not a freeze that arrives with an envelope. It is still worth knowing before you take on a building, because the finding can rest on conduct that was never yours.
What reduces it sits in the next subsection, and a new owner should read it first. Section 30 (2) provides that "In determining the remedy under this section, the Board shall consider whether the tenant or former tenant advised the landlord of the alleged breaches before applying to the Board." That is a mandatory consideration rather than a discretionary one, so a reachable address and a phone number that is answered, with a record of both, is the cheapest protection on this list.
So the first document KEILTY asks for is not the lease. It is the file of municipal and Board correspondence. An open order you have not seen is the paper still running against the unit.
Possibly, but by one route only, and the route that looks obvious is closed.
Section 49 (1) is the own-use provision for a sale. It reaches "A landlord of a residential complex that contains no more than three residential units who has entered into an agreement of purchase and sale of the residential complex", acting "on behalf of the purchaser". Every limb of that assumes a transaction.
The word "purchaser" is not defined in section 2 (1) and no deeming provision pulls a beneficiary or an estate trustee into it. When title moves on a death there is no agreement of purchase and sale at all, so section 49 is simply not available. We set out how that section works on an actual sale in what happens to your tenants when you sell a rental property.
Section 48 is the one that is open, and it has two layers. Section 48 (5) is the gate: the section applies only if "(a) the rental unit is owned in whole or in part by an individual; and (b) the landlord is an individual." It says nothing about how title was acquired, so an inheritor passes it. An estate trustee that is a trust company does not.
Section 48 (1) is the provision that actually authorises the notice, and it is narrower than the gate. The landlord must in good faith require possession "for the purpose of residential occupation for a period of at least one year" by the landlord, the landlord's spouse, a child or parent of the landlord or of the landlord's spouse, or a person who provides or will provide care services to one of them.
Read that list against the actual family. A beneficiary who is the landlord, or that landlord's child, parent or spouse, is inside it. A sibling, a nephew or a niece is not, however plainly the will leaves them the house. And the intended occupation has to be for at least a year.
State which section you are using and why, on the form and in anything you write about it. An N12 given under the wrong heading is a notice problem before it is anything else.
One month's rent, unless three conditions are all met, and then nothing.
Section 48.1 (1) sets the default: the landlord "shall compensate a tenant in an amount equal to one month's rent or offer the tenant another rental unit acceptable to the tenant". Section 55.1 fixes the deadline, which is "no later than on the termination date specified in the notice of termination".
Section 48.1 (2), as amended by 2025, c. 14, Sched. 12, s. 2 (1, 2) and in force since 2026-09-21, removes the compensation obligation only where all three of these hold.
All three, not the first two. The limb that gets dropped in summaries is the period-end one, and a date chosen without it will not satisfy the section.
Two of the three were already the rule, which is worth knowing so you do not read the exemption as inventing them. Section 48 (2) requires every section 48 notice to specify a termination date "at least 60 days after the notice is given" that is "the day a period of the tenancy ends or, where the tenancy is for a fixed term, the end of the term". What section 48.1 (2) changes is the 60 to 120, in exchange for the compensation.
Work it through on a monthly tenancy in Brockville whose periods end on the last day of the month. A notice given on Monday 2026-11-02 clears the 120 day limb on Tuesday 2027-03-02. But 2027-03-02 is not the end of a period, so the earliest termination date that satisfies both limbs is Wednesday 2027-03-31, which is 149 days after the notice. Choose 2027-03-02 and the exemption does not apply, because the third condition fails.
Then read section 57 before you act on any of it. Section 57 (5) presumes bad faith, "unless the contrary is proven on a balance of probabilities", where, between the notice and one year after the tenant vacates, the landlord does any of five things: advertises the unit for rent, re-rents it, advertises the unit or the building for sale, demolishes it, or takes any step to convert it. The limb an estate trips is the sale one.
An executor who serves an N12 for a beneficiary's own use and then lists the property is inside that presumption and has to rebut it. Section 57 (3) paragraph 1.1 allows general compensation of up to twelve months of the last rent charged.
Section 57 (6.1) adds a second presumption where no person named in section 48 (1) occupied the unit within the prescribed period. That is the live risk when a beneficiary's plans change part way through an administration. The tenant's own window is not open forever: an application under section 57 has to be brought within one year after they vacated.
If the family has not decided between keeping the house and selling it, that decision has to come before the notice, not after it.
On the tenancy's own schedule, which is not yours and did not move when you inherited.
Section 119 (1) sets the twelve month rule, and the anchor is the point to read closely. The twelve months run "(a) since the day of the last rent increase for that tenant in that rental unit, if there has been a previous increase; or (b) since the day the rental unit was first rented to that tenant, if clause (a) does not apply." Neither anchor mentions the landlord.
The clock is a property of the tenancy, so a change of owner does not restart it.
Section 116 (1) requires at least 90 days written notice of the intention to increase. Section 116 (4) voids an increase where that notice was not given, which means a new notice before the increase can be taken.
On the Brockville house, suppose the previous owner's last increase took effect on 2026-05-01. The next increase can take effect no earlier than Saturday 2027-05-01. Counting back 90 days from 2027-05-01 lands on Sunday 2027-01-31, so the notice has to be given on or before that day. Inheriting the house in between changes neither date.
On the amount, the guideline is published by the Province and reset every year, so it must always be quoted with its year attached. The Province's rent increase page, stamped "Updated: June 23, 2026", gives 2.1 per cent for 2026 and 1.9 per cent for 2027. An increase taking effect now is governed by the 2026 figure; one taking effect next year by the 2027 figure. An unlabelled percentage is wrong half the time. The Province caps the guideline at 2.5 per cent.
Two qualifications on that figure. The guideline is the ceiling only for an increase taken without the Board's approval. Section 126 is the above-guideline route, and it is the counterweight if you have inherited a building that needs capital work.
Section 6.1 (2) then disapplies sections 120, 121, 122 and 126, among others, to a unit in a building no part of which was occupied for residential purposes on or before November 15, 2018. So the guideline does not cap every unit. Sections 116 and 119 bind you either way.
That depends on the will. Where the will is silent, the Act gives less than people expect.
Section 22 (1) of the Estates Administration Act gives the personal representative "power to lease from year to year while the real property remains vested in the personal representative". A longer term needs a good deal more than a show of hands.
Clause 22 (1) (b) requires the approval of "the majority of the persons beneficially entitled thereto representing together not less than one-half of all the interest therein", and where a beneficiary is a minor, or a mentally incapable person with no guardian or attorney for property, the Children's Lawyer or the Public Guardian and Trustee has to be among the approvers.
It is a double test: a majority of the people, who between them hold at least half the interest. And it reaches those two offices in exactly the estate where that is easiest to get wrong.
Read the will before you read the section, because section 22 (1) opens by saying the powers it lists "include" these, which makes it a floor and not a ceiling. A carefully drafted will routinely gives the estate trustee wider leasing and management powers than the Act does.
So year to year is the default ceiling. An estate trustee who signs a multi-year lease on the strength of section 22 (1) alone, without that approval, is acting outside it. The time to discover that is before the signature, not in the middle of a dispute between beneficiaries.
That constraint sits oddly beside an Ontario residential tenancy, where section 38 (1) continues a fixed term as a monthly tenancy when the term ends.
The practical reading is that an estate trustee should be cautious about committing the property beyond a year while it is still in their hands. Where the market or the tenant makes a longer term attractive, get the beneficiaries' agreement in writing. That is our reading of section 22 (1) applied to a residential tenancy rather than something either statute states outright.
This is the fact in this post that catches people, because it happens silently, on a date that appears on no document you will be sent.
Section 9 (1) of the Estates Administration Act provides that real property not disposed of or distributed "within three years after the death of the deceased" is "thenceforth vested in the persons beneficially entitled thereto under the will or upon the intestacy or their assigns without any conveyance by the personal representative", unless the personal representative registers a caution. A caution holds the position for three years from its registration and is renewable.
Two qualifiers in the subsection matter and are easy to miss. It operates "subject to the Land Titles Act in the case of land registered under that Act and subject to subsections 53 (3) and (5) of the Registry Act", so what it does to registered title is a question for the registry system rather than something the section settles on its own.
Read that twice. Title can land in a beneficiary with no conveyance, no signature and no meeting. Say the previous owner died on Monday 2026-06-15. If the house is still sitting in the estate on Friday 2029-06-15 with no caution registered, the beneficial entitlement has moved to the beneficiaries from that day. The registration qualifiers above still apply. The person the tenant should be paying rent to has changed by operation of law, on an anniversary, and no letter goes out.
Section 21 (2) adds the liability that travels with it. Property vested under section 9 "continues to be liable to answer the debts of the deceased owner" so long as it remains vested in that person, or in anyone claiming under them "not being a purchaser in good faith and for valuable consideration", and a person who sells it in good faith for value is "personally liable for such debts to the extent of the proceeds of such real property".
Section 21 (1) is the other side of it. A purchaser in good faith for valuable consideration takes free of the deceased's debts where the personal representative conveyed the property by leave of a judge.
Two things follow for an owner in this position. Diarise the three year date from the death, not from probate. And if the estate is going to take time, ask whether a caution has been registered, because the answer changes who the landlord is.
Nothing about the tenancy, and a good deal about who ends up owning it.
Part II of the Succession Law Reform Act governs a death without a will. Section 44 gives the whole estate to a surviving spouse where there is no issue. Section 46 (1) gives the spouse one half of what remains after the preferential share where there is one child. Section 46 (2) gives one third where there is more than one. Section 47 (7) sends the property to the Crown where none of the listed relatives takes, and applies the Escheats Act, 2015.
The preferential share is where the statute sets a trap. Section 45 (5) says only this: "The preferential share is the amount prescribed by a regulation made under subsection (6)." There is no figure in the Act. Quoting one from it is quoting something that is not there.
The figure is in section 1 of O. Reg. 54/95, and it is triggered by the date of death rather than by when the estate is administered: "$200,000, for the estates of persons who die before March 1, 2021; and $350,000, for the estates of persons who die on or after March 1, 2021." A bare "$350,000" is the wrong number for every estate where the death was earlier, so state the date trigger whenever you state the figure.
Two things sit outside Part II and can change the answer entirely. A surviving married spouse may elect an equalization payment under the Family Law Act instead of taking under the intestacy. And section 43.1 of the Succession Law Reform Act removes a separated spouse's entitlement under Part II where its separation tests are met. Settle which of those is in play before anybody relies on the shares above.
None of this touches the tenant. The tenancy runs on through the whole exercise under section 18, and whoever emerges as owner is the landlord under section 2 (1) when they get there.
Six things, in this order, and all of them are cheap.
Write to the tenant naming who the landlord now is, with an address for service and the payment details. Confirm that the rent, the due date and the terms are unchanged. Ask for the municipal and Board correspondence file and read the appeal or compliance paragraph of anything in it before you read the work list. Reconstruct the deposit: amount, date paid, date interest last paid.
Find the date of the last rent increase, because that date and not your arrival sets the next one. Establish whether the estate trustee holds the property or whether it has vested, and diarise the three year date from the death. And settle whether the family is keeping the house or selling it, before anybody serves a notice that section 57 (5) will later be read against.
If the property is some distance from you, the ordinary distance problems arrive on top of all this, and we work those through in our guidance on single-family rentals. Our single-family rental service page sets out what KEILTY includes, at a flat monthly rate per unit that does not climb as the rent climbs.
Frankly, inheriting a tenanted property is not a fresh start. It is a running file with somebody else's history in it, and the owner who reads the history in the first month rarely has to argue about it later.
Am I the landlord before the house is transferred into my name? The role transfers with the death rather than with the registration. Section 2 (1) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 defines "landlord" to include "the heirs, assigns, personal representatives and successors in title of a person referred to in clause (a)", and section 18 makes the lease covenants run with the land. Until the estate is distributed, the personal representative holds the property under section 2 (1) of the Estates Administration Act.
Can I ask the tenant for a new last month's rent deposit? No. Section 106 (4) provides that a new landlord "shall not require a tenant to pay a rent deposit if the tenant has already paid a rent deposit to the prior landlord of the rental unit". The deposit followed the unit, and so did the annual interest obligation in section 106 (6). If that interest is not paid, section 106 (9) lets the tenant deduct it from a later rent payment.
Can I evict the tenant to move in myself? By section 48, not by section 49, because section 49 (1) requires an agreement of purchase and sale and a death is not one. Section 48 (5) asks only that the unit and the landlord both be individual, but section 48 (1) is the real test: possession must be required in good faith for at least a year of residential occupation by the landlord, their spouse, a child or parent of either, or a carer for one of them.
Does the rent increase clock restart when I inherit? No. Section 119 (1) anchors the twelve months to the last increase for that tenant in that unit, or to the day the unit was first rented to that tenant. Neither anchor mentions the landlord, so the clock belongs to the tenancy and carries straight through the change of owner.
Can title move to me without anyone signing anything? Yes. Section 9 (1) of the Estates Administration Act vests real property that has not been disposed of or distributed within three years of the death in the beneficiaries "without any conveyance by the personal representative", unless the personal representative has registered a caution, which holds the position for a further three years and is renewable.
Just inherited a tenanted property and not sure what you have taken on? Tell us about it through our free rental evaluation and A.J. Keilty will call you within 20 minutes during business hours, with a straight answer about what needs doing first and whether you need us at all.
This post is general information about Ontario residential tenancy and estates law as of 2026-10-07, not legal advice. Legislation, regulations and tribunal practice change. For advice on a specific property or situation, speak with a lawyer or licensed paralegal.
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