If you own a rental in Ontario, the last week of July is when September starts to feel real. N9 notices arrive, tenants confirm they are leaving at the end of August, and the busiest turnover window of the year begins. How you handle the next five weeks decides whether your unit is re-rented for 2026-09-01 or sits empty into October.
This year the stakes are higher than usual, because the market has softened. Units take longer to lease, renters have more choice, and the old habit of listing two weeks before move-out and taking the first application no longer works in most of our 26 cities. Here is a practical playbook for the weeks ahead.
Canada's average asking rent was $2,033 in June 2026, down 4.3 per cent from a year earlier. That was the 21st straight month of annual decline, according to the Rentals.ca National Rent Report. Toronto asking rents averaged $2,537, down 1.9 per cent year over year, though they rose 1.2 per cent from May, an early sign the biggest market may be finding a floor.
Vacancy tells the same story. CMHC's 2025 Rental Market Report put purpose-built apartment vacancy near 3 per cent in both Toronto and Ottawa, and newly built units in Ottawa sat at 6.7 per cent, more than double the city average. We covered the broader trend in our guide to Ontario's softening rental market. The short version: your next tenant has options, and your listing is competing against new supply that often comes with a month free.
Run the numbers before you make any other decision. A unit renting at $2,200 a month loses about $72 for every day it sits empty, roughly $507 a week. Miss the September 1 wave and lease for November 1 instead, and you have given up close to $4,400, plus utilities and insurance you carried in the meantime. Our vacancy loss calculator will do this math for your own rent and city.
That number should shape your pricing too. Suppose you believe the unit is worth $2,300 but the comparable listings in your building or neighbourhood are moving at $2,200. Holding out for the extra $100 earns you $1,200 over the year. If holding out costs you three extra weeks of vacancy, you lose about $1,590. In a soft market, pricing to what is actually leasing beats pricing to what you got in 2023.
A tenant ending a month-to-month tenancy must give at least 60 days' written notice, and the termination date must be the last day of a rental period. The proper form is the N9 from the Landlord and Tenant Board. A text message saying "we're thinking of leaving at the end of summer" is not notice. Get the N9, or at minimum a signed written notice with a proper date, before you spend money on advertising or trades.
Check the date carefully. A notice given 2026-07-15 for 2026-08-31 is short, since it gives only 47 days. You can accept it anyway if an early turnover suits you, but that is your choice to make, not the tenant's right.
Once a notice of termination has been given, the Residential Tenancies Act lets you show the unit to prospective tenants between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. without 24 hours' written notice, as long as you make a reasonable effort to tell the current tenant before you enter. That rule exists for exactly this situation. Use it.
Photograph the unit while it is clean and furnished if the tenant will cooperate, or use photos from the last vacancy. Get the listing live in early August. Families want to be settled before school starts, students are searching now, and the renters looking in the first two weeks of August are the ones who can take a September 1 possession. A listing that goes up on August 25 has already missed most of them.
The week around September 1 is the hardest time of the year to book a painter, a cleaner, or a carpet company, because every landlord in your city needs them at once. Walk the unit with the tenant in mid-August, list what needs doing, and book the trades now for the first days of September. A turn that needs paint, cleaning, and minor repairs can be done in two or three days when it is scheduled, and can drag for two weeks when it is not.
While you are in the unit, look past the cosmetic work. A softening market punishes tired units first. If the listing photos show a 20-year-old kitchen at a 2024 price, expect the showings to be quiet.
A few housekeeping items catch self-managing landlords every September:
When a unit turns over, you can set the new rent at whatever the market will pay. The guideline only limits increases within a tenancy. Units first occupied after 2018-11-15 are exempt from the guideline entirely, but for everyone else, the rent you set this September is the base you will be increasing by small percentages for years. The guideline for 2027 is 1.9 per cent, which we broke down in our post on the 2027 guideline. On a $2,200 unit, next year's maximum increase is about $42 a month. That is another reason to lease the unit at a fair market rent quickly instead of chasing a premium the market has stopped paying.
And if your tenant is staying, this is the moment to check whether a rent increase notice should go out. An N1 needs 90 days' notice, so an increase effective 2026-11-01 must be served by 2026-08-03.
Everything above is doable on your own. The question is whether you will do it on time, in the five weeks a year when timing matters most, while also working your own job. This is the season when professional management pays for itself: the listing goes live in the first week of August, showings happen while the outgoing tenant is still in place, trades are booked before the rush, and the new lease starts the day after the old one ends. At $149 plus HST per unit per month, one avoided week of vacancy on a typical Ontario rent covers more than three months of management. We laid out the full comparison in property management versus self-management.
September 1 is five weeks away. The landlords who own that date are the ones acting this week.
Wondering what your unit would lease for in today's market? Get a free rental evaluation from KEILTY and we will give you a straight answer based on what is actually renting in your city.
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