Update, 26 Sep 2026: The four Bill 60 changes this guide uses as examples of unsettled law are now in force. For an LTB order made on or after July 1, 2026, a request to review it must be filed within 15 days. From September 21, 2026, the N4 notice period is 7 days for notices given on or after that date; a landlord's-own-use N12 served on or after that date with at least 120 days' notice owes no compensation (a purchaser's N12 still does); and on an L1 filed on or after that date, a tenant who wants to raise other issues at the hearing must first pay the landlord half the arrears claimed, at least seven days before the hearing. Source: the LTB operational update of September 21, 2026. The e-Laws check below is still the right habit for anything else you read.
Nobody asked whether you wanted to be a landlord.
A parent died. Or a job moved, or a relationship changed, and the house you were living in became the house someone else lives in. Either way, there is now a tenancy with your name on it — a rent you did not set, terms you did not write, a last month's deposit you never took and now owe back — and a person who lives there and expects the heat to work.
Here is the mechanism, in seven words: a lease is attached to the property, not the person. It did not end when the owner died. It did not end when the lease term ran out. The moment an estate takes over, in the words of one estates lawyer, the executor steps into the shoes of the landlord — and assumes every right and every obligation the previous owner had. Those obligations apply, as one legal summary puts it, regardless of whether you were aware of them. Ignorance of the law has never been a defence to it.
Start with the good news, because you are probably braced for the opposite: you almost certainly do not owe capital gains tax simply because you inherited a property. That part is kinder than most people fear, and we will get to exactly why.
This guide is not about how to get out. It is about what you are standing in — what actually transferred to you, the two clocks that are now running at completely different speeds, the duty that collides head-on with the other duty, and the one question nobody on the internet can honestly answer for you today.
Your First 30 Days as an Accidental Landlord: The Ontario Checklist
You didn't choose this. A parent died, or a move happened, and now there's a tenancy with your name on it. This checklist walks you through the first thirty days — what transferred to you, what you must not touch, and the one mistake that makes you personally liable.
Get Free PDF →What actually transferred to you
The Residential Tenancies Act is built around a principle called security of tenure: a tenant has the right to stay as long as they follow the Act and their agreement. That right does not depend on who owns the building. It survives a sale. It survives the end of a fixed term. And it survives the death of the landlord.
So when a landlord dies in Ontario, the tenancy does not stop. The estate trustee automatically becomes the new legal landlord, and the tenant keeps paying rent exactly as the agreement says. Connie den Hollander, an estates lawyer, describes why a rental property is unlike anything else in an estate:
"It's not like most other assets that you just take control of and decide whether to distribute to a beneficiary or sell. The decisions you make have to be governed under the umbrella of the residential tenancy legislation."
Which brings us to the inventory. Here is what came with the property, whether or not anyone told you:
- A rent you did not set. The estate is bound by exactly the same rules the deceased was: once every twelve months, ninety days' written notice on an N1, and no more than the provincial guideline for most units — 2.1% for 2026, and 1.9% for 2027. Ownership changing does not reset anything. Our complete N1 guide covers the timing.
- Terms you did not write — and here is the twist. Any clause that contradicts the Act is void and unenforceable, even if the tenant signed it. So an inherited lease may contain terms that were never worth anything. You inherited the paper, not its validity. Our guide to common Ontario lease mistakes is the place to check.
- A last month's rent deposit you never took, and now owe back. It remains attached to the tenancy. It does not disappear because nobody filed the receipt. Missing paperwork is not the same thing as no liability — and this one catches people badly, because it is real money the estate is holding without knowing it.
- A rent-increase history you cannot see. When was the last increase? Was notice given properly? You need the documents, not somebody's recollection.
The instruction that follows from all of this is unglamorous and it is the most important thing in the first week: get the lease itself. Not a summary, not a description over the phone from a sibling. The document.
The assumption almost everyone makes, and should check
There is a story that gets told about inherited rentals, and it goes like this: a long-tenured tenant, years of guideline-only increases, a rent that has drifted far below what the place would fetch today. One Ontario real estate practitioner puts the underwriting version of it bluntly — if the actual rents are well below market and you are modelling the property on market rents, "your entire pro forma is fiction."
That story is often true. But it is worth checking rather than assuming, because the market moved. In the first quarter of 2026, average condo apartment rents across the Greater Toronto Area fell across every bedroom type — one-bedrooms to roughly $2,246, down about 4.1% year over year, and two-bedrooms to roughly $2,939, down about 3.2%. Those are GTA condo figures, not a provincial average, and your property may be neither. But the direction matters: a rent that was set two or three years ago is not automatically below today's market. It might be at it. It might be above it.
Find out before you build a plan on the assumption. Our rents by bedroom across Ontario cities page is a starting benchmark.
If you kept your own place rather than inheriting one
The other kind of accidental landlord did not inherit anything. You moved out, you could not or did not want to sell, and you rented the place instead. Your tenancy obligations from here are identical — everything in this guide applies. But your tax story is different, because you had a decision, and that decision triggered its own event: a change of use under paragraph 45(1)(a) of the Income Tax Act, which treats you as having disposed of the property at its market value on the day it stopped being your home. That deserves its own treatment, and it has one — see rent it or sell it: the three doors. The rest of this guide is written for the person who never had a decision at all.
Two clocks started the same day
One event set two processes running. They run at completely different speeds, and the distance between them is the entire experience of being an accidental landlord.
RTA time is fast
The Act does not pause for grief, and it does not pause for probate. From the day the estate takes over:
- Rent is due on the first. Same day it was always due.
- Vital services are continuous. Heat, water, electricity — on, and in a name that still exists. An account in a dead person's name is a problem waiting for the coldest week of the year.
- A repair request starts the day it is made. Not the day probate clears.
- Entry takes twenty-four hours' written notice. Every time, including for an appraiser. Our guide to the 24-hour notice of entry rule covers the exceptions, and there are fewer than people think.
The tenant does not wait for the estate. They were not consulted about any of this either.
Estate time is slow
Meanwhile, on the other track: probate. The terminal return. A T3 trust return if the estate earns income. Form TX19. A clearance certificate. And only then, distribution.
The good news, in full
This is the part nobody tells the person who has just been handed a house, and it is worth reading slowly.
When someone dies in Canada, subsection 70(5) of the Income Tax Act treats them as having disposed of each of their capital properties immediately before death, at fair market value. No sale happened. No buyer appeared. No cheque changed hands. The Act simply deems it, and any resulting gain is calculated on the deceased's final return — in the estate, not at your hand.
And then the other half, which is the part that matters to you. Under paragraph 70(5)(b), the person who acquires that property as a consequence of the death is deemed to have acquired it at that same fair market value immediately before the death. Your cost base is, as the accountants say, stepped up to the date-of-death value.
Which means: you do not owe capital gains tax just for inheriting. It also means something quietly liberating. Whatever the property cost in 1974, whatever the receipts said, whatever renovations went undocumented across four decades — none of it matters any more. As one CPA firm puts it, the original purchase price does not matter after inheritance. Your clock starts at the date of death. If the box of records in the basement is incomplete, and it always is, you can stop looking.
There is a rhyme here worth one sentence. The person who rents out their own home triggers a deemed disposition because the property's use changed. The person who inherits one is standing downstream of a deemed disposition because its owner died. Same machine, no buyer, no cheque, both times. The difference is that yours already happened, and it happened to somebody else.
But all of that rests on a single number, which is why the next paragraph is the most practical one in this guide.
Everything depends on the date-of-death value
The stepped-up cost base is only as good as the figure behind it — and that figure has to be defensible years from now, when you sell, to a reviewer who was not there. Canadian tax practitioners writing about inherited property in 2026 report that the CRA continues to focus on valuation accuracy, cost-base support and the proper reporting of deemed dispositions, and that executors filing final returns should expect questions where documentation is weak or values look aggressive. The line that should stay with you: unsupported cost-base increases are commonly denied on review, and the burden of proof remains with the taxpayer.
By the time that question arrives, the evidence is gone. The kitchen has been repainted. The comparable sales are ancient history. Nobody remembers what the roof looked like.
And now the reason you cannot simply get it over with
Most people arrive at an estate with one instinct: finish it. Sell what needs selling, split what needs splitting, close the file, grieve properly. The tax system will not let you.
Before distributing estate assets, an executor should obtain a clearance certificate from the CRA by filing Form TX19. The certificate confirms that the tax has been assessed and paid, and the CRA will not issue it until that is true. If you distribute without one and a reassessment lands afterward, subsection 159(2) can make you — personally, out of your own money — liable for what the estate can no longer cover.
Add the T3. If the estate earns income after the date of death, a trust return is due within ninety days of the estate's fiscal year-end. Rent is income. The moment there is a tenant paying an estate, that clock is running too.
How long does the clearance certificate take? Here is an honest answer instead of a confident one: months — and the published estimates disagree with each other. Reputable Canadian sources put it anywhere from a few months to well over a year, depending on the estate. Anyone quoting you a single number is guessing.
Now put it together, because nobody else does. You cannot distribute until the certificate. The certificate takes an unpredictable number of months. Meanwhile a person is living in the property, rent is arriving, the furnace can fail on a Sunday, and you are carrying personal exposure on the tax side. You are not a landlord for a week. You are a landlord for a year, minimum, because the tax system will not let you finish.
Plan for that, rather than being surprised by it. And get a CPA — an estate holding a rental property is not a do-it-yourself tax return, and nothing in this article is tax advice.
The duty that collides with the other duty
Here is the part almost nobody warns an executor about, and it is the hardest thing in the job.
You owe the beneficiaries a fiduciary duty to maximise the value of the estate. You simultaneously owe the tenant a set of statutory duties under the Residential Tenancies Act. Those two duties point in opposite directions, and there is no clever sequencing that makes them agree.
The most common collision is renovation. You want the property to show well. It has thirty years of someone's life in it. So you line up contractors and let the tenant know it will be a few weeks. Den Hollander is direct about where that ends:
"You can't just kick out a tenant and say, 'We need you to leave so we can clean things up.'"
The tenant's right to quiet enjoyment is not a preference the estate can weigh against a better sale price. This is not a tactic we are declining to teach you. It is a thing you are not permitted to do. The person living there is home — the same home they were living in last month, under an agreement that has not changed. That is not an obstacle to the estate. That is the situation.
And the consequences are not purely institutional. Ryan Scorgie, a lawyer who works with executors, puts the exposure plainly:
"Normally the estate overall will be the 'person' who's liable. But if there are actions that the executor should have taken but didn't, they can be found responsible for that."
Read that next to subsection 159(2) and the picture sharpens: there are two independent routes from this property to your own money. One runs through the tax. The other runs through the tenancy. Neither cares that you never asked for the job.
About the one door people go looking for
You will find a great deal written about ending a tenancy so a property can be sold empty. Most of it is written for somebody else's situation. Here is the constraint, stated once.
Selling a property is not a ground for ending a tenancy in Ontario. The tenancy goes with the house. There is a narrow route under section 49 of the Act by which a purchaser — not you — may serve an N12 for their own use, and it is narrower than almost anyone expects: the residential complex must have no more than three residential units, the purchaser must be an individual rather than a corporation, the person moving in must be the purchaser or their immediate family, there must be a signed agreement of purchase and sale, at least sixty days' notice ending on the last day of a rental period, and compensation. An application about a complex with more than three units gets dismissed.
Selling with vacant possession is not something you can simply arrange. If your situation genuinely involves an N12, read our complete guide to N12 own-use notices and talk to a lawyer. That is where this article stops on the subject, deliberately.
What to do instead
Tyler Hortie, a partner at an Ontario firm who advises on exactly these estates, offers the least fashionable advice available:
"Before you start terminating tenancies and getting the place ready for sale, canvassing the beneficiaries and understanding their interests is a really good idea."
Notice what he is doing: slowing you down. The beneficiaries may not want what you assume they want. Some may prefer to keep it. Some may not need the money this quarter. You are solving a problem that the family may not have.
Beyond that, four things that are actually available to you:
- A tenanted property can simply be sold tenanted. The tenancy travels with it, and the buyer steps into the same shoes you did. Buyers exist for this — investors, and people who want the income.
- Write to the tenant. A short letter: who the landlord is now, where rent goes, how to reach a human being. It costs nothing and prevents most of what goes wrong. Until a tenant knows who is legally entitled to the rent, they are often advised to hold it rather than pay the wrong person — which helps nobody.
- Check the insurance. A homeowner policy does not cover a rental, and an inherited property is almost always insured as a home. Our guide to landlord insurance in Ontario covers the gap.
- Get an estates lawyer. The tax half needs a CPA; this half needs a lawyer. An estate with a tenant in it is two specialties at once, and the cost of both is small against what one mistake costs.
And now the part nobody can answer for you
At some point in the next few days you will do what anyone would do: you will look up the rules. This section is about what you will find, and why most of it cannot be trusted right now.
Start with what is not in dispute. Bill 60, the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025, passed on November 24, 2025 and received Royal Assent on November 27, 2025. Its Schedule 12 amends the Residential Tenancies Act, and the amendments are substantial: N4 notice periods, the deadline to request a review of a Board order, N12 compensation, the rules about raising issues at an arrears hearing.
And then nothing happened.
Royal Assent is not commencement. These amendments come into force only on proclamation — a day named later by the Lieutenant Governor in Council. Until each provision is proclaimed, the old rule is the law, and the new text sits in the statute book doing precisely nothing.
The bill says so itself
This is the part that makes the whole problem legible. Schedule 12 is written in blanks. The compensation change applies only where "the notice is given on or after the day subsection 2 (2) of Schedule 12 ... comes into force." The shortened review deadline applies only to an order made "on or after the day section 11 of Schedule 12 ... comes into force." Another provision reaches back to how a subsection read "immediately before the day subsection 6 (1) of Schedule 12" came into force. One new subsection says a key term will be determined "in accordance with the regulations, if any."
Every one of those is a blank waiting for a date the statute does not contain. You can read the entire bill, cover to cover, and still not know what the law is. That is not an accident of drafting. It is how staged proclamation works — and it is why the internet is currently full of confident, specific, wrong answers.
What filled the gap
In the months after Royal Assent, published Ontario guides said things like this:
- That landlords "may now" serve an N4 with a seven-day termination date — in a guide that also got the existing period wrong, calling it fifteen days when it is fourteen.
- That with 120 days' notice (a rule that took effect only on September 21, 2026, and only for a landlord's-own-use N12 served on or after that date, never a purchaser's), a tenant "should generally not expect one month's rent as compensation" because the requirement "has been removed." That appeared on a law firm's site, addressed to tenants. If the provision is not in force, it tells a tenant not to ask for money they are still owed.
- That fixed-term leases will stop automatically converting to month-to-month at the end of the term. That provision was pulled from the bill in October 2025, after a public reversal that took three days, and never became law at all. The Globe and Mail reported at the time that the government "later removed this proposed section of the bill." Our own guide to why fixed-term leases all convert to month-to-month has carried the correct version since January, and the conversion rule is intact.
Now the uncomfortable part, and the reason this section exists.
The single most authoritative-looking guide we found on this subject — the freshest, the most specific, the one that cites a tribunal operational update by date, lists its sources, and even publishes its own corrections — is one of the ones describing the fixed-term change as a coming rule. Every visible marker of a careful publisher was present. The content was still wrong.
Reliability signals are not verification. Freshness is not verification. Specificity is not verification. Citing sources is not verification. Correcting yourself in public is not verification. Only the primary source is.
And today, the field still disagrees
As of this writing in July 2026, there is no consensus on the open web about what is actually in force. One guide states that Ontario's tribunal confirmed a two-stage rollout at the end of June, with one set of changes live on July 1 and another arriving September 21. In the same week, a property manager running roughly 600 units wrote the opposite:
"Here is the part almost nobody is saying clearly. As of the start of July 2026, the Residential Tenancies Act changes in Bill 60 are not in force. Royal Assent is not the same as being law you can act on ... no such proclamation order has been made."
An Ontario real estate practitioner, writing days ago, simply calls it "conflicting reporting on whether and when they come into force," and tells readers to verify with a licensed lawyer or paralegal before serving or relying on any notice.
We are not going to pretend to resolve that for you. We are going to show you how to resolve it yourself, in about ninety seconds.
The ninety-second check
Ontario publishes its consolidated statutes on e-Laws, and every amended provision carries a commencement footnote. So:
- Open e-Laws and find the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006.
- Find the exact section you are relying on — section 59 for an N4 termination date, section 48.1 for N12 compensation, section 209 for a review deadline.
- Read the commencement footnote at the bottom. If it names a date that has passed, the new rule applies. If it says "on proclamation," or names a date in the future, the old rule still applies.
That is the whole procedure. It beats every blog on the internet, including this one.
And it matters in both directions. A landlord who serves a seven-day N4 before that provision is in force has served a defective notice — the application fails and you start over, weeks lost. A tenant who reads that their review window has shrunk to fifteen days, when it has not, may forfeit a right they still possess. One of those costs time. The other costs someone their home.
Four questions for anything you read about your rights: Can you click it — is there a link to an actual source? Can you look it up — is the section named, so you could check? When was it true — is the claim dated, or floating? And the one this article is built around: is it in force yet? A rule can be real, correctly named and accurately quoted, and still not be law today.
Your first thirty days
The quick wins — do these now:
- Get the lease. The document, not a summary.
- Find the last month's rent deposit — the amount, the date, and whether interest was ever credited.
- Write to the tenant — who the landlord is now, where rent goes, how to reach you.
- Change nothing. Not the rent, not the terms, not the locks.
- Confirm heat, water and power are on, and in a name that still exists.
- Get a date-of-death appraisal if the estate does not have one. The whole tax position rests on that number.
- Check the insurance. It is a rental now.
The longer game:
- Do not distribute anything until the clearance certificate arrives — subsection 159(2).
- Diarise the T3 — ninety days after the estate's fiscal year-end.
- Read the commencement footnote before you serve any notice at all.
- Get a CPA and an estates lawyer, early — and remember a property manager is a legitimate expense of the estate.
The tools that do the mechanical parts: the Ontario Standard Lease, the rent increase calculator, and the full Ontario LTB forms library. And if you want the ground-up version of everything a new Ontario landlord needs, our guide to becoming a landlord in Ontario is the natural next read.
Your First 30 Days as an Accidental Landlord: The Ontario Checklist
You didn't choose this. A parent died, or a move happened, and now there's a tenancy with your name on it. This checklist walks you through the first thirty days — what transferred to you, what you must not touch, and the one mistake that makes you personally liable.
Get Free PDF →The bottom line
You did not choose this, and the Act does not care. The lease was attached to the property, not the person. You stepped into the shoes. Two clocks started the same day and only one of them is in any hurry.
The honest summary is three sentences. The tax is probably kinder than you feared — the deemed disposition was the deceased's, and your cost base steps up to the date-of-death value. The tenancy is more binding than you hoped — it survived, intact, with a rent you did not set and a deposit you never took. And the duty you owe the beneficiaries will collide with the duty you owe the person living there. That collision is not a problem to be solved. It is the job.
One instruction outlives this article and everything else you will read this month: Royal Assent is not commencement. Read the commencement footnote.
You're a landlord now, whether or not you planned to be
Tenon10's free tier exists for exactly this. Ontario's rules built into the software, the LTB forms ready when you need them, and the dates tracked — so your first thirty days don't depend on remembering.
Free tier • Tenants always free • Ontario rules built in
Related resources
- Becoming a Landlord in Ontario: The Complete First-Timer's Guide — the ground-up version, start here next
- The Ontario Standard Lease 2026: The Complete Guide for Landlords
- Fixed-Term Leases in Ontario: Why They All Convert to Month-to-Month
- Ontario Rental Law Changes: A Landlord's Guide to Bill 60 and Bill 97
- Ontario Rent Increases 2026: The Complete N1 Guide
- Landlord Insurance in Ontario: What's Standard, What It Costs, and Where the Gaps Are
- Is My Lease Legal? Common Ontario Lease Mistakes That Void Your Terms
- Ontario N12 Notices: A Complete Guide to Own-Use Tenancy Endings
- Should You Rent Out Your Toronto Condo or Sell It in 2026?
- CRA Audits of Rental Income: What Triggers Them, and How to Stay Audit-Ready
Frequently asked questions
I inherited a house with a tenant in it. Can I ask them to leave?
Not because you inherited it. The tenancy did not end when the owner died — a lease is attached to the property, not the person, and the estate trustee automatically becomes the landlord with all of the same obligations. There is no "new owner" ground for ending a tenancy in Ontario. Section 49 lets a purchaser serve an N12 for their own use, but it is narrow: the complex must have three or fewer residential units, the purchaser must be an individual, there must be a signed agreement of purchase and sale, at least sixty days' notice ending on the last day of a rental period, and compensation. Selling with vacant possession is not something you can simply arrange. A tenanted property can be sold tenanted — the buyer steps into the same shoes you did.
Do I owe capital gains tax on a property I inherited?
Generally, no — not just for inheriting it. Under subsection 70(5) of the Income Tax Act, the deceased is deemed to have disposed of their capital property at fair market value immediately before death, and that gain is calculated in the estate, on the final return. You are deemed to acquire the property at that same value — a "stepped-up" cost base. What the property originally cost decades ago no longer matters. Tax comes into it for you later: on rental income while you hold it, and on any gain measured from the date-of-death value if you eventually sell. This is a summary, not tax advice — an estate with a property in it needs a CPA.
The landlord died. Who does the tenant pay rent to?
The estate. Once an estate trustee is appointed, they are the landlord, and rent continues on the same terms. The practical step is a short letter to the tenant confirming who the landlord now is, where rent should go, and how to reach a person. Until that is clear, tenants are often advised to hold rent rather than pay someone who cannot prove they are entitled to it — which helps nobody. The last month's rent deposit stays attached to the tenancy, even if no paperwork survives.
Can I raise the rent now that the property is mine?
Only exactly as the previous owner could have. The estate is bound by the same rules: once every twelve months, ninety days' written notice on an N1, and no more than the provincial guideline for most units — 2.1% for 2026 and 1.9% for 2027. Ownership changing does not reset anything. And before you assume the rent is below market, check: rents in some Ontario markets fell over the past year, and a rent set a few years ago may be closer to current levels than you would expect.
Is Bill 60 in force? Can I serve a seven-day N4?
Be careful here. Bill 60 received Royal Assent in November 2025, but its amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act come into force only on proclamation — and Royal Assent is not commencement. Published sources currently disagree about which provisions are live, and some describe rules that were removed from the bill and never became law at all. Do not take our word for it either: open e-Laws, find the section you are relying on, and read the commencement footnote. If it says "on proclamation" or names a future date, the old rule still applies. Serving a notice on a timeline that is not in force means a defective notice and starting over.
Tax figures and section references in this article were checked against the Income Tax Act and CRA guidance in July 2026; rental rules against the Residential Tenancies Act. Ontario's rental law is mid-change: Bill 60 received Royal Assent in November 2025, but its amendments to the RTA come into force only on proclamation, and published sources disagree about which provisions are live. Royal Assent is not commencement. Before you serve any notice or rely on any timeline here, open e-Laws, find the section, and read the commencement footnote. Nothing in this article is tax or legal advice — an estate with a tenant in it needs a CPA and an estates lawyer, and it needs them early.
