Condo Rentals in Toronto: Board Rules, Status Certificates and What Landlords Miss

Section 14 of Ontario's Residential Tenancies Act says this, in full: "A provision in a tenancy agreement prohibiting the presence of animals in or about the residential complex is void." That's the whole section. Ontario is the only province in Canada whose residential tenancy statute does it. Your tenant can sign a no-pets clause on Monday, bring home a dog on Tuesday, and there is nothing in that clause you can do about it.

Unless the unit is a condo. Then the same sentence, in the same lease, signed by the same tenant, may not save the dog at all.

Not because the RTA goes soft in a condominium. Because there is a second rulebook. It comes from a different statute. Your tenant never signed it, never negotiated it, cannot vote on it and cannot amend it — and it binds them anyway.

This is a guide to that second rulebook: what the Condominium Act, 1998 actually requires of a landlord, why a clause that's void in a house holds in your building, the ten-day deadline most owners miss (including owners whose own building tells them it's thirty), what a status certificate is really for when you aren't buying anything, and the chain that turns your tenant's rule breach into a lien on your unit that ranks ahead of your mortgage.

One honest thing before any of it: most condo tenancies never touch a word of this. Not because the rules are toothless, but because most tenants follow rules they've actually been given. The failure mode, nearly every time, is that nobody told the tenant.

Two rulebooks, and your tenant signed only one

The split is simple once you see it, and almost nobody states it out loud.

The Residential Tenancies Act governs the relationship between you and your tenant. That's its whole job. It tells you what you can put in a lease, how much you can raise the rent, how you end a tenancy, when you can enter.

The Condominium Act, 1998 governs a different relationship entirely: the one between the corporation, the owners, and the occupiers of units.

Read that last word again. Occupier.

Section 119(1) lists everyone bound by the Act, the declaration, the by-laws and the rules: the corporation, its directors, officers and employees, the declarant, an owner, a person with an encumbrance against a unit — and an occupier of a unit. Not "a party to the lease." Not "a signatory." Not "a person who agreed." An occupier. Your tenant carries a box through the lobby and is bound by a document they have never read.

And section 119(2) hands you the other end of it: an owner must take all reasonable steps to ensure that occupiers and visitors comply. Not "notify." Not "make an effort." All reasonable steps — a standard with a pass and a fail.

The four documents, ranked

Most condo owners could not put these in order, and the order is the point.

Your lease is last. It is also the only one on that list your tenant signed. The declaration sits at the top, it was written before you owned the unit, and it is attached to the land rather than to any person — which is why it doesn't care who moves in or what they agreed to.

Here's the shape of it. Think of two switches wired in a line. In a house there's one switch, and it's yours. In a condo there's a second switch upstream — installed before you bought, wired by someone you never met, and nobody has touched it in years. Current flows only if both are closed. You can do everything right with your switch and still get nothing.

One note on Toronto, and one on your tenant

The Condominium Act is provincial. It binds a condo in Kitchener exactly as it binds one on Queens Quay, and nothing in this guide is a Toronto rule. Toronto matters here for a different reason: the condo is the default Toronto rental, and the typical Toronto landlord's entire portfolio is one unit. This is the city where "landlord" and "condo owner" are usually the same person.

And the part that's easy to forget while reading a list of your obligations: your tenant has no standing with the corporation at all. They can't attend the meeting. They can't vote. They can't propose an amendment to a rule they think is unreasonable. If the board does something that affects their home, their only route is through you.

That isn't a loophole to enjoy. It's a responsibility that arrived with the unit.

The clause that's void across the street

Section 14 is one sentence, and it is absolute — inside a tenancy agreement. That's the limit of its reach, and the limit is doing enormous work. It voids "a provision in a tenancy agreement." It says nothing whatever about a prohibition that lives somewhere else.

The leading Ontario decision on the collision is Metropolitan Toronto Condominium Corp. No. 949 (77 & 99 Harbour Sq) v. Irvine. The corporation's declaration prohibited pets. The tenants' lease also had a no-pets clause. They kept a dog anyway, and when the corporation went to court for an order removing it, they argued that the residential tenancy legislation voided the clause and therefore prevailed.

The court disagreed. Voiding "no pets" in leases, as the decision is reported, "did not extend to affect the validity of a 'no pets' clause in a condominium declaration."

Here's the one sentence to carry out of this: the RTA can void your lease clause. It cannot void the declaration, because the declaration isn't a lease clause. It's an instrument under a different Act, registered against the land, binding every occupier of every unit.

A condominium lawyer put the principle more bluntly than any statute does: "A tenant simply cannot have more rights than owners with respect to pets." Your tenant's rights in the unit are derived from yours. You're bound by the declaration. So they are.

Same tenant. Same city. Same dog. Same sentence in the same lease.

The limit that isn't optional

A condo pet ban is not absolute, and the exception is not a technicality.

Service and support animals engage the Ontario Human Rights Code. Where a resident has a disability and relies on the animal, the prohibition gives way — declaration or no declaration. A corporation may ask for medical confirmation of the disability. It cannot demand certification of the animal, because Ontario has no body that certifies service animals. There is nothing for anyone to produce.

Why the clause is in your lease at all

If you're a condo landlord with a no-pets clause in your lease, you're probably not expressing a preference. You're relaying an obligation you can't waive. The clause is void on its own terms and you may well know that. It's there because the declaration says what it says, and because section 119(2) puts the job of relaying it on you.

So say that. In those words, to your tenant, before they sign: this isn't my rule, I can't waive it, and here is the document it comes from. A no-pets line in a lease reads like landlord fussiness. In a condo it's usually the declaration talking through you, and your tenant has no way to know the difference unless you tell them.

The reason this matters more than your liability is worth stating plainly. A condominium lawyer, writing for tenants, described the risk this way: the danger is "to get a pet, get attached to the pet, and then be told that you have to choose between keeping your pet and keeping your unit."

That is what "tell them before they sign" prevents. Not a compliance headache. That.

Two things this section deliberately doesn't cover. Behaviour-based grounds — damage, substantial interference, a serious allergic reaction in the building — still exist and still run through the ordinary notice route; that's the N5 notice territory and it works the same in a condo as anywhere. And a no smoking clause Ontario landlords add to a lease behaves completely differently from a no-pets one — that's its own guide, and the contrast is worth reading.

The chain: how your tenant's breach becomes a charge on your unit

Most owners assume that if a tenant breaks a building rule, the corporation deals with the tenant.

It doesn't. It deals with you.

Here's the sequence, and every link is a real section of a real statute.

1. Section 119(2). You must take all reasonable steps to secure your tenant's compliance. You are the enforcement mechanism. The corporation's first letter goes to your address.
2. Section 134. If compliance doesn't arrive, the corporation can apply to the Superior Court for a compliance order. And the damages and actual costs — meaning legal costs — of obtaining that order are added to the common expenses for the unit of the non-compliant owner. Your unit. Your common expenses. Your tenant's dog.
3. Section 85. Unpaid common expenses give the corporation a lien against your unit, and that lien has priority over any mortgage registered against it. Ahead of your bank.
4. Section 87. And if the arrears sit there while the unit is tenanted, the corporation may collect the rent directly from your tenant — up to the higher of the amount you're in default or the rent due under the lease, on written notice to them.

Spend a second on that last one, because nobody sees it coming. Your tenant receives a letter instructing them to pay their rent to the condominium corporation instead of to you. They comply, because they have to. They aren't doing anything wrong — they're following a statute. You find out when the money doesn't arrive.

The counterweight

An article that only frightens you is a worse article, and both halves of this are true.

The three months in section 85 are policed strictly. A corporation must register its lien within three months of the default or the lien expires. Courts have refused to invent an equitable lien or revive expired lien rights to rescue a corporation that missed the window — including in a case where the corporation had itself delivered a clean status certificate to a lender while the units were roughly $812,000 in arrears. The machinery is powerful. It is also unforgiving of the people operating it.

Boards can overreach, too, and courts push back on costs. There is a well-known Superior Court file in which a corporation went to court over a bird in a unit, ran up legal fees far beyond anything the dispute warranted, and ended up with a costs award against it, the lien discharged, and money owing to the owners it had pursued. The principle had nothing to do with the bird. It had to do with how much a board can spend on your behalf and then charge to your unit.

What the corporation can't do

A condominium corporation cannot simply evict your tenant. Terminating a residential tenancy is not something a board does on its own initiative — the ordinary route runs through the Landlord and Tenant Board, and it runs through you. What the corporation can do is make a breach expensive, and make it expensive at your address.

Which is the honest cost–benefit. Reading the declaration costs you an evening. A status certificate costs $100 and ten days. On the other side of the ledger: a rule that forbids the tenancy you just signed, a pet ban you never relayed, compliance costs landing on your common expenses, a lien ahead of your mortgage, and your rent redirected to a corporation you're already annoyed with. The asymmetry isn't close.

And most tenancies never go anywhere near it — because most tenants follow rules they were actually given.

The two documents that prevent all of it

Everything in the section above is downstream of a single failure: nobody read the rules, and nobody handed them to the tenant. Two documents fix it. One you order. One you file.

1. The status certificate — and why it isn't just a buyer's document

Under section 76, anyone may request a status certificate. The corporation must deliver it within 10 days of a written request and payment, and the fee is capped at $100, including all applicable taxes. You don't need to be buying. You don't need a reason. You ask, you pay, they deliver.

What arrives is usually fifty to a hundred pages, and it contains:

• the declaration, by-laws and rules
• the current budget
• the last audited financial statements and the auditor's report
• a statement on the most recent reserve fund study and the state of the fund
• the common expenses for the unit, and whether it's in arrears
• any anticipated increase in common expenses, with the reason
• the expected surplus or deficit at the end of the current budget year
• any agreements about changes to the common elements — which are registered against title and bind future owners

Now the part almost nobody says out loud. Every guide to status certificates is written for buyers. Search the phrase and you'll get lawyers and brokerages explaining how to protect a purchase. All of that is true and none of it is aimed at you.

Because the status certificate is also the document that tells you whether you're permitted to rent the unit out at all. Some declarations restrict leasing. Some set minimum terms. Some ban short-term rentals outright — and if you're weighing that, the short-term rental rules by Ontario city are only half the answer; your declaration is the other half, and it's the half that can say no after the city says yes. Some prohibit pets, which is the whole of the section above.

Out of everything reviewed for this article, one source put the landlord's version plainly — the certificate discloses "rules that conflict with your plans, such as restrictions on renting the unit or keeping a pet." One. That's the gap this article exists in.

If you already own the unit and have never rented it before, order one anyway. A hundred dollars and ten days, against a rule that could forbid the tenancy you're about to sign.

The binding effect, which is stranger than people expect

Section 76(6) makes the certificate bind the corporation. That sounds like a consumer protection until you look at what it doesn't include: there is no right of rescission if the certificate is wrong, and no penalty on the corporation under the Act for issuing a wrong one.

What happens instead is quieter, and more useful. The corporation is generally barred from collecting what it failed to disclose. Undisclosed arrears may not be collectable from a new owner. An undisclosed reserve-fund increase may not be enforceable. The Condominium Authority of Ontario points to a recent Superior Court decision in which an owner was found exempt from a special assessment because it hadn't been clearly noted on the certificate.

The remedy isn't damages. It's that the corporation loses the argument. Which is exactly why the $100 is worth spending: you're not buying a document, you're buying a position.

2. The section 83 notice — and the deadline your building may have wrong

Section 83(1). Within 10 days of entering into a lease or a renewal, you must:

• (a) notify the corporation that the unit is leased;
• (b) give the corporation the lessee's name, your address, and a copy of the lease or a summary in the prescribed form — that's Form 5, "Summary of Lease or Renewal", one of the forms the Condominium Authority of Ontario administers;
• (c) give the lessee a copy of the declaration, by-laws and rules.

And section 83(2): within 10 days of a tenancy ending without renewal, notify the corporation in writing. Almost nobody does this one.

Look hard at (c). Handing your tenant the governing documents is not a courtesy, not a best practice, not a nice touch. It's a statutory duty with a deadline. It is also the single act that prevents most of the chain in the previous section, for the least glamorous reason imaginable: a tenant who has the rules generally follows them.

The Ontario Standard Lease — mandatory for most tenancies signed on or after April 30, 2018 — does half the work. It has a condominium section: you indicate the unit is a condo, you provide the governing documents, and the tenant agrees to follow them. Tick the box. Attach the documents. Keep the record.

3. Where the sources fail — and the test that protects you

Here's the uncomfortable part, and it's the reason this section exists at all. In condo-land, the sources you'd most naturally trust are the ones getting it wrong.

Your own building can be the stale source. There is a Toronto condominium whose own leasing page — the page an owner would trust ahead of any blog, any lawyer, any guide — currently tells its owners that the section 83 notice is due within 30 days. It even attaches the Form 5 for them to fill in, which makes it look thoroughly correct. The statute says ten. That's not a random website with bad SEO. That's the building.

And precision is free to invent. A management company's guide to this exact topic carries a statistic attributed to CMHC with no report named and no link; a named anecdote about a buyer, with no source; and a court case identified by what looks like a file number — a string that no reader, and no lawyer, can look up. Not one of those three claims can be checked by anyone. We're not saying they're false. We're saying they could not be verified, and that a reader has no way to tell the difference.

That's the lesson, and it's sharper than "some blogs are out of date." A name, a percentage, a federal agency and a case number cost nothing to type, and at a glance they are indistinguishable from research. Specificity is the cheapest way to buy trust.

So here's a test with two questions, and it takes about fifteen seconds:

• Can you click it?
• Can you look it up?

A statute has a section number that resolves on e-Laws or CanLII. A case has a citation that resolves. A statistic has a report with a name and a date. A number that looks precise and resolves to nothing isn't a source. It's a costume.

Which brings this article under its own test, so let's be direct about it. Every Condominium Act section number here — 76, 83, 85, 87, 119, 132, 134 — is one you can check, and you should. Ontario's e-Laws site carries the current consolidated text. Read section 83 yourself and see whether it says ten days or thirty.

That's the difference. Not that we're right. That you can find out.

What to actually do

This week:

1. Order the status certificate. $100, ten days, anyone can ask. You don't have to be buying.
2. Read it for leasing restrictions first — before pets, before anything. Some declarations limit or bar renting outright, and that answer changes everything else.
3. Get the actual declaration, by-laws and rules. The documents themselves. Not a summary, not the building's website, not a management company's overview.
4. Diarise your section 83 dates: 10 days from a new lease, 10 days from a renewal, 10 days from a termination without renewal.

Every tenancy, from now on:

5. Tell your tenant what the rules are before they sign — in writing, in plain words, including everything that will surprise them.
6. Use the Standard Lease, tick the condominium box, attach the governing documents, and keep a record of what you handed over and when.
7. Keep common expenses current. Section 87 is not theoretical.
8. Relay rule changes as the board makes them. Your tenant hears it from you, or they hear it from a compliance letter.

And then the one that isn't a rule at all, because it's a method — and it's the honest centre of this piece.

We cannot tell you what your rules say. Every declaration is different; that is what a declaration is. No article, no checklist, no search engine and no management company can tell you whether your building bans dogs, caps lease terms or forbids short-term rentals. So the skill isn't knowing the rule. It's knowing the rule exists, knowing it outranks your lease, and knowing where to read it.

Order the certificate. Read the declaration. Hand it over. File within ten days.

The second switch

A house has one switch, and it's yours. A condo has two, wired in series — and the second one was installed before you bought the unit, by people you never met, and it isn't yours to flip. Current flows only if both are closed.

Your tenant is standing in that circuit too, bound by a document they never signed, can't vote on and can't amend — and the only person in the world who can tell them what's in it is you.

Four moves. Order the certificate. Read the declaration. Hand it to your tenant before they sign. File the section 83 notice within ten days — not thirty, whatever your building's page says.

None of this is exotic. It's a statute anyone can read, on a website anyone can open, for free. The problem is that the document that actually decides your case is your declaration: specific to your building, never indexed by a search engine, and surrounded by sources that are closest to you and most likely to be wrong about it.

Related resources

• Smoking and Cannabis Policies in Ontario Rentals: What a Landlord Can Actually Ban — the sibling to this article. A no-smoking clause behaves nothing like a no-pets clause, and the contrast explains both.
• Ontario Standard Lease 2026: The Complete Guide for Landlords — including the condominium section and what belongs in it.
• What You Can and Can't Add to the Ontario Standard Lease — which of your added terms actually hold.
• Is My Lease Legal? Common Ontario Lease Mistakes That Void Your Terms
• Short-Term Rental Rules by Ontario City — the municipal half of the STR question. Your declaration is the other half.
• N5 Notices in Ontario: A Complete Guide to Addressing Disturbances — behaviour-based grounds, in a condo or anywhere else.
• Ontario Rent Increases 2026: The Complete N1 Guide — because your rent doesn't reset when your common expenses do.
• Becoming a Landlord in Ontario: The Complete First-Timer's Guide

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to tell my condo corporation that I'm renting out my unit?

Yes, and there's a deadline. Section 83 of the Condominium Act, 1998 requires an owner who leases a unit — or renews a lease — to notify the corporation within 10 days, provide the lessee's name and the owner's address along with a copy of the lease or a summary in the prescribed form (Form 5), and give the lessee a copy of the declaration, by-laws and rules. There's a matching obligation at the other end: if a tenancy ends and isn't renewed, notify the corporation in writing within 10 days. Some buildings' own materials still quote a longer period. Check the current text of section 83 on Ontario's e-Laws site rather than relying on a summary — including this one.

My lease says no pets, but I heard that's void in Ontario. Does that apply in a condo?

Both things are true at once, and that's what makes it confusing. Section 14 of the Residential Tenancies Act voids a no-pets provision in a tenancy agreement — Ontario is the only province that does this — and it voids it in a condo lease exactly as it would anywhere else. But if the pet prohibition is in the condominium's declaration, that's a different instrument under a different Act, and Ontario courts have held that voiding the lease clause doesn't touch it. One limit that isn't optional: service and support animals engage the Ontario Human Rights Code, and a declaration's pet ban gives way to that accommodation. A corporation can ask for medical confirmation of a disability, but it can't demand certification of the animal — Ontario has no body that certifies them.

What happens if my tenant breaks a condo rule?

The corporation's first move is usually toward you, not your tenant. Section 119(2) requires an owner to take all reasonable steps to secure an occupier's compliance, so you're the mechanism. If that fails, the corporation can apply to court for a compliance order under section 134, and the costs of obtaining it can be added to your unit's common expenses. Unpaid common expenses create a lien on the unit under section 85, and that lien has priority over a mortgage — though it expires three months after the default unless the corporation registers it. What the corporation can't do is simply evict your tenant: terminating a residential tenancy runs through the Landlord and Tenant Board, and through you.

Can my condo corporation really collect rent from my tenant?

If your common expenses fall into arrears while the unit is leased, section 87 lets the corporation collect the rent directly from your tenant, on written notice to them, up to the higher of the amount you're in default or the rent due under the lease. Your tenant isn't doing anything wrong by paying it — they're complying with a statute, and refusing would put them in a worse position than you are. The practical lesson is unglamorous: don't let common expenses slide while a unit is tenanted.

Is a status certificate worth ordering if I'm not buying?

Often, yes — and almost nobody does it. Under section 76 anyone can request one; the corporation has 10 days, and the fee is capped at $100 including all applicable taxes. It bundles the declaration, by-laws and rules with the budget, the last audited financials, the state of the reserve fund, any arrears on the unit and any anticipated increases. For a landlord that isn't trivia — it's whether you're allowed to rent the unit out at all, what the pet and short-term-rental rules are, and whether a fee increase is coming that your rent won't cover. The certificate also binds the corporation to what it discloses, which is a useful thing to have in writing before you need it.

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Rules dated July 2026. The Condominium Act, 1998 and the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 both change, and your condominium's declaration, by-laws and rules can be amended by your board at any time — so confirm the current text on e-Laws and read your own governing documents before acting on any of this. Nothing here is legal advice. Every declaration is different, which is the entire point of the article.