Hello friends: Good afternoon. Before going the details of LTB, let me introduce myself first.
My name is Muhammad Alam and I am a licensed Paralegal, A commissioner of Oath and A Notary Public in Ontario. I used to represent my clients at LTB hearing, Small Claims Court Hearing and Traffic court hearing for traffic tickets. I also go to the other tribunals of Ontario but mostly my practices are with LTB, Small Claims Court and Traffic Courts of Ontario. I have been practicing since 2011.
Let’s now discuss some of the features of Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB). LTB is the busiest tribunal among all other tribunals of Ontario. Every day there are hundred of cases or more resolved at LTB. The main dispute is – the tenants are not paying the rent and the landlord wants to evict the tenants for non-payment of rent. Or the Landlord wants the rental place for his / her own use. These two topics are mostly dealt with at LTB.
In Bangladeshi community in Ontario, I have seen so many people bought a small residential property for a small income generation purpose and once the price will go up, they will sell the property and make some profit. But unluckily their dreams become fade as the tenants did not pay the rent for few months in some cases more than a year. As the landlord must follow the Residential Tenancies Act 2006, so they need to follow the rules & procedures. They cannot just evict them immediately. Even the lease is expired, they cannot evict them as the tenancy will continue month to month basis. So the small landlords are in great trouble as they could not evict the tenants and at the same time they are not getting the rents. It has now become a big headache for the small Landlords.
So, lets discuss about the issue with Non-payment of Rent by the tenants:
Once the landlord finds that tenant did not pay the rent on time, suppose first week of the month, he can send a text to the tenant stating that the rent is due. If there is no response then may be after waiting for few days, the Landlord should serve a N4 Notice. Please don’t send any written notice other than N4 that you should pay the rent otherwise you have to leave the rental place. This will go against the landlord and the tenant will say at the hearing that the landlord had harassed him/ her. The legal procedure is to give N4 Notice not any handwritten note or notice. You can find the N4 form from Landlord and Tenant Board’s web site.
There are procedures for filling the Notice. N4 is a two pages Notice. In the first page, you need to fill out the address of the rental place, tenants name, the landlord’s name etc. If the owner of the property is two persons like you and your wife, then you need to put both the names. But anyone can sign and represent. Then you have to put the termination date. This is the problem, I have seen the landlord made the mistake and the application was dismissed. So you need to be very careful about the termination date.
The termination date is 14 days at least for N4 notice. Please calculate the day after the date you sign and from there 14 days. Put that date as your termination date. As it should be 14 days at least, so you can put one day more, so that there is no mistake. There is another crucial matter. If you send the N4 notice by Canada Post then you must add another 5 days. Please don’t forget to add another 5 days i.e in total 19 days and put that date as the termination date.
As you need to sign a Certificate of Service, so if you don’t add that 5 days, the software will not allow to proceed with the application. So remember that 5 days to add.
In the second Page, you need to put the amount and the dates of non -payment. Calculate the amount correctly and then put the figure on the space provided in the second page of N4 Notice.
Then sign it and serve to the tenants. You need to prepare a Certificate of Service also and sign that. The Certificate of Service means how did you serve the N4 Notice to the tenants. Did you serve N4 in person or by Canada Post. There are few options which are stated in the form. Please put a tick mark on the side of the way you served the N4 notice to the tenants.
After that wait for 14 or 19 days and then File a L1 Application for N4 Notice to the Tribunal Ontario Portal. You must upload N4, Certificate of Service with the L1 Application.
So the Termination date, Amount owed by the tenants and Certificate of Service should be correctly calculated and written, otherwise your L1 application will be dismissed and you will lose your money as there is a fee for L1 Application. You need to do it again from the very beginning- N4 notice, Certificate of service etc.
If you can do it by yourself then do it, otherwise take the help of a Paralegal who can help you filling the N4 form, Certificate of Service and L1 application, from A-Z.
There are other types of Application L2 which I hope to write in the next post. So long have a good life. Best wishes.