Here’s a perfect example,
Let’s say you and your spouse are looking for your next home and stumble across a beautiful newly constructed unit. You immediately fall in love with the amenities. The floor plan is exactly what you’ve been looking for, and to top it off the finishes are to die for!
You’ve been renting in Ontario for the past 5 years and know how the process works, or so you thought. You’re ready to place an offer for full ask, $2,000/month, and your realtor does not advise you of these new rent control changes.Â
Your offer is accepted! You pack your things, move in, and begin settling into your new Toronto condo.Â
The year flies by and before you know it, there are 90 days left on your lease. From your experience, you know that you or the landlord must give notice within 60 days of your intentions to stay in the unit, or their intentions of selling/renovating/moving into the unit themselves.

You’re open a new email from your Toronto landlord and notice they’ve decided to increase your rent from $2,000/month to $2,850/month!Â
After catching your breath, you quickly search “what is the rental increase guideline in Ontario?” and discover the rate was 2.2% for 2020.
Confused, you call your real estate agent to clarify what you should do since you were under the interpretation rental increases in Ontario must fall within the rental increase guideline, and sadly at this point is when your now ex-realtor says “the landlord is allowed to increase rent as much as they want since the unit was first occupied after the November 15, 2018 date.“
You question why you weren’t advised this and your realtor responds “I thought you knew.”Â
You then go digging for further information on the topic and stumble across this blog post.
You learn that landlords of newly constructed condos in Ontario do not have to follow any rental increase guideline, and to top it off – they don’t need ANY reason to justify the increase in rent.