Got an N12? What Ontario Tenants Need to Know Before Moving Out

An N12 is a notice, not an eviction order. It is how a landlord says that they, a family member, a caregiver or a buyer intends to move in. You do not have to leave because you got one. Section 39 of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 lets a landlord recover possession only where the tenant has vacated or a Landlord and Tenant Board order authorises it, and the Board's form agrees: "You do not have to move out if you disagree with what the landlord has put in this notice." What decides the outcome is the date on the form, the money attached to it, and the deadlines. General information, not legal advice.

What has to be on the notice

The termination date must be at least 60 days after the notice is given (section 48(2) for the landlord's own use, section 49(3) for a purchaser) and it must fall on the last day of a rental period, or the end of a fixed term. Pay on the first and the date has to be a month's last day; on a one-year lease it cannot precede that year's last day.

Counting matters. The N12 instructions tell landlords not to count the day the notice is handed over, and to add five days for mail or one business day for courier; section 191(3) deems a mailed document given on the fifth day after mailing. The Board's worked example: handed to a month-to-month tenant on August 1, the earliest termination date is September 30; mailed that day, October 31. An N12 cannot be posted on your door.

Get the date wrong and the notice fails. Guideline 12 says a notice with an incorrect termination date "is defective", "cannot be amended after it has been given", and cannot support an order terminating a tenancy.

Who is allowed to send one

Section 48(5) restricts the landlord's-own-use N12 to units owned at least in part by an individual, where the landlord is an individual: a corporation cannot give one. The occupant must be the landlord, their spouse, a child or parent of either, or a caregiver for one of them. On the caregiver limb, section 48(1)(d) requires the person receiving the care to be someone who "resides or will reside in the building" holding the unit. Section 48(1) requires an intention to occupy for at least one year. Section 49, the purchaser version, applies only where the complex holds no more than three residential units or a condominium unit is being sold, and only after an agreement of purchase and sale exists. Note the asymmetry: the one-year requirement sits in section 48, not 49, and Form N12 mirrors it: Reason 1 says "occupy it for at least one year", Reason 2 does not.

Tenancies that cannot be given an N12 at all

For a long-tenured GTA condo tenant this is the strongest thing here, and the Board's N12 instructions list it. Section 51(1): a landlord "may not give a notice under section 48 or 49" to anyone who was a tenant when the complex became subject to a registered condominium declaration "on or after June 17, 1998". Section 51(2): the same for a proposed condominium unit where you were the tenant when the purchase agreement was entered into. Section 56: the same where the unit became separately conveyable through a Planning Act consent or subdivision. The instructions add equity co-ops, unless the building has four or fewer units or the landlord or a member of their immediate family used to live there.

But read section 51(3) before relying on 51(1) or (2): neither applies where no unit was rented before July 10, 1986 and the complex was registered "before the day that is two years after the day on which the first rental unit … was first rented": the ordinary new-condo pattern, rented on interim occupancy and registered inside two years. Section 51(4) also excludes a tenant who took the unit by assignment. Where a bar does apply it stops the notice being given at all.

The money: one month's rent, by the termination date

Section 48.1 says a landlord "shall compensate a tenant in an amount equal to one month's rent or offer the tenant another rental unit acceptable to the tenant". Section 49.1 does the same for a purchaser's N12, keeping the obligation with the landlord who served it, not the buyer. Section 55.1 sets the deadline: compensation is due "no later than on the termination date specified in the notice", not after you leave, not on closing.

The teeth are in section 83(4): the Board "shall not issue an eviction order … for the purposes of residential occupation … until the landlord has complied with section 48.1, 49.1, 52, 54 or 55".

If the money never came, section 135(1.1) deems the landlord to have retained it in contravention of the Act, and Reason 6 on the T1 instructions is this exact situation. You need not have moved out (the T1 is open to "either a current or former tenant"), but only if the compensation fell due within the last 12 months.

If you stay past the termination date

Nothing automatic happens: the landlord must file an L2 and win a hearing, and the Board's hearing-process page puts non-arrears applications at roughly five to seven months from filing to hearing, a figure it attaches no date to. Section 71 lets them apply immediately after serving, but section 69(2) bars an application later than 30 days after the termination date, and a late one is dismissed.

Keep paying rent. Disputing an N12 suspends nothing, and arrears are the commonest way a tenant fighting one loses the unit anyway, on a separate N4 and L1 track. That track speeds up on September 21, 2026, when section 59(1) is replaced and a non-payment notice can take effect on the 7th day after it is given rather than the 14th, in all but daily and weekly tenancies, where it was already the 7th.

The affidavit. Section 72(1)(a) bars an eviction order on a section 48 notice unless the landlord files an affidavit sworn by the person who personally requires the rental unit, certifying good faith and personal use for at least one year; section 72(1)(b) requires the same for a purchaser's notice, minus the one-year clause. Section 71.1 requires it with the application, and the Board will not accept the application without it, though a signed, dated declaration is accepted instead.

The disclosure. Since September 1, 2021, an L2 built on an N12 or N13 must disclose every such notice the landlord gave any tenant in the previous two years, including for properties they no longer own; section 72(3) lets the Board weigh that history.

The hearing. The landlord must prove good faith on a balance of probabilities. Even then, section 83(2) makes the Board consider refusing or postponing, and section 83(3) requires refusal where the application is reprisal for enforcing your rights, complaining to a government authority about health or safety or joining a tenants' association, or where the landlord is in serious breach of their obligations. An eviction order cannot take effect before the notice's termination date. But the power to delay one narrows on September 21, 2026, when section 83(1)(b) becomes "subject to any prescribed limitations or conditions". O. Reg. 516/06 s. 8.4, added by O. Reg. 241/26 the same day, sets them: on an eviction built on a section 48, 49 or 50 notice the Board may postpone "only if the landlord consents" or if satisfied it "would not be unfair to the landlord or other tenants of the residential complex".

Enforcement. Only the Court Enforcement Office (the Sheriff) can remove you. Changing the locks while you live there is an illegal lockout; the answer is a T2, though section 31(3) lets the Board order you back into possession only "if the Board is satisfied that the rental unit is vacant".

Bad faith, and what the Board can order

If you move out and nobody moves in, section 57 is the route back. A former tenant may apply on Form T5 where the notice was given in bad faith, the tenant left because of it or an order based on it, and nobody named in section 48 or 49 occupied the unit within a reasonable time. The deadline is one year from the day you vacated, and you cannot file while you live there.

The presumption that shifts the burden covers only a landlord's-own-use notice, and it can be rebutted. Section 57(5) opens "For the purposes of an application under clause (1) (a)" (the section 48 branch), and the T5 instructions repeat it: "If the landlord gave you the notice of termination for Reason 1". It presumes bad faith "unless the contrary is proven on a balance of probabilities", so a relisting moves the burden onto the landlord rather than deciding the case. On a purchaser's N12 under section 49, the ordinary GTA condo case, there is no presumption at all. Section 57(6) runs the window from "the day the landlord gives the notice of termination under section 48" to one year after you vacate.

Section 57(3) sets the remedies: your increased rent for a one-year period after leaving, general compensation of up to 12 months of your last rent whether or not you spent anything, moving and storage costs, a rent abatement, an administrative fine, and any other order the Board thinks appropriate. That includes, says Guideline 12, moving you back in if the unit has not been re-rented. A new section 57(6.1) arrives on September 21, 2026 presuming bad faith where nobody moved in within a "prescribed period of time", again section 48 only, and no period has been prescribed: O. Reg. 241/26 adds sections 8.1 to 8.4, 17.1 and 17.2 to O. Reg. 516/06, none of them that one.

The T1 and T5 instructions both let you request a fee waiver "if you meet the financial eligibility requirements set out by the LTB"; the fees page adds that Board fees are non-refundable.

The fine's ceiling is written three ways: the T5 instructions cap it at "$50,000 or the monetary jurisdiction of the Small Claims Court … whichever is greater"; section 57(3) says "the greater of $10,000 and the monetary jurisdiction"; Guideline 12 says "not exceeding the monetary jurisdiction of the Small Claims Court", with no floor. All three land on the same number today only because Ontario raised that jurisdiction to $50,000 on October 1, 2025. (Guideline 16, the guideline on administrative fines, states no amount at all; it says the fine should suit the breach.) The T5 instructions separately cap your whole claim at $50,000.

The $100,000 and $500,000 maximums are different in kind: fines on conviction for an offence, such as obtaining possession improperly by giving a notice in bad faith (section 233(k)). And the Board confirmed on June 30, 2026 that they "do not apply to administrative fines, costs, or compensation" it orders.

Deadlines worth writing down

Two wrinkles. The Board's page gives both 30 days and 15 days for a review request; its June 30, 2026 update says 15 days from July 1, 2026, so work to 15. Missing it does not close the door, since a late filing "must also ask for an extension of time … by filling out a Request to Extend Deadline". And the appeal clock has two start points: section 210(1) runs 30 days "after being given the order", the Board's page from "the date the review order was issued". If you never sought a review, count from the order. Filing stays the order, but "unless the Divisional Court or the LTB lifts (or removes) the stay".

Get help before the hearing, not after: the Board's Getting legal help page lists Legal Aid Ontario, the community legal clinics it funds and the Law Society's referral service. The Board's line is 416-645-8080 in Toronto, 1-888-332-3234 elsewhere.