L1 vs L2 Application in Ontario: Which LTB Form Do You File?

The L1 is the Application to Evict a Tenant for Non-payment of Rent and to Collect Rent the Tenant Owes. It does two things at once: it asks the Board to evict the tenant for unpaid rent, and it asks for an order requiring the tenant to pay the arrears.

An L1 follows an N4— the Notice to End your Tenancy Early for Non-payment of Rent. You serve the N4, wait out its termination period, and if the tenant still has not paid in full, you can file the L1. The arrears you claim on the L1 should reconcile with the N4 and with a clean rent ledger.

The L2 is the Application to End a Tenancy and Evict a Tenant. It is the catch-all for evictions that are notabout non-payment of rent. Where the reason is conduct, damage, illegal acts, the landlord's own use, or demolition and renovation, the L2 is the application you file — and you can ask for related amounts the tenant owes as part of it.

An L2 follows whichever notice matches your reason. The common pairings are:

Several of these notices have their own rules, deadlines, and remedy periods, and some require compensation to the tenant. The point for choosing an application is simpler: if your reason is anything other than straight non-payment of rent, you are almost certainly filing an L2, not an L1.

There is a related application worth knowing about: the L9, an Application to Collect Rent the Tenant Owes. The L9 is a money-only application — it asks the Board to order payment of arrears without asking to evict.

Landlords frequently combine an L1 and L9 so that a single application both seeks eviction for non-payment and captures the full amount of rent owed, including rent that comes due while the case is in the queue. Combining them in one filing keeps everything in front of the same hearing rather than splitting your claim across separate matters.

You pay a filing feeto the Landlord and Tenant Board when you submit an L1 or L2. We are deliberately not quoting a dollar amount here, because the fee is set by the Board and changes from time to time — confirm the current amount on the LTB or Tribunals Ontario website before you file, and budget for it as a real cost of the process.

The LTB accepts applications through several channels:

Whichever channel you use, attach the underlying notice and its Certificate of Service. The application is only as strong as the notice it rests on, so the supporting documents are not optional paperwork — they are the foundation of the case.

Filing does not produce an order. It starts a process that runs through a hearing. Here is the sequence:

The honest answer to "how long does this take?" is: longer than you expect, and it varies. The notice period is short and predictable. The wait between filing and a hearing is where time disappears, and the LTB has carried a significant backlog in recent years.

We are deliberately not quoting a precise average wait, because LTB scheduling fluctuates and any fixed number dates quickly. The honest planning assumption is that a contested case can run several months from filing to resolution. That is exactly why getting the application and its notice right the first time matters so much — a dismissal sends you back to the start of a long queue.

Most dismissed applications fail for reasons that had nothing to do with the merits of the case. Check yourself against every one of these before you file:

The pattern across all of them is the same: the application inherits every weakness of the notice it rests on. A defective N4 sinks the L1 filed on top of it; a mis-served N12 sinks the L2. Fixing problems at the notice stage is far cheaper than discovering them at a hearing months later.