Subletting and Assignment in Ontario: A Landlord's Guide

These two terms get used interchangeably in everyday speech, but under the RTA they are not the same thing at all. The table below lays out the practical differences a landlord needs to keep straight.

For both a sublet and an assignment, the tenant must obtain your consent before going ahead. The RTA does not let a tenant unilaterally install a replacement and walk away. But the scope of your discretion is where sublets and assignments diverge sharply.

For a sublet, you have broad discretion. You can consent or refuse, and while you should not be unreasonable, the law gives you significant latitude because the original tenant is staying responsible for the unit.

For an assignment, your discretion is much narrower. The RTA gives you two layers. You may refuse a general request to assign to anyone at all. But once the tenant proposes a specific person to take over, you cannot arbitrarily or unreasonably withhold your consent to that person.

This trips up a lot of landlords who see a tenant transfer as a chance to collect a fee. It is not. The RTA lets you recover only your reasonable out-of-pocket expensesincurred in giving consent to a sublet or assignment — for example, a modest cost to run a credit check on the proposed person.

You cannot charge a premium, a bonus, a flat "transfer fee," or any amount above your genuine costs. Demanding extra money as a condition of consent is prohibited, and a tenant who paid it can apply to the Board to get it back. Treat consent as an administrative step, not a revenue opportunity.

Here is the part that catches landlords off guard. When a tenant asks to assign the tenancy and you either refuse consent or simply do not respond within 7 days, the tenant gains the right to give you notice to terminate the tenancy.

In other words, ignoring an assignment request does not make it go away — it can hand the tenant an early exit. The tenant can give notice that ends the tenancy on a shortened timeline, and you lose both the original tenant and the chance to vet whoever they proposed.

The practical lesson: do not let an assignment request sit. Engage with it, ask for the information you need to assess the proposed person, and respond inside the window. Silence is not neutral here — it works against you.

Because you cannot unreasonably refuse a specific assignee, your protection is to make sure that any refusal you do make is grounded in something real. That means you are entitled to assess the proposed person the same way you would assess any applicant who walked in off the street.

Ask the proposed assignee or subtenant to complete an application and consent to a background and credit check. Look at the same things you would for any new tenant: income and ability to pay, credit history, references, and any record of past non-payment or eviction. If the person checks out, a refusal would be hard to defend as reasonable. If they do not, you now have a documented, legitimate basis for your decision.

Not everyone who moves in is a subtenant. The labels matter, because they decide who is responsible to you and what rights each person has.

If a tenant sublets or assigns without your consent, the arrangement is unauthorized. You can apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board, and the Board can end the tenancy and evict both the tenant and the unauthorized occupant. There are deadlines for bringing such an application, so do not sit on it once you learn what happened.

A related problem is the overholding subtenant— a subtenant who stays in the unit after the sublease period has ended and refuses to leave even though the original tenant is entitled to return. The RTA has specific rules for this situation: the landlord or the original tenant can apply to the Board for an order evicting the overholding subtenant, again within a set time limit.