What You Should Know About Rental Contracts in Canada

If you are planning on taking the plunge and moving to Canada to live and possibly take up employment you will probably be renting out a place to live, at least for some period of time. Sometimes expatriates just rent for a short term period because they are interested in purchasing a home to live in and want to take some time to research the area and the properties that are available. However there are a lot of expats that rent out a place to live for long term periods of time. If you will be renting out a place to live in Canada for a long term period of time then you will want to familiarize your self with Canadian rental contracts before you are asked to sign one when you find a place that you would like to rent out to live in.

If you have ever rented out an apartment or other place to live then you have probably been required to sign a rental contract or lease agreement before you could take possession of the rental property to live in. For the most part, rental agreements are pretty standard fair and have basically the same information and clauses from country to country. That being said, there are some unique little parts of rental agreements that tend to vary from country to country. If you are going to be signing a rental agreement in Canada it is best that you know what those unique little parts are before you are presented with a rental agreement to sign and do not notice the items that might be somewhat different that what you are used to seeing in rental agreements in your home country.

Basically there are four major sections of the Canadian rental agreement that you will want to pay special attention to when you are looking over it before signing it. Depending on what country you are from these items may be very different or very similar to what you are used to seeing. The four main sections to pay special attention to are the deposit section, the responsibility of household bills section, the duration of agreement section and the forfeiture section.

Under the duration section you will notice that the majority of rentals in Canada have a lease period of 12 months. During your 12 month rental period your landlord cannot raise your rent price. In this section will also be the length of the required notice period.

The responsibility of household bills section tells you what utilities are included in the rent price and which ones you are responsible for paying extra for. It is important that you get a clear understanding of this section.

The forfeiture section tells you when and how you can be deemed in breach of your contract. It spells out the process of eviction and what you can and cannot do.

Under the deposit section you will notice that the standard rental deposit in Canada is for the first and last month's rent.

Any problems or questions with a rental agreement can be handled by the local provincial rental housing tribunal.