What Ontario Landlords Can and Cannot Legally Ask For (2026)

Most Ontario landlords screening a rental applicant are working from instinct and whatever the last brokerage told them. That is a genuinely risky place to be, because tenant screening in this province is governed by two separate rulebooks that pull in different directions — and the practice most landlords consider standard has been found to breach one of them.

This guide covers what you may lawfully request, what you may not, and the three places well-intentioned landlords most often get caught.

The two rulebooks

The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 governs the tenancy itself — deposits, rent increases, entry, termination. It has very little to say about how you choose a tenant.

Selection is governed by the Ontario Human Rights Code, and specifically by Ontario Regulation 290/98, titled “Business Practices Permissible to Landlords in Selecting Prospective Tenants for Residential Accommodation.” It is short, and it is the single most important document in Ontario tenant screening. Almost nobody screening tenants has read it.

What you can ask for

Regulation 290/98 permits landlords to request and consider:

• Credit references and credit checks— with the applicant's consent.
• Rental history — previous landlords, length of tenancy, payment record.
• Income information — but subject to an important condition, below.
• Guarantees — a co-signer or guarantor.
• Other similar business practices — references, identity verification.

The condition on income is the part that trips people up. Under the Regulation you may request income information only if you are also requesting credit references, rental history, and a credit check — and you must then consider the income information together with everything else you collected. Income is not permitted to travel alone.

There is one carve-out: for units subject to rent-geared-to-income rules, a landlord may request and use income information on its own to establish eligibility.

What you cannot ask about

The Human Rights Code protects a list of grounds in housing. You may not select — or decline — a tenant on the basis of:

• Race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship
• Creed (religion)
• Sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression
• Age
• Marital status and family status — including whether they have or plan to have children
• Disability
• Receipt of public assistance — ODSP, Ontario Works, and similar

The trap here is rarely a landlord saying something overt. It is the friendly question. “Where are you originally from?” and “Is it just you, or are you planning on kids?” feel like small talk and read like evidence in a Tribunal application. If a question does not go to the applicant's ability to pay rent and honour the lease, it does not belong in the process.

The rent-to-income ratio problem

This is the one that surprises people, so it is worth being precise about.

The “30% rule” — the idea that rent should not exceed 30% of gross income — is the most widely used screening heuristic in Canadian rental housing. In Ontario, using it as a selection threshold is not lawful.

In Kearney v. Bramalea Ltd., an Ontario Board of Inquiry found that minimum income criteria and rent-to-income ratios breach the Code whether used alone or in conjunction with other criteria. The Ontario Superior Court upheld that finding on appeal. A later decision, Sinclair v. Morris A. Hunter Investments Ltd., issued a cease and desist order and cautioned landlords against continuing to use the ratios at all.

The reasoning matters more than the citation. The Ontario Human Rights Commission notes that roughly a third of Ontarians already pay more than 30% of household income in rent — and pay it on time, every month. The ratio was found to have no real predictive value for default, while disproportionately excluding people protected under the Code: single mothers, people receiving social assistance, newcomers, and young tenants.

You can still look at income. You cannot convert it into a pass-fail threshold. The distinction is between weighing affordability alongside credit history, rental history, and references, and disqualifying anyone who lands on the wrong side of a number.

Social Insurance Numbers

You may ask. The applicant may decline. And you may not refuse them for declining.

The usual justification is that the SIN is needed for a credit check. It is not — credit bureaus match on name, date of birth, and current address. The SIN exists for income reporting, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission actively discourages landlords from collecting it, both on privacy grounds and because it can reveal immigration status.

There is also a practical argument. A SIN in your filing cabinet or inbox is a liability you gain nothing from holding. If you are collecting them today, the better policy is to stop and delete what you have.

Bank statements

Regulation 290/98 permits “income information.” A full bank statement is a good deal more than that. It shows spending patterns, medical payments, support payments, religious donations, and other details that can reveal several protected characteristics at once.

A letter of employment and recent pay stubs establish income without any of that exposure — which is why they are the better request. If an applicant chooses to provide a statement, they are entitled to redact individual transactions, and a landlord who refuses a redacted statement is on weak ground.

If your concern is whether the income documents are genuine rather than how much income there is, that is a different problem with a different solution — see how to spot a fake pay stub and how to verify an employment letter.

Deposits: only two are lawful

Not strictly a screening question, but the most common place Ontario landlords create liability for themselves, so it belongs here.

• Rent deposit— applied to the last rental period, capped at one month's rent or one rental period, whichever is greater. Interest is payable annually at the rent increase guideline rate.
• Key deposit — refundable, and limited to the actual replacement cost of the keys or fobs.

That is the complete list. Security deposits, damage deposits, and pet deposits are not lawful in Ontario. A tenant who paid one can file a T1 with the Landlord and Tenant Board and recover it. Damage is pursued through the Board after the fact, not pre-funded at signing.

A compliant screening process

The version that holds up:

• Ask every applicant for the same things, in the same order, every time.
• Request the full permitted set together — credit check, rental history, references, and income — rather than income on its own.
• Weigh what comes back as a whole. Never reduce the decision to a single ratio or threshold.
• Write down the business reason for the decision, at the time you make it.
• Collect the minimum that answers the question, and delete it when the tenancy is decided.

That last point is the one landlords underrate. Consistency is the whole defence. A process applied identically to every applicant is difficult to characterise as discriminatory; an ad-hoc process that varied for one applicant is difficult to defend, whatever the intention behind it.

If you would rather not assemble that process yourself, DocuVerify sends every applicant the same checklist, collects the documents in one place, and keeps a record of what was requested and when — the consistency and the paper trail, without the spreadsheet. Try it free.

This article is general information, not legal advice. The Residential Tenancies Act and the Human Rights Code are applied to specific facts, and yours may differ. For a decision with real consequences, speak to a licensed paralegal or a lawyer practising Ontario landlord and tenant law. Primary sources: Ontario Regulation 290/98, the Ontario Human Rights Commission's policy on human rights and rental housing, and the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006.