When Can a Landlord Enter a Rental Unit in Ontario?

Signing a lease doesn’t mean giving up control over who comes and goes from your home. Under Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act, a rental unit, once occupied by a tenant, is generally treated as the tenant’s home for the purposes of privacy and quiet enjoyment — and that includes placing real limits on when and why a landlord can enter, even though the landlord owns the property.

The baseline rule is straightforward: for most reasons, a landlord generally has to give the tenant written notice at least 24 hours before entering, and that notice has to state both the reason for entry and the specific time it will happen. Owning the building, or having a spare key, doesn’t create an exception to this requirement — the right to enter generally has to be exercised the same way regardless of who the landlord is or how the building is managed.

This rule exists because a tenancy agreement, once it begins, generally gives the tenant the right to reasonable enjoyment of the unit free from unreasonable interference, including interference from unannounced visits. For more on what a lease generally covers overall, see our lease agreement guide.

It’s worth separating this out from the move-in period itself. Before a tenancy begins — while a unit is still vacant and being shown to prospective tenants — there isn’t yet an existing tenant whose notice rights are engaged. Once someone has moved in and the tenancy is underway, though, the notice framework applies in full, and it continues to apply for the entire length of the tenancy, including right up to the final day before move-out.

A notice of entry generally needs to be in writing — a verbal heads-up, even given well in advance, generally doesn’t satisfy the requirement on its own. The notice generally has to specify the reason the landlord wants to enter and a specific time for the visit, not just a general day or a broad window such as “sometime this week.”

The entry itself generally has to occur between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., even if the notice is otherwise properly worded and given well ahead of time. A landlord generally can’t give 24 hours’ notice for an entry scheduled at, say, 9 p.m. or 7 a.m. — the time-of-day limit applies on top of the 24-hour minimum, not instead of it.

It’s also worth understanding how the 24-hour period is generally counted. It’s measured from the moment the tenant actually receives the notice to the moment of entry, not from when the landlord sends it. A notice mailed or left in a way that takes time to reach the tenant may end up providing less than the required 24 hours in practice, even if the landlord believed they gave enough lead time.

Common, legitimate reasons for a landlord to seek entry include carrying out or inspecting repairs, conducting a general condition inspection, showing the unit to a prospective tenant or buyer, or other reasonable purposes connected to managing the tenancy or the building. For any of these, the same written notice and time-of-day rules generally apply in full — there’s no separate, looser standard just because the reason seems minor or routine.

It’s worth noting that the reason stated in the notice generally has to match what actually happens during the visit. A notice given for a stated repair purpose doesn’t generally extend to a broader inspection of the entire unit for unrelated reasons, though in practice this distinction matters most when a dispute arises about what the entry was actually for.

For issues connected to repairs specifically, including how maintenance requests and access for repair work typically get handled, our repairs and maintenance guide covers that side of the relationship in more depth.

A landlord also generally can’t use entry as a way to pressure a tenant on an unrelated issue — for example, scheduling repeated, closely spaced visits without a genuine ongoing reason, in a way that functions more as harassment than as legitimate access. While each individual properly noticed entry may look fine on paper, a pattern that goes well beyond what the stated reasons actually require can itself become a problem worth raising.

The 24-hour written notice requirement has one clear exception: a genuine emergency. If there’s an immediate risk to health, safety, or the property itself — a fire, a serious flood or major leak, a gas smell, or another situation that can’t reasonably wait — a landlord can generally enter without any advance notice at all, and at any hour.

The key word here is genuine. A landlord generally can’t label something an “emergency” simply to skip the notice process for a matter that could reasonably have waited for proper notice. A burst pipe actively flooding a unit is a clear emergency; a long-standing minor leak that’s been known about for weeks generally isn’t the kind of situation the emergency exception is meant to cover.

Even in a genuine emergency, the landlord’s actions once inside are generally still expected to stay reasonably connected to addressing the emergency itself, rather than becoming an opportunity for a broader look around the unit. Once the immediate risk has been dealt with, ordinary notice rules generally resume for any further, non-urgent follow-up work.

A landlord who wants to sell the building, or who wants to show the unit to a prospective new tenant ahead of the current tenant moving out, still generally has to follow the same written notice rules as any other non-emergency entry. The fact that a sale is pending, or that a new tenant has already been found for after move-out, doesn’t generally create a broader right to enter whenever it’s convenient.

In practice, this means a landlord arranging viewings during an existing tenancy generally still has to give each prospective visit proper written notice, naming the purpose and the specific time, and keeping each individual viewing within the 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. window. A tenant nearing the end of a tenancy can expect this process to continue right up until move-out, rather than assuming normal notice rules relax once a move-out date is known.

Entry that happens without proper written notice, outside the permitted hours, or for a reason that doesn’t fit a legitimate purpose, is generally treated as improper, and can amount to interference with the tenant’s right to reasonable enjoyment of the unit. A tenant who experiences this can generally raise it directly with the landlord first, and if it continues, can generally bring the matter to the Landlord and Tenant Board.

Keeping a simple record — dates, times, what happened, and whether notice was given — is generally useful if a pattern of improper entry develops, since a single isolated incident is often handled differently than a repeated practice. For a broader look at how tenancies and the issues within them are typically resolved, our leases hub and our contact page may be useful next steps if you want to explore your situation further.