eSignature Legality for Home Office Rental Agreement in Canada

How to eSign a document: e-signature legality for Home office rental agreement in Canada

today we're going to be talking about the standard Ontario lease agreement how to use it how to complete it let's get into it right now what's going on everybody my name is Andrew and today we're going to be talking about the standard Ontario lease agreement which is a pretty common form that all landlords ought to be using at the commencement of their tenancies now before I actually tell you about how to use the form I want to state that you do need to use this form if you're in Ontario if you are in a different Province they might have other forms that you're supposed to be using so check to see what is standardized there otherwise make your own and as a bonus I'm also going to include one of our Pro tips and a clause that we're going to include at the end of the video so stay tuned for that so as we look through this agreement the first thing we're going to start off with here is at the top in the section one it has parties to the agreement now this is where you're going to put your name and I'm just going to put mine here just for easy pickings Here Andrew parashus and as we move further down we are going to get into the tennis names now notice how it has six sections here we on our own agreement have a customized version of this where we will have up to 10 names here but this is because we sometimes have student rentals and we want to be able to include multiple attendants names now the important thing to note here is that when you have the tenants on the lease you are only supposed to have people here that are responsible for the rental payments right so these are the least holders people who are effectively responsible to pay the rent you don't need to have people here who are occupants you can have that in your additional term or in the application to rent section children are a good example of people you won't have on the lease agreement so under section two we're talking about the rental unit and we have an example here unit 4 under 123 Bluer Street Toronto Ontario m6b1b2 so this is going to be pretty standard just completed as your rental unit legally is below that you're going to declare whether it's a condominium or not let's just say that in this case it's not under Section 3 you're going to have the contact information we're going to have the contact address where if your tenant needs to send you any notices they're going to be sending it here some people like to pick a PO box but let's say you have a real estate office you can select unit 3 234 Young Street and then just complete the rest of the information now below that it has a section here that says both the landlord and tenant agree to receive notices via email this is a good upgrade because before they never used to have this and they had a separate form that you had to have your tenant sign if you wanted to serve notices by email but now they included in the lease and that's a good thing to add the landlord is providing phone in our email address for day-to-day communication so notice how it specifies the difference of how people are going to communicate with you here I would be putting an email address instead of a phone number but you can put a phone number for emergencies only landlord gmail.com tenant gmail.com now that this next section you're going to put the term of the tenancy let's just say we're starting on May 1st of 2023 and then over here we're going to have that this is going for a fixed term and generally speaking this is going to be one year so you're going to select 2024's next year 04 is the next month and then let's just say 30 assuming that there's 30 days in the month of April you're going to say this is for a fixed length of time ending on this date so that's a one year term now the next section which is Section Five we're going to have with the rent declarations here now this is pretty much describing when rent is being paid so let's just look at section A it says rent is going to be paid on the blank space you're going to put the first of the month you should put the first of the month here and you're going to select that this is going to be paid on a monthly basis and then the section B is going to have an area that illustrates how much you're going to be paying and for what now this is going to be where you have the total monthly rent cost you can have Park working here included in the basement but it's usually good to separate them in the least below that though it has who the rent is payable to so here you put you your name as the landlord if that's who you wanted to be paid to your property manager if that's who you want to have it paid to or if you want to have it paid to your corporate name that's what you're going to put here as well so the reason why they have this is because the landlord may be different than who the rent is payable to and that is where you're going to make the distinction below that under Section D you're going to have the method by which rent is going to be paid so I put here post-dated checks because that's a very common way to do it now below here there's an important part when it comes to prorated rent that a lot of people tend to mess up and there's a reason why I was emphasizing before that you want to be starting your tenancy on the first of the month here's how that works we said that your tenancy is going to start on 2023.0501 that's May 1st of 2023 and then let's just say that my tenant is moving in in April 15th and they're going to occupy the property which which over here I've Illustrated another 15 days basically April 15th to April 30th how do we calculate the prorated month that's half a month if the rent is two thousand dollars does that mean that half a month is one thousand dollars the way that you calculate this rent is you do two thousand dollars times twelve which is the amount of months in a year you're gonna divide that by 365 days and then you're going to multiply that amount by how many days they're occupying it which brings us to a grand total of nine hundred and eighty six dollars and thirty cents that is how you calculate the pro rated risk and you're going to basically say that this amount is being paid on the first now here's why I have that that amount is being paid on the first do not make the mistake of collecting instead of first and last month's rent in full so four thousand dollars in this example you're gonna end up collecting 986 dollars plus two thousand dollars because you shortchange yourself what you do is when the tenant moves in they pay you first and last in full and then this final amount they pay it on the first of the month so they catch up afterwards do not put yourself in Jeopardy or potential Financial exposure by collect acting less than full first and last month's rent which brings me to the next point if any of you have any problems or have questions about how to manage your Properties or how to be a landlord and you want help with this make sure to check the link in the description where we have a lot of offerings and programs coaching for people who want to be landlords how to grow and scale your business in real estate so make sure to check that out the next thing we're going to talk about here in the section 6 is the service and utilities now when it comes to servicing utilities they separate these things in a little bit of an odd way but let's look over it you have gas air conditioning additional storage space on-site laundry guest parking these are all things that sometimes come with condos townhouses and other such things but they have gas here which I think is an odd place to have that utility because if you're renting a house it often should be included as part of regular utilities which ends up falling further down here and they don't say it in the same way and this is where sometimes landlers make mistakes look at the verbiage here the following services are included in the lawful rent for the rental unit as specified so this all means that this isn't included here and you're selecting everything on the right now assuming they're paying for their own utilities and assuming they're paying for gas you're going to leave all those as they are and then over here it says that the following utilities are the responsibility of and then it looks like this is for the tenant to play so the problem is that it's on the right and then everybody just thinks that okay this is the responsibility to the tenant and the tenant has to pay for these things but if it is an all-inclusive unit they're going to have it on the left and you need to select these things if your property is all inclusive there is also a section here for water tank rental if you have to ask the tenant to pay for that as well now we're going to talk about rent discounts I've never selected that there is a rent discount although I have heard of people doing this during the pandemic or for other reasons where they want to offer the rental unit for a cheaper price because maybe they're doing maintenance work or maybe there's something wrong with a unit that they're going to correct in the next six months and then after that correction has happened the rent goes back to a normal rate under Section 8 we have rent deposit the tenant will pay the rent deposit of x amount which in this case is going to be two thousand dollars and this can only be applied to the rent for the last rental period of the tenancy now a lot of tenants have misconceptions or misunderstandings as to what this means they think that when your 10 NC reaches one year that that last month's rent gets applied to that year however it actually gets applied to the last day of the tenancy meaning the month before they move out and this is important to make sure that the tenant understands this so they don't expect that on the last day of their yearly tenancy this gets applied thinking that they're then going to be month to month after that and this is just a matter of simple understanding this only happens to us with student rentals that there's a misunderstanding like this but for most regular adult Tendencies this isn't an issue key deposit the key deposit we usually put here that the tenants have to pay a 100 key deposit is generally reasonable and a lot of tenants will agree to it where you need to make sure to be careful about this is for a condos or any place that has fobs you may want to include something like a 400 key deposit because fobs are more expensive to replace smoking let's just say as a general rule you're going to select that there is no smoking in the property the tenants Insurance we're going to talk about this in the next section which if you actually click on the next video which we're going to link at some point we talk about our building policy which is our additional term terms where we get into more details about how to make sure that your tenants have the right type of insurance but generally what you want here is you want to make sure that the tenants have liability insurance at all times and if the landlord asks for proof or coverage the tenant must provide it and that is specifically supposed to cover the contents of the tenant if they need it now what we also include in there is that if there's any kind of displacement we require our tenants to have displacement Insurance meaning if they're living in a basement apartment basement floods we go through our insurance the tenant needs to go through their insurance to have additional accommodations covered section 12 this is all standard stuff that you don't need to fill out changes to the rental unit this is for both of the landlord and the Tenant the tenant's not allowed to change the rental unit without permission from the landlord in case you thought that everything here is in the tenant's favor or for the tenant there's also things here that the tenant needs to know like they shouldn't change the rental unit under Section 13 maintenance and repairs use a landlord are obviously supposed to take care of the maintenance and repairs of the property so that everything is in good standing order meaning wear and tear items need to be taken care of by you in most cases assignment and subletting this is just basically saying that the tenant has the right to sublet and the landlord has to generally agree but the tenant has to let the landlord know if the landlord declines the tenant the tenant can apply to terminate the tenancy additional terms landlord attendance agrees to certain additional terms you're always going to select yes here that this tenancy agreement includes an attachment with additional terms that the landlord and tenant agreed to this is where most landlords took the lease agreements they did have and they started to attach it to this rather lean lease agreement and it basically has all those additional terms which if you want to know more about it check out our next video where we're going to be talking about it in great detail section 16 changes to this agreement both parties have to agree to if there are any changes and then you're gonna have under here your signatures name of landlord Andrew parashas we're going to have my signature here and then we're going to say the date not the commencement date we're gonna say whatever the date is I'm just gonna write today you're going to have your tennis names as we said their names are John Doe and Stephanie Ortiz everything Beyond this is just rules about the RTA the residential tenancies act things that govern it and things that you know you need to know about the relationship between the tenant and the landlord things you have to abide by let me know if you have any questions or if you need any help with your landlord tenant situations I'd love to help until then see you on the next one