Creating leases

Leases are the core of your tenancy management. They track rent amounts, dates, and form the basis for payment tracking, notices, and evidence bundles.

Creating a new lease

Step 1: Navigate to leases

1. Click Leases in the sidebar (or use the dashboard quick link)
2. Click Create Lease

Step 2: Select property and unit

1. Choose the Property from the dropdown
2. Select the Unit within that property

note

Units with active leases won't appear in the list. End the current lease first.

Step 3: Select tenants

1. Choose one or more tenants
2. For new tenants, click Add New Tenant to create them inline
3. Add co-tenant emails if the lease has multiple tenants (used for e-signature)
4. Add co-landlord emails if the lease has multiple landlords — up to 3 co-landlords can be added for multi-party signing

Step 4: Enter lease terms

Field	Required	Description
Start date	Yes	When the tenancy begins
End date	No	For fixed-term leases
Lease type	Yes	Fixed-term or Month-to-month
Monthly rent	Yes	Base rent amount
Rent due day	Yes	Day of month rent is due (1–28)
Payment method	No	How tenant typically pays
LMR deposit	No	Auto-fills to match the monthly rent amount by default

Zero-rent leases

Monthly rent can be set to $0 for arrangements such as caretaker units. Zero-rent leases are fully supported.

Step 5: Appendix and additional details

• Payment methods, utilities, appliances, insurance, internet — select what applies
• Parking — included checkbox, number of assigned spaces, and free-text rules (no per-parking-spot fee field)
• Furnished / condo / shared or excluded spaces — additional checkboxes and notes
• Move-in requirements — any conditions for move-in

Key deposit isn't set here — it's collected later in the OSL Fields modal when generating the document (see below); defaults can be set in Settings → Lease Defaults (property-management orgs only).

Step 6: Generate OSL and send for signing

After saving, you can:

1. Generate the Ontario Standard Lease — A compliant OSL PDF is created from your lease data
2. Edit and regenerate — Preview the OSL, edit details, and regenerate if needed
3. Send for e-signature — Use multi-party signing to collect signatures from all parties

See E-signatures for the full signing workflow.

Owner contact on the document (property managers)

By default, a property management org's OSL Section 3 (landlord contact) and consent page print your office contact info. For leasing-only engagements where the owner deals with the tenant directly, you can flip a single lease to use the owner's contact instead:

1. Open the lease's Overview tab and click Edit OSL Fields
2. If the lease resolves to a linked owner with an email different from your office's, a Section 3 — Landlord Contact checkbox appears
3. Check it to use the owner's name, email, and phone on the document and consent page instead of your office contact

Checking this box also applies the same rule to any co-landlord consent rows on the lease. The Section 3 notice mailing address always stays your office address — this only changes who the tenant is told to contact and pay, not where legal notices are served. Leaving the box unchecked keeps the existing office-contact behavior; nothing changes for leases created before this option existed.

Rent payable to (OSL Section 5(c))

Who the lease names as payee in Section 5(c) is its own explicit field — not just a side effect of the owner-contact checkbox above:

1. Open Edit OSL Fields on the lease and find Rent is payable to
2. The field shows a live placeholder with the value that would print if you leave it blank — it updates as you toggle the owner-contact checkbox
3. Type a payee name to lock it in for this lease, or leave it blank to keep using the automatic default

When left blank, the payee is derived the same way as Section 3 above (your office, or the owner if the owner-contact box is checked), starting from whatever default your organization, city, or property has configured under Settings → Lease Defaults (see OSL defaults). The Review & Confirm step shows the effective payee before you generate the document — a blank warning there means no name resolves at all (usually a missing organization legal name), not that Section 5(c) will silently print blank.

Lease types

Fixed-term lease

• Has a specific end date
• Automatically converts to month-to-month after end date
• Common for first-year leases

Month-to-Month

• No end date
• Continues until properly terminated
• Common for renewals after initial term

Lease status

The lease record tracks four real statuses — there's no separate "Upcoming" or "Month-to-Month" status:

Status	Description
Draft	Not yet signed/finalized — this is also the badge shown for a lease whose start date is in the future
Active	Currently in effect
Ended	Tenancy has concluded
Terminated	Ended via formal termination

A fixed-term lease that passes its end date without renewal legally becomes month-to-month (RTA s.38), but OntarioLandlord doesn't track this as a separate status — the lease record simply stays Active.

Other ways to create leases

From upload OSL

The fastest way to create a lease:

1. Go to Leases → Upload OSL
2. Upload your signed lease PDF
3. Review extracted data
4. Confirm to create property, tenant, and lease

See Uploading OSL for details.

From property page

1. Go to Properties → Select property
2. Click on a vacant unit
3. Click Create Lease
4. Property and unit are pre-selected

From DoorLoop

Import existing leases from DoorLoop (Enterprise plan only):

1. Go to Integrations → DoorLoop
2. Select leases and tenants to import
3. Confirm the import — the OSL is locked automatically and auto-consent is applied

Imported leases are locked to prevent accidental OSL regeneration. See DoorLoop integration.

Bulk import

Import multiple leases from a CSV or XLSX file. See Data import.

Editing leases

1. Go to Leases → Select the lease
2. Click Edit
3. Update the fields
4. Click Save

Rent Changes

To increase rent, use the N1 notice generator rather than editing directly. This ensures compliance with the 90-day notice requirement.

Stale OSL after edits

If the lease already has a generated Ontario Standard Lease PDF and you edit an OSL-relevant field (rent, start date, due day, etc.) on an unsigned or declined lease, the system marks the document as out of date.

An amber banner appears on the Overview tab. Always click Regenerate Standard Lease before downloading or sharing the document to ensure it reflects your latest changes.

See Stale OSL detection for details.

Ending a lease

Proper termination

1. Navigate to the lease
2. Click End Lease
3. Enter the end date
4. Optionally add a reason

What happens

• Lease status changes to "Ended"
• Unit becomes "Vacant"
• Payment tracking stops
• Historical data is preserved

Best practices

1. Use accurate dates - Match the signed lease
2. Record rent correctly - Affects arrears calculations
3. Upload the OSL - Keep a copy attached to the lease
4. Update when terms change - But use N1 for rent increases

Next steps

• Upload your Ontario Standard Lease
• E-signatures — Send leases for multi-party signing
• Lease renewal — Renew expiring leases
• Track rent payments