An apparent abandonment is a unit that looks empty while the tenancy is still running. Nobody gave notice and the resident has stopped answering. The pull is to clear it and re-rent. That order of operations turns a small rent loss into a claim against you. Run it in this order instead. This is the walked-away case, not a death in the unit, which follows a different sequence.
Step 1: Answer the arrears question before anything else
Section 2(3) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 says a tenant has not abandoned a rental unit if the tenant is not in arrears of rent. Rent current means no abandonment, however empty the unit looks and however long they have been gone. If the ledger is clear, stop here.
The other two provinces ask a different question. Under BC's Residential Tenancy Regulation, you may treat belongings as abandoned if the tenant has not ordinarily occupied the unit and has not paid rent for a continuous month, or has removed substantially all of their property. Either counts only where you have express notice that the tenant does not intend to return, or a return cannot reasonably be expected. Alberta runs on repudiation: section 27 of its Residential Tenancies Act lets you accept the tenant's conduct as ending the tenancy where you have reasonable grounds to believe they walked away.
Step 2: Date what you know
Build a dated log before you go near the unit. Last rent received. Last contact, and on what channel. Whether mail is piling up. Whether the utilities are still connected in the resident's name. What a neighbour or your on-site staff last saw. You are fixing the date you knew or ought to have known, and in Ontario that date is worth money.
Step 3: Get inside without breaching the entry rules
BC and Alberta both give you an abandonment entry right. Section 29(1)(e) of the BC Residential Tenancy Act permits entry where the tenant has abandoned the unit, and section 24(2)(b) of Alberta's Act permits entry without consent or notice on reasonable grounds to believe the premises are abandoned.
Ontario gives you nothing of the kind. Sections 26 and 27 set out every lawful entry, and abandonment is not among them. Your route is written notice at least 24 hours ahead, entering under section 27(1) to inspect the state of repair. An unlawful entry is its own tenant application, and it survives you being right about the unit.
Step 4: Fix the termination date, because it sets the arrears number
Ontario does not let arrears run on forever. Under section 88, where a tenant abandoned without notice, arrears are owed to the earliest termination date the tenant could have named had they given proper notice on the day you knew or ought to have known. For a monthly tenancy that is 60 days, ending on the last day of a rental period. Sign a new resident and the arrears cap at the day that person is entitled to occupy. Section 88(4) also weighs whether you minimized the loss, so log your re-listing date too.
Step 5: End the tenancy on the right route
Ontario section 79 lets you apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for an order terminating the tenancy where you believe the unit was abandoned. Section 39 is why that matters: you cannot recover possession unless the tenant vacated or abandoned the unit, or the Board ordered the eviction.
In Alberta, accept the repudiation under section 27. If a non-tenant is living there, section 33 gives you a 48-hour notice to vacate, then a court application backed by an affidavit. In BC, section 35(5)(b) lets you complete the move-out condition inspection report without the tenant present, which keeps your deposit claim alive.
Step 6: Run the storage clock
Ontario, section 42. Unsafe or unhygienic items can go immediately. Everything else waits 30 days, running from either the section 79 order or a written notice of your intention to dispose given to the tenant and to the Board. Both, not one. If the tenant asks for the property inside those 30 days, make it available near the unit. You may require arrears plus your reasonable out-of-pocket moving and storage costs first. If you sell, the tenant has six months to claim any surplus over your costs.
BC rewrote this part on April 9, 2025; property abandoned before that date follows the old rules. Store at least 30 days, and keep a written inventory and the disposal particulars for two years. You can dispose early where you reasonably believe the total market value is under $1,000, or that removing, storing and selling would cost more than the sale brings in. Above that line, search the personal property registry, give a notice of disposition to any secured party or known claimant, publish it, and wait 30 days from the later of those events. Personal value property, meaning medical equipment, framed or clearly personal photographs, and anything the tenant named in writing, has to be stored the full 30 days whatever it is worth. Surplus proceeds go to the Unclaimed Property Act administrator, not to you.
Alberta, section 31 with the Residential Tenancies Ministerial Regulation. You may dispose where you reasonably believe the total market value is under $2,000, that storage would be unsafe or unsanitary, that the goods would depreciate fast, or that costs would exceed proceeds. Otherwise store 30 days from the date of abandonment, then sell at public auction, or by private sale with court approval. Proceeds cover your costs and the tenant's established liabilities, and the surplus goes to the Minister, who holds it a year. To count unpaid rent against those proceeds, swear an affidavit of the amount, mail it to the tenant's last known address, and copy the Director of Residential Tenancies.
The two habits that undo all of it
Do not seize belongings over unpaid rent. Ontario abolished distress in section 40, and BC section 26(3) bars a landlord from seizing a tenant's property or blocking access to it, outside narrow exceptions. Neither rule bends because the resident is months behind.
Do not bin anything because it looks worthless. Every early-disposal test here turns on market value, and the way to lose that argument later is to hold no inventory and no photographs.
The unit being empty is the least useful fact you hold. What decides how this ends is the date you can prove you knew, the route you used to end the tenancy, and whether the storage clock finished before the bin did.