Ontario landlords who serve an N12 for their own use pay the tenant one month of rent. On September 21, 2026, that stops being automatic. A new subsection of the Residential Tenancies Act removes the requirement for own-use notices that give at least 120 days and land on the right date. The exception is a calendar rule, and getting the calendar wrong costs you the month anyway.
What the rule is today
Section 48.1 of the Residential Tenancies Act says a landlord who gives a notice under section 48 shall compensate the tenant one month of rent, or offer the tenant another rental unit acceptable to the tenant. Section 48 is the own-use notice: you need possession in good faith for residential occupation of at least one year by yourself, your spouse, a child or parent of either of you, or a person providing care services to one of them.
Section 55.1 sets the deadline: the money is due no later than the termination date in the notice, not once the tenant has gone. Sixty days of notice or six months, the month is owed either way.
What changes on September 21, 2026
The Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025 adds a second subsection to section 48.1. From September 21, the compensation and the alternative unit offer do not apply if the notice meets all three of these conditions:
- The notice is given on or after September 21, 2026.
- The termination date is at least 120 days after the notice is given.
- The termination date is the day a period of the tenancy ends, or the end of the term for a fixed-term tenancy.
All three, or you owe the month. The first condition is the one that catches people. A notice served on September 20 with 200 days of runway still carries the compensation, because the exception attaches to the day you serve, not the day the tenancy ends.
Work the calendar backwards
Conditions two and three pull against each other: the 120 day mark almost never falls on a period end date, so you have to push past it to the next one.
Take a month-to-month tenancy with periods running first to last day of the month. Serve on September 21, 2026, and 120 days later is January 19, 2027. That is mid-period, so it does not qualify. The first period end on or after it is January 31, 2027. That is your earliest lawful termination date under the exception, 132 days after service.
Service dates cluster, so check the arithmetic before assuming that serving sooner moves the date. Serve on October 1 instead and 120 days later is January 29, which pushes to the same January 31 termination date. Ten days of earlier service bought nothing.
The 60 day minimum in section 48(2) has not moved. The 120 days does not replace it, it is a higher bar you clear by choice to keep the month.
Who the exception does not cover
The new subsection sits in section 48.1 only. It does nothing for the other compensation triggers.
- Purchaser-use notices. When you serve on behalf of a buyer under section 49, compensation comes from section 49.1, which the amending act left alone. One month is owed no matter how much notice you give, and section 49.1(2) keeps that obligation with the landlord who served, not the purchaser.
- Corporate landlords. Section 48(5) has not changed. An own-use notice is available only where the unit is owned at least in part by an individual and the landlord is an individual. If title sits in a corporation, section 48 was never open to you.
- Demolition, conversion and renovation. The compensation rules in sections 52, 54 and 55 are untouched.
Good faith did not get cheaper
Dropping the payment does not soften section 48(1). You still need the unit in good faith for residential occupation of at least one year by a qualifying person. A former tenant can apply to the Board under section 57 if the notice was given in bad faith and nobody on that list moved in within a reasonable time, for one year after they vacated.
Is waiting worth it?
Run the two options for a unit you want back this fall. Serve in the first week of August and the earliest termination date is October 31 for a calendar-month tenancy, with one month of rent payable by then. Wait until September 21 and possession moves to January 31, 2027, you pay nothing, and you collect three more months of rent while you wait.
On the arithmetic alone the second option is worth roughly four months of rent. Whether it is the right call depends on the person moving in. If they have somewhere to live until February, wait. If they need the unit in November, the month of compensation is the cheaper of your two problems.
Two more dates on the same schedule
September 21 also replaces section 59(1). The notice period for non-payment of rent becomes the seventh day after the notice is given, for every tenancy. Today it is the fourteenth day for anything other than a daily or weekly tenancy, so monthly tenancies are the ones that move. A third change has already landed: since July 1, 2026, a request to review a Board decision has to be filed within 15 days of issuance instead of 30.
What to do before September 21
- List every unit where you expect an own-use termination in the next year, with its tenancy period end dates.
- For each, count 120 days forward from a realistic service date and find the first period end on or after it. That is your earliest qualifying termination date.
- Compare that to when the occupant needs the unit. If the gap runs past a couple of months, serving early and paying the month is the better trade.
- Pull the purchaser-use files into their own pile. Those still carry compensation, so a sale closing this winter needs the month in the budget.
- Download the current Board form when you serve rather than reusing a saved copy.
Each section, with the in-force date attached to every amendment, is on e-Laws, and Schedule 12 of the amending act is on the Legislative Assembly site. Current forms are at the Landlord and Tenant Board. If you are emptying a unit for renovation instead, the municipal renovation licence rules are a separate sequencing problem.
None of this is legal advice. Own-use terminations are among the most litigated notices at the Board, and the arithmetic above is the easy part.