Start with the fact that reframes everything else.
Commercial leases in Ontario fall under the Commercial Tenancies Act, not the Residential Tenancies Act. There is no Landlord and Tenant Board standing behind you. Commercial disputes go to civil court, and in Toronto that usually means the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
The Act itself offers little guidance on what a landlord must provide. Lease terms take precedence over the statute in most areas. It sets no limit on rent increases at the end of a term.
Your protection is not the law. Your protection is the questions you ask before you sign, because your leverage disappears the moment you do.
Here are seven of them.
1. Ask for the TMI Number, Not Just the Rent
Base rent is only part of your occupancy cost.
On a net lease you also pay additional rent, usually called TMI for taxes, maintenance, and insurance. It covers your share of property taxes, building insurance, snow removal, common area cleaning, security, and the property manager's fee.
On a triple net lease, additional rent can approach the base rent itself. A space quoted at one number can cost you close to double once TMI lands. Ask for the current figure per square foot before you get attached to the space.
Ask for the most recent year-end reconciliation too. Landlords estimate these costs at the start of the year and reconcile against actual spending later. That reconciliation can produce a true-up charge nobody warned you about.
Then look for two specific clauses. A gross-up clause lets the landlord bill common costs as if the building were fully occupied, so you cover a share of expenses for space sitting empty. And check whether you have the right to review the landlord's records.
Without that audit right, you cannot verify a bill you are required to pay.
2. Confirm Your Use Is Actually Permitted
Does the zoning allow what you plan to do in that space?
The answer is no more often than tenants expect. A commercial zone does not automatically permit a restaurant, a gym, a daycare, or light manufacturing. Toronto's zoning bylaw is specific about permitted uses by category.
Look up the address on the City of Toronto zoning map yourself, then confirm your reading with the city's building division. Do this before signing, not after possession.
Read the permitted use clause in the lease separately. Landlords often draft these narrowly, and a clause limiting you to one activity can block a related one later even when zoning allows it.
The failure mode is specific and expensive. You sign, discover you cannot legally operate, and still owe rent for the full term.
3. Learn the Difference Between Rentable and Usable Space
Commercial space gets quoted in rentable square feet. You occupy usable square feet. Those are different numbers.
Rentable area includes your proportionate share of the building's common areas: lobbies, corridors, shared washrooms, mechanical rooms. The ratio between the two is called the load factor or gross-up factor.
In Toronto, Colliers reports that this factor typically runs 10% to 15% for a full floor and 18% to 23% for multi-tenant floors. On a multi-tenant floor, roughly one square foot in five is common area you pay for but never occupy.
Most leases describe the rentable figure as approximate and specify no calculation method. That vagueness works against you.
Address this before signing, because there is usually little recourse afterward. Reasonable landlords will accept lease language stating that the premises will be measured by an architect against the BOMA standard.
Compare buildings on effective rate per usable square foot, not the quoted rate. Two buildings advertised at the same price are not the same deal when their load factors differ by ten points.
4. Settle the Lock and Key Question Before You Take Possession
This is the item tenants think about last and should think about first.
Understand the landlord's position under Ontario law. Where rent goes unpaid, a commercial landlord may change the locks and evict on the sixteenth day after the day rent was due. The landlord is not obligated to notify you first.
That remedy has no residential equivalent. It exists because commercial tenants are presumed to be sophisticated parties who negotiated their own terms.
Now the practical question. How many working keys to that unit exist right now, and who holds them?
Nobody tracks this. The previous tenant kept a set. So did their staff, their cleaners, and whichever contractor did the last fit-out. Every one of those keys works until somebody changes the hardware.
Check what your lease says about changing locks. The Commercial Tenancies Act is largely silent here, which means the lease governs completely. Many landlord-drafted leases require written consent before any hardware change and require you to supply the landlord a working key or code.
Get the arrangement in writing before possession, covering four points. Who pays for the rekey or replacement. Whether the landlord receives a key. What happens to the hardware when you leave. And who handles service calls when a closer fails or a reader stops working.
Then have the work done by someone who does commercial hardware. A commercial locksmith can rekey the suite, set up master keying where the lease requires landlord access, and install card or fob systems.
That last option matters more than it sounds. Rekeying a multi-door suite every time an employee leaves gets costly. Revoking one credential takes seconds and costs nothing.
5. Photograph the Empty Unit Before You Move Anything In
Your lease contains a restoration clause. Read it on day one, not in year five.
Restoration language decides the condition you must return the space in. Colliers describes typical Toronto requirements as broom-clean condition with removal of special installations, and some leases go further and require complete restoration to shell.
Complete restoration means removing improvements you paid to build. Tenants routinely discover this obligation only when they give notice.
Here is where documentation decides the outcome. If you never recorded the original condition, the landlord's account of it stands. Pre-existing damage becomes your damage.
Walk the empty unit with your phone before move-in day. Photograph every wall, floor, ceiling tile, window, and fixture, plus the mechanical equipment and electrical panel. Record video and narrate what you see.
Email the full set to the landlord with a note stating this is the condition on the possession date. That email costs nothing and becomes your evidence.
6. Find Out Who Owns the HVAC
One clause here can cost more than a year of rent.
Under landlord-drafted leases, HVAC systems serving only the tenant's premises are typically the tenant's responsibility to maintain and to replace. Legal commentary in Ontario identifies this as one of the most disputed repair obligations in commercial leasing.
The numbers explain why. A commercial rooftop unit replacement in the GTA runs from roughly $15,000 to well over $50,000, depending on size and complexity.
The unfair part arrives at the end of a term. A tenant with eight months remaining who must replace a rooftop unit gets almost none of the benefit. The landlord and the next tenant get all of it.
Ask three questions before signing. How old is the unit. When was it last serviced. And does the lease distinguish between repair and replacement.
Sophisticated tenants negotiate a three-tier clause. Routine maintenance and minor repairs sit with the tenant up to a dollar cap. Major replacement sits with the landlord, with the cost amortized over the equipment's useful life so you pay only for the years you use it.
Landlords often accept that amendment. But only if you raise it before signing.
7. Have Your Insurance Certificate Ready Two Weeks Early
Most landlords will not release keys without a certificate of insurance.
Commercial general liability is the standard requirement, commonly written at $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate. The lease specifies the limits, so read them rather than assuming.
The landlord almost always requires naming as an additional insured. Property managers and mortgage lenders sometimes get named too. Check for a waiver of subrogation clause and any requirement that your insurer notify the landlord before cancellation.
Start this two weeks before your possession date. Brokers need lead time and the certificate wording must match the lease. A mismatch means a rejected certificate and a delayed move-in.
Sort your utility accounts in the same window. Confirm whether the unit is separately metered for hydro, gas, and water, because unmetered space means paying a share of someone else's consumption.
The Pattern Behind All Seven
None of this is legal advice, and Ontario commercial leases vary enormously. A lease review by a commercial real estate lawyer costs a fraction of one dispute, and it is the single best money a new tenant spends.
Look at what the seven items share. Every one is cheap to fix before signing and expensive or impossible to fix afterward.
That is the whole logic of commercial tenancy in Ontario. The statute gives you very little. The negotiation gives you everything you are going to get.
Ask the questions while you still hold the pen.
Sources
- Commercial Tenancies Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. L.7 (CanLII)
- Government of Ontario, "Renting commercial property in Ontario" (ontario.ca) — landlord lockout remedy and timelines
- Colliers Global Occupier Guide, Toronto — gross-up factors and restoration standards
- Grigoras Law, "Commercial Lease Repair Obligations in Ontario" — HVAC allocation
- Burban Mechanical, Toronto — GTA rooftop unit replacement costs
- BOMA International — floor area measurement standards
- City of Toronto zoning bylaw and permitted use lookup (toronto.ca)
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