Tenant Repair Requests: How to Handle Them in Canada

What a landlord owes a tenant who reports a repair

Landlord duties are set provincially, so start with your own province’s tenancy act. The principle is consistent. In British Columbia, for example, landlords must maintain the basic features of the unit and any appliances and services listed in the tenancy agreement. Tenants handle minor upkeep, such as changing light bulbs, and pay for damage that they, their guests or their pets cause beyond normal wear and tear.

That split matters at intake. A request is not automatically a landlord expense. A burnt-out bulb is the tenant’s job, while a failed furnace is not. A good intake process asks enough questions to tell the difference before anyone books a trade.

For landlords in Atlantic Canada, the same logic applies. Nova Scotia landlords must keep plumbing, heating, doors, windows and locks in working order, according to a tenant-rights guide for the province. Check the Residential Tenancies Program or your province’s equivalent for the current text of the rules.

What a repair request should contain

Incomplete requests are the main source of wasted visits. A tenant who writes “the sink is leaking” leaves you guessing: which sink, how badly, since when? The City of Toronto’s guidance for building owners lists what a service-request record should hold. It includes the date and time, the location with unit number, the nature of the issue, the tenant’s name and contact details, whether it is urgent, and the response and action taken. It also tells owners to keep a copy of the information collected and of each response.

That list is written for Toronto buildings, but it works as a template anywhere. Add two fields that save repeat visits:

• Photos or short video. A photo of the leak or the error code on an appliance often tells a technician what part to bring.
• Access details. Whether the tenant will be home, whether there are pets, and the best time windows.

Some provinces provide standard forms for formal requests. Manitoba’s Residential Tenancies Branch, for instance, offers a Tenant’s Request for Repairs form. Tenants are usually encouraged to put requests in writing, and a text message is a written, time-stamped record, which makes it a practical format for both sides.

Emergency or routine: how to triage

Triage decides everything that follows: who gets called, how fast, and whether anyone is woken up at 2 a.m. CMHC explains that emergencies affect a tenant’s health or safety or put the building or property at risk. Its examples include flooding from broken pipes, heating failure in cold weather, sewage backup and a defective entry lock. Slow drains, minor leaks and a burnt-out stove element are listed as non-emergencies.

A workable triage grid for a multi-unit portfolio looks like this:

The categories are our working framework. The emergency and routine examples come from CMHC, and you should adjust the middle tiers to your own leases and local rules.

What to do while an emergency is in progress

The first minutes of a water or heating emergency are where damage grows. Tell tenants where the main water shutoff is, and put it in the move-in package. Once the leak is stopped and the vendor has dealt with the source, the cleanup starts. Wet finishes need a repair-or-replace decision, and a guide on water damage to ceiling cornices shows how to judge whether damaged mouldings can be dried and repaired or must come down.

CMHC also notes that some provinces require landlords to post emergency contact information in a visible place in the building. Even where it is not required, a single number that tenants know works is part of a defensible process.

In British Columbia, the rule goes further. A tenant facing an emergency repair must try the landlord’s designated emergency contact twice and allow reasonable time for a response before arranging the repair and paying a reasonable cost. A landlord whose emergency line goes unanswered invites exactly that outcome.

How long a landlord has to complete a repair

This is the question tenants ask most, and the honest answer is that there is usually no fixed number of days. In Nova Scotia, the law does not set exact timelines: urgent repairs such as no heat in winter need immediate attention, and less urgent ones are expected within a reasonable period. That guide mentions 7 to 14 days as a commonly assumed range for non-urgent work, which is a general rule of thumb, not a legal deadline.

What counts as reasonable depends on the problem, the season, parts availability and whether the tenant gave access. That vagueness cuts both ways. Tenants cannot point to a statute for day eight, and landlords cannot assume that silence is safe.

The practical response is to set your own standard and keep proof that you met it:

1. Acknowledge every request quickly, even if the fix is days away.
2. Define target windows by category (see the table above).
3. Record the date the request arrived, the date a vendor was booked and the date the work was done.
4. If parts or access delay a repair, tell the tenant why and when to expect the next step.

If a dispute reaches a tribunal, those timestamps show the delay was explained rather than ignored.

Entering the unit for repairs

A repair usually means someone walking into the tenant’s home, and the law protects that space. In Saskatchewan, for example, entry is allowed with the tenant’s permission, with written notice of 24 hours to 7 days in advance, or in an emergency where entry is needed to protect life or property. The same regulations require repair entries to happen between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., not on a Sunday or a day of religious worship for the tenant, unless otherwise agreed.

In Ontario, a landlord must give at least 24 hours’ written notice before entering to carry out a repair. CMHC summarizes the balance well: landlords must not interfere with a tenant’s reasonable enjoyment, and tenants must allow entry for repairs when proper notice is given.

For property managers, this means the scheduling message to the tenant is a legal document, not a courtesy. It should state the date, the time window, the reason and who is coming. Check the rules in each province where you operate, because notice periods and permitted hours are not uniform.

Perspective from the guidance side: landlords are advised to vet vendors before giving them access to tenants’ units, so they are safe and briefed on customer service. A tenant’s experience of your company is often the technician at their door.

When a repair request goes unanswered

Unresolved requests escalate, and it helps to know the path tenants follow. The usual sequence starts with written communication to the landlord. If that fails, the tenant may apply to the local residential tenancy authority for an order that the repairs be done, or for compensation. In Ontario, the application is the T6, filed with the Landlord and Tenant Board.

CMHC is clear that tenants must not withhold rent to force repairs, because that can lead to eviction. That is a reminder to tenants, but it also shows why landlords should not make tenants feel that rent is their only leverage. A responsive process keeps conflicts out of tribunals.

Tenants who are unsure where they stand can contact local tenant organizations or their provincial tenancy office. Landlords with a complaint history should talk to a paralegal or lawyer licensed in their province, not rely on a general guide.

Where manual repair intake breaks down

Most small portfolios start with phone calls, emails and a spreadsheet. It works until volume grows. The typical failure points are the same across portfolios:

• Requests arrive in five places. A text to the superintendent, a voicemail, an email, a portal ticket and a hallway conversation all describe the same leak.
• Triage depends on whoever is awake. After-hours calls interrupt staff for problems that could wait until morning, and genuine emergencies sometimes sit in a voicemail box. We cover this in our guide to after-hours maintenance.
• Vendors get vague instructions. A missing detail means a second visit, and a second visit means a second invoice.
• Follow-up is nobody’s task. Tenants wait to hear back, and managers wait to hear that the job is done.
• Records are scattered. When a dispute or an insurance claim arrives, the timeline has to be rebuilt from memory.

None of these are people problems. They are coordination problems, and coordination is what grows with unit count.

Perspective: why we run repair requests by text

Tenants already text. A tenant standing in a flooded bathroom will not log into a portal, and a tenant who finds a dripping tap on a Sunday will not call an office that is closed. Asking tenants to learn a system is the first place requests get lost, so we built the intake around the channel they already use. A tenant texts the issue and our AI asks follow-up questions, in the same thread, for the details a technician needs.

The second thing we learned is that many requests do not need a vendor. A tripped breaker, a reset button or a clogged aerator can be sorted with a few guided steps, and when it can, nobody pays for a service call. We describe that approach in our piece on troubleshooting by text first. When it cannot be fixed that way, the system flags emergencies and dispatches an approved vendor, whether that is your own trade or one from our network.

The third is that software should not force a rebuild. We are not a replacement for your property management platform. We complement it, and we integrate with Buildium, so your leases, accounting and established workflows stay where they are. We take over the part that eats hours: the back-and-forth between tenant, manager and trade.

We are Canadian-owned and operated, and Canada is our launch market, so the provincial differences described above are the ones we design around. The goal is simple: fewer calls to your team, faster resolution for tenants, and a complete record of every request.

— Ryan

Running tenant requests with GoLando

GoLando is an AI maintenance coordination platform for landlords and property managers. Tenants report an issue by text, with no app to download and no portal to learn. The AI handles the conversation, troubleshoots where it can, identifies emergencies and, when a professional is needed, coordinates the repair with your approved vendors. A central dashboard shows requests, vendor activity, property maintenance history, expenses and performance metrics.

Plans are tiered by portfolio size. Starter is $39 per month or $390 per year, Pro is $69 per month or $690 per year, Pro+ is $149 per month or $1,490 per year, Mogul is $249 per month or $2,490 per year, and Scale is $449 per month or $4,490 per year. Enterprise starts from $999 per month. All prices are in Canadian dollars. See current plans and pricing to match a tier to your unit count, or look at how tenant maintenance requests by text work from the tenant’s side. If you want to estimate what maintenance is costing now, our rental maintenance cost calculator is a quick place to start.

Vendors dispatched through the GoLando Vendor Network carry a network fee of 5 to 10 percent on those jobs. Details for trades are on the vendor page. You can also use your own vendors for automated dispatch.

A practical standard to adopt this month

Whether or not you use software, these habits make repair requests easier to defend and cheaper to run:

1. One front door. Choose a single channel for requests and tell every tenant at move-in. Redirect side-channel messages into it.
2. A written urgency scale. Share the emergency definition with tenants so they know what to report immediately and what can wait.
3. A standard record. Use the fields in the Toronto guidance above, plus photos and access details.
4. Target response windows. Acknowledge fast, schedule by category and log each step.
5. Notice templates by province. Pre-write entry notices that meet the local rules so that nobody improvises.
6. A closing message. Ask the tenant to confirm the fix. Unconfirmed repairs become the next complaint.
7. A monthly review. Look at repeat issues by building. CMHC notes that regular maintenance helps landlords forecast needed repairs and lowers the chance of unexpected emergencies, and the request log is where those patterns show up first.

A worked example

Imagine a 120-unit building. At 9 p.m. on a January Saturday, a tenant texts that the radiator is cold. A good process asks whether the thermostat is set correctly, whether other rooms are warm and whether the tenant can send a photo. If the whole unit is cold and the building boiler is suspected, that is a heating failure in cold weather, which CMHC lists as an emergency. The on-call contact and a heating vendor are alerted at once, and the tenant is told what is happening. If a single radiator valve is closed, the tenant is walked through opening it and the request closes without a callout. In both cases, the record of times, messages and actions exists without anyone typing it up.