“We’re Not Leaving”: A Tenant True Story

Don’t let the title fool you here; there’s a lot of blame to go around in the following tale.

I don’t want to suggest that the tenants in this story are at fault for anything, in fact.  Except perhaps for being incredibly direct, but more on that later…

Let me set the scene:

Clients of mine are looking for the “move-up” home.  The classic, “We want this to be our last move” quote was thrust at me during our first meeting, and I told them that I’m quite familiar with the concept of a “forever home.”

They’ve been in their west-end semi-detached home for twelve years, and like many other folks in their situation, they’ve been thinking about moving for quite some time, but just haven’t found the time to make it a reality.

In August, we decided to head out and peruse a few homes, even though there was nothing of the “green light” variety out there, and we knew we’d be waiting for the busy fall market, which was just around the corner.

With the introduction to my clients out of the way, I can now tell you that this story has nothing to do with them!  It has everything to do with the other participants in the story, namely the listing agent, the seller, and the tenants.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again many times from here on out: being a landlord in the city of Toronto is not for the faint of heart.

Then again, neither is being a tenant, especially when you read stories like this one.

My clients and I booked appointments on four houses, and with three days’ notice, I figured it was sufficient time to get in and see them all.

I received three auto-confirmations, but I waited patiently for the fourth.

Two days passed by, and despite having emailed the listing agent to ask if we could get in to see her property, I hadn’t heard anything about that fourth house.

Then the night before my clients and I were scheduled to head out, I received an email from somebody I didn’t know:

Hello David:
You have booked an appointment to see my home tomorrow.
Please confirm that you will be attending.
We have had many agents no-show and we are tired.
Thank You.
(Name)

It was the tenant!

I’ve been in this business for twenty-two years, and I’ve never seen a tenant email me directly to confirm that I was going to show up the next day to my appointment.

But perhaps that begs the question: what appointment?

My showing hadn’t been confirmed!

I scrolled down and saw the tenant’s previous correspondence with the listing agent, or rather, the lack thereof.  She had received our appointment request through BrokerBay, forwarded it to the listing agent to say she would confirm it, but there was no response back.

So the tenant was asking me if I was coming, even though we were both waiting on the listing agent.

That tracked.

This was “one of those listings.”

An out-of-area, discount agent, listing a tenanted property that showed poorly, featured an even worse MLS listing, and, of course, was dramatically overpriced.

I knew that I shouldn’t have been in direct contact with the tenant, but she emailed me; I simply wrote her back and said:

Hi (Name)
I would like to show the house tomorrow at 12:00pm.
However, I haven’t received a confirmation through BrokerBay.
I appreciate you confirming, but I can’t attend unless I receive confirmation from the brokerage.
David.

I forwarded my email to the listing agent but didn’t hear back.

The next morning, I called the listing agent, and magically, he answered!

I told him that I wanted to show his listing, that the tenant had emailed me, and he said, “Go ahead, it’s no problem.”

I explained that I hadn’t received a confirmation from BrokerBay, and he said, “Don’t worry, my friend!  It’s fine.  No problem.”

Here’s where I might be sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, and I never considered myself a “rule follower,” but there’s absolutely no way I was showing up to this house without a confirmed appointment.  My spidey-sense was tingling, and I knew this one was a problem.

To his credit, the listing agent did get me a confirmation, and away we went.

Now, here’s where the story gets very interesting!

I arrived early and knocked on the door, but there was no answer.  I rang the doorbell again, but nobody came.

There was no lockbox, so there was no key.  My instructions said, “Go Direct.”

I called the listing agent, but of course he didn’t answer.

After about ten minutes, a lady came to the door.

She was pleasant; don’t get me wrong.  But she was definitely guarded.

She told me that half of all the agents who booked showings on her house never showed up, and never cancelled.

“People,” she said, as she shook her head.  “People are just so thoughtless.  Careless.  Just….callous.”

I told her I completely agreed, which I did.  I’m probably more of a cynic than she is, and I might even have less faith in people!  When it comes to the average Toronto real estate agent, I understand exactly why this happened, of course.  Because they don’t care.  She’s right.

I suggested that she file a RECO complaint, and she said, “It’s not going to change the fact that they didn’t show up.”

I explained that perhaps if they were fined $10,000, which, for those agents, probably represents a large percentage of their yearly income, they would learn to never do it again.

A few minutes later, my clients showed up, and we went inside.

We toured the main floor, checked out the basement, and were coming back up to the kitchen when a man appeared – presumably the tenant’s husband, and I greeted him with a “hello” and “thank you for accomodating us.”

That’s when he said it.

“You know we’re not leaving, right?”

I said, “For sure, that’s totally fine.  You have every right to be here, and I’m sorry if we’re in your way, but we appreciate you accommodating us.”

He shook his head.

He said, “No, I mean from this house.  We’re not leaving.”

I paused, thought about what I was going to say next, but he continued.

“Our lease runs until April 1st, 2027,” he told me.  Then he added:

“We have no intention of leaving.  We’re never leaving.”

I’m not italicizing that for effect, folks.  He stressed the word “never.”

I smiled and nodded, then I simply turned to my clients and said, “Shall we see upstairs?”

This wasn’t the right house for my buyers, so we weren’t fazed by the tenant’s bold statement.  But it simply underscored one of the many issues that plagues our current rental market here in the GTA.  Tenants and landlords alike have their backs up, consistently bend the rules, or at times, even break them.

For the record, when a tenant signs a one-year lease in the province of Ontario, after the conclusion of that year, they automatically go month-to-month.

If an individual purchased that home with the intention of using it as a primary residence and moving into it, then the buyer could give legal notice to the tenant to vacate.

Legal notice, that is.

It doesn’t mean the tenant couldn’t fight it.

The tenant would probably lose, but it would take 4-8 months to get in front of the Landlord and Tenant Board, and by then, the original buyer might have walked away.  We’ve seen this happen before.

So when the tenant told me, “We’re never leaving,” he could have meant a couple of different things.

1) “We’re never leaving,” as in, “Before our lease is up.”
2) “We’re never leaving,” as in, “After our one-year lease, since we’re going month-to-month.”
3) “We’re never leaving,” as in, “After our one-year lease, so the landlord can sell this house vacant.”
4) “We’re never leaving,” as in, “Even if the landlord sells the house and the buyer intends to move in, we’ll fight this all the way and make your lives a living hell.”

It’s that last point that’s scary, especially to a buyer who does intend to move in.

I’m going to draw a parallel here, and this is a far-reaching tangent, but here goes…

Did you follow the Tupac Shakur murder trial in Las Vegas last month?

Many of you had no idea this was going on, but, yes, they finally found the killer after three decades and two hundred articles, books, shows, movies, and podcasts.

In any event, Suge Knight, who was in the car with Tupac when he got shot, refused to testify.

He’s in jail on an unrelated crime, and he told both the defence and the prosecution something to the effect of, “Don’t call me as a witness.  I’m not coming.  Don’t call me because whoever calls me, I’ll make your life hell.”

Sooooo…..who’s going to call Suge Knight?

In the end, it turned out that neither the defence or prosecution did, which is amazing, considering he was the only eyewitness!

But that’s what can happen when you tell somebody, “I’m going to ruin your plans.”

And in the case of these tenants, who were presumably telling every buyer who came through the house they were renting, “We’re never leaving,” I can’t imagine there’s a buyer out there who would enter into this.

I know that I certainly would never advise a buyer client to consider this property.

Later that evening, I received a call from the listing agent.  It was around 7:00pm, which wasn’t the best response time, considering I called him at 11:50am as I was trying to get into the house.

I told him, “I was trying to get into your listing earlier, but it’s okay; the tenant came and let us in.  All good.”

He asked me what I thought of the house, and then I heard that little voice in my head ask:

“David, do you really want to get involved in this?”

These situations often backfire, but I figured that I would do the collegial thing and give him a heads-up.

“From one colleague to another, I wanted to let you know that the tenant said, and I quote, ‘We are never leaving.’  That’s what he said.”

The listing agent wasn’t fazed at all.

He said, “No, no, my friend, don’t worry.  They are on a fixed-term lease.”

Looking back, I should have already known where this conversation was going, but in the moment, instinct took over and I answered.

“Sorry, what I mean is that he said after his lease is up on April 1st, 2027, they’re not leaving,” I explained, figuring that this would clear up the confusion.

But again, the listing agent replied, “And I am telling you that after twelve months, they are out.  We are not renewing.  It is fixed-term.”

For those of you who aren’t aware, let me make this clear:

Under the Residential Tenancies Act, in the Province of Ontario, all tenants who sign a one-year lease automatically go month-to-month thereafter. 

There is no such thing as a “fixed-term lease” as the listing agent was describing it.

He continued, “It’s fixed-term.  They have only the twelve months, then they are out.  We are not allowing them to stay.”

I told him, “But they can stay.  One-year leases go month-to-month thereafter.”

Amazingly, he said, “No, my friend, not this one.  This one is fixed-term.  Twelve months only.”

I should have just hung up the phone, but in these situations, two things come over me:

1) Curiosity.  I need to know more about what the individual is thinking, just in case they’re as ignorant as I think they are.

2) Masochism.  I put myself in these situations where I voluntarily enter a conversation that is going to make my blood boil.

I paused, then tried to start over.

“Jimmy,” I said, which is clearly not his name, “There is no such thing as a ‘fixed-term,’ one-year lease in Ontario.  It’s not up to you to ‘allow’ the tenants to stay, nor do they need to ‘renew,’ nor do you have the option of directing them to sign any new lease whatsoever.”

With a bit more emphasis in his voice, although now I was the bad guy, he said, “This property belongs to the seller, and the seller has rights.  The seller is not allowing the tenant to stay after April 1st, and we are going to sell the house from the tenant.”

It wasn’t grammatically correct, but I know what he meant.

The problem, as we all know, is this:

The only way the landlord can legally evict the tenant once they are on month-to-month is if the landlord, a member of the landlord’s family, or a buyer serves legal notice to vacate for personal use.

But as the tenant essentially explained to me, they were “never leaving.”

There was a chance that the tenant meant, even if he was served legal notice to vacate from a buyer who intended for the property to be his or her primary residence, the tenant would demand a hearing at the Landlord & Tenant Board, which would drag the process out.

Nevertheless, the more I talked to the listing agent, the more I maybe, kinda, sorta, partially, a little bit, ummm…..started to feel for the tenant.

As we were all told when we were little, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

And I honestly don’t know if the tenant was taking such a hard position because the landlord (and the listing agent) were such jerks, or whether these two sides were simply a match made in Heaven.

But I hate when landlords and listing agents act like the rules don’t apply to them.

I also don’t know which of these situations is worse:

1) The listing agent and the landlord know the law, are aware that tenants automatically go month-to-month after the conclusion of a one-year lease, and are trying to bully the tenants out of their rights.

2) The listing agent and the landlord do not know the law, are clueless, unintelligent, and ignorant, which is not something you want from either a licensed real estate “professional” or an individual who owns a rental property.

Seriously.

Which do you think is worse?

I think it’s #2.

I think that the world is full of assholes, and the situation at hand is #1, well, then add these folks to the long list of jerks in society today.

The problem is: many landlords and real estate agents just don’t have any clue what they’re talking about, and situation #2 is far more common than you’d think.

I concluded my conversation with the listing agent by saying, “I wish you the best of luck with the listing,” and I avoided telling him what I really thought, which was that this property was completely unsellable.  It was overpriced by 15%, it showed terribly, it was “in between” market segments and had a limited buyer pool, it was tenanted, and you had tenants that were telling every prospective buyer that they were never leaving.

No, I didn’t tell him that.

I always get in these situations where folks shoot the messenger, and then I wonder why I bothered in the first place.

As for the property and the listing, I would bet my right foot that this property is still listed in September of 2027.

Somebody set a timer, please…