Home Sweet Home: Your Guide to Renting in London as a Newcomer

Finding a new place to live in can be an overwhelming process, especially when moving to a new country or community. 

To make the process easier, the LMLIP has put together a list of tips and useful information to help newcomers and all immigrants to London find their new home. 

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

London is a growing city with diverse neighbourhoods that offer different options to meet different lifestyles. It’s important to familiarize yourself with the area where you are planning to live and make sure it suits all your needs. 

For instance, not all newcomers arrive in Canada with the means of buying a vehicle right away. If that’s the case, it’s important to ensure there are transit options available near your potential new home to make your commute to work or school easier. 

Also keep in mind that in Ontario, the vast majority of leases are signed for a one-year term that turns into a month-to-month lease after the first year. If you move into a new home but later discover it doesn’t meet your needs, it may be difficult to move out until the one-year lease is completed. 

YOUR BUDGET 

Rent prices in London have been rising in the past few years. According to Rentals.ca, a website used by landlords to advertise their units, the average asking price for an available one-bedroom apartment in London is about $1,800, with two-bedroom units renting for about $2,200.

Make sure to ask your landlord what’s included in your rent. Some apartment units include utilities (electricity, water or gas) while others require tenants to pay for those services and additional amenities, such as parking, on top of the rent. Landlords also require tenants to secure renter’s insurance. Before moving in, you will also be asked to pay for the first and last month’s rent upfront. In Ontario, it’s illegal for landlords to ask you to pay for several months of rent at once.

According to the Human Rights Legal Support Centre: “A landlord should not refuse to rent to you because you have no previous Canadian landlord references or credit history. An absence of credit and landlord references is not the same as bad credit and bad landlord references. If you have a bad rental history, a landlord can ask you to have a co-signer or someone to ‘guarantee’ your rent. However, a landlord cannot require this just because you are a refugee or a recent immigrant.”

RENT-CONTROLLED APARTMENTS

It’s important for you to find an apartment that is protected under rent control legislation in Ontario. This ensures your landlord can only increase your rent annually by the rental increase guidelines set by the province, which usually range between one and three per cent. 

Units rented for the first time after Nov. 15, 2018, are not protected by rent control; this gives landlords the power to increase rents once per year by any amount they choose. In some cases, tenants living in non-rent-controlled units have seen their rents rise by as much as 20 per cent.

BEWARE OF SCAMS

As London’s population has grown significantly in the past few years, the city’s rental market has become very competitive, with many apartment buildings having waiting lists of people looking for apartments.

Unfortunately, scammers and bad actors have taken advantage of the tight market conditions to take advantage of people desperate to find a new home. New immigrants can be easy targets for scammers because of their limited knowledge of their new community or how renting in Canada works.

To protect yourself, limit your search for units to reputable and trusted resources such as rental websites or listings made by property management companies. 

Always visit in person the apartment you want to rent and be wary of landlords who are unwilling to show you the property in person or require you to make a deposit in advance for you to visit the unit. Also, be careful of landlords who claim to be outside of the country, ask for cash or unusual payment methods such as Bitcoins, and rental units that are priced way below market rents.

“One common scam is that someone shows you or sends you pictures of a unit and accepts money as a deposit, but they are not the landlord or the owner of that property," said Claude Boiron in an interview with Scotiabank. “Another common scam involves renting out a place to multiple people."

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

To find more tips and familiarize yourself with the renting process in London, check out this video created by the LMLIP and its partners, which is also available in Spanish, Arabic and French.