By the time you get keys you will have signed four or five separate documents, most of them handed to you in a single sitting. They do very different things. Here's the plain-language version.
The documents, in the order you'll meet them
RIG: the Information Guide for Buyers and Sellers
Since December 2023, Ontario law requires a registered agent to present this guide before providing services beyond basic information. It's the province explaining, in its own words, the difference between a client and a customer, what representation means, and what a brokerage owes you. Signing it confirms you received it. It is not a contract and does not commit you to anything.
BDRA: the Buyer Designated Representation Agreement
This is the actual contract between you and the brokerage. It sets out the term, the geographic area, and what happens with commission. In a rental context this is what makes me your representative rather than a stranger showing you a unit. Read the term and the holdover period before you sign. Those are the two clauses that surprise people later.
Co-operation Agreement
Used when you want to see a specific property without entering into a full representation agreement. Narrower in scope: one property, or a short list, for a defined period.
Agreement to Lease (OREA Form 400)
The offer itself. Once it's signed by both parties and all conditions are satisfied, you're committed. It sets the rent, the term, the deposit, the start date, and who pays for what.
Schedules
Attached pages that modify the standard form: pets, parking, smoking, utilities, the promised repaint. Everything specific to your deal lives here rather than in the pre-printed form. This is the part worth reading twice.
Where a guarantor is involved, they sign the Agreement to Lease too. There is a designated signature area for it on the form. See Guarantors and Co-Signers.
Residential Tenancy Agreement: the Standard Form of Lease
The tenancy agreement itself, and the document you will live under. The Agreement to Lease is the offer; this is what the offer results in. Two different pieces of paper doing two different jobs, and the reason people are sometimes asked to sign what feels like the same thing twice.
More on the Standard Form of Lease
Since 30 April 2018 most private residential tenancies in Ontario have had to use the province's own form, published by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing as the Residential Tenancy Agreement (Standard Form of Lease). It is a free government document, it is written in plain language, and every landlord in the province works from the same one.
A handful of tenancies are outside it: care homes, mobile home parks and land lease communities, most co-operative housing, and certain social housing. Almost everything else is covered.
What is in it
The basics: the parties, the address, the rent, the day it is due, how it may be paid, and the term.
What is included: services and utilities, parking, appliances, air conditioning, and who pays for each. Worth checking line by line against what you were shown and told.
Section 15, additional terms. The schedule, in effect. Anything the landlord wants beyond the standard form goes here, and this is the part that repays reading twice. See Common Clauses in an Agreement to Lease.
An appendix of tenant and landlord rights, printed as part of the form. It is the clearest short summary of Ontario tenancy law you will be handed, and it is free. Read it once.
Ask for it in writing, and keep the email. The landlord then has 21 days to provide it.
If they do not, you may withhold one month's rent. If they still have not provided a standard lease within 30 days of you beginning to withhold, you are not required to repay that month. There are further remedies available too, including the right to end the tenancy early in some circumstances.
Withholding rent is a serious step with a narrow set of conditions attached. Talk to me, or to a community legal clinic, before you do it rather than after.
Any clause in a lease that contradicts the Residential Tenancies Act is void, even if you signed it. "No pets" clauses are the classic example: unenforceable in Ontario, though a landlord may still decline your application in the first place.
This page describes how these documents work in practice. It isn't legal advice, and I'm not a lawyer. For anything contentious, or any lease with unusual schedules, talk to a paralegal or lawyer who works in landlord and tenant matters.