Summary of Key LTB Orders Every Realtor Should Know 

In Episode 131 of David & David on Real Estate, hosts David Gorski and David Korman interview Weiting Bollu, co-founder of Openroom, a platform that aggregates court orders related to residential tenancy disputes. 

Bollu explains how Openroom brings transparency to landlord-tenant conflicts by making court orders publicly searchable, focusing on helping landlords make informed decisions. During the conversation, Bollu highlights two key cases to illustrate common challenges landlords face. 

The first case involves a landlord who denied a lease assignment request due to the number of family members, despite the original tenant having the same family size. This led to the tenant filing a human rights violation claim, with the case eventually reaching the Divisional Court. 

The second case involves repeat offenders who repeatedly defraud landlords, using fraudulent documents to secure rental units and avoid payment, exploiting the system to delay evictions.

The episode emphasizes the importance of education for landlords and real estate professionals, especially in understanding the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) and navigating the complexities of the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB). 

Transcript

David Gorski: Good morning and welcome to the David and David on Real Estate podcast. We are today on episode number 131 and we have a special guest returning once again with us. We have Weiting from Openroom, and I hope I said that correctly. Good morning and welcome to the show.

Weiting Bollu: Thank you very much, David. Hi, everyone. My name is Weiting Bollu. I am the co-founder and CEO of Openroom CA. What we do at Openroom is we aggregate court orders regarding tenancy disputes and we make it searchable by the public.

David Korman: And this is residential landlord and tenant disputes. Nothing to do with commercial landlord and tenant disputes. It's going to the landlord tenant, the tribunal, the board, and sorting through these crazy decisions I refer to as a kangaroo court all the time. But it's great that there's, that you're, there's now a place to find them and to access them.

Openroom’s growth

Weiting Bollu: Thank you very much. It was a long time coming. I did not think that this was going to be as big as it is and what it's going to be as well because we're still working on more things behind it. But it's fantastic to see it being spread like wildfire. Word of mouth.

David Korman: Yeah, I love referring to as a kangaroo court. You're going to give us some, some examples today of, of some of the decisions that were, that are probably surprising, but people have to be aware of what type of decisions are being made there.

Weiting Bollu: Yes. You got it. Shall we jump in?

David Gorski: Just before we do, how many decisions do you have in your website?

Weiting Bollu: Currently we have just north of 15 000, right now. And mainly we specialize in Ontario, but we do take orders from all across Canada.

David Gorski: Okay. And put some context behind us, like how many cases are being heard in the landlord tenant board a day, a week, a month? Any, any ideas of what the numbers actually are like? I'd love to know, percentage wise of how many decisions are actually in your system. Like, any idea?

Weiting Bollu: Yeah. If we're honing in Ontario right now, in 2022 to 2023, LTB comes out, or LTB generally comes out with an annual report. But for last year, we were looking at landlord filing applications at about 73,010. Inside was about 50,000 or so. So altogether, that's roughly around, what, 120,000 or so. So from open room perspective, if we look at 15,000 that we have, that is tiny. It's a tiny fraction. So for anybody listening or these big property management firms, big paralegal firms, if you've got something to contribute from a court order or tribunal order perspective, please help the community submit it into our system and help each other out?

David Gorski: Absolutely. The more information that we have in the database, the more the system is going to work. Why don't we go ahead and jump into a couple that really stand out that I think the real estate industry really need to know about.

Case law 1:  Singh and Dhinara v. Salim

Weiting Bollu: You got it. So I'm going to share two specifically with you and our audience here. First one is where I believe there is a bad landlord decision that occurred. Okay, so this is Singh and Dhinara versus Salim. There are three cases inside Openroom at the time of us discussing this right now. And this actually landed in the superior Court of Justice, Divisional Court of Ontario. So it went to LTB first, then there was an appeal by the tenant and this is what happened. So the landlord and the tenant has signed this fixed lease. Right. So tenant circumstances changed and they wanted to assign the lease to someone else. And per the RTA rules, you can't arbitrarily deny someone an assignment if they found a decent tenant. Okay. As a replacement. So tenant had five members of the family currently living in the unit. Tenant finds a first set of potential tenants, wants to assign the lease to them, but the landlord denies on various reasons. The second time, tenant finds another set of tenants, wants to assign the lease to them, and then the landlord denies based on number of family members. So the second set was actually same number five. Okay. So then when questioned about why this was the reason, the landlord gave as a denial for accepting these next set of tenants, the landlord said they were advised by their realtor. So that's another story or like a conversation we can go down on. Advice given from realtors. Right. Because not all realtors, as you know, David, they're not made equal. Okay. And then at this point, the tenant had to move out because they needed to go. They had other circumstances come out. But the landlord goes after the tenant for about two months of unpaid rent. Okay. Then the tenant looks deeper into the RTA and finds that this is a human rights violation because of the second set of tenants that were denied based on family members. So appeals to the divisional court on one, I do not want to pay the two months rent that they seemingly owed to the landlord because they moved out. But landlord denied the move in of the second test set of tenants. So divisional court actually had given the opinion that the tenant should pay the tenants or. Sorry, that the. Given the opinion to the tenant that the tenant should pay. Sorry. The divisional court had given the opinion that the landlord should pay the tenants about $7000 for costs, but I think that's only 50% of the actual costs that the tenant actually incurred at the time of going to court and filing. So then, but there was an interesting piece to this, is that either parties can then reappeal back to the landlord tenant board. Okay. So it had already been, the appealed, had gone to the appeal to the divisional court and then now it repealed that appealed back again. So fast forward to today. The case is now waiting for that next hearing at the LTB in early June 4. So it's still not over, still ongoing. Why I found this particularly interesting is that the landlord was seemingly in the wrong and then they still want their $5,000 of unpaid rent, even though I think that they've spent way more now going to divisional and going to back to the LTB. So as I'm looking at this, it's really a warning to people saying, okay, you gotta be aware of why you're denying someone tenancy. Okay, I'll pause there. Turn it over to you.

David Korman: Yeah. You refer to it as being an assignment of the lease. I'm wondering if it was really, was it really an assignment of the lease or were they trying to sublease? Do you know if the rights would be different if they were subleasing it to the, to another group as opposed to assigning their lease? Like, and then if there wasn't a real assignment, was the tenant being requesting? I'm assigning, I found out there are people take it or I'm assigning my lease to them and then I want to be released of the obligations of the lease as opposed to it being a sublease where the original tenant is still on the hook but now has a sub tenant.

Weiting Bollu: I actually had the opportunity to speak to this tenant. Okay. Which is very interesting because many of the case, every single case inside the Openroom system has a story behind it. And I get to speak to many of these individuals. So this I know was for an assignment because the tenants did not want to come back to the property. And prior to trying to assign or find tenants, they had actually spoken to the landlord and said, I need to move and let's, I'll find the next set of tenants. Because that's what the landlord said is if you're going to move, you have to find another set of tenants that I approve and et cetera. So that's what the tenant had gone out to do.

David Korman: Okay. And it wasn't an issue about credit check of the new people. It was like, no, they've got five people that's the landlord says too many people moving in.

Weiting Bollu: That's what was in the case and that's what we know right now. Or as the reason for denial. Yes.

David Gorski: Yeah. There's so many multitude of issues here and messages for the real estate industry and for tenants as well as landlords here. And I think there's so much misconception from both sides as to what the rights are and legal responsibilities and obligations. And a lot of this is rooted in common law and in the RTA as well. Right. And, David, you can speak to this as well, but if you're locked in a fixed lease, but you need to move, it's your responsibility, or you have the option to either keep paying your rent and not live in the property or replace it, replace that tenancy with another tenant. And I don't think that the landlord can arbitrarily deny. And you can speak to this a little bit more than I can. What would be some of the instances where a landlord could arbitrary or could deny that tenant from coming in? Like, what check or what has to exist for the landlord to say, no, the tenant that you chose to replace, I'm not allowing them to move forward.

David Korman: Yeah. Was that part of. Was that described in the decision at all? Like, were they giving, you know, comparables or reasons why the tribunal, when a tribunal, would side with the landlord to deny an assignment request? Like, when is when, under what fact situation is it reasonable? Like, the easy one for me to think up top of my head is, you know, they do a credit check on the new tenant and they've got terrible credit. So, yeah. Landlord can say, I'm not consenting to that tenant come or the landlord say, I'll consent to that assignment even because I'm getting a tenant I'm not real comfortable with, but I'm not releasing the original tenant from their obligation. So if this new tenant defaults, I'm still coming back up to where I want some security put up front or. Or something like that. But, like, was that part of the decision?

Weiting Bollu: No. There was no mention about credit checks? No, I don't even think that they got to the part of credit checks because it was just number of family. They were just vetting the very basic details before I even got to. Okay, I'm gonna go through further details of credit check, credit reports, bank statements, etcetera. Yeah, it didn't get there. Okay.

David Korman: The fact there was five family members like this, a one bedroom place, and there are concerns. Five people living in one room or what was the. What type of place was this, well.

Weiting Bollu: You know, what does it matter? Because the current set of tenants also had five family members, which was what was very interesting to me when I was talking to the tenants. Because your current situation is five, yet the next set was denied on five on that basis.

David Korman: That doesn't.

Weiting Bollu: Yeah.

David Korman: Landlord saying, you know, five is too many in that small unit and they trash the place and they're doing damage there, or you don't have some evidence to that effect. But to say, I don't want five because my realtor said five is too many, like that. Like, that's not going to stand up to anything.

Weiting Bollu: Yeah. But I also want your listeners to know that I am not a legal professional, and I don't review every single case that come into the system because I've got a team that also helps me review. But these are some of the cases that I'm going, going to be discussing. This one and the next one where it's been highlighted or talked about in various communities, and people are like, yeah, we think this one's very interesting. You should look at it. Yes.

David Gorski: Yeah. And, you know, I think landlord tenant. Sorry. I think realtors also have to really understand some of these rules and obligations because as you mentioned, this one particular case, you know, the realtor got involved and started offering advice. You know, I love realtors to, you know, really be those professionals where they, you know, they're, the landlord can lean on them for advice, but the realtor has to be very well educated and really understand these rules before offering that advice to their clients. And whenever you're not sure, then you have to refer your client to a paralegal or to a lawyer or to somebody who has the right experience to guide your clients on this journey. You know, don't just make an assumption and offer your opinion if you're a realtor without being absolutely sure, without having personal experience, without really having the right education or the right experience behind you before making that advice.

Weiting Bollu: Absolutely. And David, how does your team learn about the tenancy side or the RTA today?

David Gorski: That's a great question. We are very fortunate at my brokerage to have David Korman: We have had a 35 year relationship with his office, and David does regular webinars for my brokerages. This is actually how the David and David on real estate podcast came to be, is during COVID I remember there was a webinar that David Korman did, and the information was so fantastic. It was great. And I said to myself, wow, like, what an advantage for our realtors and our brokerage to have such unrestricted access to David Korman: and his professionals. And I said, you know what? This whole industry needs this sort of knowledge. Everybody needs to benefit from this. Not just my realtors, not just my brokerage. I just, you know, I said to myself, how do we make that happen? How do we get that information and really help the industry move forward? And that's how the David and David on real estate podcast came to me.

Weiting Bollu: Nice. Something that we do at Openroom, aside from just the court order side, is the training and the learning element is because what I go out there saying to the world is that many housing providers think that this is passive income. But you're running a business and you need to know what you're doing. Do not be like me. Who was that ignorant landlord who didn't know what I was doing? So now I go out there educating people on how to do it so you don't make the same mistakes as I do. So what we do for the community is learning a training program where many realtors have actually taken the program with us. And we talk all the things about RTA, the LTB fire code, how to vet tenants. Like, there are different steps, how to add clauses to the leases. Like, these are really, really important elements that I wish I had known back in the day.

David Gorski: Yeah, I've seen the training course on your website. I see what you guys kind of do, and it's fantastic. And anybody listening that really wants to level up and learn, I think knowledge is power. It all starts with education. And it's so important. I think reviewing these case laws that we're doing right now is also important because that puts the whole picture into practice and into perspective. And, you know, you learn a lot from. From reading case law and from really understanding, you know, how. How things come to an end, how they start and how they come to a conclusion and kind of go through all the motions at the same time.

Weiting Bollu: I mean, it's hard. Some of these. Yeah, some of these cases are there. The legal jargon is still there. So for the average individual like myself, I. I spent a multiple. I read it multiple times, basically, and I still didn't fully understand it, but. David Korman, do you want to comment?

David Korman: I'm anxious to hear the second case that you wanted to talk about because always interesting to hear these fact situations and. And how they get resolved.

Weiting Bollu: Yeah. Yeah.

Case Law 2: Frederick Perry and Jaimey Robertson

David Gorski: The other thing is, David, I always, you know, I always. You always play the role that Weiting is playing right now. Like, you're always the one whenever we do these episodes, you're always the one that is always the describing these legal precedent cases. So it's really nice to hear somebody else from the kind of bring these to our attention as well.

Weiting Bollu: Except I'm not a legal professional. We also offer free content, like on Instagram. David, I think you, David Gorski:, you watch some of the content that I share out there. Yeah. Okay, so the next case over here. There are ten records inside the Openroom system today. Oh, sorry, let me share this with. With you both. Okay. And this is Jamie Robertson and partner Patrick. Oh, sorry. Frederick Fred Perry. Okay, so Jaimey Robertson and partner Fred Perry. These are the tenants, and these are repeat offenders, specifically in the Cambridge, Kitchener Waterloo region.

David Gorski: Wow.

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Weiting Bollu: All right, so let's dive in. They specifically target new immigrant landlords who do not know the law or things that they're supposed to do when it comes to vetting. So they will produce what is discussed in the case, all these cases, as authenticity of their documentation that they've supplied to the housing providers. Okay, so the sets of ten records, you will see that there are reviews, stays, requests to prolong the eviction. And there are two specific sets of landlords. There's Ayad and Fatin, who are owed right now about $43,000. I believe that this is still going on. And then Wilma and Alwyn, $18,000 in arrears. So they had already gone to the next set of victims. So there's two for sure that we know about that were frauded or. Yeah. And what we have here is some members of the public have actually gone to hearings where Jaimey would self represent, and there would be constant excuses to why they were unable to pay rent. They'd request for payment plans, but then never end up paying. So that's why we see high, high arrears. Okay, and why is this so interesting for me? Fraud documentation. So, in the hearing adjudicators, you'll see it written out that they. Where they discuss the authenticity of the documentation supplied at the time of tenancy. And you'll see some of the commentary is that Jamie will give reasons as to why those are legitimate documents. And then, second is that I'm a mom, and it hurts to see a fellow parent putting their kids in a situation where they have to be moving from one place to another because they're constantly getting evicted. I'll pause there. Any thoughts?

David Korman: Yeah. So it seems like they're doing this deliberately. It's not like they're renting a place. They get in trouble. They lose a job, they can't pay rent. It's like they're fraudulently, they're committing a fraud at the time. They're entering into the lease by providing false documents, moving in knowingly that they're going to default in the payment of rent and they're buying time. Like good luck because they're playing the system. Good luck getting me out. We're going to be running up a big tab here, and by the time you get me out, we're going to find the next place and start all over again. And like this is a deliberate scheme, it seems like, by these people.

Weiting Bollu: Yes.

David Gorski: Yeah, David, I think from the moment that they enter into the agreement, you can argue by looking at the history that the element of bad faith exists, right? Like, I mean, from, from the first intention is they want to fraud the system. And you know, they're doing that and we can see them doing that through the history within, you know, the context of renting. And you know, I, this situation brings, brings to mind the fact that like if you're a landlord and you're going to the landlord tenant board and you have no idea what the history is with these people, you know, you're approaching that situation from a completely different context than if you actually know what the history is. And you understand that people, that what these people do and the fact that they're professional and professional tenants trying to scheme the system and the element of bad faith is there from the start. Like you just approach that hearing in a completely different context. You're not there feeling bad for them, you're there saying, you know, Mister Representative, these are professional tenants. Here's the history. I have the documentation, I have  documents here from other cases. I have history in the last ten years. There's a constant history of these people scamming the system. And we need to work together to bring these people to justice. It changes the conversation. And that's why I think it, that's why I know that the public is so excited about what you're doing, and we need this now more than ever.

Weiting Bollu: Thank you. And David, last time we had spoken on our last episode, you had talked about you not having the ability to check inside openroom about your tenants that you have a nonpayment of rent situation with. Same thing with the landlords that are owed $43,000 right now. Had they had the opportunity to check for previous landlords owing from these tenants, I think they would have been well better, way more better informed about their rental decisions.

David Korman:

David Korman: Yeah, I think that's the key, you gotta be able to use what you're providing now in Openroom for you saying do not rent to these people because once you do, they know how to play the system and you can be the landlord and they'll fall to you and you can go to the tributo and you can say, look, here's the history of these people. They keep defrauding from place to place to place. And you get a sympathetic judge there say, yeah, you're right, you know, it's time for you to go. You have to pay your rent. And they'll say, oh, but we need a, we can make the payment, give us a payment plan and some time to do it and then the judge will give them the time even if they have this history and you know they're going to default on that payment plan again and you got to go back to court again to try and get them out. And now it's the middle of winter and the judge is going to say, you know, I really should throw these people up, but they got kids and I can't throw them out in the middle of February. So I'm going to give them six weeks to find another place and the six and they just keep going and it, no matter what their history is. So the bottom line is don't rent to these people because once they're in, you're never going to get them out and you're never going to get your money. Yeah, use open rent to them.

Case law commentary

Weiting Bollu: Thank you very much. I do want to point out that there are times when people are get a second chance and they will pay back and completely change their life around. Right. And kudos. And hopefully one day Openroom can help facilitate that change, a change in behavior. But when it comes to professional tenants and how do we define professional tenants for those who are listening or watching us? It's these people know how to game the system and they know how what the delays look like to prolong to continue to behave in criminal activity methods. And that is unacceptable and we have to hold people accountable for these types of actions.

David Gorski: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Do you rank some of these decisions or is there like a more defined database where people who really want to learn or really educate themselves about the must read cases to really learn how this system works? Do you have a place on your website where professionals or both tenants and landlords can go to read the top or the top 3 or the top 4 decisions that are a must read when it comes to decisions being made by the LTB?

Weiting Bollu: The short answer to that is no. But tell me a little bit about how that would work. I would be highlighting certain cases, right. Which, and maybe calling some people out like we did today, to give a couple examples, like to know, why is that helpful?

David Gorski: Well, you know, from, from a real estate perspective, I am always looking to educate myself, to educate my realtors. And I think by really learning about specific cases and understanding how the RTA applies to those cases teaches people the real life scenarios that they really have to understand to be able to apply the law into context. And to me, if you can apply law to context, like, you know, there's like, if we're really going to be honest with each other, there's, you know, probably like 5 scenarios that happen all the time. And it's. They're not new, they're not different, they're not unique. They're just, you know, 50 kind of situations happen. And the RTA and the landlord ten board applies different rules to those 5 situations. So if I can educate my realtors and the professional industry about how to handle those 50 situations, then we're going to raise the bar, we're going to create a better situation for both landlords and tenants, and we can just really help navigate those situations by pointing out, hey, these are the top 50 RTA decisions. Read them, know them. We can discuss them. We can, you know, apply RTA to specific situations and really start understanding how to navigate those situations.

Weiting Bollu: Ooh, I potentially discuss them as in commentary. Yeah, very valid suggestion. And for both davids, I very much love when users of Openroom message in about requests or solutions that we should be thinking about or commenting on the way that we do things right now, maybe it's nothing the best way. Some challenges that they see, we take that back. And we actually read every single comment, email, even all the things that are happening on Reddit, Facebook when people tag me in it. So I'm around, I'm looking, and I think this is actually a very valid situation in terms of education. Knowledge is power. I fully agree with that. But one thing I'll say that what we do have is the ability to look at paralegals and adjudicators that is coming out soon. So it's like, one of the main problems that I was experiencing when I was going through my case is that I thought I could self represent as a housing provider. But as people know who have gone to the LTV, it's, you're way better when you have a paralegal or legal representative with you. Okay, so as I was doing my research. I really didn't do much research. My thought was, okay, who would be best to represent me? I basically did a Google search, and then I thought, Jordan Newhoff, which is who I worked with, he's great. By luck, I found a great paralegal. But my thought at the time was he writes content. He coaches people. He must know what he's doing. And that's how I made my selection. But if we can turn it into a world where people can actually read some of these cases, find out how that paralegal represented that particular party in the dispute, then we can make better decisions on who we want to hire as a legal professional. Professional.

Concluding thoughts

David Korman: That's a great point. And I think we got to continue. We got to have you back again another episode because we're not done. We got more to get into talking about the future. And we've also, I think in the next episode, we have to talk a little bit about things from the nasty landlord part of it, too. We've been dumping a little bit on tenants so far, but it goes the other way too. There's some landlords that aren't very good, too. I want to put that, and I got a big question. I got to ask you about it because I think there's something you're deliberately not doing type of cases you're not talking about and not posting an Openroom. I want to talk about that, but I want that to be a teaser for the next episode. So we got to get.

David Gorski: Awesome. All right, guys, well, listen, thank you so much for coming back and what a great conversation. And thank you for pointing out those two cases. And join us next episode because we're really going to talk about the future where we're heading and how, you know, Openroom is really going to, I'm going to use the word revolutionize the tenant and landlord industry. So join us on episode 3 next time. Thank you, everybody.

Weiting Bollu: Thanks, everybody.

FAQ