05/25/2026
Your landlord is offering you thousands of dollars to move out. Should you take it?
They’re legal cash offers to get tenants to leave. Here’s why these deals may not be as sweet as they seem.
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Your landlord is offering you thousands of dollars to move out. Should you take it?
They’re legal cash offers to get tenants to leave. Here’s why these deals may not be as sweet as they seem.
Here’s what experts and renters who have negotiated buyouts have to say about the pros and cons of cash for keys.
Ramon Ferreira/Toronto Star illustration using Dreamstime images
Manuela-Vega
By Manuela VegaBusiness Reporter
Robyn Johnson has lived in the same complex in Sarnia, Ont., for 22 years, paying $770 a month for a two-bedroom townhome — and she has no desire to leave.
After a new landlord purchased the complex, the 67-year-old received an eviction notice for renovations and a letter saying that tenants who voluntarily left within six weeks would receive $5,000.
About a month later, she says, after she didn’t respond, the landlord doubled the offer.
“Yeah, $10,000 sounds good, but what happens after the first year? Our pensions aren’t going to increase,” Johnson says. “We’ll end up homeless.”
Rents for two-bedroom homes in Sarnia are nearly $2,000, which is roughly what Johnson brings in a month. “I can’t afford that.”
As a renter in Ontario, you have the right to stay in your rental unit even after your lease is up and becomes month-to-month. If the landlord wants you out, they need a legal reason to pursue an eviction. It’s one of the reasons landlords will offer these so-called “cash for keys” deals.
While these buyouts can sound like a lot of money, they may not be as sweet of a deal as they might seem. Here’s what experts and renters who have negotiated buyouts have to say about the pros and cons of cash for keys.
Why landlords sometimes offer buyouts and what you should consider
Housing lawyers say landlords sometimes offer their tenants buyouts after purchasing a rent-controlled building because they want higher-paying tenants to move in.
Other times, it can happen because the landlord wants to sell the property, and they believe it would be easier or more profitable to do so without a
Both scenarios are legal, but tenants don’t have to take the deal if they don’t want to.
“They’re offers that the tenant can ignore and not respond to,” says Doug Kwan, director of advocacy and legal services at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. “That’s their right as well.”
Still, tenants also have to consider whether they’re willing to deal with the eviction process and potential harassment from their landlord, Kwan says.
Benjamin Ries, executive director of South Etobicoke Community Legal Services, suggests tenants consider their unique circumstances to determine whether cash for keys makes sense.
Are they a student in a short-term living arrangement? Could they be evicted for being behind on rent? Is there a possibility the landlord may try evicting them because a family member wants to move in?
“If they have other reasons to move, then I think that starts to motivate a deal on the tenant side,” Ries says.
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Kwan adds that leaving a secure home “requires a lot more than just a couple thousand dollars.”
What is a good cash-for-keys deal?
Ries says he’s personally seen buyouts ranging from $20,000 to $35,000.
“I wouldn’t put a limit on it,” he says about the price of a good offer, especially for tenants who have no reason to believe they’ll be forced to leave in the short or medium-term.
If the landlord were pursuing a no-fault eviction (such as one for renovations, demolition, or because the landlord or a buyer wants to move in) they would have to compensate the tenant, anyway, so a good buyout deal would be higher than what is required.
For example, an Ontario landlord who wants to evict a tenant for renovations in a complex with five or more units is required to pay the tenant at least three months’ rent — the requirement is one month’s rent if the complex is smaller — and that’s under the assumption the tenant would be allowed back after the renovations are completed, Ries explains.
In the city of Toronto, however, tenants facing eviction for renovation should “absolutely hold on” to their units instead of taking a buyout “because it’s difficult to imagine a deal that’s better” than what is required by the rental renovation licence bylaw passed in 2025 to curb bad-faith evictions, Ries says.
The bylaw requires landlords to provide tenants who wish to return after renovations with a comparable temporary accommodation or with rent-gap payments for the duration of the renovations.
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It also requires landlords to pay tenants a one-time moving fee ($1,500 or $2,500 depending on the unit type), regardless of whether they want to move back in after renovations.
Ries adds that landlords who have hired a lawyer or paralegal to pursue an eviction through the Landlord and Tenant Board will likely incorporate some legal costs they would save into an offer.
Still, “for some tenants, $10,000 or less (may be) worth it if they’re going to be evicted anyway or they know they’re moving anyway,” Ries says.
Kwan, meanwhile, says a good buyout would include the difference between the tenant’s rent and market-rate rent for at least one year, plus moving expenses and “an incentive amount added on top.”
The offer should be higher the longer the tenant has lived in the home and the bigger the household is, he adds.
A $40,000 buyout
Paul Chin says he made a deal last spring to move out of his home of 13 years — a condo townhome in downtown Toronto — for $40,000 split between him and his wife, and their housemate, plus a four-month rent freeze and their last month’s rent deposit back.
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Chin pitched the idea of a buyout to the landlord’s representative after finding out the landlord wanted to sell. He thought it would be unlikely that a buyer would want to keep the unit tenanted, and that they would eventually have to move out.
“We can’t afford to leave this place voluntarily,” Chin thought. The total rent was about $2,500, Chin and his wife were self-employed and she was dealing with cancer, plus they were bracing for “the worst rental market on planet Earth.”
Chin says they hired a paralegal to negotiate for them — after first encountering one who was “immediately dismissive” and said the most they should get is $10,000 — and asked the landlord for a combined $80,000 to move out.
He thought the landlord would “more than make that (money) back” in the sale of the home if it was not tenanted.
But the landlord turned down the offer, and negotiations continued for some months, Chin says. At the same time, the condo market worsened for sellers. Finally, Chin’s household decided on the lowest possible number they would accept, and the landlord countered with that offer.
“It really was a gamble at almost every turn,” Chin says.
An $8,750 buyout
Vicki Sloot and her family had been renting a semi-detached East York home for four years at about $3,800 per month when they found out the landlord wanted to sell the property last spring.
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She says the property manager made it sound like she and her husband would be forced to move out during a sale, which she knew wasn’t the case, but she proposed an alternative: they would move out in six weeks and sign an N11, a document agreeing to end the tenancy, for $8,750. She told her landlord that was the “estimated moving cost,” including first and last month’s rent, movers and storage.
The deal would be mutually beneficial, she thought; the landlord could sell the house for more if it was untenanted, and it would be faster than the formal eviction process.
“Ultimately, we got what we asked for very quickly,” Sloot says, although the landlord requested they move within four weeks instead of six. “I think we maybe could have gotten more, but at the time we were satisfied because we weren’t out any money at the end of it.”
They moved neighbourhoods, and their rent increased by about $400, but the new home itself was “an upgrade,” she says.
Get the deal in writing
“Even if the parties can agree on terms, it’s legally difficult for tenants and landlords, in some situations, to set up a deal that’s enforceable,” Ries says.
The landlord will often want a tenant to sign an N11 document because if the tenant doesn’t move out, then the landlord can use the document to get an eviction order at the Landlord and Tenant Board, he says.
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One safe way to exchange the money for both parties would be for the tenant’s paralegal or lawyer, should they have one, to hold the cash in trust and only release it to the tenant after they move out, he says.
Another option could be through the Landlord and Tenant Board. If proceedings have already started — whether initiated by the landlord or the tenant — the parties can agree to a “consent order” at a hearing and determine the date the tenant moves, how much the landlord pays them and when. That order would be enforceable.
Kwan notes another option would be to clearly write out the terms of the agreement — and what happens if one party doesn’t uphold their side of the deal — on the N11 form itself.
“Make sure all the clauses that you care about — move-out date, is there an inspection, what happens if the inspection goes poorly, the method of payments, the dates in which money will be transferred and, most importantly, what happens when any of these conditions.
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