Useful Life of Work Done or Thing Purchased (RTA)

🥷 Caselaw.Ninja, Riverview Group Publishing 2025 ©
Date Retrieved:	2025-05-02
CLNP Page ID:	1932
Page Categories:	[Maintenance Obligations (LTB)]
Citation:	Useful Life of Work Done or Thing Purchased (RTA), CLNP 1932, <7Z>, retrieved on 2025-05-02
Editor:	Sharvey
Last Updated:	2022/06/27

Hearn v Shantz, 2021 CanLII 91892 (ON LTB)

7. However, the Schedule to Ontario Regulation 516/06, “Useful Life of Work Done or Thing Purchased”, applies a 10-year depreciation timetable for interior painting related to common areas. Given that the Landlords fixed and repainted the stair well on an unspecified date in 2019, for the purpose of this hearing I resolved the ambiguity in this date in favour of the Tenant and deemed that this activity took place at the start of 2019. In light of the fact that the damage took place at the start of 2020, the painting and repair effort would have already experienced 10% depreciation when the damage occurred. As such, I determined that the appropriate amount of the award is $900.00.

TEL-73386-16 (Re), 2017 CanLII 48941 (ON LTB)

Click Here to Subscribe to our Patreon for full access!
Only $9.5 CAD per month.

Already a Subscriber? Login Here

21. Still, the Board finds that the Landlord’s evidence, including the October 11, 2016 contracting quote in Exhibit #3, about this part of the claim is generally credible and is prepared to accept it as reliable. The floor being replaced, however, was not new. The Landlord testified that the unit had been rented to various tenants since 2010. Prior to renting out the unit, the Landlord lived there. Using 20 years as the useful life for hardwood flooring and13 years as the remaining useful life for the Landlord’s floor, the Board finds that the Landlord is entitled to 65% of the replacement cost or $2,600.00 as compensation for the damaged hardwood flooring. [See Schedule, Useful Life of Work Done or Thing Purchased, Ontario Regulation 516/06 under the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006]

CEL-72695-18 (Re), 2018 CanLII 141452 (ON LTB)

10. The Tenant has resided in the rental unit for seventeen years. There was no evidence before me that any of the alleged damaged items had been changed, repaired or replaced within those seventeen years. Although the Landlord argued that the condition of the unit was beyond normal wear and tear, the evidence before me was insufficient to find that this was the case. The Landlord provided no installation date of these items, no evidence of the condition of these items upon the Tenant’s occupancy of the unit and no maintenance records related to these items for this unit.

11. Ontario Regulation 516-06 (the “Regulation) under the Act provides a schedule listing the useful life of work done or things purchased for a rental unit or residential complex. The schedule provides the useful life of flooring such as carpet, vinyl and linoleum of approximately ten years. RM confirmed that this type of flooring was in the rental unit. The schedule also provides the useful life of interior painting at ten years, appliances such as refrigerators and stoves at fifteen years, and tubs, toilets and sinks at fifteen years as well. The stated useful life of cabinets and countertops is twenty-five years.

12. While it is understandable that on-going cooking and smoking within a rental unit will eventually discolour the walls and/or leave a substance on the walls. These are two activities that one would expect to be normally done in one’s home. After more than seventeen years of these continuous activities, without any repair or updating by the Landlord, it is expected that the interior paint (walls) would wear, especially given that the Regulation provides for a useful life of only ten years. It is the Landlord’s obligation to maintain the rental unit.

13. The Landlord submitted that the Tenant never requested any maintenance for his unit. However, regardless of whether or not a tenant requests maintenance, I am satisfied that with a long term tenancy such as in the case here, a landlord ought to be following up after their yearly unit inspections with issues such as interior painting and flooring to ensure they have not out lived their useful life.

14. All of the alleged damaged items in the rental unit are items listed in the schedule of useful life in the Regulation. All of the items, except for the cabinets and countertops have a useful life less than seventeen years. Given that the Landlord did not provide the date of installation for the cabinets and countertops in the rental unit, I am not satisfied that these items are still within their useful life of twenty-five years.

15. It is not sufficient to simply compare the condition of this rental unit to another rental unit with the same tenancy length to determine normal wear and tear. I find it likely that there will be variations in the wear and tear of items within a rental unit simply based on a number of factors that can occur over a seventeen year tenancy. In this instance these items were beyond their useful life and ought to have been replaced by the Landlord in any event.