There's finally some good news for apartment renters in Toronto

If you're a tenant or prospective renter in Toronto, or actually anywhere in Ontario, you're in luck. Come the end of April, all landlords will be legally required to use the same lease. 

That might sound like a small thing, but it could make life much better for renters who are often pushed around by landlords in the wildly competitive market that is Toronto. 

The provincial government, working with the Federation of Metro Tenants' Association (FMTA), has implemented a standard lease law that aims to quash the illegal terms that so often appear on rental leases. 

A few things that will now be banned from lease agreements are stipulations that forbid pets, demands for exorbitant damage fees, and the requirement to submit post-dated cheques, to cite just a few common examples. 

So how will the standardized lease benefit renters, more broadly? Well for a start, the language of the lease form is written to be "easy-to-understand" so that you don't get into any confusing legal snafus with your landlord. 

It also means that landlords won't be able to get away with adding random rules to the lease, like how many guests you can have over or how often you need to clean the place.  

While it probably won't result in a reduction of prices in Toronto, this is a big win for renters who are often forced to comply with lease agreements that are technically illegal. The new standardized lease comes into effect April 30.