For the quarter 1 April to 30 June 2026, Tribunals Ontario’s Open Data reports an average of 49.5 days from application to first hearing for an L1, but 164 days for an L10, 306 days for an L5 and 172 days for a T2. All landlord applications average 86.2 days; all tenant applications 134.7. The most-quoted figure — “approximately 3 months” for an L1 — comes from an LTB page that has not been refreshed since 2024 and is roughly double the current data. The real problem has moved: the Board now hits its scheduling target, but only about 52 per cent of cases complete the 90-day lifecycle against a target of 80. And of the 4,345 complaints behind the Ombudsman’s 2023 report, 84 per cent came from landlords.
Everyone quotes a number for how long the Landlord and Tenant Board takes. Almost nobody says where theirs came from. The most-repeated figure in Ontario real estate writing is from the LTB’s own website and it is out of date by roughly half — and the Board publishes a better one, quarterly, that hardly anyone uses.
The current number, and where it comes from
Tribunals Ontario publishes an Open Data file giving the average number of days from when an application is processed to the first hearing, by application type. The most recent covers 1 April to 30 June 2026.
| Application | Average days to first hearing | Within the standard |
|---|---|---|
| L1 (non-payment of rent) | 49.5 | 0.3% |
| L1 and L2 combined | 47.1 | 22.5% |
| L4 | 47.4 | 19.0% |
| L2 | 57.9 | 5.1% |
| L9 | 49.6 | 0% |
| L10 (former tenant owes money) | 164.0 | 0% |
| L5 (above-guideline increase) | 306.2 | 0% |
| All landlord applications | 86.2 | 6.7% |
| T2 (tenant rights) | 172.0 | 2.9% |
| T6 (maintenance) | 171.7 | 0% |
| All tenant applications | 134.7 | 2.3% |
The previous quarter, January to March 2026, had L1 at 51.6 days. So it is improving, slowly.
Read the spread rather than the headline. An L1 gets a hearing in about seven weeks. An L10 takes more than five months, an L5 more than ten, and a tenant’s maintenance application nearly six. The “LTB backlog” is not one number. It is a system that has been optimised for one application type and left the others behind.
Two honest caveats about that table. The column is labelled only “Avg. # Days” while the stated performance standard is in business days, and the file does not define which it is using. Cross-checking against the Board’s own scheduling indicator — around 78 to 81 per cent of L1 and L9 hearings scheduled within 50 calendar days, against an average of 49.5 — makes calendar days the reading the two datasets are consistent with. That is my inference from two published figures, not something Tribunals Ontario states. And the file itself carries the note “Numbers are subject to change.”
The figure you have probably been quoted, and why it is wrong
The LTB’s own service timelines page says:
“On average, landlord applications (L1… and L9…) are being scheduled within approximately 3 months from the date an application is received (as compared to 8-10 months in early 2023).”
That page is written in the present tense. But its own internal reference is “So far in 2024, we have scheduled over 105,000 hearings”, and it forecasts forward: “We expect this timing will continue to improve in 2025.” It has not been refreshed.
Approximately three months against an actual 49.5 days. The most-cited LTB wait-time number in Ontario real estate writing is roughly double the current published figure, and it is being repeated because it sits on a page that reads as current. If you are quoted three months, ask which dataset it came from.
For completeness, the same page also says most other application types are scheduled within “5-7 months”, urgent matters such as illegal lockout applications in “5-6 weeks”, and that most orders issue within “30 days or less” after a hearing.
The measure that actually tells you something
Tribunals Ontario publishes key performance indicators for the LTB. The reporting period runs 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, with the fourth quarter and the full-year total still blank.
| Indicator | Target | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hearings scheduled within 50 calendar days for L1 and L9, 55 for most others | 80% | 78% | 78% | 81% |
| Decisions issued within 20 calendar days for L1 and L9, 35 for most others | 80% | 89% | 84% | 83% |
| Cases completing the 90 calendar day lifecycle | 80% | 51% | 53% | 52% |
| Same, French or bilingual | 80% | 32% | 37% | 39% |
| Cases resolved wholly or partly through alternative dispute resolution | — | 14% | 16% | — |
This is the honest headline and it is not the one either side tells you. The Board is now hitting its scheduling and decision-issuance targets for L1s. But only about half of all cases complete the ninety-day lifecycle, against a target of eighty per cent. Getting a hearing date is no longer the bottleneck. Finishing the case is.
And note the French and bilingual line: 39 per cent against the same 80 per cent target. If your file is in French, the published data says you wait roughly twice as long.
An inconsistency in the government’s own documents, worth knowing before you quote either. The 2024-2025 annual report narrative says L1 and L9 applications “continue to be scheduled for a hearing within the target of approximately 90 days on average”. The KPI table in the same report states the target as 50 calendar days. Both are published by Tribunals Ontario. Quote whichever you use precisely and say which it is.
The scale, in the Board’s own words
From the 2024-2025 annual report, which is still the most recent published:
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Cases resolved, calendar 2024 | “approximately 106,000… the highest number of resolutions in the LTB’s history” |
| Cases resolved, 2023 | 83,000 — itself a 45% increase on 2022 |
| Cases resolved, 2022 | 57,000 |
| Hearings scheduled, 2024 | approximately 109,000, against 76,000 in 2023 and 49,000 in 2022 |
| New applications received, 2024 | approximately 87,600 — “the highest number… since its creation” |
| New applications, running rate | “an average of over 7,000 new applications each month” |
| Active caseload, 31 March 2025 | 41,465, a 26% reduction from the December 2023 peak |
| Active caseload, 23 September 2025 | 36,689, a further 11.5% reduction |
| Adjudicators, 31 March 2025 | 81 full-time and 52 part-time |
| ServiceOntario offices accepting LTB applications | 80 locations |
Resolutions nearly doubled in two years. The caseload has come down by more than a third from its peak. Both of those are real, and neither is much comfort if your L10 is one of the ones sitting at 164 days.
What the Ombudsman found, and the statistic nobody uses
The Ombudsman of Ontario reported on the LTB on 4 May 2023 in Administrative Justice Delayed, Fairness Denied, making 61 recommendations. The language was not gentle:
“The purpose of administrative tribunals like the Landlord and Tenant Board is to provide the public with a swift, accessible way to resolve disputes instead of going to court. We found it was anything but.”
“They were not only denied the swift administrative justice to which they are entitled, they were denied simple fairness.”
The media release described the Board as “moribund” and found it was “fundamentally failing in its role of providing swift justice”.
| Ombudsman finding | Figure |
|---|---|
| Complaints received, January 2018 to December 2019 | 471 |
| Complaints received, January 2020 to April 2023 | 4,345 |
| — from landlords | 84% |
| — from tenants | 12% |
| — from other stakeholders | 4% |
| Backlog in 2020 | 20,000 |
| Backlog at the time of the report | “38,000+” |
| Steps in the member appointment process | 122 |
| Appointment approval timeframe | “3 to 5 months” |
Eighty-four per cent of the complaints came from landlords. That is the most under-used statistic in this whole subject. The delay story is usually told as a tenant-protection story. The people who actually complained were overwhelmingly the people waiting to be paid or to get possession.
The Ombudsman also published the gap between the Board’s own service standards and reality at the time: application entry against a three-day standard was taking three months in 2022; scheduling eviction and rent hearings against a 25-day standard was taking 66.5 days in November 2021; landlord application scheduling was at six to nine months in March 2023 and tenant application scheduling at up to two years.
Where it stands now
The Ombudsman’s 2025-2026 annual report, published 25 June 2026:
“The Landlord and Tenant Board continues to be the most complained-about tribunal, with 779 cases in 2025-2026 — although this number has dropped steadily in recent years, largely because of issues resolved since the publication of our 2023 investigative report.”
Tribunals Ontario as a whole drew 1,104 complaints and inquiries, down from 1,237 the year before.
And one thing that does not exist yet. The Auditor General of Ontario lists an audit in progress titled “Landlord and Tenant Board — Caseload Management”, described as examining the Board’s processes for resolving disputes in a timely manner. It has not been published. The Auditor General’s 2025 annual report, released 2 December 2025, contains six value-for-money audits and none is on the LTB. If you are shown an Auditor General finding about the Board, ask for the citation, because as at today there isn’t one.
What this means if you are actually waiting
- Know which application you are in. An L1 at 49.5 days and an L10 at 164 days are not the same experience, and the difference is not effort or luck. It is which queue you joined.
- An L5 is a ten-month project. At 306.2 days average to first hearing, an above-guideline increase application needs to be planned around, not squeezed in.
- Getting the hearing is not finishing the case. Roughly half of cases miss the ninety-day lifecycle. Budget for the gap between the hearing date and the order, and for anything that adjourns.
- Get the application right the first time. The single largest avoidable delay is a defective notice or application that has to be restarted, and that cost has not changed no matter how much the queue improves.
- Watch 21 September. The N4 notice period halves, and the rules on raising tenant issues and on postponing enforcement both tighten. Those change the arithmetic on every arrears file.
- If the wait is the deciding factor, price the alternative honestly. Selling tenanted is a real option and sometimes the better one. It is not always, and I will tell you which.
What is not on this page
No prediction of how long your file will take — these are averages across an entire province and several regional offices, and the Board’s own file says the numbers are subject to change. No Auditor General findings, because there are none. No case law. And no number from a private data vendor or a brokerage: every figure here comes from Tribunals Ontario, the Ombudsman or the Auditor General’s own published material.
Waiting on an LTB file for an Etobicoke or GTA property?
If the wait is what is driving your decision, the honest question is what the property is worth tenanted against vacant, today, and whether waiting is actually buying you anything. Send me the address and where you are in the process and I will give you both numbers. Sometimes the answer is that selling tenanted is better, and sometimes it plainly is not. No cost and no obligation.
connect@jatindua.com · 437-987-1925 · Book a free consultation
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Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to get an LTB hearing in Ontario?
It depends entirely on the application type. For the quarter 1 April to 30 June 2026, Tribunals Ontario’s Open Data reports an average of 49.5 days from processing to first hearing for an L1, 57.9 days for an L2, 47.4 for an L4, 164.0 for an L10, 306.2 for an L5, 172.0 for a T2 and 171.7 for a T6. All landlord applications averaged 86.2 days and all tenant applications 134.7 days. The previous quarter had L1 at 51.6 days, so it is improving slowly.
Is it true that the LTB takes about three months for a landlord application?
That figure comes from the LTB’s own service timelines page, which says landlord applications are being scheduled within approximately three months. But the page is stale: its own internal reference is to what had been achieved “so far in 2024” and it forecasts improvement “in 2025”. Against the current Open Data figure of 49.5 days for an L1, the three-month number is roughly double. It is the most-cited LTB wait time in Ontario real estate writing and it should be dated whenever it is used.
Are the published wait times in business days or calendar days?
Tribunals Ontario does not say. The Open Data column is labelled only “Avg. # Days” while the stated performance standard for it is expressed in business days. Cross-checking against the Board’s key performance indicators, which report around 78 to 81 per cent of L1 and L9 hearings scheduled within 50 calendar days against an average of 49.5, makes calendar days the reading the two datasets are consistent with. That is an inference from two published figures rather than something Tribunals Ontario states, and the file itself notes that numbers are subject to change.
Has the LTB backlog actually improved?
Substantially, on the Board’s own figures. The 2024-2025 annual report states that the LTB resolved approximately 106,000 cases in calendar 2024, the highest in its history, against 83,000 in 2023 and 57,000 in 2022. It scheduled approximately 109,000 hearings in 2024 against 49,000 in 2022. The active caseload fell to 41,465 at 31 March 2025, a 26 per cent reduction from the December 2023 peak, and to 36,689 by 23 September 2025. At the same time it received approximately 87,600 new applications in 2024, the highest since its creation, and continues to receive over 7,000 a month.
So what is the remaining problem?
Finishing cases rather than starting them. Tribunals Ontario’s key performance indicators for 2025-2026 show 81 per cent of hearings scheduled within the standard in Q3 against a target of 80, and 83 per cent of decisions issued within the standard. But only 52 per cent of cases completed the 90 calendar day case lifecycle against a target of 80 per cent, and for French or bilingual cases the figure was 39 per cent. Getting a hearing date is no longer the bottleneck.
What did the Ombudsman find about the LTB?
The Ombudsman of Ontario released Administrative Justice Delayed, Fairness Denied on 4 May 2023, making 61 recommendations. The report described the Board as moribund and found it was fundamentally failing in its role of providing swift justice. The Ombudsman’s own words were that the purpose of a tribunal like the LTB is to provide a swift, accessible way to resolve disputes instead of going to court, and that “we found it was anything but”, and that people were “not only denied the swift administrative justice to which they are entitled, they were denied simple fairness”.
Who actually complains about the LTB?
Landlords, overwhelmingly. Of the 4,345 complaints the Ombudsman received between January 2020 and April 2023, 84 per cent came from landlords, 12 per cent from tenants and 4 per cent from other stakeholders. It is the most under-used statistic on this subject, because the delay problem is usually framed as a tenant issue.
Is the LTB still the most complained-about tribunal?
Yes. The Ombudsman’s 2025-2026 annual report, published 25 June 2026, states that the Landlord and Tenant Board continues to be the most complained-about tribunal with 779 cases in 2025-2026, although the number has dropped steadily in recent years, largely because of issues resolved since the 2023 investigative report. Tribunals Ontario as a whole drew 1,104 complaints and inquiries, down from 1,237.
Has the Auditor General audited the Landlord and Tenant Board?
Not yet. The Office of the Auditor General of Ontario lists an audit in progress titled Landlord and Tenant Board, Caseload Management, described as examining the Board’s processes and procedures for managing and resolving residential tenancy disputes in a timely manner. It has not been published. The Auditor General’s 2025 annual report, released 2 December 2025, contains six value-for-money audits and none concerns the Board. If you are shown an Auditor General finding about the LTB, ask for the citation.
How many adjudicators does the LTB have?
As at 31 March 2025 the Board had 81 full-time and 52 part-time adjudicators, according to the Tribunals Ontario 2024-2025 annual report. For comparison, the Ombudsman reported that before its investigation the Board had 40 full-time and 10 part-time members, and that by January 2023 it had 35 full-time and 43 part-time, nine of whom were cross-appointed to other tribunals. The Ombudsman also documented 122 steps in the member appointment process and an approval timeframe of three to five months.
Related reading
- Everything that changes in Ontario tenancy law on 21 September 2026
- The LTB hearing: what to expect
- You have an eviction order and the tenant is still there
- Your tenant damaged the unit: the $50,000 trap
Sources
Every figure on this page traces to one of these, and each was read on 1 September 2026. Primary sources only — statute, regulation, and the government or agency that administers the rule. Where I could not verify something from a primary source, the page says so instead of guessing.
- Open Data — Tribunals Ontario. Tribunals Ontario, read 1 September 2026. Publishes the average number of days from when an application is processed to the first hearing, by application type and office, against a stated performance standard. The file for Q1 2026-2027, covering 1 April to 30 June 2026, reports L1 at 49.5 days against a performance standard of 25 business days, L2 at 57.9 days, L10 at 164.0 days, L5 at 306.2 days, T2 at 172.0 days and T6 at 171.7 days, with all landlord applications averaging 86.2 days and all tenant applications 134.7 days. Accessed 1 September 2026.
- Landlord and Tenant Board key performance indicators — Tribunals Ontario. Tribunals Ontario, reporting period 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 with the fourth quarter and full-year figures not yet populated. Reports 81 per cent of hearings scheduled within 50 calendar days for L1 and L9 applications in Q3 against a target of 80 per cent, 83 per cent of decisions issued within the standard, and 52 per cent of cases completing the 90 calendar day case lifecycle against a target of 80 per cent. Accessed 1 September 2026.
- Tribunals Ontario 2024-2025 Annual Report. Tribunals Ontario, the most recent annual report published as at 1 September 2026. Reports approximately 106,000 cases resolved in calendar 2024 against 83,000 in 2023 and 57,000 in 2022, approximately 109,000 hearings scheduled in 2024, approximately 87,600 new applications received, an active caseload reduced to 41,465 at 31 March 2025 and to 36,689 at 23 September 2025, and 81 full-time and 52 part-time adjudicators at 31 March 2025. Accessed 1 September 2026.
- Application and hearing process, LTB service timelines — Landlord and Tenant Board. Landlord and Tenant Board, Tribunals Ontario, read 1 September 2026. States that L1 and L9 applications are being scheduled within approximately three months and most other application types within five to seven months. The page is written in the present tense but its own internal reference is to 2024 and it forecasts forward to 2025, so it has not been refreshed; its three-month figure is roughly double what the Open Data now shows. Accessed 1 September 2026.
- Administrative Justice Delayed, Fairness Denied — Ombudsman Ontario. Ombudsman of Ontario, released 4 May 2023. Made 61 recommendations after receiving 4,345 complaints between January 2020 and April 2023, of which 84 per cent came from landlords, 12 per cent from tenants and 4 per cent from stakeholders. Found the Board was fundamentally failing in its role of providing swift justice and described it as moribund. Accessed 1 September 2026.
- Ombudsman Ontario 2025-2026 Annual Report. Ombudsman of Ontario, published 25 June 2026 covering 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. Reports 1,104 complaints and inquiries about Tribunals Ontario against 1,237 the previous year, and states that the Landlord and Tenant Board continues to be the most complained-about tribunal with 779 cases, although the number has dropped steadily since the 2023 investigative report. Accessed 1 September 2026.
- Reports in progress — Office of the Auditor General of Ontario. Office of the Auditor General of Ontario. Lists an audit in progress titled Landlord and Tenant Board, Caseload Management, described as examining the processes and procedures of the Board to manage and resolve residential tenancy disputes in a timely manner. As at 1 September 2026 no such audit has been published, and the Auditor General’s 2025 Annual Report released 2 December 2025 contains none on the Board. Accessed 1 September 2026.
- Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, S.O. 2006, c. 17. Government of Ontario e-Laws, consolidated text read 1 September 2026 through the e-Laws JSON API. Consolidation period from 1 July 2026; last amendment 2025, c. 14, Sched. 12. The consolidation carries twenty-eight not-yet-in-force amendment notes dated 21 September 2026, each in the form “Note: On September 21, 2026, the day named by order of the Lieutenant Governor in Council…” Accessed 1 September 2026.
About the author — Jatin Dua, Etobicoke real estate agent
I’m the Broker of Record at RE/MAX Quantum Realty, 799 The Queensway in Etobicoke. I write these pages the same way I work a file: read the primary source, quote it, date it, and say plainly where the source is silent or where two sources disagree. If a figure on this page has no citation beside it, that is a mistake and I want to hear about it.
I work with buyers, sellers, renters and investors across Etobicoke, Mimico, Humber Bay Shores, New Toronto, Long Branch, Alderwood and Stonegate–Queensway. connect@jatindua.com or 437-987-1925.