Chattels and Fixtures Clause Ontario: Rentals, Warranties, Removal

Last updated 11 September 2026. Written by Jatin Dua, Broker of Record at RE/MAX Quantum Realty, 799 The Queensway, Etobicoke · For Ontario registrants · 10 min read

The closing-day call is almost always about a hot water tank

A buyer moves in on Friday. On Monday a rental company sends a welcome letter about an account the buyer has never heard of, for a water heater, on a contract with years left to run. The buyer calls their agent, who looks at the agreement and finds the item was not listed as a rental anywhere – and the listing said appliances included.

That is not a dispute about property law. It is a documentation failure that happened three months earlier when nobody walked the basement with a list. The chattels and fixtures section exists almost entirely to prevent that conversation, and agents underuse it because inclusions feel like data entry rather than drafting.

Fixture or chattel is a question you should not be answering

The general law asks how firmly a thing is attached and why it was attached. Fixed with intent to improve the land, it tends to be a fixture and stays. Freestanding, it tends to be a chattel and goes. That test is arguable on the facts all the time – the mounted television, the shed on skids, the built-in speakers, the chandelier.

Here is my rule for agents. Do not adjudicate it. The moment you tell a buyer “that stays, it’s attached,” you have given an opinion on a legal characterisation that a lawyer might disagree with, and you have done it in a text message that survives. The right response is to write the item into the agreement by name, on one side of the line or the other, so nobody has to run the test at all.

What CHATT-2 actually promises, and the date it is fixed to

CHATT-2 (Chattels and Fixtures – Good Working Order) is a seller representation and warranty that the included chattels and fixtures will be in good working order and free of liens and encumbrances on completion, and it is expressed to survive closing rather than merge into the transfer. Two features of that deserve more attention than they get.

First, survival. A warranty that does not merge on closing is a promise the seller carries out the door, and a buyer’s lawyer can build on it after the keys change hands. Sellers sign it without registering that. On the listing side I want the seller to understand they are making a promise with an afterlife, and to have checked that the second fridge works.

Second, and more useful for buyers’ agents: the warranty speaks to the state of things at completion. Not at the offer date, and not months afterwards. A dishwasher that worked on completion and failed in week three is not obviously a breach of a promise about the property at completion. Which is why a buyer who cares about the appliances should be checking them on the pre-closing visit.

Timing is where warranty arguments live. In Coppendale v. Mills, 2025 ONSC 5192, as reported, buyers who had waived their inspection found basement moisture before closing and refused to complete; a warranty framed on the best of the seller’s knowledge was held to speak to knowledge at signing rather than at closing, and the buyers lost a $20,000 deposit plus damages of $206,703.56. Different clause, same lesson: read which moment the promise is pinned to.

CHATT-7 (Lighting Fixtures) does a smaller version of the same job for lighting, which matters because light fixtures are the item sellers most often believe they are entitled to take.

CHATT-3 does not do what a seller thinks it does

CHATT-3 (Chattels – No Warranty) records the buyer’s acknowledgement that there is no express or implied seller warranty on the chattels included in the agreement. A listing agent reaches for it when the seller is an estate, a receiver, an out-of-province owner, or anyone who genuinely does not know whether the appliances work.

Now read the noun. It addresses chattels. CHATT-2 addresses chattels and fixtures. A seller who thinks a no-warranty clause has taken care of everything mechanical in the building has not necessarily dealt with the fixtures, and if CHATT-2 or something like it is also sitting in the agreement from an earlier draft, you have two clauses pointing in opposite directions in the same schedule.

Rentals: CHATT-8, and why CHATT-9 is the most useful page in the section

CHATT-8 (Rental Items) is the clause that records which equipment is rented, not included in the price, and to be assumed by the buyer if the contract permits assumption. It is the fix for the Monday-morning phone call, and it fails in practice for one reason: somebody has to know what the rentals are.

Which is why CHATT-9 (Rental Items – Checklist) is the item I would hand a new agent first. It is a structured list rather than a clause, and the structure is the point. It walks the categories where Ontario rentals hide – water heater, HVAC, heating system, air conditioner, heat pump, water softener, alarm and security, propane tank, EV charger, appliances – and asks for each whether it is rented or lease-to-own, the amount, whether it is assumable, and the contract terms.

Two categories deserve attention. Lease-to-own arrangements are not rentals, and the buyout figure can be substantial. Whether anything has been registered in connection with the equipment is a title question for the lawyer to run down, not something for you to reassure anyone about. The other is newer equipment: heat pumps and EV chargers are recent enough that the financing behind them is not yet in most agents’ muscle memory.

CHATT-1 gives the buyer a look before they are committed

CHATT-1 (Condition – Rental Contracts) is the buyer-side condition that makes the offer conditional on reviewing the rental, lease and lease-to-own agreements for items the buyer will assume, with the seller supplying copies within a stated number of days after acceptance. It is drafted for the buyer’s benefit and carries a waiver right.

The trap is the delivery period. The condition is only useful if the copies arrive early enough to be read and considered. Give the seller five days to produce documents inside a five day condition and you have built a condition that expires the moment it becomes usable. Whatever the outer date is, the seller’s delivery obligation should be materially shorter.

One more thing, since the condition turns on the buyer’s satisfaction. Marshall v. Bernard Place Corp. (Ontario Court of Appeal, 2002) is an inspection case, but as reported it treats a discretionary condition as having both an objective and a subjective element – so sole discretion is not a free option to walk. A buyer who wants out for unrelated reasons and reaches for a rental contract review as the pretext is exposed, and so is the agent who suggested it.

The equipment clauses residential agents should borrow

CHATT-4 (Equipment – Good Working Order) extends the good working order promise across building systems – mechanical, electrical, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and the heavier equipment you would find in an industrial building. It survives closing and, like CHATT-2, is pinned to the circumstances existing at completion.

CHATT-6 (Equipment – Removal) is the one residential agents should take from this group. It obliges the seller to remove machinery or equipment before completion at their own expense, including mountings protruding from walls and floors, and to repair the damage removal causes. Translate that to a house: the television bracket, the basement shelving bolted into the block, the satellite dish. Removal and repair are two separate promises and both belong in writing.

Pull the current wording from your own OREA member copy before using any of them. I am describing function and difference, not text, and revisions move the details.

Where your licence is exposed

Under RECO Bulletin 5.1 on advertising, a misleading statement is one that causes someone to have a wrong idea or impression, and it does not matter that not everyone is misled. A listing that says all appliances included when the water heater is rented, or a staged photograph featuring a chandelier the seller intends to take, is capable of creating exactly that impression. If you would not read the line out loud with the rental contract in your other hand, rewrite the line.

Then self-represented parties, because inclusion negotiations feel small and friendly. You cannot advise a self-represented party on price, terms or clauses, and wording an exclusion for their chandelier is advising on a term. Under TRESA and RECO Bulletin 2.4, confirm they intend to proceed unrepresented, deliver and explain the RECO Information Guide and the Information and Disclosure to Self-Represented Party form, say plainly that you act for your client and not them, and make reasonable efforts to obtain written acknowledgement.

How I want inclusions handled

1. Run the rental and lease-to-own checklist at the listing appointment, item by item, and have the seller sign it.
2. Ask the seller what they intend to take with them, and write those items into the exclusions by room and description rather than by category.
3. Decide whether the agreement carries a good working order warranty or a no-warranty acknowledgement. One of them, never both.
4. On the buyer side, get copies of every rental contract, with the seller’s delivery date set well before the condition deadline.
5. Where the seller is taking something bolted, mounted or wired in, document removal and repair as two obligations.
6. Compare the final agreement against the listing data before firming up, and fix the listing if they disagree.
7. On the pre-closing visit, check that the included items work, while the warranty is still pointed at a date that has not passed.

None of this is sophisticated. It is the difference between an agent whose files close quietly and one who spends December explaining a furnace contract. The rest of the series sits at all articles.

Questions agents actually ask

Related reading

• Documentation Review Conditions: The Catch-All Clause and Its Limits
• Ontario Heritage Act Designation: The Clause and the Conversation You Owe Your Buyer
• Commercial Lease Clauses in Ontario: The 50 Terms That Decide Whether Your Deal Works
• Designated vs Brokerage Representation: The Services Clauses That Define Your Agreement
• Title Clauses in Ontario: Easements, Crown Restrictions and In Trust for an Undisclosed Principal
• Every clause and condition guide in one place

This is professional commentary from a Broker of Record on drafting practice around chattels, fixtures, equipment and rental items in Ontario agreements of purchase and sale. It is not legal advice. Whether an item is a fixture, whether a warranty has been breached, and what any rental or lease-to-own contract means are questions for the client’s lawyer. This is general professional commentary from a Broker of Record on drafting practice. It is not legal advice, it is not a substitute for your own brokerage’s policies, and it does not create any professional relationship. Clause codes refer to OREA’s Guidelines for Residential and Commercial Clauses, an OREA member resource — the clause wording itself is OREA’s and is not reproduced here. Always work from your brokerage’s approved forms, and send your client to a lawyer for anything turning on interpretation, enforceability or remedy. Legislation, regulator guidance and case law all change; verify anything you are relying on.