Why One in Three Canadian Renters Never Hears Back About Their Maintenance Request

Canada has roughly 5 million renter households. That's one in three Canadians who depend on someone else to fix their leaky faucet, replace their broken furnace, or deal with the mice in the walls. And yet, the communication infrastructure connecting these renters to their landlords hasn't evolved much since the days of paper notices taped to lobby doors.

The numbers paint a grim picture. According to a 2024 report from Tribunal Watch Ontario, the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board had a backlog of over 53,000 cases. By March 2025, that number dropped to 41,465, but processing times still sit between three and seven months. In 2018, those same cases took three to seven weeks. That's not a typo. Weeks became months.

But formal complaints are just the tip of the iceberg. For every tenant who files with the LTB, dozens more simply stop asking. They fix it themselves, or they don't renew their lease. Research from MRI Software found something counterintuitive: communication quality has a larger impact on tenant satisfaction than the speed of the actual repair. A tenant who waits three days but gets clear, timely updates rates their experience higher than one whose issue was fixed in 24 hours with zero communication in between.

This creates a painful irony for small landlords. Most aren't ignoring their tenants on purpose. They're at their day job when the text comes in. They're asleep when the after-hours message lands. They see it the next morning, write a mental note to respond, and then life takes over. The tenant, meanwhile, assumes the worst.

Property management companies solve this with dedicated staff and call centers. But the average Canadian landlord owns one to three units. They can't justify a $2,000/month answering service for a duplex in Laval.

This is the gap Domly was built to fill. When a tenant texts their building's number at 2:47 AM about a clogged drain, Domly responds instantly with troubleshooting steps pulled from the landlord's own property rules. It triages urgency, asks for photos if needed, and sends the landlord a clean summary in the morning. The tenant feels heard. The landlord sleeps.

The math is straightforward. According to OxMaint's property management research, the average property loses 25% of preventable turnover to poor maintenance response. Properties that implement structured communication workflows see tenant satisfaction jump by 35%. For a landlord with even a few units, one avoided turnover pays for years of communication tools.

The maintenance silence crisis isn't a technology problem. It's a bandwidth problem. Canadian landlords care about their tenants. They just can't be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The solution isn't to work harder. It's to have something reliable answering on your behalf.

Ready to let AI handle your tenant messages?