London ONculture & etiquette

By-law CP-19 requires a residential rental unit licence for most small rental properties: buildings containing four or fewer rental units where the registered owner does not live there. Apartment buildings, townhouses and stacked townhouses are exempt, and so is an owner renting to three or fewer people in their own home. A new licence needs a property standards inspection and a fire inspection; renewals do not. The fees are modest — $175 to apply, $171 for the fire inspection, $65 a year to renew — and the licence must be posted near the front entrance of the unit. For a newcomer this is the closest thing to a free quality signal on a house, duplex or converted flat, and no listing site will show it. Ask, and look for it on the wall.

London's rental unit repair licence, Schedule 23 of the Business Licensing By-law, took effect on 1 March 2025. A landlord serving an N13 notice — eviction for extensive repairs or renovations — must already hold a building permit, and must apply for the repair licence within seven days of issuing the N13, supplying a report from a qualified professional stating that vacant possession is genuinely necessary. The application costs $600 per unit and the licence lasts six months. The tenant's right to move back in afterwards at the same rent is written into the scheme. Renovictions are the standard way a rent-capped tenancy gets reset in Ontario, and this by-law is a real, local, recent brake on it. Almost nothing written about renting in Ontario mentions it.

CMHC's October 2025 rental market survey put the London CMA purpose-built vacancy rate at 4.0% — its highest in fifteen years — with the average two-bedroom at $1,651, up 4.1%. The causes were record completions, softer international migration and a slower economy. Practically: you can view several places before committing, ask for a month free or for parking included, and walk away from a landlord who wants a credit check, a co-signer and post-dated cheques on the spot. Newcomers arriving with a Toronto-shaped mental model bid against themselves here.

Metrolinx ran a GO train pilot between London and Toronto from 2021 until October 2023, when its access arrangement with CN and VIA expired and the service stopped. The intercity link is VIA Rail from the downtown station on York Street, on a schedule built for travel rather than commuting, plus coach services and Highway 401. London is not a Toronto commuter town the way Hamilton and Mississauga are — it is a self-contained regional city two hours away. If your plan depends on being in a Toronto office two days a week, price that honestly before you sign a lease.

London is building two bus rapid transit corridors — the East London Link out to Fanshawe College and the Wellington Gateway south to the 401 — worth roughly $454 million with $167 million from the federal and provincial governments. Full service is expected to roll out from late 2027 on the East London Link and late 2028 on Wellington Gateway. Until then the practical effect is the opposite of rapid: Dundas Street and Wellington Road have been dug up in phases for years, and detours and closures move around the city each construction season. Check what is open on your route before committing to an address on either corridor.

London sits in the snowbelt behind Lake Huron and averages around 194 cm of snow a year — comfortably more than Toronto or Hamilton. The mechanism is different too: instead of a storm crossing the city, a stationary squall band parks over one part of the region and dumps for hours. Highways 401 and 402 west of the city close for these several times most winters, and a closure means a genuinely stranded trip, not a slow one. Winter tyres are not required by Ontario law and are not optional here in practice; and if you commute to Sarnia, Stratford or Woodstock, treat a squall warning as a work-from-home day.

London Health Sciences Centre is the largest employer in the city with nearly 15,000 physicians, residents and staff across Victoria Hospital, University Hospital and Children's Hospital, treating more than a million patients a year; St. Joseph's Health Care London is a separate organisation on top of that; Western University supports around 10,000 jobs; the Thames Valley District School Board has some 11,900 employees. If you are a regulated health professional or a teacher, your binding constraint is not the visa but recognition by the Ontario college or the Ontario College of Teachers, which runs on a separate timeline and does not wait for permanent residence.