Tarion warranty

Tarion is the not-for-profit corporation that administers Ontario’s new home warranty program. Every new home built for sale in the province comes with a statutory warranty the builder provides and Tarion backs — a package of one, two and seven-year protections, deposit coverage, and compensation for delayed closings. Buyers don’t purchase it; enrolment of the home is the builder’s legal obligation, and the coverage travels with the house, protecting later owners through the balance of its term.

The three tiers, practically

The one-year warranty promises a home free of defects in work and materials and fit to live in — the squeaks, gaps and failures of a building settling into use. The two-year tier covers what makes a house function: water penetration through the envelope, and defects in plumbing, electrical and heating distribution. The seven-year tier covers major structural defects — the failures that threaten the building itself. Around the tiers sit the extras buyers forget they have: deposit protection to defined limits, and delayed occupancy compensation when a builder blows past its committed dates without proper notice.

Claims run on clocks

Tarion’s process is form-driven and deadline-hard. Coverage begins on the date of possession — for a pre-construction condo, that’s when interim occupancy starts, not final closing — and the standard rhythm asks owners to document defects in specific submission windows, most memorably in the first 30 days and again at the end of year one. An unreported defect is, for warranty purposes, an unnoticed one; the buyers who do well keep a written, dated record from the pre-delivery inspection onward and file inside every window. Since 2021, builder licensing itself has lived with a separate regulator (the HCRA), leaving Tarion focused on the warranty.

Boundaries worth knowing

The warranty covers defects, not disappointment: normal shrinkage, wear, owner damage and most subjective finish complaints fall outside it, and buying resale means no new coverage begins — you inherit whatever term remains. BC runs an entirely different regime (third-party insured warranties on a 2-5-10 structure), which matters to anyone comparing a BC presale against an Ontario pre-construction purchase — the agreement may look similar, but the safety nets underneath are provincial.