Ontario to ban liens from being placed on homes in exchange for HVAC appliances

The Ontario government will be banning liens placed on property in exchange for certain household appliances sometime in the spring.

The goal of the legislation is to prevent scams in which Notice of Security Interests (NOSI) are applied without a homeowner’s knowledge when they purchase or rent HVAC appliances such as furnaces or air conditioners. It will also remove all existing NOSIs from the Land Registry.

A NOSI is a debt or lien placed on a property that must be repaid upon sale or refinancing.

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In the fall, the province launched consultations on ways to reduce harmful and inappropriate uses of NOSIs against unsuspecting consumers.

“Our government has heard from people of Ontario and we are taking swift action to address consumer harms in all forms,” Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery Todd McCarthy said.

The announcement came after the Ontario New Democratic Party proposed legislation that would do the same thing. In the bill, tabled Tuesday, the NDP would ban NOSIs from being placed on HVAC appliances and give homeowners the ability to apply for a lien to be removed once they notice it.

It would not cover fixed building materials such as windows and insulation, the NDP said.

“These notices often register without the homeowner’s knowledge, become liens against someone's property title, and allow these companies to pocket a chunk of someone's property value for years and years,” NDP MPP Terence Kernaghan said at a news conference Tuesday morning.

“A simple unit which costs hundreds of dollars becomes tens of thousands in many of these cases. Worse yet, homeowners don't even find out about NOSIs until they refinance or sell.”

Kernaghan brought a resident to Queen’s Park to talk about how her in-laws were scammed into purchasing a furnace and air conditioner unit in 2015 and a NOSI clause was included in the fine print.

“My in-laws, in the final stages of their life, have 12 liens on their home,” Linda Palmieri told reporters.

Her in-laws were also put on a fraud list, she said, in which their names and identities have been “swapped, sold, and essentially trafficked out to other fraudulent companies.”

It’s unclear when exactly the government’s bill will be tabled.