Your Tarion warranty is claimed on dated forms, and each one has a window that opens and closes on a fixed day counted from a single date.
Tarion’s claim forms and timelines set them out. An Initial Form takes items from one day after your date of possession and submits automatically on day 41. The Mid-Year Form runs day 42 to day 183, the Year-End Form day 183 to day 365, with a 10-day grace period for anything you can show you had already reported to your builder inside the first year. Only one Year-End Form is accepted. A Second Year Form can go in any time during year two, as many as you need, and a Major Structural Defect Form any time after year two and no later than seven years from possession.
Coverage exists in law whether or not you file anything, and it is not negotiable. The Ontario New Home Warranties Plan Act provides that the warranties set out in its section 13 (1), which cover workmanship and materials, fitness for habitation, Building Code compliance and major structural defects, “apply despite any agreement or waiver to the contrary and are in addition to any other rights the owner may have and to any other warranty agreed upon”. Reaching them is a separate problem, and the forms are how you reach it. A defect you noticed in month three and only mentioned in a text to your supervisor is a harder claim than one typed into a form on day 40.
The date the whole Tarion warranty is counted from
Your date of possession is not the day the moving truck arrived. It is written on one document, handed to you at one moment.
At the Pre-Delivery Inspection, the walk-through Tarion requires your builder to do before handing over the keys, you also review a Certificate of Completion and Possession. The CCP, in Tarion’s words, “states your home’s enrolment number with Tarion and the date of possession, which is also the start date of your statutory warranty.” Keep it where you will still find it in year six.
The PDI itself is evidence rather than a formality. Its stated objective is to record everything incomplete, damaged, missing, inaccessible or not operating properly on the builder’s PDI Form, “to verify that these conditions existed prior to occupancy”. Anything you cannot assess that day goes on the form as exactly that.
The two halves of the program start on different days. Protection before possession runs from the day you sign. The construction warranties below start here.
Before the keys, what protects you depends on what you signed
Whether your builder is licensed, and whether your home was enrolled at all, are separate lookups covered in choosing a licensed builder in Ontario. What follows is the money question underneath them.
If you are buying a new home from a builder, Tarion’s pre-possession coverage protects your deposit if the builder goes bankrupt or fundamentally breaches the agreement: up to $60,000 on a freehold sale price of $600,000 or less, and 10% of the price to a maximum of $100,000 above that, for agreements signed on or after January 1, 2018. Tarion now tells freehold purchasers to register the agreement within 45 days of signing, using the Home ID on the Warranty Information Sheet attached to it, because from April 1, 2026 registering inside that window is what qualifies a purchaser for the maximum available deposit coverage. Tarion has deferred the change itself to January 1, 2027, and says late registrants fall under a separate fund with a sub-limit. Confirm the current position on Tarion’s page.
If you own the land and signed a construction contract, none of that describes you. Tarion calls this a contract home, and its contract homes page sets the protection before possession as financial loss protection: the difference between what you paid the builder and the value of the work and materials actually supplied, where the builder fails to substantially perform the contract, to a maximum of $40,000. Anything beyond that is pursued “through other means including the court system”. If your builder stops work, call Tarion immediately, because it warns that finishing the job yourself can jeopardize the claim.
One boundary on a custom home build can remove the warranty entirely. If you rather than the builder exercise significant control over construction, or supply one or more essential elements (Tarion names the foundation, framing, electrical, roughed-in plumbing, HVAC and the building envelope), the home may be treated as an owner-built home, with no statutory warranty at all. Bringing in your own electrician to save money is a warranty decision as much as a budget one, and belongs in what to ask before hiring a builder.
One protection also does not travel with you. The $7,500 delayed closing maximum and the $150 a day for living expenses appear in most warranty summaries, and both belong to a freehold purchase agreement, where a builder who misses the Firm Closing Date owes the purchaser up to $7,500. Tarion states, on its pre-possession coverage page, that a contract home is entitled to statutory warranty coverage “(except for Delayed Closing Coverage)”. A late build on your own land is governed by your construction contract, which is why Tarion recommends independent legal advice from the contract stage, and why that contract’s payment schedule has to line up with the draw schedule in your construction financing.
Year one is the widest coverage you will ever have
For one year from the date of possession, and still in force if the home is sold, Tarion’s coverage page requires that the home is constructed in a workman-like manner and free from defects in material, is fit for habitation, complies with the Ontario Building Code, and contains no unauthorized substitutions. That first requirement is the broadest sentence in the program, and it lasts 365 days.
Substitutions split in two, and the split decides your remedy. A selected item, one the agreement let you choose, cannot be substituted without your written consent, and if it is, you are entitled to the item you selected, subject to reasonableness in assessing damages. A specified item, such as a named brand of window, can be substituted only with something of equal or better quality, and if it is not, you are typically entitled to the difference in cost.
An item entirely absent on the date of possession gets its own extended warranty, running a year from the day your builder installs it. It does not cover items present but incomplete or defective, and you have to report the absence on a warranty form within your first year to keep it.
Year two narrows to water and the systems behind the walls
For two years from the date of possession, the same page covers water penetration through the basement or foundation walls, defects in work and materials resulting in water penetration into the building envelope, defects in the electrical, plumbing and heating delivery and distribution systems, defects causing the detachment, displacement or deterioration of exterior cladding, and violations of the Ontario Building Code that affect health and safety.
Read that last one against year one, where Building Code violations are covered outright. In year two only the health and safety subset is, and general workmanship is not on the list at all, which is why a scratched countertop is permanently a year-one item. A basement that stayed dry through one season and takes water in the next is still inside the two-year warranty, and you can submit as many Second Year Forms as necessary. The custom home building process in Ontario ends at possession. This coverage does not.
Years three to seven cover major structural defects and nothing else
The seven-year warranty begins on the date of possession and ends on the seventh anniversary, so years three through seven are major structural defect coverage only.
For a home built after June 30, 2012, Tarion defines one as any defect in work or materials, including a crack, distortion or displacement of a structural load-bearing element, that results in failure of such an element, materially and adversely affects its ability to carry applicable structural loads for its usual and ordinary service life, or materially and adversely affects the use of a significant portion of the building for ordinary residential purposes.
The exclusions written into that warranty catch a lot of what feels structural at the time. The claim does not extend to dampness that does not arise from failure of a structural load-bearing element, to appliances forming part of the heating or cooling system (furnaces, air conditioners and heat recovery ventilators are named), to the acts or omissions of an owner or tenant, or to a flood not caused by the builder. A furnace that fails in year four is not a seven-year item, and neither, usually, is a damp basement.
What it will pay, at most
Tarion’s coverage limits are keyed to the date the first Agreement of Purchase and Sale was signed, not to today. For agreements signed on or after July 1, 2023, the maximum statutory warranty coverage for a freehold home is $400,000, with a separate maximum of $50,000 for warranted damage caused by environmentally harmful substances or hazards. Before that date it is $300,000. Tarion’s contract homes page states the same $400,000 maximum for a contract home.
One amount is rarely mentioned and occasionally decisive. The Temporary Relocation Warranty applies when your home cannot be lived in because of a warranted item or the repair of one, and its examples include an unusable kitchen, all toilets or showers unusable, and toxic mould. Your builder is expected to provide up to $150 for each day the home cannot be lived in, to a maximum of $15,000, and you can apply to Tarion if they do not.
What is excluded in all seven years
Tarion’s exclusions page lists what the warranty never reaches. The ones that come up most: normal wear and tear, normal shrinkage of materials caused by drying after construction, defects in materials, design and work supplied by the homeowner, alterations and additions made by the homeowner, damage caused by the homeowner or visitors, and damage from dampness or condensation where the homeowner failed to maintain adequate ventilation.
The act of God exclusion is narrower than it sounds. Tarion is explicit that it does not include weather typical to our climate, such as ice, snow, high winds and heavy rains, only extraordinary events that could not reasonably have been foreseen or guarded against. Once a builder defect is established, the onus shifts to the builder to show the exclusion applies.
Eligibility is worth settling early rather than assuming. Ontario’s guidance states that coverage may vary by type of home, and that “homes built on existing footings or foundations may not be covered”, a live question on an infill lot where the plan is to keep a foundation and rebuild above it. Tarion can advise whether a particular home is eligible, at ismyhomecovered@tarion.com. The same page draws one more boundary worth carrying: the HCRA and Tarion do not enforce the Ontario Building Code, and your municipality does. A passed municipal inspection and a warranted item are different findings.
What happens after you submit a form
Submitting a warranty form triggers a 120-day initial builder repair period, during which Tarion expects your builder to resolve the warranted items and expects you to give them reasonable access. Tarion assesses a claim only where the builder will not or cannot resolve it.
If something goes unresolved, you can request a conciliation, an inspection by a Tarion Warranty Services Representative who decides whether the items are covered. For warranty start dates on or after May 1, 2024, you can request one any time after a form is submitted and up until the next form submission date, or until 150 days after a Year-End Form’s submission date. For earlier start dates it is 30 days plus a 10-day grace period after the repair period ends, and second-year and major structural defect forms carry a 30-day window either way. It costs $282.50 ($250 plus HST), refunded if Tarion finds at least one assessed item covered.
If you disagree with what Tarion decides, Ontario.ca sets out the routes: mediation with Tarion, a complaint to the New Home Ombuds about how the claim was handled, and an appeal to court or to the Licence Appeal Tribunal. None of it replaces a lawyer on anything genuinely contested.
The two things to do this week
If you are signing soon, take the Home ID off the Warranty Information Sheet attached to your agreement and register your purchase with Tarion. It is the one step here with a countdown already running.
If you have already taken possession, open the CCP and put five dates in your calendar: day 41, day 183, day 365, the second anniversary, and the seventh. Then record what you notice on the day you notice it, with a photograph and a date. Deciding what is warranted belongs to your builder and to Tarion. Establishing what the house did, and when, is the part nobody else can do for you.
