How the score works
RentSafeTO applies to apartment buildings with three or more storeys and ten or more units. During an evaluation, a City officer rates roughly fifty items across the building. Those ratings combine into a proactive score, which is then ranked against every other building in the program. Buildings in the bottom 2.5 percent are audited. The scores refresh daily on the City's interactive map, so a building's standing can change between one week and the next.
What the bands mean
Every building posts a green, yellow, or red placard based on its most recent score. When the band changes, the placard has to change with it, and the band is disclosed to tenants and prospective tenants.
Open Orders pull the score down
The evaluation produces a proactive score. Separately, enforcement produces a reactive adjustment. An unresolved Order to Comply keeps a deduction on the score for at least thirty days. The City's own example: a building at 70 percent with two unresolved Orders reads as 68 percent. The score returns to 70 once the building comes into compliance. A clean-looking score sitting over an open Order is not a clean building.
What non-compliance actually costs
A low or stalled score is more than a placard in the lobby. The cost is real, it lands on the tax bill, and it compounds. Here is what the City can charge when an Order is not addressed.
Every one of these is avoidable. Handling an Order on your own timeline, with a documented response, keeps the work, the cost, and the control in your hands instead of the City's.
The rules are getting tighter, not looser
The City is expanding RentSafeTO enforcement. It added eleven positions to the RentSafeTO team, funded by an increase to the apartment building registration fee, and is formalizing the colour-coded placard system. It is also introducing set fines, or tickets, that can be issued immediately on non-compliance and do not carry the usual appeal delay. Enforcement is becoming faster and more direct.
What changes in 2027
Under the City's planned update, the weighting shifts so that higher-risk items count for more, and unresolved Orders begin to compound against the score over time rather than sitting at a fixed deduction. A building that looks settled today, on the strength of good paperwork and a couple of soft exterior items, may not stay settled once the heavier items count for more and any open Order starts to erode the score month over month.
See where your building stands, free
A GreenSign Exposure Report gives you a one-page read on any Toronto building's public standing (current score, band, and trajectory), with no obligation. It is the honest starting point before deciding whether a deeper look is worth it.
Look up a buildingLook it up yourself
You do not need anyone to find a building's basic standing. Read the placard at the entrance for the current score and band. The City's interactive RentSafeTO map lets you search any building for its score and any active violations or issued Orders, and you can download the full per-building evaluation report, which breaks the score down item by item. The records are public.
What GreenSign adds is not access to those records. It is reading them closely, understanding what the score is actually telling you, and knowing what is coming, so an owner can act before the next evaluation rather than after.
Service boundary. GreenSign is an independent off-site compliance-analysis service based on public and client-supplied records. It is not an inspection or certification, does not represent or act on behalf of the City of Toronto, and does not provide engineering, legal, or repair advice or direct contractors. Scores and figures shown are analytical reconstructions of public data and may differ from the City's official result. GreenSign does not guarantee scores, Order closure, approvals, compliance, or any other outcome.