Commercial Property Records: Retention, Access and Handover

Create a records register with accountable owners

Keep executed leases and amendments, title and easement information, approved site plans, permits, warranties and service agreements in a controlled property file. Preserve superseded documents where they explain earlier work or obligations, and clearly distinguish them from current instructions.

Give assets a stable identifier linking manuals, drawings, maintenance, repairs and replacement decisions. Record the document owner, storage location, revision date and who can authorize changes. Keep essential operating and emergency information accessible to authorized staff during an internet outage.

Set retention by purpose and legal requirements

A rule of retaining every lease for the tenancy plus six years should not be described as Ontario’s contract limitation period. The Limitations Act has discovery rules, different limitation structures and exceptions; it does not provide that universal records schedule. Obtain a retention policy appropriate to the lease, claims and other applicable requirements.

CRA’s general business-record rule uses a minimum of six years from the end of the latest year to which records relate, with additional rules in particular circumstances. That tax rule is not a permission to destroy a lease, incident file or asset record still needed for another legal or operational purpose.

Apply a hold when records may be relevant to an incident, dispute, investigation or audit. Suspend normal deletion for the affected material and record who authorized the hold and its eventual release. Do not set automatic deletion purely from a file’s creation date.

Protect sensitive files and verify continuity

Limit incident reports, tenant contact details and surveillance exports to people with a legitimate need. Privacy guidance calls for retention linked to purpose and legal needs, followed by secure disposal. Keeping every personal record indefinitely is not a sound substitute for a retention policy.

Use controlled folders, access permissions and tested backups. Maintain readable exports of electronic records where required and document how a new manager receives them. A vendor-hosted portal is useful only while the property can retrieve its records; agree export and access arrangements before the service ends.

Review expiring contracts and credentials on their actual dates. Link each inspection finding to corrective evidence so a collection of current certificates does not conceal unresolved deficiencies.