first dollar back after 4 years

🔥 News you need to know

👉 First: Tomorrow (Monday, September 21, 2026): significant changes at the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board begins.

Example: New N4 eviction for non-payment of rent form must be used now which only needs a 7-day termination date instead of 14. And for N12 personal use, landlords who give at least 120 days of notice no longer have to pay one month's compensation or offer another unit. Reference the memo released by the LTB. Reference the memo released by LTB.

👉 Second: Our friends at SingleKey just released their Quarter 2 Rental Intelligence Report. You’ll see a breakdown major city across Canada.

👩🏻 What was our story?

A couple weeks ago, I shared a deeper story on social about the start of the Openroom journey. It got 30K+ views in 2 days!

The full post:

I was pregnant and had politely told my tenants I needed the house back for personal use. My former tenants told me “no I’m not leaving” and “I’m also not going to pay rent anymore”.

Uhh, what?

I was so petty and angry, I created an entire company to fight them. I know you want the drama so read on...

When my partner and I graduated from university, we each purchased a property. We lived in the condo and rented out the house.

After a few years, we felt it was time to grow our family. Like common, my days as a fertile gal is counting down....

So we sent a notice to our tenants stating we needed it back for personal use reasons.

My tenants retaliated.

And let me tell you, it was stressful as f**k to get my house back.

During this time, I had an ectopic pregnancy so I miscarried our first baby.

I was also out $35,000 of unpaid rent.

Meanwhile, they were constantly complaining about maintenance issues. One time, I showed up for a routine inspection, they called the police on me.

I was constantly in a battle addressing my tenant’s long essay rambles of how I was a terrible human being for trying to evict them.

I was at the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) multiple times over two years.

I couldn’t comprehend why it took so long at the time.

I thought our legal system to get to justice was straight forward...uh wrong!!!

Whatever. I finally got public record (similar to a court order) for eviction!!!

I’ll never forget Monday, March 7, 2022. That was the day the Sheriff gave me vacant possession of my house.

I was 30 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby, I stood in the foyer and I just cried. It felt so good to have this win.

But I wasn’t finished...

My background is in software product management and my partner is a software engineer.

We looked at these 5 public records we had and thought “PEOPLE NEED TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED TO US.”

So during our parental leave with our baby, we built a one page website called Openroom.ca to host our orders (that should have been public but wasn’t) for the world to see.

And oh gee, literally thousands of people saw it and started contributing their orders to us for the purposes of transparency.

Public records should be easily accessible based on Canada’s Open Court Principle!

A movement has begun, and our community started to conduct searches in Openroom to read other orders to make a more informed decision of who they rent to and who they rent from.

FOR FREE!!!

But we knew our job wasn’t done yet.

We then built technology to use court orders as the evidence material to hit the Equifax credit history of debtors negatively.

My case was the very first guinea pig at Openroom.ca. It took time, but IT WORKED and I saw my first dollar back(!!).

Am I being too salesy? Oh well, you’re in too deep now. Keep going pls.

If someone cares enough about their financial standing with future creditors, they’ll pay back debt.

Like us, others were owed THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS from tenants who didn’t pay rent too.

We then went down the path of figuring out how to get back unpaid debt.

We continued working alongside lawyers, property managers, great tenants and landlords, advocacy groups, and government officials to hold bad actors accountable for their actions.

And now, I teach about rental rights, credit scores, and debt enforcement so I can reach you, at scale, to prevent you from making the same mistakes I did.

But our work is still not finished.

My partner and I are cooking up more to shake up the rental industry and unpaid debt.

Our vision towards a transparent and connected rental ecosystem, for all players including GREAT TENANTS and GREAT LANDLORDS has just begun.

Whether you were with us Day 0 or just found us today, thank you so much - again and again.

📚 How do debts work when it hits your Equifax Credit History?

We’ve been operating the Rental Debt Ledger to help BOTH tenants and landlords recover money they’re owed.

Property Managers, Landlords, and legal representatives: hitting a debtor’s credit history negatively is one technique to get back debt owed.

I get a LOT of questions about it so I’ll share what I know with you.

If you don’t know the answers to the following, you should join me on Thursday, September 24, 2026 at 7:00 PM EST for a free webinar.

• What happens if someone pays rent on-time each month?

• What’s the difference between how tradeline vs. collections record?

• How long does a collections record stay on a history for?

• If someone is 30 days overdue, does it negatively impact them?

• When do you need consent and when do you not?

• How much does a credit score change?

• What is the minimum information you need to get a hit?

• How does this incentivize repayments back to the creditor?

✨ For paralegals: let’s get you some CPD hours. A certificate can be provided upon completion of the webinar and on request.

Have a great week!

Weiting Bollu
Mom, Rental Housing Provider, Rental Housing Advocate, Educator, and Openroom Co-Founder & CEO

Openroom collects public tenancy records and connects them to the broader financial credit system to help you make informed decisions on who to rent from and rent to.

We enable you to screen tenants or future landlords, help you report rental debt, give rewards to great residents, or bundle it all into BureauEdge.

We also educate about rental housing and we advocate for a more transparent and connected rental ecosystem to support both responsible housing providers and residents. Send us an opinion piece to [email protected].