Landlord-Tenant Disputes: Towards the End of Court Litigation through Alternatives.

The rental housing market is one of the most flourishing shaped by continued growth in demand generating an increase in number of landlord and tenant conflicts by 20% in 2016, most of them can be resolved out of Court to save time and money according to Residential Tenancies Boards. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the alternatives to judicial proceedings to prevent and handle conflicts, from pre-contract signing action to options once the lease agreement is signed. These substitutes have been compared by using Multi-Attribute Decision Making and ranked from the most appropriate to the least relevant alternative. The main findings of this paper are that appropriate clauses, mediation, arbitration and adjudication are alternatives resolving disputes meet more or less well both parties' expectations. Based on compensatory and non-compensatory models, appropriate clauses alternative is the most effective way for both landlord and tenant to prevent conflicts since it is the first step in the rental process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]