Short-Term Rentals and BC Strata Bylaws After Bill 35

Why this matters for councils

Bill 35, formally the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act, added new province-wide short-term rental rules starting in 2024, including a principal residence requirement and a provincial registry that became mandatory on May 1, 2025. Importantly for councils, it did not take away your strata's authority to make its own bylaws. Your strata can still limit or ban short-term rentals and enforce that with fines.

What Bill 35 actually changed

Bill 35 received Royal Assent on October 26, 2023, and its rules were phased in. The main provincial changes are a principal residence requirement, which limits short-term rentals to a host's principal residence in many communities, and a registry that all hosts and platforms must join. Since May 1, 2025, platforms are expected to validate provincial registration numbers, and unregistered listings can be removed. You can review the Province's summary on the BC government short-term rental legislation page.

What your strata can still do

Your strata's bylaw power is separate from the provincial rules. Under the Strata Property Regulation, a strata can pass a bylaw that restricts or prohibits using a residential strata lot for short-term accommodation, and can set a fine of up to $1,000 for each contravention. That is much higher than the general bylaw fine limit. Note that a strata cannot ban long-term rentals; that power was removed in late 2022.

How the rules work together

A single short-term rental can be subject to provincial rules, a local government's rules, and your strata's bylaws all at once. These pathways are not mutually exclusive. In practice, that can make enforcement easier for councils: a host who ignores your bylaw may also be breaking provincial or municipal rules, which gives more than one route to address the problem.

Where does your strata's authority come from? It flows from the bylaws and the council's role in enforcing them, which we cover in what a BC strata council actually does.

Updating a short-term rental bylaw

If your strata wants to add or change a short-term rental bylaw, the amendment must be approved by a three-quarter vote at a general meeting and filed at the Land Title Office within 60 days. Because poorly worded bylaws have sometimes been found unenforceable, many councils have a strata lawyer review the wording before the vote.

Keeping bylaws where residents can find them

Short-term rental questions come up often, from owners, tenants, and prospective buyers. When your current bylaws live in one accessible place rather than scattered across email and old binders, residents can check the rule themselves and council spends less time answering the same question. That is the kind of shared, current record OpenStrata is designed to keep.