BC taking next steps with short term rental restrictions and penalties

With the BC government passing its short-term rental (STR) restrictions exactly one year ago, the Province has provided an update on how the legislation has impacted British Columbians. 

The STR restrictions were passed as a way to help free-up homes that could be utilized as long-term rentals, rather than being made available to visitors and tourists via platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo. 

The restrictions required that STRs be registered with the Province and only impact municipalities with more than 10,000 residents. 

In municipalities that the restrictions do apply to, STRs are still allowable, but the property must be the owner’s primary residence in order to be legal. 

As of May 1st, all STR hosts in BC should have registered their listings and received a provincial registration number. 

Since this time last year, over 20,000 listings have been registered, and as of May 2023, there were an estimated 28,000 individual STR listings in the province. 

The Province says this indicates more of these units are being converted to long-term homes, just as they intended. 

Going forward, when people try to book an Airbnb, Vrbo or an STR through another similar platform, that platform will have to validate the provincial registration number in order for the transaction to be complete. 

However, some STR platforms have called on the BC government to allow for additional time to complete technical work on their validation systems. 

To this, the minister of housing and municipal affairs has moved to extend the timeline for when platforms are legally required to validate provincial registration numbers. 

The new deadline will be June 2nd, and when that time comes, illegal STRs with no provincial registration number will be automatically removed.

The onus will be on the STR platforms to stop advertising the listing and prevent new bookings from that host, otherwise, they may face an investigation and fine.

As of June 23rd, platforms must cancel all future bookings from hosts without a valid provincial registration number. 

Investigations and fines will be imposed upon the hosts and platforms if they do not comply.

In the meantime, the Province says they continue to work with platforms to address any technical challenges. 

According to Rentals.ca, since the STR restriction legislation was introduced, asking rates for long-term rentals are down 6.1% throughout BC, including a 11.4% decrease in Vancouver. 

Additionally, annual Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) data shows province-wide vacancy rates are up from 1.2% in 2023 to 1.9% in 2024.

When the legislation was initially passed, many STR operators and hosts were livid at the decision to restrict the viability of the rentals. 

Many people who ran only one STR property said they were losing a part of their livelihood, their vacation homes and/or their retirement plan. 

As of this publication, there are approximately 97 guesthouses, suites or rooms in the Victoria, Saanich and Esquimalt areas alone on Airbnb. 

Prices for these STRs range from around $80 per night to $300 per night.