Short-term rental business licence

COVID-19 (Coronavirus) update

August 11, 2020:  We continue to monitor short-term rental activity and the impact of COVID-19 on the industry. The public health team at Vancouver Coastal Health leads on all COVID-19 surveillance.

All short-term rental operators must ensure they adhere to the Provincial Health Order for vacation rentals. 

Our short-term rental regulations help protect long-term rental housing and allow residents to earn additional income.

A short-term rental can:

  • Be an entire home, or a room within that home, that is rented for less than 30 consecutive days at a time
  • Only be operated from your principal residence – the home where you live, as an owner or tenant, and use for bills, identification, taxes, and insurance

Are our regulations working?
Read our annual highlights report  (1.4 MB)

Get or renew a short-term rental business licence

 Your strata by-laws or landlord must permit the use of short-term rentals in your home before you apply for a licence.

Apply for or renew a licence

Related business licences:

What's happeningJoin our Short-term Rentals Community Working Group

We are seeking a broad variety of voices to help provide both insights on community impacts and input to evolve our short-term rental program. Membership is open to all Vancouver residents.

Applications close: Midnight, October 31. 

Learn more and submit application

 All short-term rental operators in Vancouver must have a business licence and include their licence number in all online listings and advertising, or they may be subject to fines up to $1,000 per offence. Review what we've been doing since short-term regulations were introduced

About short-term rentals in Vancouver

Statistics as of October 1, 2020

Enforcement actions

City staff have opened 5,466 case files (1,351 in 2020), closed 4,618 cases (1,962 in 2020), and pursued the following enforcement actions against suspected unauthorized short-term rental units:

active listings in Vancouver*
business licences issued for 2020 (4,187 issued for 2019)
licences flagged for investigations and audits (330 flagged in 2020)
warning letters written (283 written in 2020)
legal orders issued (185 issued in 2020)
listings referred to prosecution (9 referred in 2020)
violation tickets issued (401 issued in 2020)
units identified for inspection (142 identified in 2020)
business licences suspended (289 suspended in 2020)

*Source: Host Compliance

Documents

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