BC Strata Rules and Rentals — What Landlords Need to Know in 2026

Modern strata townhouse living room in Metro Vancouver — BC strata rules for landlords

If you bought a Metro Vancouver condo before late 2022, there is a reasonable chance your strata's bylaws still contain a rental restriction — a cap on how many units can be rented, a waitlist, a "no rentals in the first year" clause. There is an equally good chance nobody has ever removed it.

It does not matter. Those bylaws stopped being enforceable on November 24, 2022, and the strata was never required to amend its bylaw document to make that true. The text can sit there indefinitely, unenforceable.That single change reshaped what a strata council can and cannot do about your rental — but it did not remove strata control entirely, and the parts that survived are the parts that actually cost landlords money. This guide sorts the two: what your strata still governs, what it no longer can, and the obligations that fall on you as the owner rather than on your tenant.

The 2022 Change, and What It Actually Did

Bill 44 amended the Strata Property Act effective November 24, 2022. Residential rental-restriction bylaws became invalid province-wide, immediately, with no transition period and no requirement for stratas to hold a vote or update their documents.Three things follow from that, and landlords get all three wrong regularly:

An unamended bylaw is not a live bylaw. If your strata's bylaws still read "no more than 12 units may be rented," that clause is void. A council cannot enforce it, and a rental waitlist built on it has no legal force.
The strata cannot reinstate it. This was not a pause. A strata cannot pass a new rental-restriction bylaw, however unanimous the vote.
It did not touch short-term rentals. Bylaws banning or limiting short-term rentals remain fully valid. The change protected long-term tenancies specifically.

The same amendment reworked age restrictions. Only a 55-and-over bylaw is lawful now; anything setting a lower age threshold is invalid. A further change on May 1, 2023 widened who may live in a 55+ building alongside a qualifying resident, adding children — including adult children — and younger spouses or partners to the existing live-in caregiver exemption.

What Your Strata Can Still Control

Plenty. The rental ban is gone; the strata's authority over conduct and use of the property is not.

Bylaws That Bind Your Tenant Directly

Your tenant is bound by the strata's bylaws and rules whether or not they signed anything with the strata. In practice this covers pets, smoking, noise and quiet hours, window coverings visible from outside, parking and storage use, alterations, and use of common amenities.This is the most common source of friction in strata rentals, and it is almost always a communication failure rather than a legal one — a tenant who was never told about the pet weight limit or the hardwood-flooring underlay requirement is not being difficult, they are uninformed.

Short-Term Rental Bylaws

A strata may ban short-term rentals outright, and many Metro Vancouver stratas have. The fine ceiling here is far higher than for ordinary bylaws — up to $1,000 per day, and it can be re-imposed daily rather than weekly.There is now a second layer above that. BC's Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act imposes a principal residence requirement across municipalities over 10,000 people and communities within 15 km of them — 80-plus communities as of mid-2026, covering essentially all of Metro Vancouver. Where it applies, an owner may short-term rent their own home plus one secondary suite or accessory unit on the same property, subject to exemptions.The practical read for a landlord: in Metro Vancouver, an investment condo you do not live in is not a short-term rental candidate, regardless of what the strata's bylaws say.

Move-In and Move-Out Fees

A strata may charge these, but they must be reasonable under section 6.9 of the Strata Property Regulation. There is no fixed statutory dollar figure — the market range sits roughly between $50 and $200, and the courts have looked at how the fee was applied rather than the number alone.In The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 1721 v Watson, the BC Supreme Court upheld a finding that two $100 moving fees were unreasonable and significantly unfair — not because $100 was too much, but because the strata billed them two and a half years after the moves, charged the full amount where only personal effects went up in the elevator, and cut off building access to force payment. The amount can be defensible while the conduct is not.

Alterations and Amenity Access

Any alteration touching common property — flooring, plumbing, exterior fixtures — still needs strata approval, and that obligation sits with you as owner even when the tenant is the one who wants it.

Removing a Tenant, in Narrow Circumstances

Where significant bylaws are repeatedly or continuously broken by a tenant, the strata corporation can take steps to have that tenant evicted. This is rare, it runs through the Residential Tenancy Branch under its own policy guideline, and it is not a shortcut a landlord can invite the strata to use — but it exists.

What Your Strata Cannot Do

Just as useful to know, because councils sometimes overreach in good faith.

Prohibit or cap long-term rentals. Void since November 2022, amended bylaws or not.
Screen or approve your tenant. A strata cannot establish screening criteria, interview your applicant, run its own credit check, or veto your choice. Tenant selection is entirely yours.
Enforce an age restriction below 55. And even in a 55+ building, the 2023 exemptions apply.
Charge a fee it has not properly enacted. User fees must be set out in a bylaw or rule and be reasonable.
Fine without process. More on that next.

Form K — The Two-Week Obligation Most Landlords Miss

This one is small, mandatory, and carries a disproportionate penalty.Within two weeks of renting your strata unit, you must give your tenant a copy of the current bylaws and rules along with Form K — the Notice of Tenant's Responsibilities — and deliver a signed copy of that Form K to the strata corporation.Skip it and the exposure is real: if your tenant ends the tenancy within 90 days because you failed to provide the bylaws or the Form K, you can be liable for their reasonable moving costs, up to one month's rent.Two weeks is the deadline, so the practical answer is to build it into your move-in package rather than treating it as follow-up. Handing over the bylaws at lease signing also solves the informed-tenant problem in the previous section, which is where most strata rental disputes actually start.

Fines: Who Pays, and Why It Lands on You

The fine ceilings set by the Strata Property Regulation are $200 per contravention for a bylaw, $50 for a rule, and up to $1,000 per day for a short-term rental breach. For an ongoing violation, a fine may be re-imposed no more than once every seven days — the daily rate is reserved for short-term rentals. A strata's own bylaws may set lower maximums, and the Standard Bylaws do, at $50 and $10.Before fining, the council must receive and document the complaint, give written notice to the person alleged to have breached — and to the landlord and owner where a tenant is involved — allow a reasonable opportunity to respond including a hearing if requested, decide whether a breach occurred, and give written notice of that decision. A council that fines first and explains later has not followed the Act.The part that surprises owners: the strata can collect a tenant's fines and remediation costs from you. Owners and landlords can be fined for the conduct of their tenants, and the tenant then owes that sum to the owner — but you cannot assign the responsibility to your tenant so as to make the strata deal with them directly. From the strata's perspective, the owner is on the hook.That means bylaw letters are not something to forward to your tenant and forget. They are a bill headed your way, and the seven-day re-imposition clock keeps running while the matter sits unaddressed.

Managing the Strata Relationship Well

The legal position is only half of it. In practice, strata rentals go smoothly or badly depending on a handful of unglamorous habits:

Get the current bylaws before you list, not after a complaint. Pet limits, rental parking allocation, and flooring requirements all change how you advertise the unit.
Brief the tenant properly at signing — bylaws, Form K, and a plain-language summary of the three or four rules that actually get people fined in that building.
Book the elevator. Most move-in disputes are logistics, not law.
Give the strata a working contact. If the council can reach you or your manager the same day, most issues die as a phone call instead of becoming a fine.
Respond to bylaw notices in writing, promptly. You have a right to respond and a right to a hearing; both are worth using.
Read the minutes. Levies, bylaw amendment votes, and building projects affect your unit and your tenant's quiet enjoyment.

Where We Fit

We manage a lot of strata units across Metro Vancouver, and the strata side of the job is mostly invisible when it is done right — bylaws pulled and read before a unit goes to market, Form K filed inside the deadline, the council given a name and number that answers, bylaw notices dealt with the day they arrive rather than the week the fine repeats.Owners typically notice it only by absence: no surprise bylaw letters, no fines collected against their unit, no tenant discovering a pet restriction after move-in.If you own a condo or townhouse in Burnaby, Coquitlam, Richmond, Surrey or Vancouver and would rather not track any of this yourself, that is the part we take over.Contact us for a free, no-obligation rental evaluation.This guide is general information for Metro Vancouver landlords and is not legal advice. The Strata Property Act, its regulations and short-term rental rules change, and every strata's bylaws differ — for a specific issue, consult your strata's bylaws, the Civil Resolution Tribunal, or a qualified professional.