What is the BC Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act (STRAA)?

Direct answer

Since May 1, 2024 most BC hosts can only short-term rent the home they actually live in, plus one secondary suite or accessory dwelling on the same property. That second unit is the part people miss: a basement suite or a laneway house on your own lot is still available to you. Short-term means a stay under 90 consecutive nights, so the rule reaches Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com and leaves a normal tenancy alone. The principal-residence rule applies wherever the population is over 10,000. A community under 10,000 is exempt only if it is also more than 15 km from a larger municipality, and its local government can opt in anyway. Also outside the rule: the resort municipalities, among them Whistler, Tofino, Sun Peaks, Revelstoke and Rossland; regional district electoral areas; Islands Trust local trust areas; First Nations lands; farm land in assessment class 9 with limited on-farm agritourism; and fishing and hunting lodges. Hosts register with both the province and their municipality and show the registration number in every listing, and a platform has to pull a non-compliant listing within five days of notice. Provincial fines reach $50,000 per offence and municipal fines stack on top, with Vancouver going to $1,000 a day. A strata keeps its own power to ban short-term rentals by bylaw, so the Act is a floor and not a ceiling. The practical effect is that the buy-to-Airbnb model is finished in BC urban centres. Note that Kelowna, Victoria and Nanaimo are in scope rather than exempt — the exemption is not a tourism test, it is a population and distance test — so check the current list for the specific community before you underwrite any short-term rental income.