Strata Rental Bans, Gone. What Replaced Them.

What the amendment did. Bill 44, the Building and Strata Statutes Amendment Act, 2022, took effect 24 November 2022. It repealed sections 139, 140 and 142 through 145 of the Strata Property Act, and replaced section 141 with one sentence: "The strata corporation must not screen tenants, establish screening criteria, require the approval of tenants, require the insertion of terms in tenancy agreements or otherwise restrict the rental of a strata lot." The Province puts the result without hedging: no strata is allowed a residential rental-restriction bylaw, and all such bylaws are invalid. Caps and percentages fell with the sections that authorised them, and the waitlists administering those caps had nothing left to administer. On the same date the Form B stopped reporting how many lots are rented.

Dead text stays printed. Nothing required a strata to delete the void clause, and most did not. A bylaw takes effect only on filing at the Land Title Office, but filing does not cure invalidity: the Province's guidance is that a bylaw is unenforceable to the extent it contravenes the Strata Property Act, the regulations, the Human Rights Code or any other enactment. A printed clause capping rentals at twelve units is not a restriction you must live with, though it may tell you how the council thinks. The stale copy runs deeper than bylaw sets: the Province's own page titled Rental Restriction Bylaws in Stratas was still serving content last updated 5 June 2017 when we read it on 25 August 2026.

The family exemption, and what it was. This is the point most often carried forward wrongly. Before 24 November 2022 a rental restriction bylaw could not stop an owner renting to a family member, and section 8.1 of the Strata Property Regulation defined who counted: a spouse, including someone who had lived with the owner at least two years in a marriage-like relationship; a parent or child of the owner; and a parent or child of the owner's spouse. That was an exemption from a restriction, not a power to impose one. Bill 44 repealed section 142, and the carve-out went with the power it carved out of. Nothing in the amended Act lets a strata limit rentals to family members, and the Province now writes of family-member tenants in the past tense.

Age restrictions were narrowed, not abolished. Same bill, same date, opposite outcome. Age bylaws survived, cut to one permitted threshold: only bylaws limiting occupants to 55 and over remain valid, and any lower age is invalid. Exemptions for caregivers and family members followed by regulation on 1 May 2023. So a complex may still lawfully exclude your household by age while having no power at all to stop you renting the unit out.

Short-term rentals are a different regime entirely. The ban reaches residential tenancies. It does not reach nightly rental, which the Province treats as a licence to occupy and a commercial use, and stratas remain free to ban it outright. That bylaw needs a 3/4 vote and filing at the Land Title Office like any other, and carries a ceiling reserved for this category alone: since 30 November 2018 the regulation permits fines up to $1,000 a day, well above the ceiling on ordinary bylaw fines. Watch the thresholds, strata bylaws are usually drafted around stays under 30 days, the provincial Act reaches bookings of 90 days or less.

The provincial layer, and where Langley sits. Both Langley (Township) and Langley (City) are inside the principal residence requirement, on the Province's list of covered communities current as at 1 June 2026, page last updated 23 July 2026. There, a short-term rental must be in the host's principal residence, the usual place where they make their home, plus, at most, one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit on the same property. A Langley condominium bought to rent nightly and never lived in does not qualify. The Province calls this a floor, not a ceiling. Registration in the provincial registry has been mandatory since 1 May 2025, with the number on the listing; legal non-conforming use protection no longer shields short-term rentals; and municipal ticket maximums rose from $1,000 to $3,000 per infraction per day.

Three hurdles, and the municipal one is the quiet one. Clear the strata bylaw, clear the municipal licence and zoning, clear the provincial Act, clearing one says nothing about the others. The middle one cannot be answered from a website. As at 25 August 2026 neither Langley municipality publishes a short-term rental page or lists it as a licence category; the Township's categories run to home-based, inter-municipal, non-resident and commercial, and the City's fee schedule names residential rental property but not nightly stays. Silence is not permission, zoning governs whether the use is allowed at all. Put the question in writing to the Township's licences department or the City's licensing desk, and keep the answer.

What to read, and where a dispute goes. Read the bylaws as filed at the Land Title Office, not the strata's summary and not the agent's recollection, the filed set is the authority, and we order it rather than inherit it. Request the Form B under section 59; it is due within seven days and discloses unfiled amendments and any pending notice of a 3/4-vote resolution, which is where a new short-term rental ban first appears in writing. Then two years of minutes, for whether a void clause is still enforced. If it is, the route is the Civil Resolution Tribunal, which hears disputes over unfair, arbitrary or non-enforcement of strata bylaws and the fines levied under them.

Sourced from the text of Bill 44, the Building and Strata Statutes Amendment Act, 2022 as introduced in the Legislative Assembly, the Province of BC's strata legislation-change, bylaw-amendment, short-term rental bylaw and Form B guidance, the Province's short-term rental legislation, registry, enforcement and principal residence requirement pages, Alexander Holburn Beaudin + Lang and the Vancouver Island Strata Owners Association on the section 141 amendments, and the published licence and bylaw pages of the Township of Langley and the City of Langley, all verified 25 August 2026. This report describes and informs; it is not legal advice, and a specific bylaw and a specific address deserve specific verification by a strata lawyer and the local licensing authority. Do you know whether the rental clause in your bylaws is enforceable, or only that it is printed?