Regulating short-term rentals is one of the City’s several initiatives to preserve rental housing supply across Toronto. The City’s regulations limit short-term rentals to principal residences only. In 2024, Toronto City Council adopted updates to the short-term rental bylaw, which will come into effect in three phases on June 30, September 30 and January 1, 2025.  

We are providing a short summary of the changes affecting short-term rental operators (residents who short-term rent their homes) and request you to please share within your network.  

In addition to changes for short-term rental companies such as Airbnb and Booking.com, the following changes for short-term rental operators have come into effect on June 30: 

• Operators will need to post a physical copy of the emergency contact information and exit diagrams prominently in the rental for the duration of the guest’s rental period. 
• The 40-day registration revocation process will be reduced to a 10-day process. The appeal process will remain to allow operators to provide evidence and information to explain why their registration should not be revoked. 
• Revised definitions of short-term rental, principal residence and dwelling unit clarify the bylaw and make it easier for operators to understand the regulations.
• Licensed multi-tenant house operators will be prohibited from applying for a short-term rental registration. 

Changes coming into effect in September 2024 will strengthen the principal residence requirements, authorize annual inspections and introduce a limit of one registration per dwelling unit. Starting January 2025, the operator registration fees will increase and operators will be required to choose between registering as either an entire-unit operator (i.e. short-term renting entire home) or as a partial-unit operator (i.e. short-term renting only rooms in the home) for the duration of their registration period. 

More information on the bylaw changes and an updated Good Operator Guide are available at toronto.ca/ShortTermRentals. For any questions regarding the new rules, please email [email protected].