- Do I need a permit to run a short-term rental in Ottawa?
- Yes. Ottawa requires a host permit under By-law 2021-104 for any short-term rental, and the permit number has to appear on your listings. Operating without one is an offence carrying a minimum $500 fine.
- Can I short-term rent a property in Ottawa that I do not live in?
- Generally no — the by-law permits short-term rentals only in the host's principal residence. The exception is rural Ottawa, where a separate cottage rental permit allows short-term renting of a property that is not your principal residence.
- How much does an Ottawa host permit cost and how long does it last?
- $123 in total — a $65 administrative fee plus a $58 permit fee — and it runs for two years. Renewal is done in the same way as an original application, within the 30 days before expiry.
Principal residence, with a rural exception that matters
Ottawa's rule is the same one Toronto applies: a short-term rental has to be the host's principal residence, the home you actually live in and use for your bills, identification and taxes. An investment condo you never occupy cannot be permitted, and no amount of paperwork changes that.
The exception is what makes Ottawa different, and it is worth understanding if you operate anywhere outside the greenbelt. Properties in Ottawa's rural zones can be short-term rented under a separate cottage rental permit without being anyone's principal residence — a deliberate accommodation of the cottage economy that has operated in the city's rural west and south for generations. Ottawa's amalgamated boundary takes in a great deal of countryside, so this covers considerably more property than an outsider would guess.
What the permit costs and how long it lasts
A host permit is $123: a $65 administrative fee and a $58 permit fee. Unlike most municipal licences in Ontario, it runs for two years rather than one, and it is renewed by applying again in the same manner as an original application, within the 30 days before it expires.
Two years is long enough that the renewal date will not be front of mind when it arrives. Put it in the same calendar as your insurance renewal rather than trusting yourself to remember an expiry two summers away — a lapsed permit is not a paperwork problem, it is an unpermitted operation.
What the application asks for
Proof that the property is your principal residence, by way of an Ontario driver's licence or Ontario identification card showing the address. A floor plan showing the square footage of the unit and the number of bedrooms. And proof of insurance appropriate to short-term renting — a standard homeowner's policy generally is not, and confirming that with your insurer before you apply is cheaper than discovering it after a claim.
The Municipal Accommodation Tax is 6%, and it moved this year
Ottawa's MAT rose from 5% to 6% effective 1 January 2026, by By-law 2026-8 amending the original MAT by-law 2022-56. Any rate table, contract or booking engine still carrying 4% or 5% for Ottawa is out of date — and a good deal of the third-party guidance online still does, which is the practical reason to configure the rate from the City's own page rather than from a blog post.
As everywhere in Ontario, MAT sits on the accommodation portion of the booking, and HST applies on top.
What it costs to get it wrong
Offences under the short-term rental by-law carry a minimum fine of $500 and a maximum of $100,000 for each day the offence continues. The per-day construction is the part to notice: an unpermitted listing left up through a summer is not one offence, and the arithmetic gets serious faster than most operators expect.
Direct PMS holds permit numbers and expiry dates per property, which matters more in Ottawa than most places — a two-year permit is exactly long enough to forget.
Short-term rental operators →- First published. MAT recorded at 6%, effective 1 January 2026 under By-law 2026-8.
Toronto regulates short-term rentals through mandatory registration, not a discretionary licence — and the rules differ sharply depending on whether you're renting a whole unit or a room in your own home.
MAT applies to almost every short stay in Toronto, and the rate has moved twice in the last fourteen months — as of 8 August 2026 it's back down to 6%, after a temporary jump to 8.5%.
Every residential property owner in Toronto must declare occupancy status every year — even an occupied home — or the property is automatically deemed vacant and taxed at 3% of its assessed value.
MAT is set city by city, and almost nothing about it is uniform — not the rate, not the stay length that triggers it, not how often you remit. Rates below are taken from each municipality's own published pages, not from an aggregator.