- Do I need to register a short-term rental in Toronto?
- Yes. Toronto requires registration for every short-term rental, and it is mandatory rather than discretionary — the City registers anyone who meets the rules and refuses anyone who does not. The registration number must appear on every listing.
- Can I short-term rent a property that is not my principal residence?
- No. Toronto permits short-term rentals only in your principal residence — the address where you live and that you use for bills, identification and taxes. An investment unit you do not live in cannot be registered.
Registration is mandatory before you list
Every short-term rental in Toronto — a stay under 28 consecutive days — needs a registration on file with the City before it's listed or booked anywhere, including your own direct-booking site. This isn't a one-time approval process the way a business licence is; it's an annual registration you renew.
The 2026 fee is $375 for a new registration and $390 to renew. Operating without one is enforced through a set schedule of fines — $1,000 each for advertising without a registration number, advertising or facilitating an unregistered rental, failing to register at all, or renting a property that isn't your principal residence; $700 for failing to provide evidence of principal residence or for renting an entire unit beyond 180 nights; $400 for obstructing an inspection — with a general maximum of $100,000 on conviction, up to $10,000 per day for a continuing offence, and an additional fine to strip out any economic advantage gained.
Applying: what you need and how long it takes
You register through the City's official Short-Term Rental Registration portal, not through Airbnb or any other platform. The application asks for the property address, what portion of it will be used for the rental, the building type, and a 24-hour emergency contact whose name and number must differ from your own. You also declare whether you're registering as an entire-unit or partial-unit operator — that choice is locked in for the full one-year term and can only be switched once per year, at renewal.
Proving it's your principal residence
Government-issued photo ID matching the registration name is required upfront. Beyond that, the City can ask for at least two further documents confirming you actually live there, from a published list that includes:
- Vehicle insurance or vehicle registration
- A banking statement
- A lease or proof of ownership
- Travel documents showing departure and return dates
- Condo rules or declaration
- Employment records, a T4/T2200, or recent pay stubs
- A notice of assessment or CPP/OAS statement with current address
- A current licence, permit, or certificate from a government agency showing the address
In-person interviews and annual inspections
The City can require an in-person interview to evaluate eligibility, and since January 2025 every approved registration is subject to an annual compliance inspection covering both the property and your paperwork. You're required to be present, and not completing an inspection within a reasonable time can lead to revocation.
There's no fixed processing timeline published for applications — the City doesn't commit to a service-level number of days for approval, so it's worth applying with buffer before you plan to list.
One registration, tied to your principal residence
Toronto's bylaw only lets a host register their own principal residence — the home they actually live in. That can be the whole unit, a private room, or a basement suite, but it rules out registering a second property or a pure investment condo as a short-term rental under this program.
This is the detail that trips up portfolio operators moving from other Canadian cities: Toronto's regime is built around owner-occupiers renting out spare capacity, not around multi-unit STR businesses.
Secondary suites and laneway houses count separately
Toronto's bylaw treats a secondary suite (a basement apartment, for instance) and a laneway or garden suite as their own distinct dwelling units from the main house on the same lot. Since an operator can have only one principal residence at a time, that has a specific practical effect: if you live in the main part of a house that also has a basement or laneway suite, you can only short-term rent whichever portion you actually live in — not the other one, and not both. Unless a secondary or laneway suite genuinely is your principal residence, the City doesn't allow it to be registered as a short-term rental at all; its stated position is that these units are meant for long-term housing.
The 180-night cap only bites on whole-unit stays
If you're renting your entire principal residence while you're away, Toronto caps that at 180 nights per calendar year, tracked January to December. Rent out a private room or basement suite instead — while you keep living in the rest of the unit — and there's no night cap at all; you can accept bookings 365 days a year.
Displaying your registration number — and what platforms have to do
Your registration number must be prominently displayed on the main page of any listing, and it has to appear on every invoice, contract, or receipt tied to the rental. The listing's address (including unit number and postal code), operator name, and expiry date have to match what's on file with the City exactly — a mismatch can get a listing pulled or converted to a 28-night minimum stay by the platform.
Platforms need their own licence, too
Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and any other company that brokers short-term rental bookings online for a fee must hold a separate short-term rental company licence from the City — an annual fee of $10,816 plus $1.62 for every night booked through the platform. In exchange, platforms are required to verify each operator's name, address, and registration number against City records, pull any non-compliant listing within 24 hours of a City request, and cancel future bookings tied to it. That's the practical reason an unregistered Toronto listing on a major platform generally doesn't stay live for long — the platform carries its own liability for leaving it up.
Renewal, moving, and losing your registration
Registration is valid for one year from approval. You can renew on the anniversary date or up to 30 days early, and the City emails a renewal notice beforehand. Late fees accumulate and are non-refundable — $11.27 at 1–30 days late, $83.18 at 31–60 days, $160.69 at 61–90 days — and past the 90-day mark the registration is cancelled outright, meaning a fresh application rather than a renewal.
A registration is tied to one specific address and never transfers — if you move, you close the old registration and submit a new application for the new property. The City can also revoke a registration at any time it has reasonable grounds to, giving written notice and 10 days to respond before a final, non-appealable decision. Whether revoked or cancelled voluntarily, that dwelling unit is then locked out from a new registration for one full year.
Your condo board can override all of this
Registering with the City doesn't override your condominium corporation's own declaration or bylaws. Many Toronto condo boards prohibit short-term rentals outright regardless of what the municipal bylaw allows — check with the board before a unit owner registers, not after.
Insurance — no mandated minimum
Toronto's bylaw sets no required minimum liability insurance coverage for short-term rental operators. The City's guidance here is advisory only: if you carry a homeowner's policy, understand what operating a short-term rental does to your existing coverage, and ask your insurer whether you need a short-term-rental-specific product. There's no city-mandated dollar figure to build a compliance checklist around — this is a gap operators have to close with their own insurer, not the bylaw.
Direct PMS keeps your registration number on every listing and every booking confirmation, so a renewal lapse shows up before the City notices it.
Short-term rental operators →BC moved short-term rental regulation from the municipality to the province: a principal-residence requirement in most communities, a provincial registry, and a duty on the platforms to enforce both.
Alberta is the loosest short-term rental regime of the four big provinces — no provincial licence, no principal-residence test — which puts the whole of the compliance burden on the city and the tax.
Quebec put the enforcement duty on the platforms: a listing without a valid registration number is one the platform is not allowed to publish, and the fines for publishing it anyway are aimed at the platform as much as the host.
La France superpose trois régimes : la déclaration, qui est nationale ; le plafond de nuitées, qui dépend de la commune ; et le changement d'usage, qui ne concerne que les logements qui ne sont pas votre résidence principale.