Terrebonne Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Terrebonne, the Lanaudière city in MRC Les Moulins just north of Montreal, and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you're almost certainly allowed to, so long as we're talking about the home you actually live in. Article 372.6 of Terrebonne's zoning bylaw 1001 permits a principal-residence tourist accommodation establishment as a use complementary to housing across the whole city, and it has said so since June 2023.

The catch is that Terrebonne draws a hard line between renting your own home and buying a unit to run as a nightly rental. Those are two different uses in the bylaw, and the second one is filed under hotels. There are also three residential zones on the côte de Terrebonne where the city used a special provincial procedure in 2024 to shut principal-residence rentals down entirely, so the citywide permission has holes in it.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly in 2026: which of the two uses your plan falls under, the two separate certificates you'll need, what Quebec charges to register you, the three taxes that attach to a night's stay, and who to call in Terrebonne when something doesn't line up. Every figure below comes from the city's own bylaws or from the Quebec government's own pages, checked in July 2026. Where I couldn't confirm something, I've said so rather than guessed.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Terrebonne, Canada?

Those two uses are the whole game here, so it's worth getting the vocabulary straight before anything else.

Quebec sets the outer boundary. Under section 2 of the Tourist Accommodation Act, a tourist accommodation establishment is any place offering at least one unit to tourists, for payment, for a period not exceeding 31 days. Cross that line and you're in the regime, whether you rent 300 nights a year or 30.

Terrebonne then sorts everything inside that boundary into two boxes, and bylaw 1001-355 built both of them in 2023.

The first box is the établissement de résidence principale. Chapter 2 of the zoning bylaw defines it as accommodation offered in the operator's own principal residence, on a single reservation, for 31 days or less, to one person or one group of related people, with no meals served. Article 372.6 then authorizes it as a complementary use to housing everywhere in Terrebonne. No zone grid has to tick a box for it, which is why this route is open to so many people.

The second box is the résidence de tourisme, use code 5834. Article 51 defines it as an establishment other than a principal-residence establishment where a house, apartment or chalet with self-catering is offered on a single reservation for 31 days or less. Read where that definition sits, though, because it's the detail that decides most investment cases. It's the third paragraph of "Hôtel, classe A", inside the Hébergement group.

Your investment rental is a hotel-class use, in other words, and it's only permitted where the zone grid allows hotel-class hébergement. Most of Terrebonne's residential grids don't.

Two more standards apply to a résidence de tourisme once you're in a zone that permits one. Articles 445.4 and 445.5 cap the dwelling at three bedrooms, each with at least one window, and cap the share of a building given over to the use at 50% of its dwelling units. That second rule quietly kills the "buy a triplex and run all three doors" plan.

Then there are the three zones where even the residence-principale route is closed. On 20 February 2024 the council adopted three separate bylaws adding one line to three zone grids: "L'exercice de l'usage « établissement de résidence principale » est prohibé." They cover zone 8861-91 near rue de Plaisance, zone 8961-74 around the 40e Avenue and zone 8961-95 around rue de Séville, all on the côte de Terrebonne. MRC Les Moulins certified all three on 16 April 2024 and they took effect the next day.

Searching the January 2026 consolidation of bylaw 1001 turns up that prohibition in exactly those three zones and nowhere else. Do check your own zone anyway, since a fourth one could be added the same way, and the city's zoning page links straight to the interactive plan where the grids live.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Terrebonne

Knowing which box you're in tells you almost immediately whether there's a business here or just a side income, and for most people arriving at this page it's the second one.

Terrebonne isn't a resort town. The city's own numbers put 65.4% of Terrebonniens working outside MRC Les Moulins, which describes a commuter suburb rather than a visitor market, and the demand profile follows from that. Weekday guests here tend to be contractors, relocating families and people visiting relatives, not tourists chasing a downtown.

That matters because the easy legal route and the easy money route point in opposite directions. Renting a spare floor of your own house is permitted almost everywhere and needs no zone change. Buying a second condo to run at nightly rates is a hotel-class use, so it needs a zone that permits hotel-class hébergement, and that's a narrow slice of the city.

Before you spend anything, then, work through three questions in order.

• Which zone is the property in, and what does its grid allow? Pull the address up on the interactive map, then check the grid for the Hébergement class A use and for the principal-residence prohibition.
• Is it genuinely your principal residence? Quebec defines that as where you usually live and centre your family and social activities, and it's the address you give most government departments. You have to prove it at registration.
• Does your lease or your co-ownership declaration allow it? Quebec makes you file those provisions, or the owner's or syndicate's written authorization, with your application. A condo board that says no ends the plan before the city ever sees it.

Assuming all three answers come back clean, then the next question is what the paperwork costs and how long it stays valid. Run the numbers through BNBCalc before you start it, because two certificates and a $2 million insurance policy are real annual costs on a property that may only book on weekends.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Terrebonne

There isn't one licence to get here. There are two, issued by two different governments, and they check each other.

The provincial one is the registration certificate. Under section 4 of the Tourist Accommodation Act you can't operate a tourist accommodation establishment unless it's registered with the Minister, and applications go through the Corporation de l'industrie touristique du Québec. The 2026 registration and renewal fees, as of July 2026, are $54 for a principal-residence establishment, $156 for a general tourist accommodation establishment and $131 for a youth establishment, and none of them is taxable.

That certificate runs for a short window, mind you. The CITQ says it's valid for 12 months and reissued each year on renewal, so this is an annual chore rather than a one-time hurdle. Section 7 of the Act also bars you from transferring a registration to anyone else, which means a buyer inherits nothing and starts over.

Three obligations ride along with the certificate, and each one carries its own fine.

You have to display it at the main entrance where guests can see it. You have to send a digital copy to every transactional platform you list on, or the listing comes down. And your six-digit registration number has to appear on the listing itself, on your own website, on social profiles and in print ads, written out as "Numéro d'enregistrement" or "Enr." followed by the six digits. Transactional listings must carry the certificate's expiry date too.

The municipal one is Terrebonne's certificate of authorization. Bylaw 1004-2 on permits and certificates treats a résidence de tourisme as a change of use under article 71, and a principal-residence establishment as a use complementary to housing under article 72. Both applications now go in online, through the change of use request #010 or the additional use to housing request #011.

Now, there's an ordering problem in all of this that nobody has written down, and you should know about it before you start. Quebec's section 5 says you must attach a document from a competent authority confirming your project doesn't contravene the planning by-laws, which points you to the city first. Terrebonne's articles 71 and 72 both say the application must include proof of CITQ registration, which points you to Quebec first.

No page I could find reconciles the two. So call the Bureau des citoyens and ask which document they issue for the provincial file before you pay anything.

One thing I genuinely could not pin down is the municipal fee. Bylaw 2527 sets Terrebonne's 2026 tariffs entirely by cross-reference to annexes that aren't published alongside it, and article 14 only tells you the 2026 rates sit 3% above the 2025 schedule. Ask for the current figure when you call, and don't budget from an old number you found in a forum.

Required Documents for Terrebonne Short-Term Rentals

Since neither certificate is granted on trust, the evidence file is where most of the work still sits. Quebec asks for one set, Terrebonne asks for a second, and they overlap only partly.

For the provincial registration, the ministry's own list is specific:

• The municipal conformity document, confirming the use doesn't contravene Terrebonne's planning bylaws.
• Your title deed, municipal tax bill or lease.
• Proof of civil liability insurance of at least $2,000,000 per event, covering bodily injury or property damage caused in the course of operating the establishment. Keep it in force, because letting it lapse is its own offence.
• The lease or co-ownership provisions permitting tourist accommodation, or a written authorization from the owner or the syndicate of co-owners where those provisions are silent.
• Two photographs, one of the exterior and one of the interior.
• Proof that the place really is your principal residence, for that class of registration.

Terrebonne then asks for its own file on top. Under article 72 of bylaw 1004-2, a principal-residence application has to carry proof of CITQ registration, a scale plan of the building's interior locating each bedroom, and photographs of those bedrooms showing the required number of windows. Under article 71, a résidence de tourisme application needs the CITQ proof, an interior layout sketch, a certificate of location or a plan showing existing parking spaces, and any minor exemption or conditional use authorization that applies.

Take the bedroom photos seriously. They're how the city checks the three-bedroom and one-window-per-bedroom rules in article 445.5 without sending an inspector, and a basement room with no window is exactly what that requirement is looking for.

Terrebonne Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get both certificates and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to sort out, and three separate charges stack on a single night in Terrebonne.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Tax on lodging	3.5% of the price of the overnight stay	The registered platform, or you
GST	5%	You if registered, otherwise the platform
QST	9.975%	You if registered, otherwise the platform

The lodging tax is the local-feeling one, and it applies here because of geography. Section 541.24 of the Act respecting the Québec sales tax sets it at 3.5% of the consideration for an overnight stay in a prescribed sleeping-accommodation establishment in a prescribed tourist region, and Revenu Québec lists Lanaudière among the regions where it applies. Nunavik is the only Quebec tourist region where it doesn't.

Here's the part that saves most hosts an account. If you rent only through platforms that are themselves registered for the lodging tax and that take all the money, you don't have to register for it yourself. Airbnb has been registered since October 2017, HomeAway since January 2020, Booking.com since March 2024 and Agoda since October 2025, according to Revenu Québec's list as last updated in April 2026. Take one direct booking outside those platforms, though, and the obligation lands back on you.

Three exemptions are worth remembering. The lodging tax doesn't apply to a stay of more than 31 consecutive days, to a stay of six hours or less, or to a genuinely occasional rental, which Revenu Québec illustrates as once a year during a festival, an absence or a school break.

GST and QST are the bigger numbers. Revenu Québec puts GST at 5% and QST at 9.975% of the price before GST, and registration becomes mandatory once your worldwide taxable supplies pass $30,000 in a calendar quarter or the four preceding quarters. Below that you're a small supplier and the platform handles it.

Ottawa adds one more consequence, and it's the reason compliance stops being optional the moment you claim an expense. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act denies deductions for a non-compliant short-term rental, meaning one operated where the rules don't allow it or without the required registration and permits. So an unregistered Terrebonne listing doesn't just risk a fine. It loses the mortgage interest, the insurance and the cleaning off your tax return as well.

Quebec Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Ottawa's rule is the last layer above you, but the layer that shapes Terrebonne most is the provincial one, because the city's whole 2024 exercise was written into it.

Section 23 of the Tourist Accommodation Act is the pivot. Its first paragraph says no zoning by-law made under the Act respecting land use planning and development may prohibit a principal-residence establishment. Quebec cities can't simply ban home-sharing, in other words, and Terrebonne's article 372.6 is that protection written into a local grid.

The second paragraph is what makes the three côte de Terrebonne zones legal. A municipality can prohibit the use after all, provided it goes through an amending zoning or conditional-use bylaw under a modified procedure, and that procedure is deliberately easier to trigger than a normal one. Any provision in the second draft is deemed to have drawn a valid application from every eligible zone, and the number of signatures needed to force a referendum is cut by 50%.

Terrebonne ran exactly that process. The public consultation was held on 17 January 2024, the register of qualified voters opened on 13 March 2024, nobody forced a vote, and the three bylaws were deemed approved. Because sections 135 to 137 of the planning act require a separate bylaw per zone, three zones meant three bylaws rather than one.

Registration sits above all of that, and since 2023 the platforms enforce it. Section 20.1 bars a digital accommodation platform from publishing an offer that doesn't carry the establishment's registration number and certificate expiry date, and from letting anyone book a stay of under 32 days at an establishment whose registration is missing, expired, suspended or cancelled. Section 21.1 then puts every certificate in a public register that a neighbour, a guest or a city inspector can search by municipality.

One more provincial lever points straight back at Terrebonne. Under section 12, a municipality can ask the Minister to suspend a registration, and where the request is well founded the Minister suspends it for two months, then for six months on a second occasion, then cancels it. The regulation behind that section has to take municipal by-law offences on nuisances, sanitation and safety into account, which is a polite way of saying repeated noise complaints can eventually cost you the number itself.

Does Terrebonne Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

That escalation path is the honest answer to how enforcement works here, because Terrebonne's own fines are modest and the provincial ones aren't.

Start with the municipal side. Article 25 of bylaw 1004-2 sets the penalty for breaching an urban planning bylaw at $300 to $1,000 for an individual, rising to $600 to $2,000 on a repeat within the same year. A company pays $600 to $2,000, and $1,200 to $4,000 on a repeat. On its own that reads like a cost of doing business.

It isn't, though, because of one line further up. A continuing breach of the urban planning bylaws is a separate offence for every day it continues, so a listing left running through an objection compounds rather than settling at one ticket.

The provincial numbers are where it turns serious. Quebec's schedule of fines puts operating an unregistered tourist accommodation establishment at $2,500 to $25,000 for an individual and $5,000 to $50,000 otherwise.

Operating one whose registration has been refused, suspended or cancelled runs $5,000 to $50,000, and up to $100,000 for a company. Letting the $2 million insurance lapse is $1,000 to $10,000, and a false or expired registration number in a listing is $2,500 to $25,000. Every one of those minimums and maximums doubles on a second offence and triples after that.

Note who does the checking, too. Section 55 of the Act hands inspections and investigations to the Minister of Revenue, which means the enforcement body here is Revenu Québec rather than a municipal inspector with a clipboard.

The practical enforcement, mind you, happens before any of that. A platform can't legally publish your listing without a live registration number, so the usual failure mode in Quebec isn't a fine arriving in the post. It's a listing that never goes up.

As for how hard Terrebonne itself pushes, I couldn't find any published count of citations, complaints or prosecutions, so I'd rather not put a number on it. What the record does show is a council that took three zones through a full referendum procedure in a single winter. A city that indifferent to short-term rentals wouldn't have bothered.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Terrebonne

Given how the two certificates check each other, the order you do things in matters even more than it looks, and getting it wrong mostly costs you time.

1. Look up the zone before anything else. Find the address on the interactive plan linked from the city's zoning page, then read the grid. If the property sits in zone 8861-91, 8961-74 or 8961-95, the principal-residence use is prohibited and there's no application to make.
2. Decide which use you're applying for. Your own home is an établissement de résidence principale. Anything else is a résidence de tourisme, which needs a zone permitting hotel-class hébergement.
3. Clear the private rules. Read your lease, your co-ownership declaration or your landlord's position now, because Quebec will ask for those provisions or a written authorization.
4. Call the Bureau des citoyens on 450 961-2001 and ask which document Terrebonne issues to satisfy section 5 of the Tourist Accommodation Act, plus what the current certificate fee is. Both answers are cheaper to get by phone than by trial and error.
5. Buy the $2 million civil liability cover and get the certificate in writing. It's a registration condition and an ongoing one.
6. Assemble the evidence file. Title deed or lease, tax bill, insurance certificate, interior and exterior photos, the scale plan locating each bedroom, and the bedroom photos showing the windows.
7. Register with the CITQ and pay the $54 or $156 fee, then diarize the expiry date. It's a 12-month certificate and the renewal is annual.
8. File the city request online, through change of use #010 or additional use to housing #011, attaching the CITQ proof.
9. Put the number in every listing the day you publish, along with the expiry date on transactional platforms, and send the certificate copy to each platform.
10. Hang the certificate at the main entrance, and keep it there for every stay.

Once the listing is live, the thing to watch then is the calendar rather than the rulebook. An expired registration and an unregistered one carry the same consequence on the platform side.

Who to Contact in Terrebonne about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Wherever you get stuck in that sequence, four offices cover almost all of it between them, and picking the right one first saves a transfer.

Zoning, permits and the city certificate

The Bureau des citoyens is Terrebonne's front door and routes urban planning questions to the right inspector.

• Address: 708 A, boulevard des Seigneurs, Terrebonne QC J6W 1T6
• Phone: 450 961-2001
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
• Online: requests can be filed through the city's online request portal at any time

For a longer conversation, the Direction de l'urbanisme durable takes 25-minute appointments at 790, rue Saint-Pierre, either in person or over Teams, and there's a document drop box at the entrance available 24 hours a day. Be aware that the city says these appointments aren't for technical questions, project conformity opinions or following up an application already in progress. Those go back through the Bureau des citoyens.

Bylaw texts and public notices

The Direction du greffe et des affaires juridiques holds the bylaws and issues the public notices when a zone is about to change.

• Address: 775, rue Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Terrebonne
• Email: [email protected]

Provincial registration

The Corporation de l'industrie touristique du Québec processes registrations, renewals and certificate reissues.

• Address: 1010, rue De Sérigny, bureau 810, Longueuil QC J4K 5G7
• Phone: 450 679-3737, or toll free 1 866 499-0550
• Email: [email protected]

Policy questions about the Act itself, rather than your file, belong to the Ministère du Tourisme at [email protected].

Taxes

Revenu Québec administers the lodging tax, the QST and, under an agreement with Ottawa, the GST in Quebec. Its tax on lodging pages carry the registration routes, the remittance schedules and the current list of platforms already collecting on your behalf. Remember that it's also the body responsible for inspections under the Tourist Accommodation Act, so the tax office and the enforcement office are the same office here.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Terrebonne on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Since Revenu Québec sits on both sides of that desk, hosts here tend to talk about compliance rather than loopholes. Let me be straight about the evidence for that, though, because it's thinner than I'd like.

Reddit blocks automated access, so I haven't read those threads and I'm not going to characterise them. BiggerPockets carries plenty of Quebec discussion but nothing specific to Terrebonne that I could locate. What follows is my read of the local record, not a survey.

The clearest signal is the one that produced the three-zone prohibition. In January 2023, La Revue reported that Terrebonne residents had complained about noise and disturbance from a neighbouring property they later discovered was being rented short-term, and quoted the city saying it had adopted no specific short-term rental regulation and was studying a housing diagnostic. Five months later, bylaws 1001-355 and 1004-2-007 both took effect. Anything you read from before June 2023 saying Terrebonne is unregulated is simply out of date now.

Three themes hold up across everything I could read directly.

• Neighbours drive this, not inspectors. The zones that lost the use are residential streets on the côte de Terrebonne, and the council's own recitals point to social acceptability and to lots served by water but not by municipal sewer, which limits how many people a house can hold.
• The paperwork frustration is the CITQ file, not the city. The insurance certificate, the co-ownership authorization and the proof of principal residence are where Quebec applications stall, and none of that is within Terrebonne's control.
• Nobody argues the rules go unenforced anymore. Once the platforms had to verify a live registration number, the debate stopped being about whether to comply and became about how quickly the number arrives.

If you're comparing Terrebonne against other Canadian cities before you commit, the best Airbnb markets in Canada ranking is the useful next stop, and running the specific property through BNBCalc will tell you whether a weekday commuter market clears your numbers at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Terrebonne in 2026?

Yes, in most of the city. Article 372.6 of Terrebonne's zoning bylaw 1001 permits a principal-residence tourist accommodation establishment as a use complementary to housing across the whole territory, and that permission dates from June 2023. Three zones on the côte de Terrebonne are the exception: 8861-91, 8961-74 and 8961-95, where the use has been prohibited since 17 April 2024. Renting a property you don't live in is a different use, classed with hotels, and needs a zone that allows it.

How much does it cost to register a short-term rental in Terrebonne?

Quebec's registration fee for 2026 is $54 for a principal-residence establishment and $156 for a general tourist accommodation establishment, neither of them taxable, payable to the Corporation de l'industrie touristique du Québec. The certificate lasts 12 months and renews annually at the same price. Terrebonne charges its own fee for the certificate of authorization, but the city publishes its 2026 tariffs only by reference to annexes that aren't posted, so ask the Bureau des citoyens for the current figure.

What taxes do you pay on a short-term rental in Terrebonne, Quebec?

Three. A 3.5% tax on lodging applies because Terrebonne sits in the Lanaudière tourist region, plus 5% GST and 9.975% QST. Where you rent only through platforms registered for the lodging tax, such as Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo's HomeAway, the platform collects and remits it and you don't register separately. GST and QST registration becomes mandatory once taxable supplies pass $30,000 in a quarter or the four preceding quarters. Stays over 31 consecutive days are exempt from the lodging tax.

What happens if you rent on Airbnb in Terrebonne without registering?

Operating an unregistered tourist accommodation establishment carries a Quebec fine of $2,500 to $25,000 for an individual and $5,000 to $50,000 for a company, doubled on a second offence. Terrebonne adds $300 to $1,000 per municipal offence, counted separately for every day it continues. The more immediate consequence is commercial: platforms are barred from publishing an offer without a live registration number, so the listing generally can't go up. The Income Tax Act also denies expense deductions on a non-compliant short-term rental.

Can you rent an investment property short-term in Terrebonne?

Only in a zone that permits hotel-class accommodation. Terrebonne's zoning bylaw files a résidence de tourisme, meaning any short-term rental that isn't the operator's principal residence, inside the "Hôtel, classe A" use, and most residential grids don't tick that class. Where one does, the dwelling is capped at three bedrooms with a window in each, and no more than half a building's units may be used that way.

Regulation like this rewards the same habit everywhere: read the zone grid before you read the listing photos. A permission written for the house you live in is rarely a permission for the house you'd like to buy, and the gap between those two sentences is where most short-term rental money gets lost.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.