View Royal, Canada Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in View Royal, the small town wedged between Victoria and Langford in British Columbia's Capital Regional District, and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, unfortunately the answer here is no, and it's been no since late 2022. View Royal's Zoning Bylaw No. 900 lists "Vacation rentals, AirBNB and any other form of non-residential commercial overnight accommodation" among the uses prohibited everywhere inside the municipality, whether you'd be running it as the main use of the property or as a sideline in a spare room.

Nobody has quietly forgotten about that ban, either, and council looked at it again this spring: a motion to bring the town's rules into line with the province's was defeated on 19 May 2026, 4 votes to 2, with the mayor among those opposed. There's one narrow exception, a bed and breakfast run out of a detached house you live in yourself, though the conditions attached to it knock out most properties well before you reach the application form. And if you've read something about a two-month World Cup amnesty in View Royal, keep in mind that it suspended enforcement without making anything legal, which turns out to matter quite a lot for your taxes.

So let's walk through what that means for an owner here in 2026: what the zoning bylaw allows, the bed and breakfast route and what it costs, the provincial registry sitting on top of the town's rules, the tax layers underneath, how hard any of this gets enforced, and who to phone when your situation doesn't fit the boxes. Every figure below comes from View Royal's own bylaws and council minutes, or from British Columbia's own pages, checked in July 2026. If you're weighing this property against a market that welcomes nightly rentals, run both through BNBCalc first.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in View Royal

That comparison tends to end quickly, because there isn't a short-term rental business to start in View Royal in the shape most owners mean by the phrase. The prohibition arrived on 15 November 2022, when council adopted Amendment Bylaw No. 1105, and it did three things at once rather than one.

First it rewrote the definition of "Dwelling Unit" so that a home "specifically excludes commercial overnight accommodation", then bolted on a plain-English test of where you live: the place where you "make your home, conduct your daily affairs, and receive mail", the address on your tax return, driver's licence and utility bills. Second it added vacation rentals to the town-wide prohibited uses at section 3.3.2(e), which reaches a home, a whole building or bare land, and reaches a principal use and an accessory one alike. Third it barred them from the home-occupation list at section 4.2.1(m), which is the route a home business would otherwise take.

Then the bylaw's own catch-all closes the last gap, since "a use not specifically permitted in this Bylaw is prohibited in the municipality".

The Director of Development Services set out why in a report to council dated 5 January 2026, which is worth reading if you want the town's reasoning in its own words. Staff describe the intent as preventing "the displacement of residential units by commercial non-residential rental uses" and preventing "neighbourhood disturbances (parking, noise, etc.)".

That same report also confirms the adoption date and, usefully, tells you the vocabulary: what the province calls a short-term rental, View Royal's bylaw calls a vacation rental. Search the bylaw for the wrong phrase and you'll conclude the town has no rule at all.

What survives is a bed and breakfast, and only as a Level 3 Home Occupation under section 4.3. Before you get attached to the idea, be aware that the conditions stack:

• A detached house, and no other building type. A bed and breakfast may only run "as an accessory use within a detached dwelling", so an apartment, a townhouse or a duplex half is out from the start.
• A lot of at least 1,000 square metres. Level 3 is the only home-occupation tier that permits a bed and breakfast, and 1,000 m² is its minimum lot size. That alone removes a large share of View Royal's newer subdivisions.
• Two sleeping units, maximum, and the business can't take up more than 40% of the dwelling's floor area or 93 m², whichever is smaller.
• You have to live there. The bylaw's words are that "the licensed operator of a bed and breakfast operation must reside in the dwelling in which the operation is located".
• Two extra off-street parking spaces, on top of whatever the house already needs, and the home occupation must not increase on-street parking beyond ordinary residential levels.
• No secondary suite or garden suite on the same lot. You get one or the other, never both.
• Breakfast is part of the definition. Section 2.2 defines the use as "the provision of nightly accommodation and breakfast", so a self-catering nightly rental with a fruit basket isn't the same product.

One more clause deserves a phone call rather than a guess. Section 4.3.1 ends with the sentence "The maximum length of stay is no more than 60 days in a calendar year", which sits oddly in the consolidated text and could be read either as a cap on a single guest's stay or as a cap on your trading year. Do check that reading with Planning before you build a model on it, since the two readings produce wildly different revenue.

Secondary suites get their own explicit shutdown, and it's the question the town clearly gets asked most. View Royal's secondary suites page says flatly that suites "are not permitted to be non-residential commercial overnight accommodation, including vacation rentals, Airbnb, etc., regardless of length of stay", and it's those last four words that do the damage, because they mean no minimum-night setting will turn a suite into a compliant listing.

The realistic alternative, then, is an ordinary residential tenancy, furnished or not, which is a permitted residential use and sits under the Residential Tenancy Act rather than under any of this. Plenty of Vancouver Island owners landed there after 2022. If your plan depends on nightly rates, you're better off looking at a municipality that licenses them, and the Chilliwack guide and the Maple Ridge guide are the useful next reads, since both regulate short-term rentals rather than banning them.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in View Royal

Assuming your house does clear all of that and you're able to run the bed and breakfast, there's still a licence to get, and then a second one from the province.

The town's side is the cheaper of the two, since every business in View Royal needs a municipal licence and the town's business licence page lists Bed & Breakfast as its own home-occupation category, defined as "nightly accommodation and breakfast provided by a resident from within their home". The licence fee schedule then prices it at $100.00 a year as of July 2026, the same tier as any other home occupation.

So the fee isn't the obstacle. A licence runs the calendar year no matter when you apply, though the fee drops to half if you apply after 1 July. Renewal notices go out each November, payment is due by 31 January, and a late fee of 10% of the licence fee, minimum $25.00, lands on 1 February, while changing the name or address on a licence costs $10.00.

Applying, mind you, is deliberately old-fashioned, because you download the application form and then bring it into Town Hall at 45 View Royal Avenue with cash, cheque, debit or credit, and depending on the licence you may be asked for supplemental material such as a parking plan. A post office box or a storage unit won't be accepted as the business address, which is the town's way of confirming that a home business is at a home.

The province is where the real gatekeeping happens now, and it's newer than most guides written before 2025 acknowledge. Under the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act, every short-term rental offer in B.C. must be registered, and section 13 says an offer must carry "the valid business licence number" where a business licence requirement applies, along with "the valid registration number".

Registering is its own small expense, since host registration runs $100 a year where you live at the property and $450 where you don't, each plus a $1.50 service fee, renewed annually with a window that opens 40 days before expiry. Registration numbers have had to appear on listings since 1 May 2025.

Two provincial rules then land squarely on View Royal. Section 14 limits short-term rental services to "the property host's principal residence" plus "not more than one secondary suite or other accessory dwelling unit", and View Royal sits on the province's list of communities where that principal residence requirement applies, current as of 1 June 2026. The same page confirms the requirement reaches bed and breakfasts, which "may continue to operate if the owner of the B&B lives on the property".

Section 36 then removed the old escape hatch, because despite the usual non-conforming-use protection in the Local Government Act, "the non-conforming lawful use is not authorized to continue" for a short-term rental. Anyone who was letting nightly in View Royal before November 2022 lost their grandfathering, and lost it province-wide.

Put the two systems together and you can see why the ban bites harder than a municipal ban used to. Registering with the province means producing a local business licence wherever one is needed; View Royal won't licence a use its zoning bylaw prohibits; and platforms have been obliged to police the registration number since 2025. So there's no version of this where the paperwork quietly works itself out.

Required Documents for View Royal Short-Term Rentals

Since the two licences feed each other, it's worth assembling both piles at the same time rather than discovering halfway through that the province wants something the town hasn't issued yet. For a bed and breakfast, here's what you'll be pulling together:

• Written confirmation that your lot qualifies. Zoning comes first, so ask Planning to confirm your zone permits a Level 3 Home Occupation and that your lot clears the 1,000 m² minimum before you spend anything else.
• The completed business licence application form, delivered to Town Hall in person with the $100 fee.
• A parking plan, where the town asks for one, showing the two additional off-street spaces section 4.2.5 requires.
• Proof you live in the dwelling, which the town needs for the resident-operator condition and the province needs for its own principal residence declaration.
• Photo ID plus at least two supporting documents for the provincial registry's proof of principal residence, drawn from its accepted list such as property assessment notices, insurance certificates, tax notices or tenancy agreements.
• Your View Royal business licence number, which the provincial registration asks for and which then has to appear on the listing itself alongside the registration number.
• A GST/HST account number, if your revenue takes you past the small-supplier threshold. More on that in a moment.

Don't forget that the province wants changes reported, not just an accurate first application. If you move, if the property's principal-residence status changes, or if the listing details shift, that's a reportable change, and failing to report one carries its own penalty schedule.

View Royal Short-Term Rental Taxes

Keep all of that current and you're compliant, though there's still tax underneath it, and in View Royal that layer is unusually lopsided: two charges apply, while a third one, the tourism tax you'd expect in a Victoria-area town, doesn't.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
GST	5%	the host if GST-registered, otherwise the accommodation platform
PST on short-term accommodation	8%	the online marketplace facilitator, or the host selling off-platform
Municipal and Regional District Tax	none in View Royal	not applicable

That third row is worth a second. The Designated Accommodation Area Tax Regulation is the instrument that imposes the MRDT, and it lists the City of Victoria at 3% while carrying no View Royal entry at all. So a legal stay in View Royal picks up 13% in tax rather than the 16% a guest would pay a few kilometres east.

On the provincial side, B.C.'s accommodation tax rules charge 8% PST on short-term accommodation, with an important cutoff: you don't charge PST or MRDT on a continuous stay of 27 days or more.

Then there's a small-seller exemption, though it's narrower than it sounds, since it only covers accommodation that isn't listed on an online marketplace and that grosses under $2,500 across both the previous and the next 12 months. List anywhere online and you're outside it. Where you do sell through a platform, the marketplace facilitator registers and collects, and you needn't register yourself, but remember that you stay jointly and severally liable if the tax doesn't reach the province.

GST works on a similar split. The CRA's guidance on platform-based short-term accommodation applies 5% GST in British Columbia to a unit occupied "for a period of less than one month and that costs more than $20 per night". A host who's registered for GST charges and collects it themselves, including on platform bookings; where the host isn't registered, the platform operator has to. Registration generally becomes mandatory once taxable supplies pass $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters, and a two-bedroom bed and breakfast running most of the year can drift over that line without anyone noticing.

Tax Deductions and Write-Offs

Ottawa is where the "it's only a bylaw, what's the worst that happens" reasoning falls apart, so read this part twice if you've been tempted. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act denies deductions for a non-compliant short-term rental, which it defines as one located where short-term rentals aren't permitted, or one that fails to meet all applicable registration, licensing and permit requirements. The denial is pro-rated, so your expenses get multiplied by non-compliant days over total short-term rental days, and the resulting share stops being deductible at all. It has applied to every tax year since 2023.

Read that against View Royal's zoning bylaw and the arithmetic is brutal. A vacation rental in View Royal is by definition in a place that doesn't permit them, so mortgage interest, cleaning, utilities, insurance, property tax and depreciation all stop being deductible against that income, while the income itself stays fully taxable.

The federal government isn't guessing at who's operating, either. Part XX of the Income Tax Act makes the rental of immovable property a reportable activity, so platforms hand host and property data to the CRA each year without you doing anything.

A legal bed and breakfast is in the opposite position. Licensed by the town, registered with the province, principal residence declared, so the ordinary deductions apply, apportioned between the business and personal use of the house. That apportionment is fiddlier on a real return than it looks on a spreadsheet, and it's worth an accountant's hour before your first season rather than after it.

British Columbia Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

The province's framework is what makes a small town's ban stick, so it's worth understanding even though none of it is View Royal's doing. The Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act came into force in stages: the principal residence requirement and the business-licence display rule from 1 May 2024, mandatory registration from 1 May 2025, and then the platform obligations.

So from 2 June 2025 platforms had to stop advertising unregistered listings, and from 23 June 2025 cancel their future bookings. More than 20,000 listings had registered by that point, against roughly 28,000 estimated when the law was introduced in 2023.

The penalties are provincial rather than municipal, and they're the serious ones. Under the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Regulation, failing to register an offer draws an administrative penalty of up to $5,000 for a first contravention, $7,500 for a second and $10,000 for a third, while breaching the principal residence requirement draws exactly the same ladder. A missing business licence number or registration number on a listing is cheaper at $500, $750 and $1,000, though section 27 of the Act lets each day of a continuing contravention be penalised separately, which is how one busy summer turns into a five-figure exposure.

For the record, a repeat contravention means one inside two years, and you get 60 days to pay.

Then the province handed local governments sharper tools on top, whether or not View Royal chooses to use them: municipal ticketing maximums rose to $3,000 per infraction per day, regional district prosecution fines rose from $2,000 to $50,000, platforms report listing data monthly, and a local government can require a platform to remove a listing.

One provincial lever is worth a calendar reminder, though. Communities can opt out of the principal residence requirement where the rental vacancy rate has held at 3% or more for two consecutive years, by resolution submitted to the Province by 28 February and effective 1 June, so that's the mechanism to watch if you own in View Royal. It's the one thing that could change the provincial layer without a single word of the town's bylaw changing. Neighbouring towns have taken very different paths through the same statute, which the Merritt guide and the Hope guide both illustrate.

Does View Royal Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Different paths only mean something where somebody enforces them, though, which brings us to View Royal's own record. Yes and no is the honest answer there, and it's more useful than either half on its own, because the town's enforcement is light while the province's isn't, and the tax consequence sits outside both.

Start with the town, since its numbers are small enough to be misleading. Municipal Ticket Information Bylaw No. 643, consolidated to May 2026, sets the ticket for a "Prohibited vacation rental" under section 3.3.2(e) at $100. That's a parking-ticket sort of number against a summer weekend's revenue, and it would be easy to price in.

Two things make that a mistake, though. The Zoning Bylaw's own penalty clause allows a fine "not exceeding $10,000" on summary conviction, and the Business Licence and Regulation Bylaw No. 952 makes trading without a licence an offence carrying "not less than $500.00 and not more than $10,000.00", with "a separate offence… deemed to be committed upon each day during and in which the contravention occurs or continues". So it's the daily accrual, rather than any single number, that turns a nuisance into a real one.

Staff have been candid about capacity. The January 2026 report to council states plainly that "the Town has limited staff capacity to monitor bylaw compliance and undertake enforcement of this nature", which tells you enforcement in View Royal is complaint-driven rather than proactive. In a town this size, that mostly means a neighbour.

Then there's the episode that sent people searching for View Royal's rules in the first place. On 20 January 2026, council passed resolution C-14-26, resolving that "there be a non-enforcement period for Zoning Bylaw No. 900, 2014 pertaining to short-term rentals from June 1, 2026 to July 31, 2026 during the 2026 World Cup of Soccer." It carried with Mayor Tobias and Councillor MacKenzie opposed, and it went against the written staff recommendation, which had asked council not to proceed and had costed the alternative at more than 40 hours of staff time.

Watch out for what that resolution did and didn't do, because it's the single most misread fact about View Royal. Council chose non-enforcement precisely so that it wouldn't have to amend the Zoning Bylaw, since amending it would've meant readings, a public hearing, legal review and a website rewrite. So the use stayed prohibited for all sixty-one days. The provincial registry still applied, the principal residence requirement still applied, platforms still checked registration numbers, and section 67.7 still denied deductions on income earned in a place that doesn't permit short-term rentals.

What lapsed was the town's willingness to answer a complaint, and it lapsed on 31 July 2026.

Then in May the broader question came back, and lost. Councillor Brown moved that the town amend its short-term rental regulations to align with provincial requirements, Councillor Lemon seconded, and the minutes record council weighing affordable housing, enforcement capacity, housing supply and consistency with neighbouring municipalities against property owner rights and the local economy. Then the motion was defeated, with the mayor and Councillors MacKenzie, Mattson and Rogers opposed. So the position going into the rest of 2026 is a prohibition that has now survived both a stress test and a vote.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in View Royal

Given all that, the honest sequence isn't "how to get a listing live", it's "how to find out quickly whether you have anything to work with". The early steps are the ones that decide it, so working through them out of order mostly wastes money.

1. Confirm you're in View Royal at all. The boundaries with Victoria, Saanich, Esquimalt, Colwood and Langford are tight, and each of those municipalities runs a different regime. A Victoria mailing address does not mean Victoria's rules.
2. Check your zone and your lot size. Call Planning at 250-708-2254 and ask whether your property permits a Level 3 Home Occupation and whether the lot reaches 1,000 m². A no here ends it, and it's a five-minute call.
3. Check the building type and the suite. You need a detached dwelling, and you can't keep a secondary suite or garden suite on the same lot as the bed and breakfast.
4. Sort the parking before you apply. Two additional off-street spaces are required, and the town may want a parking plan with the application.
5. Apply for the $100 business licence in person at Town Hall, and remember it runs to 31 December whatever month you file it in.
6. Register with the province at the short-term rental registry, declare your principal residence, pay the $100, and put both the registration number and your business licence number on every listing.
7. Set up tax before the first booking. Confirm how your platform handles the 8% PST, watch the $30,000 GST threshold, and diarise the 27-day rule if you ever take a longer stay.
8. Diarise both renewals. The municipal licence is due by 31 January and the provincial registration renews annually, with a window opening 40 days out.

Should step two or step three end the exercise, and for most View Royal properties it will, the next question is where the same capital does work. Nightly rules across the country vary far more than people expect, and the Canada market rankings are the fastest way to see which markets are worth the trip before you start reading another municipality's bylaw.

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

If you're staying put, though, and one of those steps is where you come unstuck, View Royal is small enough that the right person is usually one call away, and the contact directory lists direct numbers by department rather than routing everything through a switchboard.

Town Hall sits at 45 View Royal Avenue, Victoria BC V9B 1A6, with general inquiries on 250-479-6800 or [email protected]. Regular hours are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday, excluding statutory holidays, and Town Hall shifts to 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. through July and August, which is worth knowing if you're calling in the summer.

• Zoning, home occupations and bed and breakfast questions: Planning, 250-708-2254, [email protected]. That's the first call for anything above.
• Business licences: 250-727-7903, [email protected]. Same number for renewals and for setting up online payment.
• Bylaw compliance, including complaints about a listing: 250-727-7903, [email protected].
• Building and inspections: 250-708-2256, [email protected], which is who you want for anything structural in a suite or a guest room.
• After-hours public works, sewer or drain emergencies: 250-479-6800.

For the provincial layer, the registry and the Compliance and Enforcement Unit run through ServiceBC. You can reach them on 1-833-828-2240 or at [email protected], Monday to Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and the enforcement unit's page explains what it investigates and how penalties are set.

One practical tip on all of this: council correspondence in View Royal is public, and so are the minutes. Before you phone anybody, skim the 2026 council meeting record for the most recent short-term rental item, because you'll walk into the conversation knowing where councillors have already landed.

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

That public record is also the only place I can honestly tell you what View Royal owners think, so let me be straight about the sourcing. Reddit blocks automated access, so I haven't read its threads and I'm not going to characterise them, and I found no BiggerPockets discussion specific to this town. What View Royal does have, unusually, is residents putting their names to letters that end up in the minutes, and there were a lot of them through the first half of 2026. So take what follows as sentiment rather than as a survey.

• Owners here organised, and they were persistent. Between January and July 2026 the minutes log letters and emails on short-term rentals at nearly every meeting, several from the same residents week after week, on both sides. The 19 May meeting alone recorded three speakers in the public participation period and eight separate items of written correspondence on the topic.
• The pro-rental argument leaned on the province, not on principle. The recurring line, and the one that became Councillor Brown's motion, was that View Royal should "align with provincial requirements" rather than run a stricter rule of its own. Speakers pointed at neighbouring municipalities doing exactly that.
• The opposition argued housing supply and neighbourhood character, which matches the town's own stated rationale from 2022 about displacing residential units and about parking and noise. Correspondence titled "Short Term Rentals - No Thanks" gives you the flavour.
• The World Cup amnesty satisfied almost nobody. Owners kept writing after it passed, including on the amnesty itself and on the decision behind it, which is what you'd expect from a two-month reprieve that never made anything legal.
• Nobody on either side argued the rules were unclear. The debate here is about whether the ban is right, not about what it says, and that's a meaningfully different conversation from the one you'll find in towns with ambiguous bylaws.

Take the persistence seriously if you're buying on the assumption that the rule will loosen. It's been raised repeatedly, by organised residents, with a councillor sponsoring it, and it still lost 4 votes to 2 in May 2026. A rule that survives that much pressure usually isn't about to fall over.

A ban that holds through a housing debate, a global sporting event and a council vote is telling you something a fee schedule never will. Where a small community has decided its housing stock matters more than its visitor economy, the rules tend not to soften just because demand turns up at the door, so the question worth asking about any market isn't what it permits today. It's whether the people who live there want it permitted at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in View Royal, B.C. in 2026?

No. View Royal's Zoning Bylaw No. 900 prohibits vacation rentals, Airbnb and any other form of non-residential commercial overnight accommodation everywhere in the municipality, as a principal use or an accessory one, whether of a dwelling unit, a building or land. The prohibition was adopted in November 2022 and council defeated a motion to relax it in May 2026. The only nightly accommodation permitted from a home is a bed and breakfast under section 4.3, and that carries its own conditions.

What are View Royal's bed and breakfast rules?

A bed and breakfast is permitted only as a Level 3 Home Occupation, which means a detached dwelling on a lot of at least 1,000 square metres. It's capped at two sleeping units and at 40% of the dwelling's floor area or 93 square metres, whichever is smaller. The licensed operator must live in the house, two additional off-street parking spaces are required, and no secondary suite or garden suite may exist on the same lot. Breakfast is part of the defined use.

How much does a View Royal business licence cost?

A Bed & Breakfast or Home Occupation licence costs $100.00 a year, halved if you apply after 1 July. Licences run the calendar year regardless of when you apply, renewal notices are mailed each November, and payment is due by 31 January. Late renewals attract 10% of the licence fee with a $25.00 minimum, and changing the name or address on a licence costs $10.00. Applications are made in person at Town Hall.

What happens if you rent your View Royal home short-term anyway?

The municipal ticket for a prohibited vacation rental is $100, and the Zoning Bylaw allows a fine up to $10,000 on summary conviction, while trading without a business licence carries $500 to $10,000 with each day counting as a separate offence. The larger exposure is provincial and federal: administrative penalties reach $5,000, $7,500 and $10,000 for failing to register, and section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act denies your deductions on income from a rental in a place that doesn't permit them.

Did View Royal allow short-term rentals during the 2026 World Cup?

Not legally. Council passed a non-enforcement period running 1 June to 31 July 2026 rather than amending the bylaw, so the use stayed prohibited throughout. Provincial registration, the principal residence requirement and platform verification all carried on applying, and income earned in that window still counted as a non-compliant short-term rental under the federal deduction rules. The town's non-enforcement ended on 31 July 2026.

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