London, Canada Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in London, Ontario and you're wondering whether you can put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, provided it's the home you live in yourself. London, the city in southwestern Ontario (not London, England), permits short-term rentals under Schedule 21 of its Business Licensing By-law, built around one idea: a Short-Term Accommodation, or STA, is meant to be small-scale entrepreneurship out of your own home, never a portfolio business. Council tightened that framework further. On March 31, 2026, it approved amendments limiting every host to a single STA starting October 1, 2026, closing a loophole that let some providers run two properties under one name.

Here's where it gets less comfortable for anyone eyeing London as an investment play. Only individuals can hold a licence, not corporations, and that licence has to sit at your one declared Resident Address: the place where you sleep, eat, and get your mail. A new application now runs $552, mandatory Property Standards and Fire Safety inspections apply as of March 31, 2026, and the Municipal Accommodation Tax climbed to 5% that same spring. None of that touches the separate 13% HST Ontario adds on top.

So let's walk through what running one of these properly in 2026 takes: what the licence requires, what the paperwork looks like, the tax layers stacked on a single booking, how hard the city pushes on enforcement, and who picks up the phone when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from London's own by-laws and council reports, checked in July 2026, and I've flagged the couple of places where the research is still catching up to a fast-moving file. Assuming you're weighing a London property against a market with fewer strings attached, make sure you run the numbers through BNBCalc before you commit to either one.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in London

Since you're probably already picturing what that comparison would look like, it's worth being precise about what "business" means under this by-law, because it isn't what most people assume. What you're licensing isn't a portfolio. It's your own home. Every Short-Term Accommodation Provider Licence has to sit at your one Resident Address, defined by the by-law as wherever you habitually sleep, eat, keep your personal effects, and receive your government ID and tax mail. Only individuals can apply, not corporations, and you have to be at least 18.

That single-address rule does the real work here. The by-law requires the STA to be provided at the same municipal address the licence was issued for, so moving out or selling the property means starting the application over from zero at the new place. You can't carry a licence with you. Buy a second house purely to run it as an Airbnb and that plan doesn't clear the by-law at all, no matter how good the numbers look on paper.

Where the property is jointly owned, rented, or sits inside a condominium, every co-owner, co-tenant, or the condo board has to consent in writing before an application even goes in. That's a step people skip and then get stuck on.

This isn't a new idea London invented overnight, either. Airbnb opened its first Canadian office in Toronto back in 2014, and council spent years circling the question before acting: an information report in 2017, a decision in 2018 not to regulate at all, and a reversal by 2020 that finally led to licensing. Council voted to approve the by-law on June 14, 2022, and it took effect that October 1st.

It's less a business in the conventional sense than a licensed side hustle tied permanently to wherever you already live. The Residential Rental Unit Licence program that governs long-term rentals is a completely separate track with its own fees and rules.

If you're weighing this against a straightforward buy-and-rent strategy somewhere with fewer restrictions, our guide to starting a short-term rental business walks through what that model looks like elsewhere.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in London (300 words)

Assuming your situation still fits inside that principal-residence box, the licence itself is where the real requirements live. Schedule 21 of the Business Licensing By-law requires every Short-Term Accommodation Provider to hold a valid licence before operating at all, and City Council rewrote a good deal of it on March 31, 2026.

The core conditions:

• One STA, full stop. Starting October 1, 2026, each Provider is limited to one Short-Term Accommodation, one Provider licence, and one ownership interest in a dwelling unit used as an STA. Until then, the older rule (up to two STAs registered under one name at the same address) still applies.
• Five bedrooms, maximum, in an unhosted unit, and no more than two people per bedroom, not counting children under two. That occupancy cap borrows straight from the Ontario Building Code and the City's own Property Standards By-law.
• $2,000,000 in general liability insurance, per occurrence, unless you list exclusively through Airbnb, which is exempt from the certificate requirement.
• A local emergency contact who can be on-site in person within one hour of a guest, or an enforcement officer, getting in touch.
• Mandatory inspections. As of March 31, 2026, every STA has to pass a Property Standards Inspection and a Fire Safety Inspection before its licence renews.

The fee, as of July 2026, is $552 for a new application ($201 annual plus a $351 one-time inspection charge), and $201 for the annual renewal after that. Every licence expires March 31 regardless of when you applied, so applying in September still buys you a licence that lapses the following spring.

Do check the City's own licensing page before you pay, since this fee only replaced a flat $196 in 2026. The Administrative Monetary Penalty for operating unlicensed jumped the same year, from a token $500 to $1,500, $2,500, and $5,000 for a first, second, and third offence.

Required Documents for London Short Term Rentals (250 words)

Since that $552 doesn't come back if you're refused, it's worth assembling everything before you apply rather than after. Every application under Schedule 21 has to include:

• A sworn declaration that you're an individual, not a corporation, at least 18, and that the address you're naming is your Resident Address.
• Government-issued ID showing your current Resident Address.
• Written consent from every co-owner, co-tenant, or landlord, and from the condo board where the unit is a condominium.
• A floor plan showing the dwelling unit's location, square footage, bedroom count, building type, and the number of off-street parking spaces.
• A signed Certificate of Insurance for your $2,000,000 policy, unless Airbnb is your only listing platform.
• A criminal record and judicial matters check, dated less than 90 days before you apply.
• The name, phone number, and email of your local emergency contact.
• An indemnity in favour of the City, in a form the Licence Manager accepts.

Keep in mind the City can still ask for more information after a licence is issued, on anything you've already attested to, so don't treat the application as a one-time exercise. And don't forget the insurance renewal deadline either: you have to file a new certificate at least five days before your current policy expires, or you risk losing the licence over paperwork rather than anything you did wrong. It's also worth drafting your own house rules for guests, since the by-law's requirements are a floor, not a ceiling.

London Short Term Rental Taxes

Once you've cleared licensing and the paperwork behind it, there's still tax sitting on top of every booking, and in London that's three layers rather than one.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Municipal Accommodation Tax (MAT)	5%	Ontario Restaurant, Hotel and Motel Association, on the City's behalf
Harmonized Sales Tax (HST)	13%	Canada Revenue Agency, usually via your booking platform
Federal and provincial income tax	Your marginal rate	Canada Revenue Agency

The Municipal Accommodation Tax is administered by the city but collected through the Ontario Restaurant, Hotel and Motel Association, which acts as the designated agent. It applies to any stay under 30 nights and has moved twice: it started at 4% when it first covered hotels in 2018, extended to short-term rentals that October, then climbed to 5% effective May 1, 2025. Short-term Providers remit quarterly, within 15 days of each quarter's end, while hotels and motels remit monthly.

Miss it and the penalty runs from $500 up to $100,000 per violation, with continuing offences compounding daily.

Ontario's Harmonized Sales Tax sits on top of that at 13%, split 5% federal and 8% provincial. Since 2021, federal rules under the Excise Tax Act's digital-economy provisions have required accommodation platforms to collect and remit GST/HST on behalf of hosts who aren't themselves registered, so most casual London hosts never have to touch this piece directly.

Once your own short-term rental revenue passes $30,000 CAD across any rolling 12 months, though, you're required to register and collect it yourself, on every booking including the ones a platform facilitates. Airbnb's own London help page doesn't state outright whether it auto-remits the MAT for you, so don't just assume it's covered; check your host dashboard and confirm.

Your rental income is also ordinary taxable income at the federal level, on top of both of those. There's a sharper trap worth knowing about, too, if you ever plan to sell.

London's own council was told directly, in the same March 2026 report that raised these penalties, about a 2025 Federal Court of Appeal decision (1351231 Ontario Inc. v. Canada) finding that a landlord who'd switched a condo from long-term to short-term rental in the year or two before selling it owed HST on the entire sale price, not just the rental income. Switch a property to Airbnb use and you may be changing its tax character for good, so it's worth a call to your accountant before you list it, not after.

London-wide Short Term Rental Rules

Given how much of that tax exposure depends on getting the fundamentals right, it's worth stepping back to the rules that apply across every STA in the city, not only the ones tied to licensing or tax specifically.

Every licensed Provider has to post the Fire Department's safety material inside the unit, at the locations it specifies. The licence number has to show on every advertisement and listing, too, and where a booking doesn't go through a broker, you'll issue guests an invoice naming that licence number and the total price charged, MAT included. You're also on the hook for an indemnity in the City's favour covering anything that goes wrong on the property. Keep your insurance current as well, filing a renewal certificate at least five days before the old one lapses.

There's no separate Ontario-wide short-term rental statute sitting above any of this, which surprises people who assume a province this size must have one. The Municipal Act, 2001 gives municipalities the general power to license and regulate businesses under section 151, and to set a Municipal Accommodation Tax under section 400.1, then leaves the specifics entirely to each council. That's why London's five-bedroom cap and 5% MAT read so differently from Brampton's 180-night cap or Toronto's 8.5% MAT next door, even though all three sit under the same provincial framework.

One thing the province does bar outright: section 153 of the Municipal Act prohibits refusing a business licence based only on where the business is located. That's part of why London's council rejected proposals for minimum-distance or clustering rules between STAs in residential neighbourhoods.

One more piece worth watching rather than banking on: Ontario's government has said it intends to eventually require STA brokers to remit the MAT directly, cutting out the ORHMA middle step, but as of my last check in July 2026 no timeline had been set. Treat that as coming eventually rather than coming soon.

Does London strictly enforce STR rules?

Given the province just handed London sharper enforcement tools, it's fair to ask whether the city uses them. Increasingly, yes.

Enforcement so far has been complaint-and-blitz driven rather than constant. In a compliance sweep reported in March 2023, Municipal Compliance identified 366 unlicensed properties: 89 that could become compliant with a licence, and 277 that had to cease operating entirely because the address wasn't the operator's principal residence. Only 55 applications came in that year, and only 31 were granted. Director Orest Katolyk framed the goal plainly at the time: protecting the health and safety of guests, preventing neighbourhood nuisances, and preserving residential character, not maximizing licence revenue.

What changed in 2026 is the price of getting caught. The old $500 penalty for operating without a licence was, in the City's own words to Council, treated by many operators as a cost of doing business rather than a reason to comply. The new Administrative Monetary Penalty structure, approved March 31, 2026, escalates to $1,500, $2,500, and $5,000 for an unlicensed Provider's first, second, and third offence, and to a serious $10,000, $15,000, and $20,000 for an unlicensed Broker.

That broker number matters more than it looks. As of the same report, not one STA Broker held a licence in London, and only Airbnb had even begun the process, so the City is leaning on brokers as hard as individual hosts to force compliance.

Watch out for one more thing if you're already operating: the occupancy limit and the one-STA rule both give Enforcement Officers a cleaner basis to act on complaints than the old rules did. Nuisance party houses were the specific problem the March 2026 amendments were written to fix, so if that's ever been part of your model, this is the year it stops working quietly.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in London

Assuming none of that changes your plans, here's the order that saves you real time and the $552 fee, since several of these steps can disqualify you before you spend a dollar.

1. Confirm the property is your Resident Address, and that you don't already hold an ownership interest in another dwelling unit used as an STA.
2. Get written consent from every co-owner, co-tenant, landlord, or condo board before you go further.
3. Order your $2,000,000 general liability policy and have your insurer prepare the Certificate of Insurance, unless you'll list exclusively through Airbnb.
4. Request a criminal record and judicial matters check, timed so it's dated within 90 days of your application.
5. Draw up your floor plan, count your bedrooms against the five-bedroom and two-per-bedroom caps, and note your off-street parking spaces.
6. Line up a local emergency contact who can be on-site within one hour, day or night.
7. Apply and pay the $552, and budget for the Property Standards and Fire Safety inspections that now come bundled with it.
8. Post your licence and the Fire Department's safety material inside the unit, and add your licence number to every listing before you accept a booking.
9. Register for the Municipal Accommodation Tax with ORHMA, and check your HST position once your revenue nears $30,000.
10. Set a reminder for March 31 every year, since that's when every London STA licence expires regardless of when you applied.

Who to contact in London about Short Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever step trips you up, four City contacts cover almost everything you'd need to ask about.

Licensing and applications

The Business Licensing office, part of Municipal Compliance, handles new STA applications, renewals, and general questions about Schedule 21.

• Address: London City Hall, 300 Dufferin Avenue, London, ON N6B 1Z2
• Phone: 519-930-3515
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Complaints and enforcement

Municipal Compliance / By-law Enforcement investigates unlicensed operators and nuisance complaints.

• Phone: 519-661-4660, or 311 within London
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Municipal Accommodation Tax

Administered through the Ontario Restaurant, Hotel and Motel Association on the City's behalf.

• Email: [email protected]

Zoning and building compliance

The Building Division and Zoning staff handle questions about Zoning By-law No. Z.-1 and property-specific eligibility.

• Phone: 519-661-4555 (Building), or 519-930-3510 (Zoning)
• Email: [email protected], or [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

What do Airbnb hosts in London on Reddit and Bigger Pockets think about local regulations?

Since the Building Division and Enforcement share a phone tree, it's worth knowing whether the hosts calling them think the rules are fair. Opinion in London splits along a pretty predictable line.

Reddit blocks the kind of automated access this research relies on, so I can't claim to have surveyed r/londonontario directly, and I couldn't find a BiggerPockets thread naming London, Ontario specifically in its Short-Term Rental & Airbnb Investing forum either. What follows is an honest read of the public record rather than a summary of threads I opened myself.

The council debate itself is public and tells you plenty. When the original by-law passed in June 2022, Councillor Stephen Turner called it "backdoor expropriation by other means," arguing it stripped value from owners who'd built an income around short-term rentals, while Councillor Shawn Lewis defended it as one small piece of a much bigger housing puzzle.

That same tension resurfaced in March 2026: Council tightened licensing and penalties, but voted down a separate proposal to loosen the rules for hosted stays, so the "small-scale entrepreneurship, not a business" framing has held even as enforcement toughens.

Investors comparing the Greater Toronto Area and southwestern Ontario tend to describe London the way they describe Brampton and Mississauga: a market where the principal-residence rule rules out the buy-a-condo-and-Airbnb-it model that still works in looser jurisdictions. Owner-occupants who already live in London and want income from a spare room, or from the whole house while travelling, are the actual target audience here, and that's a different reader than someone hunting for a second property purely to run as a nightly rental.

Assuming you're in the second camp, the London market data is worth checking against a few other Ontario cities before you assume this one is typical for the province.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in London, Ontario in 2026?

Yes, but only from the home you live in yourself. London requires a Short-Term Accommodation Provider Licence under Schedule 21 of its Business Licensing By-law, and that licence has to sit at your own Resident Address, the place where you sleep, eat, and receive government mail. Corporations can't hold a licence, and starting October 1, 2026, each host is limited to one property. Buying a separate house purely to run as an Airbnb doesn't qualify under this framework, no matter how the numbers look.

How much does a London short-term rental licence cost?

A new Short-Term Accommodation Provider Licence costs $552 total: a $201 annual fee plus a $351 one-time charge covering a Property Standards Inspection and a Fire Safety Inspection, both mandatory as of March 31, 2026. Renewals cost $201 a year. Every licence expires March 31 regardless of when you applied, so a licence issued in September still lapses the following spring. Confirm the current figure before you pay, since fees increased substantially in 2026 after years at a flat $196.

What happens if you operate a short-term rental in London without a licence?

You're exposed to an Administrative Monetary Penalty that escalates fast: $1,500 for a first offence, $2,500 for a second, and $5,000 for a third, up from a flat $500 before March 31, 2026. A Short-Term Accommodation Broker operating unlicensed faces $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000 for the same sequence. The City also runs compliance blitzes rather than waiting only for complaints, and a 2023 sweep identified 366 unlicensed properties in a single pass, most of which had to shut down entirely rather than apply for a licence.

Do you have to pay tax on a London short-term rental?

Yes, on two separate layers plus your regular income tax. The Municipal Accommodation Tax is 5% of the accommodation price, remitted quarterly through the Ontario Restaurant, Hotel and Motel Association. Ontario's Harmonized Sales Tax adds another 13% on top, though your booking platform usually collects and remits that portion automatically once you're below $30,000 in annual short-term rental revenue. Above that threshold, you need to register for HST and collect it yourself. Your rental income is also ordinary taxable income at the federal level.

Can you operate more than one Airbnb in London?

Not for much longer. Until September 30, 2026, a Provider can hold up to two Short-Term Accommodations under one name at the same address. Starting October 1, 2026, the new rule limits every host to exactly one STA, one Provider licence, and one ownership interest in a dwelling unit used this way. The change closed a loophole that let co-owners of multiple properties each get a separate licence, effectively running a small commercial operation instead of the single-home model the by-law is meant to allow.

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