Sun Peaks Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Sun Peaks and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you very likely can, and for a reason most BC owners don't get: Sun Peaks Mountain Resort Municipality sits on the province's own list of exempt resorts, so the principal-residence rule that shut down whole-unit rentals across most of British Columbia never applied here in the first place. That's confirmed directly on the province's own exemption page, which names "Sun Peaks Resort" outright under ski resorts exempt from the rule.

That's the province's half of it, though, and it's the easy half. Sun Peaks Mountain Resort Municipality (SPMRM) still runs its own zoning, its own business licence, its own occupancy caps, and its own fee schedule, and none of that gets any easier just because the provincial law leaves you alone. Council has also been actively rewriting its short-term rental policy since 2022, and a fresh multi-year review is underway right now, so 2026 is not a settled year to be doing this.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly in Sun Peaks: which zones and permits actually let you rent nightly, what the business licence costs and requires, how occupancy gets capped by unit type, the tax layers that stack on top, and who to call when something doesn't add up. Every figure below comes from SPMRM's own bylaws and British Columbia's own pages, checked in July 2026. If you're weighing a Sun Peaks unit against other markets where the rules run differently, BNBCalc is worth running the numbers through first.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Sun Peaks

That review council is running right now is worth keeping in the back of your mind for everything that follows, because it touches almost every rule in this guide. Start with the definition, since it's the thing everything else hangs off: SPMRM defines a short-term rental as accommodation provided to the public in a host's property, for money, for fewer than 90 consecutive days. That's a wider window than the 30-day line most Canadian cities draw, and it matters because it pulls in everything from a two-night ski weekend to a two-month winter sublet.

What makes Sun Peaks unusual is who's allowed to run one. Because the resort exemption removes the principal-residence requirement, you don't have to live in the unit, and you don't have to be a Canadian citizen or a BC resident to own it and rent it out nightly. That's a different starting point from Vancouver, Burnaby or Surrey, where the province forces short-term rentals back into a host's own home unless the municipality itself sits on that same exempt list.

It also explains why Sun Peaks looks the way it does on the ground. Of the resort's 1,506 dwellings, only 622 carry usual, year-round residents, which tells you most of the housing stock here was built for exactly this kind of ownership.

None of that means every property qualifies, mind you. Your unit still has to sit in a zone that permits tourist accommodation, or hold a Temporary Use Permit that does the same job for a single-family home or duplex outside those zones. We'll get into the specific zones in a minute, but don't skip that check. A property that fails it can't be rescued by any amount of paperwork, provincial exemption or not.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Sun Peaks

Assuming your property clears that zoning test, there's still the licensing to get through, and it runs through two separate systems that both have to stay current at once. The municipal one is a business licence issued under Bylaw No. 0203, and it's required for every short-term rental property, whether you self-manage or use an agent. It's personal to you, and it isn't transferable. It also runs on the calendar year, renewed each January and expiring December 31, with invoices going out the last week of November and a 10% penalty if you haven't paid by January 31.

The fee itself depends on what kind of property you're running and how many bedrooms it has. Make sure you check SPMRM's current fee schedule before budgeting, since it was last raised in 2024 and reads as of July 2026:

Property type	Studio to 1 BR	2 BR	3 BR	4+ BR
RS-1A / Temporary Use Permit short-term rental (each unit)	$275	$425	$550	$675
Strata Complex short-term rental (each unit)	$175	$275	$375	$450

Rental property managers pay a separate tier based on how many units they manage: $400 for up to 25, $450 for 26 to 100, and $550 above that. If your unit runs under a Temporary Use Permit rather than an outright-permitted zone, add a $1,000 refundable deposit on top, which covers the cost of chasing down complaints and violations if any come in.

That's not a cheap ask, and it's gotten more expensive on purpose. Council's own fee-increase report puts the 2024 bylaw-enforcement budget at $344,610, a 139% jump, and says plainly that short-term rentals are the reason. With one bylaw officer covering the whole resort, council decided STR properties should carry a proportionate share of what enforcing against them costs. Sun Peaks isn't unusual there, either. The same report notes Whistler and Osoyoos don't permit any short-term rentals in residential subdivisions at all, so a fee increase is the milder version of what several other BC resorts have already done.

On top of the business licence, every application also has to include proof of registration with Tourism Sun Peaks (covering both business and common assessment fees), a signed acknowledgement that you'll collect PST and MRDT, a garbage disposal plan, and, for single and two-family properties, a to-scale landscaping plan showing snow storage and parking. You'll also need to pass a fire and life-safety inspection before your first licence gets issued, and the municipality can require another one later with reasonable notice.

Then there's the provincial side, which runs on a completely separate clock. Since May 1, 2025, every BC short-term rental has needed a provincial registration number displayed on its listing, and since June 1, 2025, platforms are required to pull down any listing that doesn't carry one.

The registration fee itself is $100 a year if you live in the unit, $450 a year if you don't, and $600 for a strata hotel, so almost every Sun Peaks investment property lands in that $450 tier. That's a real, separate cost layered on top of everything SPMRM charges, and it's easy to miss if you're only thinking about the municipal side.

Occupancy Limits for Sun Peaks Short Term Rentals

Since that provincial number is tied to a specific listing, it's worth getting the occupancy right on that same listing before you advertise it, because Sun Peaks caps guest counts by formula rather than by a flat headcount. Bylaw 0203, section 4.5 sets it out unit type by unit type:

Unit type	Maximum occupancy
Principal dwelling unit in a single-family home	2 per bedroom, plus 4
Auxiliary residential dwelling unit only	3 per bedroom
Full single-family home (main dwelling and suite both rented)	2 per bedroom plus 4, capped at 16 total
Condo or townhouse	2 per bedroom, plus 2
Studio unit	3 people

Those numbers aren't arbitrary. Council raised them in 2023 specifically to let bigger groups book a single home, with Mayor Al Raine framing it around multi-generational family trips: "Multi-generational families would like to come for a vacation in Sun Peaks. That's going on in ski resorts around the world." The same amendment capped overnight parking at five vehicles per property, a reduction from an earlier proposal that would have removed any limit at all.

A short-term rental can't advertise a number above its cap, full stop, and every unit has to post a Guest Information Notice inside the door showing the maximum occupancy, the maximum number of overnight vehicles, hot tub hours if the property has one, quiet hours (10pm to 7am resort-wide), the garbage disposal plan, and the name, email and phone number of your 24/7 on-mountain contact. A fire evacuation diagram goes up too.

None of this is optional paperwork you can skip until an inspector asks, since council also brought in Granicus monitoring software specifically to track listings against what's actually posted, and violations run $500 a day.

Zoning Restrictions for Sun Peaks Short Term Rentals

Those occupancy numbers only ever matter once your property is zoned to rent short-term in the first place, so it's worth backing up to that gate. Four zoning paths let a property operate outright, with a business licence and nothing more: Tourist Accommodation (TA), RS-1A and R-1A (residential zones specifically rezoned for tourist accommodation), and CC1. A fifth path covers strata properties in RM zones that got written approval from their strata council before April 2018, which is a grandfathered category rather than something new owners can apply for today.

Everything else, meaning a standard single-family home or duplex sitting in an ordinary residential zone, needs a Temporary Use Permit instead. TUPs aren't unlimited, though. SPMRM caps them at 25% of the built homes on any given street or subdivision, a threshold council raised from 20% back in 2022. Once a street hits that ceiling, new applications go into a queue and no fee is due until they can proceed, so don't assume paying up front buys you a place in line.

A granted TUP runs up to three years, with one three-year renewal available after that. Once both terms are used up, you're filing a brand-new application rather than a simple renewal.

The application itself isn't fast. Per SPMRM's own walkthrough, staff take two to three weeks on an initial review, owners within 50 metres get formal notice, a public hearing follows roughly a month after that, and only then does council vote. Altogether, expect something like two and a half to three months from submission to a decision, which is longer than most hosts assume when they're picturing a quick licence application.

Keep in mind that this whole framework is mid-review. SPMRM is running a two-phase policy overhaul, with Phase 1 running 2025 through 2027 to align the Official Community Plan, the business licensing bylaw and the zoning bylaw into one coherent framework, while Phase 2 starts in 2028 to revisit the 25% cap and the long-term direction of TUPs themselves. An August 2025 staff review flagged real problems driving that work:

• TUPs meant to renew once are being extended indefinitely in practice.
• Flat licence fees don't scale with the size or type of property.
• On-mountain contacts often don't live on the mountain at all.

None of that has changed the zones or the 25% cap as of my research in July 2026, but a buyer planning around this in 2027 or 2028 should watch for it rather than assume today's rules hold.

Tax Implications for Sun Peaks Short Term Rentals

Assuming you clear the zoning and licensing gauntlet and are able to start hosting, there's still a full stack of tax to collect on top of everything else. Three separate layers apply to a Sun Peaks stay, and three different governments administer them:

Tax	Rate	Collected by
GST	5%	Canada Revenue Agency (federal)
PST	8%	BC Ministry of Finance (provincial)
MRDT	3%	Tourism Sun Peaks (municipal, since November 2016)

Most of that gets handled for you automatically, though it's still worth understanding who's on the hook. Under the CRA's digital-economy rules, a host earning under $30,000 over a 12-month period doesn't have to register for GST separately if every booking runs through a platform like Airbnb or Vrbo, since the platform itself is required to collect and remit GST on your behalf. PST and MRDT work the same way, and BC requires online marketplace facilitators to register and collect both on any booking they process.

That said, you don't get to walk away entirely. If the platform gets your listing details wrong, you're still jointly and severally liable for whatever PST and MRDT didn't get collected, so do check your listing settings rather than assuming the platform has it right.

Your rental income is also ordinary taxable income at both the federal and provincial level, on top of those consumption taxes. One older wrinkle is worth flagging honestly. SPMRM's own 2023 guidance noted that the federal Underused Housing Tax, a 1% annual charge tied to certain non-primary-residence properties, doesn't count short-term rental use toward the "monthly leasing" exemption that would otherwise apply. I checked that against SPMRM's own page and it's real, though the notice itself dates to early 2023, so confirm your specific filing obligation with an accountant rather than treating that alone as the full picture in 2026.

Pros and Cons of Operating a Short Term Rental in Sun Peaks

Once you've worked through the tax stack, it's worth stepping back and weighing whether all of that effort is worth it here, because Sun Peaks cuts both ways more than most resort towns do.

On the upside, the provincial exemption is the whole ballgame. Investor-owned, non-primary-residence units can rent nightly in a way that's flatly illegal across most of British Columbia, and the resort's own zoning is more permissive than several comparable BC mountain communities. Whistler and Osoyoos don't allow short-term rentals in residential subdivisions at all, so Sun Peaks giving you a Temporary Use Permit path, even a capped and slow one, is a real advantage.

Demand is seasonal but strong, and the MRDT revenue funds Tourism Sun Peaks marketing directly, which works in your favour as a host even though you're the one paying it.

On the other side, the regulatory ground here doesn't sit still. Fees jumped sharply in 2024 specifically to fund enforcement against STR properties, the 25% street cap can put you in a queue with no fixed timeline, and the current policy review could reshape TUP terms and the cap itself once Phase 2 starts in 2028. Neighbour pushback is real too, not hypothetical: Lookout Ridge alone has gone through two separate moratorium fights since 2017, and Granicus monitoring means a listing that drifts from its posted occupancy or parking limits gets caught rather than quietly ignored.

How to Launch a Short Term Rental in Sun Peaks

Given all that, the order you tackle these steps in matters, since getting it backwards wastes both time and application fees you won't get back.

1. Confirm your zoning first. Check whether your property sits in TA, RS-1A, R-1A or CC1, or whether your street is even under the 25% cap for a Temporary Use Permit. This decides everything else.
2. If you need a TUP, prepare the site plan. You'll need a to-scale landscaping plan covering parking and snow storage before SPMRM will accept the application.
3. Submit and wait through the process. Expect roughly two to three weeks for initial staff review, notice to neighbours within 50 metres, a public hearing about a month later, then a council vote. Budget two and a half to three months in total.
4. Register with Tourism Sun Peaks for both business and common assessment fees, since your business licence application won't be accepted without it.
5. Pass the fire and life-safety inspection before your first licence is issued.
6. Apply for the SPMRM business licence and pay the fee, plus the $1,000 refundable deposit if you're operating under a TUP.
7. Register with BC's provincial short-term rental registry and display your registration number on every listing before you take a single booking.
8. Set up your on-mountain contact, post the Guest Information Notice and fire evacuation diagram inside the unit, and confirm your platform is collecting GST, PST and MRDT correctly.
9. Diarize your renewal dates. The municipal licence expires every December 31, and a TUP's three-year clock (plus one renewal) runs on its own separate schedule.

Who to Contact About STR Rules in Sun Peaks

Whichever step trips you up, three offices between them cover almost every question a Sun Peaks host will ever have.

Sun Peaks Mountain Resort Municipality handles zoning, business licensing and general questions.

• Address: 106-3270 Village Way, Sun Peaks, BC V0E 5N0
• Phone: (250) 578-2020
• Business licensing: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 4pm

Bylaw Enforcement takes complaints and questions about an existing rental's compliance.

• Phone: (778) 257-2275
• Email: [email protected]
• 24/7 short-term rental complaint line: 778-910-4479
• Online: SPMRM's short-term rental complaint form

BC's provincial short-term rental registry handles registration numbers and provincial-level compliance questions.

• Phone: 1-833-828-2240
• Email: [email protected]

What Hosts Are Saying About STR Rules

Reading through years of SPMRM council coverage rather than any single forum, the same fault line keeps showing up. Hosts and investors want the rules to stay predictable, while year-round residents want their streets to stay residential, and council has been trying to referee that fight since at least 2017.

That first fight is well documented. When the municipality issued its original moratorium in July 2017, owner Gary Geissinger, who'd put nearly a million dollars into a rental property, told local reporters plainly, "It's our retirement plan." Resident Maureen Walker, on the other side, warned that under the rules as written at the time, "all undeveloped land on Lookout Ridge could all be nightly rentals." Mayor Al Raine's response captured the tension council still hasn't fully resolved: "People bought residential properties with no promise that they would become income properties."

That same argument resurfaced on the same street in 2023, when a second, narrower moratorium hit Lookout Ridge. Resident Randy Hunter, who'd applied for a TUP himself, argued the real issues could be managed rather than banned outright: "Issues like noise and parking can be managed by vetting guests." Council ultimately lifted that moratorium after an informal survey ran 62% in favour of allowing STRs to continue.

Where things stand now, going through the review documents from 2025, is less a fight than an honest admission of what isn't working. Consultant Ken Cossey was brought in to help SPMRM rebuild its policy. He put his own role plainly: "My role is to help municipalities strengthen their own policies and procedures so they fit their communities."

Director Demetri Hofer's comment about the reporting system doubles as a fair summary of where enforcement actually stands. "We completely acknowledge that the number of online submissions through our 24-hour reporting system is lower than expected," he said.

I looked for Reddit or BiggerPockets discussion specific to Sun Peaks and didn't find any I could read and verify, so what's here is drawn from council meetings and local reporting rather than a forum survey. Take that as the honest state of sentiment rather than a gap, since it means what you're reading is grounded in named people and dated public meetings.

If Sun Peaks numbers don't quite pencil out once you've weighed all of this, it's worth checking how the rest of the country compares. BNBCalc's Canada market data breaks down revenue and occupancy by market, and Whistler runs the same resort exemption under a very different set of local rules, while Vancouver shows what BC's principal-residence rule actually looks like in practice for owners who don't get Sun Peaks' exemption.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Sun Peaks in 2026?

In most cases, yes. Sun Peaks Resort is named directly on British Columbia's official list of ski resorts exempt from the province's principal-residence requirement, so investor-owned units that nobody lives in full-time can still rent nightly here. You still need your property to sit in a zone that permits tourist accommodation, or hold a Temporary Use Permit, plus a Sun Peaks business licence and a provincial short-term rental registration number.

Do you have to live in your Sun Peaks property to rent it short-term?

No. That's the whole point of the resort exemption: British Columbia's principal-residence requirement, which forces most of the province's short-term rentals back into a host's own home, doesn't apply to Sun Peaks. You still need the right zoning or a Temporary Use Permit, and you still need both a municipal business licence and a provincial registration number, but living there isn't one of the requirements.

How much does a Sun Peaks short-term rental business licence cost?

It depends on bedroom count and property type. A standalone home under RS-1A or a Temporary Use Permit runs $275 for a studio or one bedroom up to $675 for four or more bedrooms, per unit. A strata unit runs $175 to $450 across the same bedroom range. TUP properties also carry a separate $1,000 refundable deposit, and every property also needs a $100 to $450 annual provincial registration fee on top of that.

What taxes apply to a Sun Peaks Airbnb?

Three layers stack on top of each other: 5% federal GST, 8% provincial PST, and a 3% Municipal and Regional District Tax that funds Tourism Sun Peaks marketing. Most bookings made through a platform like Airbnb or Vrbo have all three collected automatically under Canada's digital-economy tax rules, though hosts remain liable if the platform's collection turns out to be wrong.

Can you still apply for a new Temporary Use Permit in Sun Peaks in 2026?

Yes, though the process is slow and capped. SPMRM limits Temporary Use Permits to streets where fewer than 25% of built homes already hold one, so an application on a street at capacity goes into a queue rather than being approved outright. Expect roughly two and a half to three months from application to a council decision, and be aware that a wider policy review running through 2027 could change these terms.

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