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

Do you own a place in Regina and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is you can, and the paperwork is lighter than almost anywhere else in Canada. Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan, licenses short-term rentals under Bylaw No. 2020-70, the Residential Short Term Accommodation Licensing Bylaw, which council passed on October 28, 2020 and brought into force on May 1, 2021. One licence, one fee, no separate business permit.

There's a catch, though, and it's the one that decides whether you have a business at all. The bylaw ties new licences to the local rental market, and that door is currently half shut. Because the Regina vacancy rate sits at 2.6 per cent, under the bylaw's 3 per cent trigger, the city has stopped issuing new licences for secondary properties. Hosting the home you live in? You're fine. Hosting a condo you bought purely to run on Airbnb? Unfortunately, you can't get a new licence at any price right now.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly in 2026: the two licence types and what each one costs, the documents and the fire inspection behind them, the two taxes that attach to a stay, how the province fits over the top, how hard the city pushes, and who to phone when something goes sideways. Every number below comes from the City of Regina's or the Government of Saskatchewan's own pages, which I read in July 2026, and where a figure moves I've flagged it. Before you commit to anything, run the address through BNBCalc and see whether the licence type you can actually get still clears your costs.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Regina

That split between the home you live in and the unit you bought as an investment is where everything starts, because the rest of the bylaw follows from it. Regina licenses two kinds of short-term accommodation, and they don't play by the same rules at all.

A principal residence unit is the place where you live, make your home and conduct your daily affairs. The bylaw is specific about how you prove it, listing income tax returns, driver's licences, personal identification, vehicle registration and utility bills as the documents that settle the question. Only an individual or individuals who own or lease the unit can hold this licence, and no person may have more than one principal residence. Renting a spare bedroom sits here. So does listing the whole place while you're away for a week.

A secondary property unit is defined as any unit that isn't a principal residence. A second house, a condo across town, a basement suite in a building you don't live in.

That second category is the classic investor play, and it's exactly the one the city has paused.

Here's the mechanism, because it's unusual and worth understanding properly. Section 25 of the bylaw keys the whole thing to a single number. Where the average vacancy rate in the Regina Census Metropolitan Area falls below 3 per cent in the most current published Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Rental Market Survey, the city issues no new licences. It starts again only once a later CMHC survey shows 3 per cent or higher.

Two carve-outs soften it. The freeze never blocks an application for the applicant's own principal residence, and it never blocks a renewal where the licensee held a valid licence for that unit within the last 90 days.

Regina's licence page confirms the freeze is live and keyed to that 2.6 per cent figure as of July 2026, and the city says plainly that it will resume issuing new secondary licences once the rate reaches 3 per cent or above.

Unfortunately for most people arriving here with a buy-and-list plan, that's where the business stops for now. Keep in mind the number moves with each CMHC survey, so do check the city's page for the current rate rather than trusting this one indefinitely.

What's left is still real, mind you. Live in Regina and your own home, or a legal garden, laneway or secondary suite attached to it, can be licensed and hosted for $100 a year. Already hold a secondary licence? You can keep renewing it, freeze or no freeze. And if you're an investor shut out of the nightly market, the honest pivot is the 30-plus-day furnished rental, which falls outside this bylaw entirely, since "short term accommodation" is defined as a stay of less than 30 days.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Regina

Assuming you're on the right side of that gate, the licence itself is then one of the gentler processes in the country. You apply online, you pay, and a couple of days later you're legal.

The fees come straight out of Schedule A of the bylaw and run annually:

Licence type	Annual fee	Fire inspection
Principal residence unit	$100	Only where the licence inspector asks for one
Secondary property unit	$300	Mandatory on the initial application

Both fees are non-refundable once you've applied, which is a good reason to confirm you're eligible before you pay. The bylaw does split that one hair usefully: if the licence inspector refuses to issue the licence, your fee comes back, but if you cancel it yourself, or the city suspends or revokes it, the money's gone.

Applications go through the city's eBuild portal at ebuild.regina.ca, and Regina says it processes them within two to three business days. To be eligible you have to own the unit, or be a lessee or tenant who's obtained the owner's consent. Corporations can hold a secondary licence, yet they can't hold a principal residence one, since that category is reserved for individuals.

A licence runs for one year from the date it's issued. Renewal notices go out about a month before expiry, and you renew by emailing your licence number to [email protected].

Remember the licence is glued to one unit and one licensee. It confers no property right, you can't sell, transfer, assign or lease it, and you can't move it to another property you own. Sell the unit or lease it to a new tenant and the licence is deemed expired on the spot. Same if you hold a principal residence licence and stop living there, which is why the bylaw also obliges you to tell the licence inspector in writing the moment that changes.

Two structural caps sit behind all of this, and the vacancy freeze is only the first. The second is a building-level limit: no more than 35 per cent of the units in a multi-unit dwelling can carry a licence, where a multi-unit dwelling means a stacked building with a common entryway and more than four units.

Principal residences are left out of that calculation, and a renewal within 90 days isn't blocked by it either. Still, if you own a condo in a building that's already close to the cap, the building can stop you before the vacancy rate does.

One genuine piece of relief: you don't need a separate residential business licence on top of this. Section 18 excuses short-term accommodation operators from that regime entirely, and since Regina's residential business licence runs $195 a year with a four to six week processing time, that exemption is worth real money and real weeks.

Skipping the licence gets expensive quickly, though. Operating or marketing an unlicensed short-term rental draws a fine of $1,000 per unit plus the applicable licence fee, or up to 90 days' imprisonment in default of payment. Other offences by an individual reach $10,000, and a corporation can be fined up to $25,000. Your licence number also has to appear in a conspicuous place in every advertisement, and in your invoices and receipts, so a listing that quietly omits it is itself the offence.

Required Documents for Regina Short-Term Rentals

Since the fee doesn't come back and those fines aren't trivial, be sure to walk in with the paperwork already assembled. Section 16 sets out what the application asks for, and the fire piece is where secondary hosts spend the real time and money.

Here's what you'll be handing over:

• The address of the proposed short-term accommodation, plus the business name you'll operate under if you have one.
• The owner's name as it appears on the land titles registry.
• Your own contact details: full name, mailing address, email and phone number.
• A 24-hour contact, meaning someone reachable at any hour to respond to emergencies while you're away from the unit.
• The platforms and the listings. The bylaw asks for the name of any media outlet, company or platform you'll market through, and the URL of every online advertisement.
• Proof it's your principal residence, if that's the licence you want, along with the names of all adults who ordinarily live there.
• Written owner consent if you're a tenant, using the city's Short Term Accommodation Landlord Consent Form, which has to be submitted alongside a new application before it can be processed.
• Proof of corporate registration with the Corporate Registry (Saskatchewan) or an equivalent agency, if you're applying as a corporation.
• The total number of units in the building, if it's a multi-unit dwelling, so the city can apply the 35 per cent cap.
• A passed fire inspection report for a secondary property unit, which the licence inspector is required to demand on the initial application.

That last item has teeth, and it's the step people underestimate. Regina's fire and safety specifications name the hardware: interconnected smoke alarms with 10-year lithium batteries in the bedrooms, a fire extinguisher on every floor, carbon monoxide detectors where they apply, monthly testing, quick-acting locksets on exterior doors, bedroom windows that meet code, no cooking appliances in bedrooms, and a posted fire safety plan.

You book that inspection through the city's [email protected] inbox. Watch out for the fee, because it isn't in Schedule A with the licence fees. The bylaw sets the fire inspection fee by reference to The Regina Fire Bylaw, 2018 instead, so budget for it separately on top of the $300.

Make sure the unit is lawful in the first place, too. The bylaw bars operating short-term accommodation in any unit whose use doesn't comply with The Regina Zoning Bylaw, 2019, The Regina Fire Bylaw, 2018 or The Uniform Building and Accessibility Standards Act. It also flatly prohibits operating out of a temporary structure, a vehicle, a recreational trailer, or an accessory building that isn't a legal suite.

In zoning language your rental runs as a "Service Trade, Homestay", which Chapter 2 of the zoning bylaw defines as a dwelling unit where short-term accommodation is provided.

Regina Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you clear the inspection and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and this is the section where an old myth catches people. Plenty of write-ups, including some that still rank near the top of a search, quote a "4 per cent Municipal Accommodation Tax" for Regina.

I went looking for it in the city's bylaws and in the province's own 2026 municipal legislation updates, and it isn't there. No municipal accommodation or hotel tax is in force in Regina. Treat that 4 per cent as wrong and budget for two taxes instead.

Charge	Rate	Who collects it
Saskatchewan Provincial Sales Tax	6%	Airbnb and Vrbo on platform bookings, you on direct ones
Federal GST	5%	The platform while you're under the $30,000 threshold, you once you're registered
Municipal accommodation tax	none in Regina	not applicable

Start with PST, since it reaches every host. The Government of Saskatchewan describes PST as "a six per cent sales tax that applies to taxable goods and services consumed or used in Saskatchewan", and Information Bulletin PST-46, revised in February 2025, lists lodging "for a period of less than 30 consecutive days" among the taxable services.

Bulletin PST-31 adds the two details that matter to a host. Tax applies to the total price charged excluding GST, and lodging supplied for a continuous period of 30 days or more isn't taxed at all.

Booking through Airbnb takes this off your hands. Airbnb's Saskatchewan tax page confirms it collects 6 per cent of the listing price, cleaning fees included, on every reservation of 30 nights or shorter. Take a booking directly, though, and it flips back to you. PST-31 is blunt that accommodation businesses have to be licensed with a PST number and that there's no minimum annual sales figure that excuses it, so don't forget to register before you take your first direct booking rather than after.

GST works on a different logic, and the dividing line is the $30,000 small-supplier threshold. Under the Canada Revenue Agency's small supplier rules, you're not required to register until your worldwide taxable supplies exceed $30,000 across the previous four calendar quarters.

Stay under it and the accommodation platform operator collects the 5 per cent for you, which is the digital-economy rule the CRA brought in for platforms like Airbnb. Cross it, register, and the obligation moves onto you. A GST-registered supplier charges and collects the tax themselves even on bookings the platform facilitated. The CRA counts a rental as taxable short-term accommodation where the guest occupies it continuously for less than one month and it costs more than $20 a night, which covers essentially every nightly listing in the city.

Then there's income tax, federal and provincial, on what you clear. The usual deductions apply where you can support them, though renting a room inside your own home means apportioning most expenses between personal and rental use. That's fiddlier on a return than it looks on a spreadsheet, so keep clean records from your first booking.

Saskatchewan Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those two taxes are the clearest illustration of how the province divides the work, because they're the only layer that lands on every Saskatchewan host identically. Above the city, the provincial picture is mostly defined by what the province has chosen not to do.

Saskatchewan has no province-wide short-term rental statute. No provincial registry, no blanket permit, no statutory cap. Regulation is delegated instead, and the Government of Saskatchewan sets out the split directly: cities operate pursuant to The Cities Act, northern municipalities under The Northern Municipalities Act, 2010, and everyone else under The Municipalities Act. Regina's bylaw cites sections 8 and 9 of The Cities Act as its authority. What you can and can't do therefore changes at the city limit.

The same page explains why no Saskatchewan city has a hotel tax. Municipalities hold what's called "natural persons powers", and the province is explicit about the limit of that: those powers "do not confer or expand any law-making, bylaw or taxing powers since natural persons don't have any such authority." A city can only levy a tax the legislature hands it. So an accommodation tax here needs an amendment to The Cities Act, not a council vote.

There was a live opportunity for exactly that amendment in 2026, and it went by. Bill 43, The Municipalities Modernization and Red Tape Reduction Act, received Royal Assent on May 14, 2026 and amended all three municipal Acts, bringing in stronger taxation and bylaw enforcement tools along with new transparency duties phased in between 2027 and 2028.

Going through the province's own summary of that package, though, nothing in it creates an accommodation or lodging tax. Saskatchewan mayors have been asking for one for a couple of years now, and my guess is that it's a question of when rather than whether. Until it lands, treat it as an open lobbying campaign rather than a rate to budget for.

Saskatoon is the natural comparison, and it runs a genuinely separate scheme: short-term accommodations are their own business licence category there, under Saskatoon's own bylaws, with its own fees and conditions. Weighing the two cities against each other means treating them as two regulatory environments, not one provincial standard.

Does Regina Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Given how modest the licence fee is, you might assume enforcement is an afterthought here. It isn't, and the vacancy freeze is the clearest sign the city means to hold the line.

Day to day, enforcement runs on complaints, which is normal for a market this size. The bylaw names the licence inspector as a specific set of people, from the City Manager down to a Licensing Officer, and designates them officers under The Cities Act. They can inspect a unit to verify compliance, and where someone refuses access or ignores a reasonable request, the city can apply for a warrant under section 325 of that Act.

The grounds for pulling a licence are broad. An inspector may suspend, revoke or refuse to issue or renew where fees go unpaid, where information was false or misleading, where the licensee breaches this or any other bylaw, or where the people staying at the unit have violated a City bylaw, including nuisance and neighbourhood amenity bylaws. That last one matters: your guests' behaviour is your licensing risk. There's also a catch-all for cases where continuing the licence isn't in the public interest.

Get a decision you disagree with and you have 30 days to appeal to the Regina Appeal Board, in writing, served on the City Clerk. Be aware that filing doesn't pause anything by itself. The bylaw says an appeal doesn't operate as a stay unless you ask for one and the Board grants it.

The platform layer is where the bylaw reaches furthest. On written request from the licence inspector, anyone providing a space to market a Regina short-term rental, physical or online, must remove or correct the identified listing within seven calendar days. Pair that with the licence number that has to appear in every advertisement, and an unlicensed listing is both easy to spot and quick to pull down.

The city built the programme to pay for itself. When council passed the bylaw unanimously in October 2020, administration and enforcement was budgeted at $75,000 a year, fully recovered through licensing and inspection fees.

Do keep the scale in perspective, though. In the year to November 2019, before any of this existed, the city counted 947 short-term accommodation listings, of which almost half were never rented and only 7 per cent were rented for more than half the year. Regina was never a big short-term rental market, and the freeze is deliberately keeping the licensed side of it small.

So the practical read splits two ways. Host your own home by the rules and you're unlikely to hear from anyone. Try to run a dedicated investment unit that can't be licensed under the current freeze and you're exposed to complaints, a seven-day takedown, and a fine that scales per unit, with no paperwork available to fix it until CMHC publishes a friendlier number.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Regina

Since the city enforces it that way, the order you work through the setup in matters, because the first two checks decide whether the rest is worth your time at all. Here's the sequence I'd follow.

1. Decide which licence you're after. Principal residence, or secondary property? That single answer sets your fee at $100 or $300 and tells you whether the vacancy freeze applies to you.
2. Check the freeze before anything else, if it's a secondary unit. The city's licence page carries the current vacancy rate. Below 3 per cent and a new secondary licence isn't available, so pivot to a 30-plus-day rental or a different city before you spend a dollar.
3. Confirm the zoning and the building cap. Check that the use qualifies as a Service Trade, Homestay and, in a stacked building of more than four units, that the 35 per cent cap still has room. Phone Service Regina if you're unsure.
4. Book the fire inspection for a secondary unit by emailing [email protected], and fit the alarms, extinguishers, detectors and locksets first so you pass the first time.
5. Assemble the documents. Principal residence proofs, the landlord consent form if you rent, your 24-hour contact, the land titles owner name, your listing URLs, and corporate registration if you're applying as a company.
6. Apply and pay through eBuild. Expect two to three business days, and remember the fee doesn't come back once you've applied.
7. Put the licence number in every listing the day you're approved, plus your invoices and receipts, and start your records: check-in and check-out dates for each rental, and whether you let the whole unit or part of it.
8. Post the emergency contact inside the unit, along with anything else the licence inspector requires guests to be given.
9. Sort out the tax before your first guest. Confirm the platform is collecting the 6 per cent PST and the 5 per cent GST, and register for your own PST number if you'll take direct bookings, or a GST number once you're past $30,000.
10. Diarize the renewal. The licence lasts a year, the notice lands about a month out, and you renew by emailing your licence number to [email protected].

Step one is the one worth slowing down on. A licensed spare bedroom and a licensed second condo are completely different businesses, and only one of them is available to a new applicant in Regina today, so model both in BNBCalc before you pick which application to file.

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

Whichever of those steps stalls, a handful of offices handle nearly all of it, and knowing which one owns your question will save you a long hold. Note that the counter moved recently: as of April 7, 2026, all in-person licensing services run out of Old Fire Hall #1 rather than City Hall.

Licensing, applications and renewals

The City of Regina's Licensing and Parking Services issues short-term accommodation licences and handles renewals.

• In person: Old Fire Hall #1, 1646 11th Avenue, Regina, SK
• By mail: City of Regina, Licensing & Parking Services, PO Box 1790, Regina, SK S4P 3C8
• Phone: 306-777-7717
• Fax: 306-751-4475
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: weekdays, 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., closed weekends and statutory holidays
• Apply or renew: the residential short-term accommodation licence page and the eBuild portal

Fire inspections

Secondary property units need a passed fire inspection before a licence issues, and it's booked separately from the application.

• Email: [email protected]
• The inspection fee is set under The Regina Fire Bylaw, 2018, not the licensing schedule

Zoning, building standards and general questions

For whether a unit qualifies as a Service Trade, Homestay, or anything that isn't licensing, start with Service Regina.

• Phone: 306-777-7000
• City Hall: Queen Elizabeth II Court, 2476 Victoria Avenue, Regina, SK S4P 3C8
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.

Appeals

A refusal, suspension or revocation goes to the Regina Appeal Board, and the appeal is served on the City Clerk within 30 days.

• Office of the City Clerk: Queen Elizabeth II Court, 2476 Victoria Avenue, Regina, SK S4P 3C8
• Email: [email protected]
• Fax: 306-777-6809

Provincial and federal tax

PST is provincial, GST is federal, and they're two different governments with two different phone trees.

• Saskatchewan Ministry of Finance, Revenue Division: PO Box 200, Regina, SK S4P 2Z6; toll free 1-800-667-6102; Regina 306-787-6645; [email protected]
• Canada Revenue Agency, business enquiries: 1-800-959-5525

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

Those offices will settle the mechanics for you. Host sentiment is harder to pin down, so treat what follows as my read of the public record rather than a survey. I'll be straight about the limits, too: I couldn't find substantive, Regina-specific short-term rental discussion on the big investor forums. The Saskatchewan threads I read on BiggerPockets are general networking posts rather than regulatory debates, and I didn't quote Reddit, since those communities block automated access and their data policy rules out mining them for a commercial guide.

So here are the themes I can actually support, with the evidence attached to each.

• The freeze is the whole story for investors. Everything else in this bylaw is cheap and quick. A rule that makes a new secondary licence unobtainable at any price isn't, and it changes the pitch from "buy and list" to "host your own home or go mid-term."
• Owner-occupier hosts have very little to complain about. A $100 fee, two or three business days, and no separate business licence is about as light as Canadian short-term rental regulation gets. Compare it with the registration regimes in Toronto or Vancouver and it barely registers.
• The fire inspection is the friction point on secondary units. Interconnected alarms, compliant bedroom windows and an inspection fee set by a different bylaw add cost and coordination that the $300 headline doesn't hint at.
• Nobody credible argues the rules go unenforced. A seven-day platform takedown, a licence number required in every ad, and a fine that scales per unit make an unlicensed listing both visible and expensive. What people debate is whether the freeze is fair, which is a separate argument.

Keep in mind that a market this small can turn on a single CMHC survey. Let Regina's vacancy rate climb back over 3 per cent and the secondary door reopens, at which point the arithmetic changes for every investor who'd written the city off. If that happens, or if you're weighing a principal-residence room share against a mid-term rental right now, the Regina market data on BNBCalc Markets will show you the occupancy and nightly rates before you commit to a licence type.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you run an Airbnb in Regina in 2026?

Yes, with a City of Regina licence, though the property type decides your options. If the unit is your principal residence, a Residential Short Term Accommodation licence costs $100 a year and applications are open. If it's a secondary investment property, new licences are frozen because Regina's vacancy rate is 2.6 per cent, below the bylaw's 3 per cent threshold. Existing secondary licences can still be renewed.

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

Schedule A of Bylaw 2020-70 sets the principal residence unit licence at $100 a year and the secondary property unit licence at $300 a year. Secondary units also pay a separate fire inspection fee set under The Regina Fire Bylaw, 2018. All licence fees are non-refundable once you apply, unless the licence inspector refuses to issue the licence, in which case the fee is returned. A licence lasts one year from issue.

Why can't I get a new short-term rental licence for my Regina investment property?

Because of the bylaw's vacancy-rate rule. Section 25 stops the city issuing new licences whenever the Regina Census Metropolitan Area vacancy rate falls below 3 per cent in the most recent CMHC Rental Market Survey. That rate was 2.6 per cent in mid-2026, so new secondary licences are on hold until a later survey shows 3 per cent or above. The freeze doesn't apply to principal residence applications or to renewals of licences held within the previous 90 days.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in Regina?

Two. Saskatchewan's 6 per cent Provincial Sales Tax applies to lodging supplied for less than 30 consecutive days, and the federal 5 per cent GST applies on stays under one month costing more than $20 a night. Airbnb collects the PST on reservations of 30 nights or shorter, and the platform collects the GST for hosts under the $30,000 small-supplier threshold. Regina has no municipal accommodation or hotel tax, despite older guides quoting a 4 per cent figure.

Do I need a business licence to run an Airbnb in Regina?

No separate one. Section 18 of Bylaw 2020-70 exempts short-term accommodation operators from Regina's residential business licence, which otherwise costs $195 a year and takes four to six weeks. The Residential Short Term Accommodation licence is the only city permission the rental needs. Tax registrations are different: you may still need a PST number from Saskatchewan and a GST number from the Canada Revenue Agency.

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