Brentwood Bay, Canada Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Brentwood Bay and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can settle the question in about five minutes, because in 2026 it comes down to one thing, and that's the zone your property sits in. Unfortunately for most people reading this, that zone check comes back no.

Brentwood Bay isn't its own municipality, and that trips people up before they've even started. It's a village inside the District of Central Saanich, on the Saanich Peninsula in British Columbia's Capital Regional District, so the bylaws that decide this are Central Saanich's rather than Victoria's or Saanich's. The District's current Zoning Bylaw No. 2270, 2026 treats "Short Term Rental Accommodation" as a named land use and lists the zones that may host it. Since the same bylaw says a use permitted in one zone is prohibited in every other, a house or condo on a residential street in Brentwood Bay falls outside that list.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: which zones can take a short stay in 2026, what the province piles on top, the tax layers, how enforcement works on the Peninsula, and who to call at the municipal hall when your situation doesn't fit the mould. Every figure below comes from Central Saanich's own bylaws or from British Columbia's legislation, checked in July 2026, and where I couldn't confirm something I've said so. Before you spend a dollar on furniture, run the property through BNBCalc at both nightly and monthly rates, since the monthly one is probably the number that ends up mattering here.

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

That zone check carries so much weight because two separate governments regulate this, and only the local one looks at your address. Central Saanich decides whether the use is allowed on your lot at all, while British Columbia decides whether you're allowed to advertise it once the District has said yes. Get a no from the first and the second never comes into play.

Start with the definition, because it's wider than most people expect. Zoning Bylaw No. 2270 defines Short Term Rental Accommodation as the use of a dwelling unit, or a portion of one, for temporary overnight accommodation for a period of less than 90 consecutive days. Then it carves out hotels, bed and breakfasts and anything in a tent, camper, recreation vehicle or trailer.

Ninety days, mind you, not thirty. So a two-month furnished let in Brentwood Bay counts as a short-term rental to the District, even though most Canadian municipalities would call that a medium-term tenancy and leave it alone.

The permission side is much shorter, since Short Term Rental Accommodation shows up as a permitted principal use in three zones only: Tourist Commercial (C-T), Marina Commercial (C-M) and Brentwood Lodge Marina Commercial (C-BL). On top of those, the bylaw adds it on a site-specific basis to two Brentwood Bay properties in the R-A (Residential Apartment) zone, at 7247 West Saanich Road and 851 Brentwood Drive, and it names both by legal description and PID so there's no argument about which buildings are meant.

Those five spots are the whole list, because section 3.1 of the bylaw shuts the rest of the door: "Where a particular land use is expressly permitted in a zone or zones, such land use is prohibited in all other zones."

Three consequences follow from that one sentence, and they're the ones that catch people out:

• Your secondary suite can't do it either. Section 4.5 says secondary dwelling units are for residential purposes only, "shall not be used as a Bed and Breakfast or Short-Term Rental Accommodation", and "must be rented for an occupancy period of more than 30 days". So the suite, the cottage and the carriage house are all closed off, which removes the workaround that works in plenty of other B.C. communities.
• A home occupation licence won't get you there. Section 5.4 restricts a minor home occupation to family members living in the dwelling, bars any exterior sign of the business and allows no patrons on site. Accommodation is its own defined use in the bylaw, so it can't ride in under a different name.
• Bed and breakfast is a separate use with its own address list. Under section 5.1, a B&B runs to a maximum of four bedrooms inside a single detached dwelling, offers no second kitchen for guests, and requires the operator both to live in the dwelling and to be on site while it's operating. It's permitted as an accessory use in the Agriculture (A) zone, plus one named rural property at 8133 Rae-Leigh Place in the Rural Forest (RU-F) zone, capped there at three bedrooms.

None of this is a new position for the District, either. Its older Short Term Rental Accommodations bulletin already told residents in plain words that "short term rentals are not permitted in residential zones".

That bulletin was written against the older Land Use Bylaw No. 1309, so its zone letters are out of date, though the principle survived the rewrite intact.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Brentwood Bay

Since the District has held that line for years rather than months, the answer for most owners is still a disappointing one, because there's no nightly-rate business here to start. If your plan was to buy a place near the marina, furnish it, and rent it whole on Airbnb for summer weekends, the zoning bylaw says no before any of the interesting questions get asked. No licence unlocks it, no company structure gets around it, and no fee buys the right, because the permission simply isn't written into the residential zones.

There is still a narrow set of things that do work, and it's worth knowing which one you're in before you spend money:

• A minimum stay of 30 nights. This is the pivot most Brentwood Bay owners end up making. A tenancy of 30 days or more falls outside the secondary-suite restriction and outside British Columbia's registration regime, and it lands under ordinary residential tenancy law instead. Do count the nights properly, though, since the zoning definition of a short-term rental runs to 90 days, so a 45-night furnished let is still a short-term rental to the District even while the province has stopped caring.
• A property already zoned for it. C-T, C-M and C-BL are commercial zones near the water and the village core rather than residential streets, so this route generally means buying commercial, not converting residential.
• One of the two named addresses. If you own at 7247 West Saanich Road or 851 Brentwood Drive, the bylaw permits the use on your specific parcel. Everyone else on a residential street is on the outside of that line.
• A bed and breakfast on agricultural land. Four bedrooms maximum, you living there, you on site during the stay, and the Agricultural Land Commission has its own say over what happens on ALR parcels.
• A rezoning or an official community plan amendment. The District runs these through its rezoning and development application process, and the best moment to make your case is the scheduled public hearing. Under section 493 of the Local Government Act a temporary use permit can also allow a use the zoning bylaw doesn't, running three years and renewable once, but that route only opens where the community plan or zoning bylaw has designated temporary use permit areas. I couldn't confirm from a published Central Saanich document whether any have been designated here, so treat it as a question for the planning department rather than a plan.

One thing that used to save long-running operators has quietly disappeared. Section 36 of the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act removed legal non-conforming use protection for short-term rentals, so a Brentwood Bay owner who has been renting nightly since well before the bylaw was written no longer gets to continue on the strength of having started first. That was the single biggest change for hosts across the province, and it's the reason a lot of Peninsula listings that looked settled in 2023 are not settled now.

Owners who reach this point and still want a nightly-rate market usually start looking up-Island or up the Fraser Valley, where several municipalities license short-term rentals rather than zoning them out. Our Chilliwack guide and Abbotsford guide cover the Valley, while the Merritt guide and the Hope guide cover two smaller B.C. markets where the principal residence requirement lands differently.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Brentwood Bay

Back in Brentwood Bay, though, assuming your property is one of the few that clears zoning, you're looking at two licences from two governments, and the municipal one comes first for a practical reason. Central Saanich says every business needs a business licence and has to display it at the place of business, with annual fees as of July 2026 of $50 for a home-based business, $100 for a small commercial premises up to 464.5 m², and $200 above that. Farm-based licences run $25 and the inter-municipal licence is $100.

Staff review each application for zoning and building compliance before the invoice goes out, so the zoning question gets asked whether or not you raise it.

That review is where an ineligible property stops. Business Licence Bylaw No. 2166 states at section 6(g) that "no business license shall be granted where the premises that the business will be conducted on or from is in contravention of the bylaws of the municipality regulating business, building, zoning or land use". Section 7(a) then lets the License Inspector grant a licence only once satisfied that the applicant has complied with the District's business, building, zoning and land use bylaws, along with applicable federal, provincial and regional legislation. So applying anyway doesn't create a grey area. It creates a file.

The provincial side runs in parallel, and it's mandatory even where the District is content, so every short-term rental unit offered in B.C. needs its own provincial registration. As of July 2026 that costs $100 a year where you live in the unit and $450 where you don't, plus a $1.50 service fee either way, and one registration covers a unit however many platforms it's listed on.

Registrations then renew annually, with the window opening 40 days before expiry and reminder emails landing at 40 days, 14 days and one day out. Where the local government requires a business licence, a copy of the valid licence has to be uploaded with the application or the renewal, which is the mechanism that ties the provincial registry back to Central Saanich's zoning review.

Then there's the requirement that decides the outcome for most owners. Central Saanich appears in Schedule 2 of B.C. Reg. 268/2023 as a large municipality, and it doesn't appear in Schedule 1 as exempt land, which means the province's principal residence requirement applies here in full. Under section 14 of the Act you can only offer short-term rental services in your principal residence, or in not more than one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit on the same property.

Since the District's bylaw has already ruled out the suite, what's left provincially is the home you live in, and the province lists Central Saanich alongside North Saanich, Saanich, Sidney and Victoria among the communities where the rule bites. Certain strata-titled hotels and motels, time shares, home exchanges and fractional ownership arrangements sit outside it, while hotels and motels fall outside the Act altogether under section 3.

Once you hold both, section 13 of the Act requires the listing itself to carry the valid business licence number, where a licence is required, and the valid registration number. Neither is optional decoration, and the penalty schedule treats a missing number as its own contravention.

Required Documents for Brentwood Bay, Canada Short-Term Rentals

Since the numbers on the listing have to match paperwork that already exists, it's worth assembling the file before you start either application rather than halfway through. The provincial registry asks for proof of identity, meaning a B.C. driver's licence or Services Card, plus at least two supporting documents from a set that includes a land title certificate, a property assessment notice, home insurance, a property tax notice and a banking statement.

Renting rather than owning adds a tenancy agreement or a rent increase notice to that list, and a valid business licence copy goes in wherever the local government requires one.

Central Saanich's side is lighter but matters more, since it's the piece that gets rejected. You'll complete the District's business licence application form, online or printed, and an initial licence for a commercial business also needs a detailed floor plan of the premises. Staff then run the zoning and building analysis, an invoice follows, and the licence is mailed once it's paid.

Renewals are annual and carry no charge, though the form still has to be completed, and a late renewal costs half the original fee.

Two smaller details are worth getting right the first time. A licence under Bylaw No. 2166 is personal to the licensee and can't be transferred to anyone else, so a sale doesn't carry it across to the buyer. And if your property sits in the Agricultural Land Reserve, the zoning bylaw's own notes warn that the Agricultural Land Commission Act may limit permitted and accessory uses regardless of what the zone says. That's a second approval to confirm before you commit to a bed and breakfast plan.

Brentwood Bay Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you're able to get through all of that and start hosting, there's still tax to sort out, and Brentwood Bay is unusually simple on this one front. Two taxes attach to a short stay here rather than the three or four that a guest pays in Victoria, because Central Saanich has never joined the regional accommodation tax that its neighbours collect.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
GST	5%	The host if GST-registered, otherwise the platform
PST on accommodation	8%	The host, or the online marketplace facilitator
MRDT (regional accommodation tax)	none in Central Saanich	not applicable
Municipal accommodation tax	none	not applicable

The provincial piece is the bigger of the two. B.C. charges 8% PST on sales of short-term accommodation unless a specific exemption applies, and in participating areas an additional Municipal and Regional District Tax of up to 3% rides on top of it. Central Saanich isn't one of those areas.

Reading the Designated Accommodation Area Tax Regulation as consolidated to 11 August 2026, the District appears in neither schedule, while the City of Victoria sits at 3%, the District of Saanich at 2%, Oak Bay at 2% and Langford at 2%. So a guest paying for a night in Brentwood Bay pays PST and GST and nothing regional, which is a real, if modest, price advantage over a room ten minutes down the highway.

Three PST exemptions matter to a small operator, and one of them is easy to lose by accident. Accommodation is exempt where the provider doesn't list on an online marketplace platform and had under $2,500 of gross accommodation revenue in the previous 12 months while reasonably expecting under $2,500 in the next 12. It's exempt as well where the charge is $30 or less per day or $210 or less per week, again unless it's listed on an online marketplace.

Then the third one, which is the useful one here: accommodation is exempt where the same person stays for a continuous period of 27 days or more, so a monthly furnished let is cleaner on tax as well as on zoning. Keep in mind that listing on Airbnb or Vrbo removes the first two exemptions outright, so the platform decision changes the tax answer.

Collection is mostly handled for you, but the liability isn't. Online marketplace facilitators have to register and collect both PST and MRDT on accommodation sold through their platforms, so a host selling only through a registered facilitator doesn't need to register for PST.

You remain jointly and severally liable, though, for anything the facilitator fails to hand over on your accommodation, which is a good reason to keep the platform's tax statements rather than bin them at year end.

Federal GST works on a similar split. The CRA's guidance on platform-based short-term accommodation puts 5% GST on accommodation occupied for less than one month at more than $20 per night, and a GST-registered host charges and collects it themselves even on platform bookings, while an unregistered host has the platform operator do the collecting instead. Registration turns mandatory once taxable supplies pass $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters, the small-supplier test.

Do remember that platforms report host and property data to the CRA under Part XX of the Income Tax Act, so the revenue side of this is visible whether or not you file it.

Potential Tax Deductions for Short-Term Rental Hosts

Deductions are where an illegal Brentwood Bay listing turns from a bylaw problem into a tax problem, and this is the part that surprises people. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act denies expense deductions for a "non-compliant short-term rental", defined as one operated in a place that doesn't permit short-term rentals, or one that fails to meet all applicable registration, licensing and permit requirements. The denied share is calculated as expenses multiplied by non-compliant days divided by total short-term rental days, and it has applied to tax years after 2023.

Run that against a residential Brentwood Bay address and every day is a non-compliant day, because the zoning bylaw doesn't permit the use there at all. Mortgage interest, insurance, utilities, cleaning, property tax, platform fees, none of it comes off the income. The CRA's own explainer on the change sets out the mechanics, and the effect is that a gross number you were treating as revenue is closer to taxable profit.

Where the property is properly zoned, licensed and registered, ordinary deductions apply as normal, and a stay of 90 consecutive days or more sits outside the definition of a short-term rental entirely.

British Columbia Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Since that deduction rule turns on whether you're following provincial and local rules, it's worth understanding the provincial framework in its own right rather than as background noise. British Columbia's Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act arrived in late 2023 and rolled out in stages, and the version I read is consolidated to 11 August 2026.

The principal residence requirement came into force on 1 May 2024, limiting short-term rentals to a host's principal residence plus one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit in the communities it covers. It applies in municipalities over 10,000 people and in smaller communities close to larger ones, and the list shifts each year through opt-in and opt-out requests filed by 28 February.

From 2027, a municipality with a rental vacancy rate of at least 3% for two consecutive years can apply to opt out with a 1 June effective date, which is the mechanism to watch if you want the Peninsula rules to loosen.

The registry came next, and every host has needed a provincial registration number displayed on their listings since 1 May 2025, with the platforms pulled in behind it: from 2 June 2025 they had to stop advertising unregistered listings, and from 23 June 2025 cancel their future bookings. The province is blunt about what happens now if you skip it, saying an unregistered listing gets removed from platforms, existing bookings cancelled and no new reservations accepted, and platforms must also pull down non-compliant listings when a local government asks them to.

Two further changes give the whole structure teeth, and both matter more in a place like Central Saanich than in a city with its own licensing bylaw. Legal non-conforming use protection no longer applies to short-term rentals, so history is no defence. And the maximum bylaw ticket fine available to municipalities rose from $1,000 to $3,000 per infraction per day, with regional district prosecution fines going from $2,000 to $50,000. A council that used to find enforcement more trouble than it was worth can now write a far bigger ticket, whether or not it has an STR bylaw of its own.

Elsewhere in the province the picture varies a lot, since the province sets the floor and each municipality builds on it differently. The Maple Ridge guide is a useful comparison for a Metro Vancouver municipality that licenses rather than prohibits, and it shows how much the local layer changes the answer even under identical provincial law.

Does Brentwood Bay Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Back on the Peninsula, enforcement comes from two directions at once, and the provincial one is considerably sharper than the municipal one. Central Saanich states plainly that bylaw enforcement is complaint-driven, meaning staff respond to concerns residents bring forward rather than patrolling for violations. A file opens when a complaint arrives from someone within 100 metres of the property, or when two separate complaints come in from unrelated Central Saanich residents, or when the matter is high priority. Bylaw Notice tickets cover zoning violations along with parking and noise, payable within 14 days at a reduced rate.

That threshold tells you something useful about the risk. A listing that never bothers a neighbour may run for a long time without a file being opened, whereas a busy nightly rental on a quiet residential street in Brentwood Bay generates exactly the two-complaints-from-unrelated-residents pattern the policy describes. On top of that, Business Licence Bylaw No. 2166 makes each day a violation continues a separate offence and sets a summary conviction fine of not less than $100 and not more than $10,000, so an unlicensed operation isn't a one-time cost.

The province doesn't wait for a neighbour, though. Its Compliance and Enforcement Unit sits inside the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs, takes tips through a public form, and can compel records, issue compliance orders, impose administrative monetary penalties, seek Supreme Court injunctions and publish its decisions.

And the penalty maximums in Schedule 4 of the provincial regulation are real money. Breaching the principal residence requirement or failing to register at all runs from $5,000 up to $10,000 for repeat contraventions, leaving a registration or business licence number off a listing runs $500 to $1,000, and a platform that fails to verify a number faces $10,000 to $20,000.

So far the province has published only one decision, though it shows clearly enough how those maximums turn into an actual bill. Its summary of the Wilman penalty, issued 26 March 2025, records a public tip arriving on 25 June 2024 and an investigation finding three City of Victoria properties let short-term in breach of the principal residence requirement.

The director then set the penalty at $400 per property per day for the month of September 2024 alone, which came to $34,400. The respondent had already delisted in October 2024 after being educated by the investigator, only to re-list that December, and the application to review the decision was dismissed.

Two things in that file are worth carrying into your own thinking. The penalty was calculated on a single month, so the total climbs fast if a longer period ever gets assessed. And the case started with a member of the public filling in a form, which is exactly the route available to a Brentwood Bay neighbour who really doesn't like the suitcases next door. Be aware that the platform layer bites first in practice anyway, because an unregistered listing tends to vanish from Airbnb long before anyone writes you a ticket.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Brentwood Bay

Since the platform can end this well before an inspector does, the order of the steps below still matters more than it looks. The cheap checks all sit at the top, and the expensive commitments sit at the bottom.

1. Confirm your zone before anything else. Use the District's interactive zoning map, or call Planning on 250-544-4209, and find out whether your parcel is C-T, C-M, C-BL, or one of the two named site-specific properties. A residential zone is a no, and everything below is moot.
2. Check whether the property is inside the Agricultural Land Reserve. If it is, the Agricultural Land Commission has a say over the use on top of the zone, and a bed and breakfast may be the only accommodation option available.
3. Decide honestly between nightly and monthly. A 30-night minimum takes you out of the provincial regime, and a 90-night minimum takes you out of the District's definition as well. Make sure you count from check-in, and set the platform minimum rather than relying on guests to book long.
4. Read the strata bylaws if you're in a strata. A strata corporation can restrict or ban short-term rentals independently of the zone, and the two site-specific Brentwood Bay properties are both strata or multi-unit buildings.
5. Apply for the Central Saanich business licence. Complete the application, expect a zoning and building review, and budget $50 for a home-based business or $100 for a small commercial premises. Nothing gets issued if the use contravenes the zoning bylaw.
6. Register with the provincial short-term rental registry. Have your identity document and two supporting documents ready, along with your business licence copy, and pay $100 if you live in the unit or $450 if you don't, plus the $1.50 service fee.
7. Put both numbers on every listing. The Act requires the valid registration number and, where a licence is required, the business licence number, on the short-term rental offer itself.
8. Sort out tax before your first guest. Confirm whether the platform is collecting PST and GST for you, keep its statements, and check the $30,000 GST small-supplier threshold against your projection.
9. Diarize the annual renewal. The provincial registration renews yearly with the window opening 40 days before expiry, and the District's business licence renews annually too, so a lapse on either one puts the listing at risk.

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

Wherever you get stuck in that sequence, one building handles almost all of it, because Brentwood Bay's municipal services run out of the Central Saanich hall in Saanichton rather than anywhere in the village itself.

District of Central Saanich Municipal Hall

• Address: 1903 Mount Newton Cross Road, Saanichton, BC V8M 2A9
• Main line: 250-652-4444
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Inside that building, Planning and Building Services is the office that answers the zoning question, so it's the right first call for anyone weighing a rezoning, a temporary use permit or a bed and breakfast on agricultural land.

• Phone: 250-544-4209
• Email: [email protected]

Bylaw Enforcement then handles complaints and the tickets that follow them, and the same number reaches the Business Licence Officer.

• Phone: 250-544-4237
• Email: [email protected]
• After hours: Central Saanich Police non-emergency, 250-652-4441

The provincial layer sits elsewhere, though. The registry and the principal residence requirement belong to the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs, reachable through ServiceBC on 1-833-828-2240, while questions about PST on accommodation go to the Consumer Taxation Programs Branch on 1-877-388-4440 or [email protected]. Reports about a listing that looks non-compliant go to the Compliance and Enforcement Unit's public tip form rather than to the District.

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

That tip form is part of why hosting here gets talked about the way it does, and I should be upfront that what follows is my editorial read of public discussion rather than a survey. Reddit blocks automated access and its platform terms don't permit the commercial data use a proper survey would need, so I haven't sampled threads and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. What I can point to is the documented record, which lines up with three themes B.C. hosts raise again and again.

The first is that investors have largely stopped looking at the Peninsula for nightly rentals. When the principal residence requirement removed non-resident owners from the market in May 2024, and the registry made the rule checkable a year later, the entire-unit model that most investors want stopped being available at any price in communities like Central Saanich. Discussion in B.C. host circles moved quickly toward 30-plus-night furnished tenancies and toward the resort municipalities that sit outside the requirement.

The second is that resident hosts complain about the paperwork rather than the principle, because matching a business licence to a registration and keeping both renewals in sync is fiddly for people who are otherwise fully entitled to host. Central Saanich adds a wrinkle that Victoria and Saanich don't, since there's no municipal short-term rental licence to hold at all, which leaves owners trying to satisfy a provincial form with a municipality that has no category for them.

The third is that the loss of grandfathering still generates real anger. Section 36 of the Act took away protection owners had relied on for years, and it hit hardest the people who had operated openly and paid their taxes on the strength of it. That's a fair grievance, and it's also settled law, so don't build a plan around it changing.

Before you decide where to buy instead, the Canada market data is the place to compare revenue and occupancy market by market, and it argues for looking outside a prohibited zone better than any paragraph I can write.

The wider point reaches well past one village on Vancouver Island, mind you. Once a rule is enforced at the payment layer, by the platform rather than by an inspector, you can't price the risk into a spreadsheet any more, because the listing never takes a booking in the first place. So check the zone first, always, and let the spreadsheet come second.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Brentwood Bay in 2026?

Only if your property sits in one of a handful of zones. Brentwood Bay is part of the District of Central Saanich, whose Zoning Bylaw No. 2270, 2026 permits Short Term Rental Accommodation in the Tourist Commercial, Marina Commercial and Brentwood Lodge Marina Commercial zones, plus two named properties at 7247 West Saanich Road and 851 Brentwood Drive. Residential zones are excluded, and the bylaw prohibits any use not expressly permitted in a zone. Secondary suites and carriage houses must be rented for more than 30 days.

Does the BC principal residence requirement apply in Central Saanich?

Yes. B.C. Reg. 268/2023 lists the Corporation of the District of Central Saanich in Schedule 2 as a large municipality, and it does not appear in Schedule 1 as exempt land, so short-term rentals are limited to a host's principal residence plus at most one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit. Central Saanich's own zoning bylaw already bars short-term use of a secondary dwelling unit, which narrows it further to the home the host lives in.

How much does short-term rental registration cost in Brentwood Bay?

British Columbia charges $100 a year to register a short-term rental in the unit where you live and $450 where you don't, plus a $1.50 service fee, renewed annually. A Central Saanich business licence is separate and costs $50 a year for a home-based business, $100 for a small commercial premises up to 464.5 m² and $200 above that. The District will not issue a licence where the premises contravene its zoning bylaw.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in Brentwood Bay?

Two. British Columbia charges 8% PST on short-term accommodation, and the federal government charges 5% GST on accommodation occupied for less than a month at over $20 a night. Central Saanich has no Municipal and Regional District Tax and no municipal accommodation tax, unlike Victoria at 3% and Saanich at 2%. Booking platforms registered as online marketplace facilitators generally collect PST and GST for unregistered hosts, though the host stays jointly liable for anything the platform fails to remit.

What happens if you rent short-term in Brentwood Bay anyway?

Two enforcement systems can reach you. Central Saanich's complaint-driven bylaw enforcement can ticket a zoning violation and treat each continuing day as a separate offence, with a summary conviction fine between $100 and $10,000 under its business licence bylaw. British Columbia's Compliance and Enforcement Unit can impose administrative penalties up to $10,000 for repeat contraventions, and it issued a $34,400 penalty against a Victoria host in March 2025. Platforms also delist unregistered listings.

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