Laval Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Laval and you're wondering whether you can put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is, you can. Laval permits short-term rentals across the city, and it hasn't followed Montreal's lead in banning them, which is worth knowing up front because Montreal sits right across the river and gets treated as the regional benchmark by a lot of first-time hosts.

What you can't do is skip Quebec's provincial paperwork. Since 2023, every short-term rental in the province, Laval included, needs a registration number from the Corporation de l'industrie touristique du Québec, known as CITQ, before it can legally take a single booking. Airbnb and Vrbo are required to check for that number, so an unregistered listing in Laval doesn't quietly fly under the radar. It gets refused at the platform level.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in 2026: what CITQ registration costs and requires, the municipal side Laval still controls, the three tax layers that stack on a Laval stay, and how hard the province and the city enforce it. Everything below comes from Quebec's own government pages and Laval's own site, checked in July 2026. Where something is still political rather than settled, I've said so. If you're weighing a Laval property against other Canadian markets, run the numbers through BNBCalc first.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Laval

That CITQ number is the whole ballgame, so it's worth understanding what it represents before you spend a dollar on furniture. Quebec's Act respecting tourist accommodation establishments covers any rental of 31 consecutive days or fewer to a tourist, anywhere in the province, and Laval doesn't get its own carve-out. Renting a room in your primary home, an entire condo you own but don't live in, a chalet, a basement suite: all of it falls under the same provincial regime, in different registration categories.

The provincial law changed the ground under Laval's feet in 2023, and it's worth knowing exactly how. Bill 67, passed after a fire in an illegal Old Montreal rental killed several people, did two things. As of March 25, 2023, a municipality can no longer zone-ban short-term rental of someone's own primary residence, not through an outright prohibition and not through a sneakier route like a contingency cap or a rule targeting multi-unit buildings.

A city that wants to override that needs a specific referendum: a registry open across every zone, a signature threshold from 25% of affected residents, then a majority vote. Laval hasn't gone anywhere near that process. And as of September 1, 2023, Airbnb, Vrbo and every other platform are barred from even displaying a Laval listing that lacks a valid CITQ number.

Here's the part that separates Laval from its more famous neighbor, and it's worth sitting with for a second. Montreal announced in January 2025 that it would ban most entire-unit short-term rentals in principal residences outright, with only a summer window and a Grand Prix exception carved out. Laval's mayor's office was asked directly whether it would follow suit.

The answer, reported by local outlet Média Laval in January 2025, was no. The city's communications director said Laval is prioritizing faster housing construction instead of a rental ban, and nothing since suggests that's changed. Still, municipal politics can move faster than a guide gets updated. Do check Laval's own council agenda before you commit serious money to a whole-unit rental play.

One more thing the province didn't loosen: municipalities kept full zoning power over anything that isn't your own primary residence. If your plan involves an investment condo, a secondary property, or a whole house you don't personally live in, Laval can still restrict that use to particular zones, the same way it always could.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Laval

Given that zoning distinction, the first real decision is which CITQ category you fall into, because it determines both your cost and your paperwork. CITQ registration comes in three categories, and as of July 2026 the annual fees are $54 for a principal residence establishment, $156 for a general tourist accommodation establishment, and $131 for a youth tourist accommodation establishment.

If you live in the unit and it's your actual home, you're almost certainly in the cheapest bracket. Rent out a condo you own but don't live in, and you land in the general category at three times the fee. Know which one you are first.

Getting the registration itself isn't a one-form process, though the form is short once you've gathered everything behind it. Quebec requires a short list: proof of ownership or your lease, at least $2,000,000 in civil liability insurance per occurrence, a lease clause or co-ownership declaration that authorizes tourist rental, and interior and exterior photos. Before any of that goes to CITQ, you also need a municipal compliance notice from Laval confirming your address doesn't contravene local zoning.

That last document is the one people underestimate. You can't apply to the province until the city has signed off. City first. Then CITQ. Not the other way around.

Once you're registered, the number is good for 12 months, and CITQ recommends starting the process a few weeks before you plan to take your first guest, since assembling the paperwork takes real time. Renewal has to happen within 60 days of expiry through the Portail CITQ, and a registration can't be transferred to a new owner if you sell. Buy a property that already has a CITQ number attached, and you're still starting from zero.

Quebec has also been tightening this process steadily rather than leaving it alone, so treat 2026 as a moving target rather than a fixed one. Two more rounds of changes are already scheduled. From April 9, 2026, your registration number has to appear in every piece of advertising including social media, and your certificate needs to be posted at the guest entrance rather than somewhere in the building.

From September 1, 2026, applicants need two separate proofs of principal residence instead of one, and annual renewal requires fresh owner or co-ownership consent every single year, not only when you first registered.

Quebec's own announcement frames these as fraud-prevention measures. The compliance numbers back that up: listings simultaneously posted on Airbnb and Vrbo went from 34.5% compliant in 2022 to 87.6% in 2025.

Required Documents for Laval Short Term Rentals

Since that compliance jump didn't happen by accident, it's worth getting your own paperwork right the first time rather than bouncing back and forth with CITQ. Here's what to have ready before you start either application:

• Proof you own or lease the unit. A title document, a recent property tax notice, or your lease agreement.
• Civil liability insurance of at least $2,000,000 per occurrence. Get this in place before you apply, since CITQ asks for proof of it up front.
• Authorization to rent short-term. For a tenant, the actual lease clause permitting it. For a condo, the relevant excerpt from your co-ownership declaration.
• Interior and exterior photos of the unit you're registering.
• Laval's municipal compliance notice, confirming the address clears local zoning. Apply for this through the city before you touch the CITQ portal.
• Two proofs of principal residence, if you're registering in that category. This becomes a firm requirement from September 1, 2026, so gather it now rather than scrambling later.

Do check your co-ownership declaration carefully if you're in a condo, because plenty of Laval buildings still carry older language that predates the short-term rental boom and either bans it outright or stays silent in a way that reads as a ban. That's a fight worth having with your board before you spend money on furniture, not after.

Laval Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you clear the registration gauntlet and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to collect on every stay. Three separate layers can attach to a Laval short-term rental, and because two different levels of government administer them, it's worth taking each one on its own terms rather than lumping them together.

Tax	Rate	Collected by
Lodging tax (taxe sur l'hébergement)	3.5% of the nightly rate	Revenu Québec, or the platform on its behalf
GST (TPS)	5%	Canada Revenue Agency, administered by Revenu Québec
QST (TVQ)	9.975%	Revenu Québec

The lodging tax is Quebec's own, and it applies only to the nightly rate itself, not breakfast, parking, or any add-on fees. Laval sits inside one of the Quebec tourism regions where the tax applies, which covers nearly the whole province, so this isn't a rate you can plan around.

What's worth knowing is who remits it. If Airbnb or another platform is registered for the lodging-tax file and collects the full guest payment on your behalf, the platform handles collection and remittance for you, and you don't need to separately register for that file. Take a booking directly, by contrast, or through a platform that only collects part of the payment, and the obligation to register, collect and remit falls back on you.

GST and QST stack on top at a combined 14.975%, calculated on the nightly rate plus the lodging tax plus anything else bundled into the stay. Small suppliers, meaning anyone under $30,000 in taxable revenue across the current and prior four quarters combined, are normally exempt from registering for these taxes.

Just be aware that this exemption doesn't fully protect a platform-based host: a registered platform still has to collect GST and QST on bookings it facilitates, regardless of whether the host personally clears the small-supplier threshold. In practice, that means most Laval hosts booking through Airbnb see these taxes collected automatically either way.

Rental income itself is ordinary taxable income on top of all three of those, and Revenu Québec's five-step guide walks through CITQ registration, the lodging-tax file, the GST/QST file, collection and remittance, and your income tax return in that order. Working through it in sequence saves you from registering for a file you didn't need. Once you've stacked all three taxes against a realistic nightly rate, BNBCalc Markets is a fast way to see whether a Laval unit still clears enough to be worth the paperwork.

Laval-wide Short Term Rental Rules

That five-step sequence assumes you already know whether your specific unit is allowed to operate, and that's where Laval's own zoning still matters even after the provincial changes. Land use across the city runs through the Code de l'urbanisme, administered by the Service de l'urbanisme, and any new or changed use of a building requires a certificate of occupancy.

For a homeowner adding tourist accommodation as a secondary use inside an already-residential building, that certificate runs $82. A new commercial use costs more, starting at $273 for the first 250 square meters of floor space plus $191 for each additional tranche.

I have to be honest about a gap here: I couldn't find a published zone-by-zone map from Laval spelling out exactly where non-primary-residence tourist accommodation, meaning an investment condo or a whole secondary property you don't live in, is zoned yes or no. The province's March 2023 protection only covers your own primary residence.

Everything else is still fully subject to Laval's ordinary zoning discretion, the same as any other commercial-adjacent use, and the city's interactive zoning tool wasn't accessible to confirm the specifics address by address. Do check with Laval's Service de l'urbanisme directly before buying a property purely to run it as an unhosted short-term rental, rather than assuming the zoning will cooperate.

Laval is also partway through a broader rewrite of its planning code, with public consultation running through revisionurbanisme.laval.ca as of this research. Nothing there has changed the short-term rental picture yet, but keep an eye on it if you're planning years out rather than months.

Does Laval strictly enforce STR rules?

Given how much of this now runs on a provincial registration number rather than a purely local permit, enforcement in Laval is a story about Quebec-wide enforcement more than anything the city does on its own. Revenu Québec runs the inspections and investigations behind the Act respecting tourist accommodation establishments, and the province created a dedicated Bureau de l'encadrement en hébergement touristique inside the Tourism Ministry specifically to coordinate that work with municipalities like Laval.

The penalty structure is genuinely steep, and it scales with whether you're an individual or a company. Operating without any registration carries a fine of $2,500 to $25,000 for an individual, and $5,000 to $50,000 for a company, per violation. Keep operating after your registration gets refused, suspended or cancelled, and that jumps to $5,000-$50,000 for an individual or $10,000-$100,000 for a company.

Platforms carry their own exposure too. Advertising a Laval listing without a valid registration number costs a platform operator $5,000-$50,000 as an individual or $10,000-$100,000 as a company, which is exactly why Airbnb and Vrbo enforce the number-verification requirement rather than treating it as optional.

What makes this enforcement regime different from a typical city-level crackdown is that it's improving on its own numbers rather than staying static. The province's own figures show compliance among listings posted on both Airbnb and Vrbo climbing from 34.5% in 2022 to 87.6% in 2025, and two more rounds of tightening are already scheduled for 2026. That's not a jurisdiction quietly letting a rule go unenforced. It's one actively closing the gap.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Laval

Given all of that, the sequence below is the one that saves you money, because the early steps determine whether the later, more expensive ones are even worth doing.

1. Confirm which category you fall into. Living in the unit points you toward the $54 principal-residence bracket. Renting out an investment property or a place you don't live in means the $156 general bracket, and it also means Laval's full zoning discretion applies rather than the provincial protection.
2. Check your zoning and co-ownership documents first. Call Laval's Service de l'urbanisme before you sign anything, and if you're in a condo, read the co-ownership declaration for language that predates the short-term rental era.
3. Apply for Laval's municipal compliance notice. This has to happen before CITQ will accept your application, so budget the time for it.
4. Get $2,000,000 in civil liability insurance in place. CITQ needs proof of this alongside your application, not after.
5. Gather your remaining documents and apply to CITQ. Ownership or lease proof, authorization to rent short-term, photos, and (from September 2026) two proofs of principal residence if that's your category.
6. Register for the lodging-tax file, unless your platform collects it for you. Confirm directly with Airbnb or Vrbo whether they're handling the 3.5% on your behalf.
7. Register for GST/QST if you're over the small-supplier threshold, and remember a registered platform will collect these regardless of your own threshold status.
8. Post your certificate at the guest entrance and your registration number in every listing. This becomes mandatory from April 9, 2026, so build the habit now.
9. Diarize your renewal date. CITQ registrations run 12 months, renewal opens 60 days out, and from September 2026 it needs fresh owner consent every year.

Who to contact in Laval about Short Term Rental Regulations and Zoning

Whichever step trips you up, three offices split the work between them, and knowing which one owns your question saves an annoying amount of time on hold.

Provincial registration, CITQ

The Corporation de l'industrie touristique du Québec handles the registration number itself, renewals, and the Portail CITQ account.

• Address: 1010, rue De Sérigny, bureau 810, Longueuil, QC J4K 5G7
• Phone: 450-679-3737, or toll-free 1-866-499-0550
• Fax: 450-679-1489
• Email: [email protected]
• Phone hours: 8:15 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., Monday to Friday

Laval zoning, the compliance notice, and permits

The Ville de Laval Service de l'urbanisme issues the municipal compliance notice CITQ requires and the certificate of occupancy for adding tourist accommodation as a use.

• Phone: dial 311 in Laval, or 450-978-8000 from outside
• Hours: Monday to Friday 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• In person: the multiservice counter at 1333 Boulevard Chomedey, ground floor, Laval, QC H7V 3Y1
• Urban planning counter hours: information counter Monday to Friday 8:15 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; permit and payment counter Monday to Friday 8:15 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 5:15 p.m.

Taxes: lodging tax, GST and QST

Revenu Québec administers the lodging tax, GST/QST registration, remittance, and the penalty regime under the Act respecting tourist accommodation establishments.

• Phone: 1-800-267-6299 toll-free (Quebec City 418-659-6299, Montreal 514-864-6299)
• Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday

What do Airbnb hosts in Laval on Reddit and BiggerPockets think about local regulations?

That enforcement trajectory shapes how people talk about hosting here. The debate splits less along "is it legal" and more along whether it's worth the housing tradeoff. Reddit itself was out of reach for this refresh: automated access is blocked there, and its data policy doesn't permit the kind of commercial use this guide would need. So what follows is my read of documented public debate rather than a forum survey, and it's worth weighing accordingly.

• The pro-housing argument dominates local political debate. Action Laval, the city's main opposition bloc, has argued publicly that Laval's real problem is a shortage of new housing units, not short-term rentals, pointing to only around 2,000 new units launched in a recent year as the actual bottleneck.
• Local advocates want enforcement, not prohibition. At least one Laval activist has made the case publicly for stricter enforcement backed by real resources rather than an outright ban, warning that a Montreal-style prohibition would hurt the local economy without necessarily fixing the housing shortage.
• Investors watching Montreal's ban are treating Laval as the fallback. With Montreal restricting entire-unit rentals to a narrow summer window, satellite markets like Laval get discussed as where that demand and that inventory could land instead, since the underlying provincial registration regime is identical either way.
• Compliance fatigue is a recurring theme, even among hosts who support the rules. The pace of change, CITQ tightening its documentation requirements twice in one year, is the kind of thing that shows up in host discussion even when nobody's arguing against registration in principle.

That fallback framing is worth testing with real numbers rather than taking it on faith. Comparing Laval against other Canadian short-term rental markets before you commit is worth doing, and BNBCalc's Canada market data is a reasonable place to start that comparison at the country level.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Laval in 2026?

Yes. Laval permits short-term rentals and hasn't adopted Montreal's ban. You need a CITQ registration number from Quebec's Corporation de l'industrie touristique du Québec, which starts at $54 a year for a primary residence, plus a municipal compliance notice from Laval confirming your address clears local zoning. Airbnb and Vrbo are barred from displaying a Laval listing without a valid registration number, so operating without one generally means you can't take bookings on the major platforms at all.

How much does short-term rental registration cost in Laval?

CITQ's 2026 fees are $54 a year for a principal residence establishment, $156 for a general tourist accommodation establishment, and $131 for a youth tourist accommodation establishment. On top of that, budget for at least $2,000,000 in civil liability insurance and Laval's own certificate of occupancy, which runs $82 for an additional use inside an existing residential building or from $273 for a new commercial use.

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

Three layers. A 3.5% lodging tax on the nightly rate, which a registered platform like Airbnb generally collects and remits for you if it takes the full guest payment. Then 5% GST and 9.975% QST, a combined 14.975%, on the nightly rate plus the lodging tax plus any bundled extras. Rental income is also ordinary taxable income on your personal return. Small suppliers under $30,000 in revenue are normally exempt from GST/QST registration, but a registered platform still collects those taxes on your bookings regardless.

Has Laval banned Airbnb like Montreal did?

No. Montreal announced a near-total ban on entire-unit short-term rentals in principal residences in January 2025, with only a summer window and a Grand Prix exception. Laval's mayor's office was asked directly about following suit and said it has no such plan, preferring to focus on accelerating housing construction instead. Nothing has changed that position since, though it's worth checking Laval's council agenda periodically since municipal politics can move faster than any guide.

Can Laval restrict where I run a short-term rental?

It depends whether it's your primary residence. Since March 25, 2023, Laval can't zone-ban short-term rental of your own home, short of an unusual referendum it hasn't pursued. Investment condos and secondary properties you don't live in are different: those stay under Laval's ordinary zoning discretion. Check with the Service de l'urbanisme before buying for that purpose.

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