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

Do you own a place in Port Perry and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that nobody's going to hand you a licence application, an annual renewal or a registration fee, because the Township of Scugog doesn't license short-term rentals at all. Port Perry isn't its own municipality, mind you. It's the urban settlement inside Scugog, which sits in the Regional Municipality of Durham, Ontario, about an hour northeast of Toronto, and the province runs no registry either. On paper, then, the paperwork is beautifully light.

Light paperwork isn't the same thing as permission, though, and that's where this gets awkward. Scugog controls land use through Zoning By-law 14-14, whose section 6.1 says no person shall use any land or building "for any Use other than as permitted in the Permitted Uses Tables". Short-term rental appears in none of those tables. It isn't defined in the by-law either, so you can't point to a rule that permits you and the Township can't point to a rule that names you, which leaves a genuine grey zone that only Township planning staff can resolve for your specific address.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: which zone decides your answer, why a missing licence is a trap rather than a loophole, what a rezoning costs if you chase one, the tax that applies anyway, how enforcement works here, and who to call at 181 Perry Street. Every figure below comes from the Township's, Ontario's or the federal government's own documents, checked in July 2026. Before you buy anything on the strength of nightly rates, run the property through BNBCalc on monthly numbers too.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Port Perry

That grey zone is not a technicality you sort out after closing. It's the whole business plan, and it resolves differently depending on which side of Port Perry your property sits on.

Scugog's zoning by-law is what planners call a closed-list or permissive by-law. Part 2 of it puts the logic in one sentence: "If a Use is not listed as a permitted Use it is not permitted." Every zone gets a table, every permitted use gets a row, and an "X" in your zone's column is the only thing that authorises anything. There's no residual category for uses nobody thought of in 2014.

Now, the by-law does name one short-stay use. A Bed and Breakfast Establishment is defined as sleeping accommodation, breakfast included, "for the travelling or vacationing Public in up to three rooms within a Single Detached Dwelling that is the principal residence of the proprietor of the establishment and where the proprietor is in attendance during the rental period". Read that definition slowly, because three separate limits are buried in it. Three rooms maximum. It has to be your principal residence. And you have to be there while the guests are.

Where that row appears is the part that decides most of this. Going through the permitted-use tables one Part at a time, Bed and Breakfast Establishment shows up in the rural area zones, in the rural residential group that covers Rural Residential, Estate Residential, both Hamlet Residential zones and Shoreline Residential, and in the commercial zones including Tourist Commercial.

It does not appear anywhere in Part 9, the Urban Residential zones, which is the R1, R2, R3 and RM1 through RM4 block covering Port Perry's serviced neighbourhoods. So a lakeside or hamlet property has an authorised path to paying guests. A house on a Port Perry side street doesn't have that same one.

The by-law then closes the obvious workaround. A Home Occupation is a secondary business run inside your own dwelling, and the definition states flatly that "a home occupation does not include a Bed and Breakfast Establishment". You can't relabel guests as a home business.

The by-law cuts both ways, though, and I'd rather flag that than tidy it away. Its definition of Dwelling covers a building occupied as the home or sleeping place of one or more persons "either continuously, permanently, temporarily or transiently". Transiently is doing real work in that sentence.

An owner could reasonably argue that renting a whole house by the night is still a dwelling being occupied transiently, and a dwelling is permitted in every residential zone. The Township could just as reasonably argue it's a commercial accommodation use the tables never list. I went looking for a Scugog council decision, staff report or tribunal ruling that settles which reading wins, and I couldn't find one. Nobody has published a position.

That's why the single most useful thing you can do here costs nothing. Email [email protected] with your address and ask, in writing, whether a short-term rental is a permitted use in your zone. A written answer either unlocks the plan or saves you the purchase, and either outcome beats guessing.

There is real demand behind the question, which is presumably why you're reading this. The Township reported in February 2026 that downtown Port Perry drew more than 573,000 daily visits from 73,000 tourists during 2024, a 28% increase over the year before. Council responded to that with a tourism growth plan. It did not respond with a short-term rental framework.

One more wrinkle worth knowing, since it may come up if you ever argue your case. The Township's Official Plan is more generous than the by-law that implements it, saying at section 3.10 that "Bed and Breakfast establishments shall be permitted in all designations and where in excess of two rooms, shall be subject to a rezoning". All designations includes the Port Perry Urban Area. The zoning tables don't reflect that, and the zoning by-law is the instrument a by-law officer actually enforces, so treat the Official Plan as an argument for a rezoning rather than as permission today.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Port Perry

Since the by-law is what decides your answer, you'd still expect a licence to be the next hurdle. There isn't one, and there's no register, no permit and no host number either.

Look at what Scugog does license and the gap is obvious. The Township's applications, licences and permits page runs to animals, birth and death certificates, building, burn, fence, land sales, lottery, marriage, patios, plumbing, pools and hot tubs, roads, alcohol and special events. Business Licence By-law 135-05 adds adult entertainment parlours, carnivals, fireworks, group homes, hawkers and peddlers, kennels, refreshment vehicles, salvage shops and taxicabs. Accommodation of any kind is absent from both.

Don't read that absence as a green light. A licence regime is how a municipality says yes with conditions attached, so a township that never built one hasn't quietly said yes. It has said nothing at all, and silence in a closed-list system defaults to no.

Which means the only instrument that can definitively authorise a use the tables don't list is a site-specific Zoning By-law Amendment under section 34 of the Planning Act. That's a rezoning, not a licence, and the price difference is the point. By-law 17-24's tariff of planning fees, effective January 1, 2025 and still the current schedule as of July 2026, sets the Township's side of it:

Application	Fee
Pre-application consultation, minor	$625 per meeting
Pre-application consultation, major	$1,040 per meeting
Zoning By-law Amendment, minor	$6,960
Zoning By-law Amendment, major	$17,765
Minor Variance, residential	$2,700

A minor amendment is the realistic category for one house, because By-law 17-24 reserves "major" for applications tied to an Official Plan Amendment, a subdivision or condominium, multiple properties, or anything needing technical studies. Region of Durham, health and conservation authority review fees sit on top of the Township's number, and they vary by watershed, so budget above the headline rather than at it.

Remember that none of that money buys a decision. A rezoning goes to a statutory public meeting where your neighbours get to speak, and then to Council. The Planning Act treats the fee as cost recovery rather than as a purchase, since section 69(1) says a municipal tariff "shall be designed to meet only the anticipated cost" of processing the application. Council can and does refuse. You pay either way.

Required Documents for Port Perry Short-Term Rentals

There's no application form to assemble a package for, so the paperwork that matters here is the paperwork that protects you later. Four items carry real weight, and the first one is free.

• A written zoning determination from Township planning. Email [email protected] with the address and the exact use you're proposing, and keep the reply. Verbal reassurance at a counter isn't evidence, whereas a dated email from the Township itself is.
• Your rezoning package, if you go that route. The Township's zoning page is the starting point, and the sketch alone needs lot dimensions, building setbacks, lot coverage, and the location of any private well and septic system.
• GST/HST registration once you cross the threshold. The Canada Revenue Agency's guidance on platform-based short-term accommodation puts registration at above $30,000 in taxable supplies over twelve months, and a registered host collects the tax personally rather than leaving it to the platform.
• A day-by-day booking log. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act apportions your denied deductions by counting non-compliant days against total short-term rental days, so the log is what stands between you and the Canada Revenue Agency's arithmetic. Keep check-in and check-out dates, nights, and gross rent per stay.

Do also tell your insurer before the first guest arrives, not after an incident. A standard Ontario homeowner policy is written for a home you live in, and paying occupants are exactly the sort of change that voids coverage when nobody was told.

Port Perry Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you're able to get past the zoning question and actually host, there's still tax to deal with, and Scugog's slice of it is the smallest part of the story. Two layers apply, one municipal layer doesn't exist here, and one federal rule is more expensive than anything the Township could charge you.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
GST/HST on the stay	13% in Ontario	The platform, unless you're registered yourself
Municipal Accommodation Tax	none in Scugog	n/a
Income tax on the profit	your marginal rate	Canada Revenue Agency, self-assessed

Start with HST, since it attaches to almost every booking. The CRA's rules for platform-based accommodation apply GST/HST to accommodation occupied continuously for less than one month where the charge is more than $20 a night, which catches essentially all nightly hosting. Ontario's rate is 13%. Where you aren't GST/HST registered, the accommodation platform operator has to charge and remit it, so Airbnb handles the mechanics for most small hosts. Cross $30,000 in taxable supplies over twelve months and that flips to you, including on platform bookings.

The municipal layer is the one that isn't there. Ontario lets a municipality impose a transient accommodation tax under O. Reg. 435/17, made under the Municipal Act, 2001, and plenty of Ontario cities have taken it up. Scugog hasn't. I went through the whole 2026 Fees and Charges By-law 42-25 package looking for an accommodation line and there isn't one, so as of the 2026 fee year a Port Perry guest pays no local bed tax.

Now the expensive part, and it's federal. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act denies income tax deductions for what it calls a non-compliant short-term rental, and the definition has two limbs. One covers a rental that fails registration, licensing or permit requirements. The other, the one that bites in Scugog, covers a rental in a province or municipality that "does not permit the operation of the short-term rental at the location". A short-term rental for this purpose means one rented or offered for rent for fewer than 90 consecutive days, so weekly and monthly stays are inside the net too.

Sit with what that means in a township with no licence. There's no permit you can obtain to fix limb (a), which is why a written zoning opinion stops being a nicety and becomes the file you show an auditor.

The denial isn't a penalty either, so it doesn't scale with intent. The Act runs the formula A × B ÷ C, where A is your otherwise deductible expenses, B is the days the rental was non-compliant and C is total short-term rental days. Every non-compliant day removes a proportional slice of your mortgage interest, utilities, insurance, cleaning and depreciation, while the rental income stays fully taxable. A property that looked like it cleared a decent margin after costs can end up taxed close to gross.

Ontario Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Federal tax is national, so the layer between it and Scugog is the provincial one, and Ontario has deliberately kept that layer thin.

There is no Ontario short-term rental statute and no provincial register. Nothing to apply for, no number to display in a listing, no province-wide principal-residence rule. That puts Ontario in a different camp from British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, all of which now run provincial registries whose numbers have to appear on listings. In Ontario the province hands the pen to municipalities instead, through licensing powers under Part IV of the Municipal Act, 2001, the optional accommodation tax under O. Reg. 435/17, and land use control under the Planning Act. So one Ontario town can demand a licence and cap your nights while the town next door demands nothing, and Scugog's silence is a choice in exactly the same way.

The provincial rule that reaches Port Perry hardest is the enforcement one. Section 67 of the Planning Act makes contravening a zoning by-law passed under section 34 an offence, punishable on a first conviction by a fine of not more than $25,000, and on a subsequent conviction by up to $10,000 "for each day or part thereof upon which the contravention has continued". A corporation faces $50,000 and $25,000 a day on the same pattern.

Two smaller provisions do more work than the headline numbers. Section 67(3) lets the convicting court order that the offence stop, which is the remedy that ends a business rather than taxing it. Under section 67.1, the fine then goes to the Township's own treasurer when the Township prosecutes, which quietly removes the usual objection that enforcement doesn't pay for itself. The Planning Act text here is current to its July 1, 2026 consolidation.

One provincial rule works in your favour, and it's the reason the mid-term pivot is worth modelling. The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 doesn't apply to "living accommodation intended to be provided to the travelling or vacationing public", which is why a nightly guest is never a tenant. Flip the same house to stays of a month or more and you leave the zoning argument behind entirely, because you're a landlord under a statute that covers most private residential rental units, including basement apartments. You'll trade nightly rates for security of tenure and Landlord and Tenant Board timelines. Price that trade properly before you dismiss it, because a smaller number you're allowed to earn beats a bigger one you might not be.

Does Port Perry Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Those Planning Act numbers are ceilings a court can reach, so the practical question is how often anyone in Scugog gets there. Enforcement here is complaint-driven, and the honest answer is that the Township has published nothing about how hard it pushes on short-term rentals specifically.

What the Township does publish is the machinery. Complaints run through Cloudpermit, the online system residents use, and the By-law Department says non-compliance "may result in fines or legal charges filed with the Ontario Court of Justice". The department publishes two extensions for the whole township, 121 and 142. Nobody is out patrolling for listings, so somebody has to complain first.

Once somebody does, the cost recovery starts even before any fine lands. Schedule C of the 2026 Fees and Charges By-law bills the owner directly, at rates set for the 2026 fee year: $173 for an inspection that confirms non-compliance with a notice or order, $128 for a certificate of compliance, $621 as a file management fee once an order is registered on title, and $886 plus legal fees plus a 25% administration charge to issue a summons.

That title registration is the one to watch out for. It follows the property into your next sale, and a buyer's lawyer will find it.

The noise route tends to arrive first in practice, and it's harsher than the zoning route on a per-incident basis. Noise By-law 50-22 prohibits noise "clearly audible at a Point of Reception", restricts listed activities in residential areas between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. and all day on Sundays and public holidays, and sets fines from $350 up to $10,000 for an individual and up to $100,000 for a corporation.

Two clauses in it deserve a second look. Section 8.3 lets the court increase the fine "by an amount equal to the financial benefit" gained from the offence, so profitable non-compliance gets priced out. Section 8.4 presumes that an owner or occupier present at a nuisance party is the one hosting it. A single bad weekend can cost more than a season of bookings earned.

None of that adds up to a crackdown, and I want to be careful not to imply one. I found no Scugog enforcement statistics for short-term rentals, no staff report proposing a framework, and no council decision on the subject in the 2025 or 2026 record. Council amended the zoning by-law in 2025 to permit additional dwelling units and still created no short-term rental use while it had the file open. Read that as a township that hasn't decided rather than one that has cracked down, and keep in mind that an undecided township is exactly where a single motivated neighbour sets the precedent.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Port Perry

Given that the first complaint tends to write the rules in a place like this, the order of these steps matters even more than usual. The early ones tell you whether the later ones are worth attempting at all.

1. Find your zone before anything else. Rural, hamlet, shoreline and commercial zones carry a Bed and Breakfast Establishment row. The urban residential zones covering Port Perry's serviced streets don't. Your zone is the answer to most of this.
2. Get the determination in writing. Email [email protected] with the address and the exact use, and keep the reply. Do this before an offer goes firm, not after.
3. Design the stay to fit what's actually permitted. Where a B&B is the authorised path, that means up to three rooms, in your principal residence, with you in attendance during the rental period. Anything else needs a different route.
4. Price the rezoning honestly if the answer comes back no. $625 to $1,040 for pre-consultation, $6,960 for a minor amendment, plus agency fees, a public meeting your neighbours will attend, and no guarantee at the end of it.
5. Model the 28-plus-night version in parallel. Mid-term stays sidestep the zoning question and land you under the Residential Tenancies Act instead. Run both scenarios before you commit to either.
6. Sort out HST. Let the platform collect while you're under $30,000 in taxable supplies, and register once you're over it.
7. Start the day log with your first booking. Section 67.7 apportions by days, so the log is your defence, and reconstructing it two years later during an audit is not a defence.
8. Tell your insurer, then put the noise rules in your house rules. Restricted hours run 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and cover all of Sunday, and your guests won't know that unless you tell them.

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

Steps two and four both end at the same building, so it's worth knowing which desk inside it owns which question. Three offices handle nearly all of this, and one of them is regional rather than municipal.

Zoning, permitted uses and rezoning applications

The Township of Scugog Development Services Department answers whether a use is permitted at your address and processes Zoning By-law Amendments and minor variances.

• Address: 181 Perry Street, P.O. Box 780, Port Perry, ON L9L 1A7
• Phone: 905-985-7346
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Online: the Township's zoning page carries the current consolidation of By-law 14-14

Complaints, orders and enforcement

The By-law Enforcement Department investigates complaints and issues the notices and orders that trigger those cost-recovery fees.

• Phone: 905-985-7346, extension 121 or 142
• Email: [email protected]
• Fax: 905-985-9914
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with appointments encouraged
• Complaints: submitted online through Cloudpermit

General Township business, and after hours

• Main line: 905-985-7346, or 905-434-2173 after hours for urgent Township issues
• Email: [email protected]

Regional planning and servicing

The Regional Municipality of Durham handles regional planning review, water and sewer servicing, and health approvals for private septic systems, all of which can surface in a rezoning.

• Address: 605 Rossland Road East, Whitby, ON L1N 6A3
• Phone: 905-668-7711, toll-free 1-800-372-1102, or 311 within the region

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

Those phone numbers are where the official answers live. Everything past this point is host chatter, and I'd rather tell you what I could and couldn't verify than dress up a summary of it.

I could not read Reddit for this guide. It blocks automated access, and its platform terms rule out the commercial use a proper survey would need, so I'm not going to tell you what a thread says when I haven't opened it. I also went looking for a BiggerPockets discussion specific to Port Perry or Scugog and didn't find one worth citing. That absence is itself a finding, honestly. Investor forums cluster around markets with a rulebook to argue about, and Scugog doesn't have one.

What the public record does support is a fair sketch of the operator experience here, so take the following as my read rather than as a survey:

• The confusion is real and it's structural. Owners find no licence, no register and no fee, conclude they're unregulated, and never open the zoning by-law. That's an easy mistake to make in a township whose website has nothing to say about short-term rentals in either direction.
• Waterfront and rural owners are in a genuinely different position from village owners. A Shoreline Residential or Hamlet Residential property has a named, authorised path to paying guests. A house three streets off Queen Street doesn't have the same one, and the two groups swap advice as though they were in one market.
• Neighbour relations are the actual enforcement mechanism. With a complaint-driven process and nobody patrolling, the operators who last are the ones managing parking, quiet hours and turnover so that nobody bothers to file.
• The 28-plus-night pivot keeps coming up in Ontario discussions generally, because it converts an unresolved zoning argument into a straightforward tenancy. It pays less per night and sleeps better.

If you're weighing Port Perry against places where the rules are settled and a licence is something you can simply go and buy, it's worth seeing where the returns actually sit across the Canadian short-term rental market before you commit to a township that hasn't made up its mind. Then run your specific address through BNBCalc on both nightly and monthly assumptions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a licence to run an Airbnb in Port Perry?

No. The Township of Scugog, which contains Port Perry, issues no short-term rental licence, permit or registration, and Ontario runs no provincial registry. That's not permission, though. Scugog's Zoning By-law 14-14 permits only the uses listed in each zone's table, and short-term rental isn't listed anywhere in it, so the operative question is whether your zone allows the use rather than whether you hold a licence.

Is Airbnb legal in Port Perry in 2026?

It depends on your zone, and the by-law doesn't answer it cleanly. A Bed and Breakfast Establishment, capped at three rooms in your own principal residence with you present during the stay, is a listed use in Scugog's rural, hamlet, shoreline and commercial zones. It is not listed in the urban residential zones covering Port Perry's serviced neighbourhoods. Whole-home nightly rental is named nowhere, so ask Township planning at [email protected] for a written determination on your address.

How much tax do you pay on a short-term rental in Port Perry?

Ontario's 13% HST applies to stays under one month costing more than $20 a night, and the booking platform collects it unless you're GST/HST registered yourself, which becomes mandatory above $30,000 in taxable supplies over twelve months. Scugog levies no municipal accommodation tax. Rental profit is taxed at your marginal rate, and section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act can deny the deductions that create that profit.

What happens if you run an unpermitted short-term rental in Scugog?

Enforcement is complaint-driven through the Township's Cloudpermit system. Before any fine, the 2026 fee schedule bills the owner $173 for a confirming inspection, $621 once an order is registered on title and $886 plus legal costs to issue a summons. Section 67 of Ontario's Planning Act then allows a fine of up to $25,000 on a first conviction, up to $10,000 for each day the contravention continues afterwards, and a court order to stop.

Can you rent a Port Perry property for 28 days or more instead?

Yes, and it's the cleanest way out of the zoning argument. A stay of a month or more falls under the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, which covers most private residential rental units in Ontario, so you're a landlord rather than an accommodation operator. HST also stops applying once occupancy runs continuously for a month or more. You give up nightly rates and gain security-of-tenure obligations and Landlord and Tenant Board timelines.

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