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

Do you own a place in Uxbridge and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that there's no licence to apply for and no annual fee to budget for. The Township of Uxbridge, in the Regional Municipality of Durham, Ontario, doesn't license short-term rentals, doesn't register them, and charges no municipal accommodation tax on the nightly rate. Going through the Township's own regulatory by-law index in July 2026, I found no short-term rental by-law of any kind in it.

The catch is that no by-law also means no permission. Zoning By-law 81-19 runs on a closed list of permitted uses, and a short-term rental isn't on any of them. The phrase doesn't appear once in the entire consolidation, and neither does "bed and breakfast". So what you'd be operating in is a gap rather than a green light, and the penalty attached to that gap comes from the Planning Act at up to $25,000 on a first conviction, which isn't the sort of fine a licensing by-law hands out.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly in 2026: what the zoning by-law does and doesn't allow, the one registration that genuinely applies to a second unit, the tax layers that turn out to be federal rather than municipal, how the Township handles a complaint, and who to call before you list anything. Every figure below comes from the Township's own by-laws and pages, or from Ontario and the CRA, checked in July 2026, and where I couldn't confirm something I've said so plainly. Assuming you're still deciding whether the numbers work at all, run the property through BNBCalc first.

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

Whatever those numbers say, though, it's worth knowing exactly what that gap is made of. One document does nearly all the work in Uxbridge, and it isn't a short-term rental by-law at all. It's the zoning by-law.

Section 3.1 of Zoning By-law 81-19 sets the rule. No land, building, structure, lot or premises may be used or occupied "for any purpose" other than in conformity with the provisions of that by-law. Section 3.4 then closes the other door, since a use that isn't permissible in a zone "shall not be changed except to a use, activity or occupation which is permissible within such Zone category." Ontario zoning runs on permission rather than prohibition, so a use the by-law never names is a use the by-law never allowed.

Take the Residential First Density (R1) zone, which covers most of the housing in the Uxbridge urban area. It opens on a flat prohibition. "No person shall, within the Residential First Density (R1) Zone, use any land or erect, alter or use any building or structure except for one or more of the following uses." Then come the uses: a single family dwelling house, private home daycare, a Group Home Type 1, a home occupation, a public use, and accessory uses. That's the entire list.

The Rural (RU) zone reads the same way. Its permitted uses are a single-family detached dwelling house, a converted dwelling house, private home daycare, conservation and forestry, a farm or nursery farm, a seasonal farm produce stand, a home occupation and a home industry, a public park and a public use. No tourist establishment, no bed and breakfast, no farm vacation home.

Now, the by-law does define several accommodation uses, which makes the omission look deliberate rather than accidental:

• "Tourist establishment" means "any premises operated to provide sleeping accommodation for the traveling public or sleeping accommodation for the use of the public engaging in recreational activities". It's defined, and then it's never listed as a permitted use in a single zone.
• "A hospitality use" covers "a commercial use such as a hotel, motel, banquette hall, hostel or other similar uses which cater to the needs of the travelling public". This one is permitted, but only inside the downtown and mixed-use commercial zone tables.
• "Family" means "one or more persons living as a single housekeeping unit in a dwelling, and may include domestic servants and not more than 2 roomers or boarders". A dwelling unit, in turn, is designed for use by one family only. That two-boarder ceiling is the closest thing Uxbridge has to a guest cap.
• "Home occupation" is the one small-business permission residential zones do carry, and it's aimed at services and custom or artisanal products, not beds. It caps you at 25% of the gross floor area, one non-resident worker, and in R1, R2, RM, ER, RC, SR and HR zones, customer visits only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, five a day at most.

There's one genuine contradiction worth knowing about before you talk to anyone at the Township. The Official Plan, consolidated to February 2025, says bed and breakfast establishments "shall be permitted in residences in accordance with the regulations of the zoning by-law". Four conditions attach: the use stays clearly secondary to the residential use, the property is the principal residence of the operator, adequate parking exists, and the B&B sits in a single detached dwelling. It lists B&Bs and farm vacation homes as permitted uses across the Oak Ridges Moraine designations too. Every one of those policies defers to the zoning by-law, and the zoning by-law never defines a bed and breakfast. So the Township's higher-order policy document contemplates a use its own zoning by-law cannot actually deliver.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Uxbridge

That contradiction is exactly where most Uxbridge hosting plans land, so it helps to separate the three shapes a listing can take, because they don't carry the same risk at all.

Renting a room while you live there is the most defensible. You're the permanent occupant, the dwelling stays a dwelling, and the by-law's own definition of a family already contemplates up to two roomers or boarders inside it. Nobody at the Township has published a position saying that a paying guest for three nights counts as a boarder, mind you, so treat it as the strongest of the three rather than a settled one.

Letting the whole house while you're elsewhere is the weakest. There's no permanent occupant, the guests are the travelling public, and "tourist establishment" is a defined term in the by-law that no residential or rural zone permits. That's the scenario a complaint-driven enforcement file would be built around.

Renting a second unit brings in a by-law that genuinely does apply to you. The Two-unit House Registration By-law 99-107 says no person shall "Operate or permit the occupancy of more than one Residential Unit in a Two-unit House unless the house is registered", and it defines "Operate" as "to rent, lease, license or endorse an occupancy", including sub-rentals. Registration costs $125 to process the application plus $125 for the initial and final inspection, with $50 for each additional inspection after that. The inspection checks the house against the Ontario Building Code, the Fire Code, Zoning By-law 81-19, the property standards by-law and O. Reg. 384/94, and you'll need documentation that one of the two units is owner-occupied. Do check whether your suite is actually registered, because the by-law puts that duty on whoever operates it.

Out in the countryside there are two more things to deal with. The RU zone sets a minimum lot area of 40 hectares and 200 metres of frontage, so most rural listings sit on legal non-conforming lots, and any septic work goes through the Region rather than the Township. The Township's own septic page says it "has retained the services of the Region Of Durham Health Department to issue permits and inspect septic systems", which matters more than it sounds when you're about to add four guests to a system sized for a family.

Assuming none of those shapes fits and you want an actual permission, the rezoning route is still open, and the Township's planning fee schedule sets out what it costs. A temporary use zoning by-law amendment runs $3,537 plus all external costs, with a single renewal at $1,615. A minor amendment is $6,100 and a major one $13,580. Pre-consultation costs $769, and a residential minor variance is $877, with the applicant required to post the notice sign on the boulevard ten days before the hearing and send Development Services a photograph of it. Before you spend any of that, model the property in BNBCalc at a realistic occupancy, since a $13,580 major amendment needs a lot of nights to earn itself back.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Uxbridge

Assuming you decide a $6,100 rezoning isn't worth it, the next question people ask is whether there's still a licence to buy instead. There isn't, and that holds as of July 2026.

The Business Licensing By-law 2012-114 is the instrument that would carry one. It's passed under Part IV and section 150 of the Municipal Act, 2001, which lets a municipality "licence, regulate and govern any business wholly or partially carried on within the municipality". Reading it through, there is no accommodation class, no rental class and no short-term rental class anywhere in the text. The licence types Uxbridge actually issues are go karts, kennels, pawnbrokers, places of amusement, prohibited animal education events, refreshment vehicles, salvage yards, second hand goods, taxi drivers, taxi owners and transient traders.

If Council ever adds a short-term rental class, the machinery it would slot into is already written, which tells you roughly what a future licence would look like. Every licence under 2012-114 expires annually on December 31 at 11:59 p.m., renewals filed after January 31 attract a late fee, and fees are "for administrative purposes and are, therefore, non-refundable if the application is refused". The Clerk holds the power to issue, refuse, refuse to renew, revoke or suspend.

Meanwhile, the nearest thing to a permission slip in Uxbridge is a zoning compliance letter, and it's cheap enough that skipping it makes no sense. The planning fee schedule lists it at $144, or $252 for the express version returned within seven days. That letter tells you in writing what the Township considers the legal use of your property to be, from the department that would answer a complaint about it. Keep in mind that a compliance letter describes the current use rather than blessing a new one, so ask your question specifically.

Required Documents for Uxbridge Short-Term Rentals

Since there's no application to submit, there's no document checklist to satisfy either, which sounds like a saving until an inspector or an insurer asks you for something. The paperwork below is what actually protects you in Uxbridge, and none of it is filed with a short-term rental office, because no such office exists.

• A zoning compliance letter for your address, at $144 standard or $252 express, requested from Development Services at [email protected].
• Two-unit house registration, if any part of your plan involves a second dwelling unit. That's $125 plus $125, an inspection, and proof that one unit is owner-occupied.
• Septic records or a permit from the Durham Region Health Department, which handles installation, replacement and repair on Uxbridge properties.
• Short-term rental insurance in your own name. The Township requires none, so nobody will ask you for it. Remember that a standard homeowner's policy in Ontario typically excludes commercial or transient occupancy, and the gap only shows up at claim time.
• HST registration, once your taxable supplies pass $30,000 over twelve months.
• A nightly booking record, which is what the Income Tax Act's compliance test for short-term rentals gets measured against.

One absence deserves stating outright rather than being implied. Uxbridge imposes no short-term rental fire inspection, no guest register, no local-contact requirement, no parking condition and no neighbour notification, because it imposes nothing at all on the use. The Ontario Fire Code's smoke and carbon monoxide alarm duties still apply to your home the way they always did.

Uxbridge Short-Term Rental Taxes

Suppose the paperwork lands where you want it and you're able to take a booking. There's still tax to handle, and the surprising part in Uxbridge is that every layer of it is federal or personal rather than municipal.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
HST on stays under one month over $20 a night	13%	You, if you're GST/HST registered; otherwise the platform
Municipal accommodation tax	None in Uxbridge as of July 2026	Not applicable, no by-law exists
Provincial lodging tax	None in Ontario	Not applicable
Income tax on rental profit	Your marginal rate	CRA, subject to the section 67.7 deduction test

The CRA's own page on platform-based short-term accommodation sets out how the 13% works in Ontario: it applies to accommodation occupied "for a period of less than one month and that costs more than $20 per night", a registered host charges and collects it themselves even on platform bookings, and where the host isn't registered, the accommodation platform operator must collect and remit instead. Registration is generally required once you pass $30,000 in taxable supplies over twelve months. Make sure you know which side of that line you're on, because a host who registers and then assumes Airbnb is still handling it has quietly stopped remitting.

Then there's the rule that bites hardest in a place like Uxbridge. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act denies deductions for a "non-compliant short-term rental", which it defines as one located where short-term rentals aren't permitted, or one that fails to meet all applicable registration, licensing and permit requirements. A short-term rental for this purpose is any property "rented or offered for rent for a period of less than 90 consecutive days", and the denied share is your expenses multiplied by non-compliant days over total short-term rental days. It has applied since the 2024 tax year.

Read that against Zoning By-law 81-19 and you can see the exposure. There's no licence to fail to obtain in Uxbridge, so the licensing limb doesn't catch you. The first limb, whether the location permits short-term rentals at all, is the one nobody in the Township has answered on the record. Losing the deduction for mortgage interest, utilities and cleaning hurts far more than a fine does, and Ottawa doesn't need a municipal by-law in place to make the argument. Part XX of the same Act, the reporting rules for digital platform operators, already sends your host and property data to the CRA.

Municipally, you're left with property tax and nothing else. Uxbridge's property tax page covers interim bills mailed in January with instalments due in February and April, final bills mailed in May with instalments due in June and September, and a late payment charge of 1.25% each month on anything past due. Council could add an accommodation tax whenever it likes, since O. Reg. 435/17 under section 400.1 of the Municipal Act has let Ontario municipalities do exactly that since December 2017 and sets no maximum rate. It simply hasn't.

Ontario Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That federal deduction test ends up doing the work a provincial registry does elsewhere in Canada, largely because Ontario has never built one. There's no provincial short-term rental statute, no registration number to display in a listing, and no principal-residence rule imposed from Queen's Park. British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador all run provincial registries. Ontario devolves the whole question to its municipalities.

What the province does supply is the toolkit, and four instruments matter to an Uxbridge host:

• Municipal Act, 2001, Part IV and section 150, which is the licensing power any future Uxbridge short-term rental by-law would be passed under.
• Section 400.1 and O. Reg. 435/17, the transient accommodation tax power, which caps nothing and is why municipal accommodation tax rates differ so much across the province.
• Planning Act section 34, the zoning power behind By-law 81-19, plus section 67, which sets the penalties.
• Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, section 5(a), which exempts "living accommodation intended to be provided to the travelling or vacationing public or occupied for a seasonal or temporary period" in, among other things, a tourist home, a bed and breakfast vacation establishment or a vacation home. Your short-stay guest isn't a tenant, though a guest who settles in for months can start to look like one. That line matters more than hosts expect it to.

Durham Region is where this is moving fastest, and Uxbridge's neighbours have stopped waiting. Ajax passed By-law 60-2026 on June 22, 2026, adding a new section 4.28 to its zoning by-law. Four rules came with it: short-term rentals are permitted only in zones that list them as a permitted use, no single stay may run past 28 consecutive days, no dwelling may function as a short-term rental for more than 180 days in a calendar year, and the dwelling has to be the operator's principal residence as defined in the Income Tax Act. Principal residence plus a night cap is the template the region is converging on, and it's a reasonable guess at what Uxbridge would adopt if it ever moved.

Does Uxbridge Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Ajax now has a framework to enforce. Uxbridge has no such machinery, so enforcement here doesn't begin with an inspector at all. It begins with a neighbour.

The Township's by-law enforcement page sets out the process, and it's entirely complaint-driven. Complaints have to be made in writing, either through the Township's online Cloudpermit system, where you pick "Report a Concern", pin the property on a map and fill in the details, or on a paper form at Town Hall. By-law Services says it "will strive to obtain voluntary compliance with our By-laws through public education and mediation", and escalates to notices and orders only where that fails. It also says plainly that it "is unable to provide status updates regarding active investigations", citing municipal freedom of information rules. Nobody will tell you a file is open on your property.

Noise is the usual trigger, and the Noise By-law 2012-011 is specific about it. Yelling, shouting, singing or playing a musical instrument or stereo is prohibited in a residential area between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. Monday to Saturday, and between 11:00 p.m. and 9:00 a.m. on Sundays and holidays, with "residential area" defined by zone as RC, ER, SR, HR, R1, R2 or RM. Contravening it is an offence under the Provincial Offences Act carrying a fine of not more than $5,000. Watch out for how one bad Saturday night escalates here, since the noise complaint is what puts your address in front of a by-law officer, and the zoning question is what that officer looks at next.

That second question is where the money is. Under section 67 of the Planning Act, a person who contravenes a by-law passed under section 34 is liable on a first conviction to a fine of not more than $25,000, and on a subsequent conviction to not more than $10,000 for each day the contravention continues. For a corporation, which is how plenty of investors hold Ontario rental property, the ceilings are $50,000 and then $25,000 a day. Those daily amounts are the part worth pausing on, because a zoning contravention doesn't end when you pay it.

So how strictly does Uxbridge enforce? Honestly, I couldn't find a single published prosecution, order or enforcement statistic involving a short-term rental in Uxbridge, and searches of the Township's site and its council portal turned up no staff report or council motion on the subject in 2024, 2025 or 2026. That absence cuts both ways. There's no evidence of a Township campaign against hosts, and equally no precedent telling you how a complaint would be resolved. Enforcement here is latent rather than absent, and it starts one address at a time.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Uxbridge

Given all of that, the order you do things in matters more than usual, since the early steps are the ones that tell you whether the later ones are worth attempting.

1. Find your zone before anything else. Ask Development Services which zone your property sits in and what the permitted uses are, and pay the $144 for a compliance letter in writing rather than relying on a phone call.
2. Decide honestly which of the three shapes you're running. A room in your occupied home, a whole home let nightly, or a second unit. They carry genuinely different risk, and only the third has a registration attached.
3. Register the second unit if you have one, at $125 plus $125, and expect an inspection against the Building Code, the Fire Code and the zoning by-law.
4. Sort out the Region's side. Septic permits and inspections run through the Durham Region Health Department, not the Township, and a system sized for a household is not sized for turnover.
5. Buy the right insurance before the first booking. No Uxbridge by-law requires it, which is precisely why nobody will catch the omission for you.
6. Set up tax properly. Check your position against the $30,000 HST threshold, confirm in writing who is collecting the 13%, and keep a nightly record you could hand to the CRA for the section 67.7 test.
7. Write house rules around the noise by-law, quiet from 11:00 p.m. on weeknights and Saturdays and until 9:00 a.m. on Sundays and holidays, then enforce them like your zoning position depends on it, because in a complaint-driven township it does.
8. Watch Council. Uxbridge could add a licensing class under the existing business licensing by-law, or a short-term rental section to the zoning by-law the way Ajax did in June 2026, and neither would need a provincial change to happen.

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

Wherever you get stuck in that sequence, the Township is small enough that a handful of people handle all of it, and the contact page lists them directly.

The Township office

The Corporation of the Township of Uxbridge sits at 51 Toronto Street South, PO Box 190, Uxbridge, ON L9P 1T1.

• Phone: 905-852-9181
• Fax: 905-852-9674
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• After-hours emergency: 1-877-426-4459

Zoning, compliance letters and planning applications

Development Services answers the question that actually decides your business, which is whether your use conforms to Zoning By-law 81-19.

• Phone: 905-852-9181 ext. 422, or ext. 403 for building inspections
• Email: [email protected]
• What to ask for: your zone, the permitted uses in it, and a zoning compliance letter at $144, or $252 for the seven-day express version

Complaints and by-law enforcement

By-law Services handles noise, property standards and any zoning complaint about your address.

• Phone: 905-852-9181 ext. 205
• Email: [email protected]
• How complaints arrive: in writing, through Cloudpermit's "Report a Concern" or a paper form at Town Hall

Fire, taxes and the Region

• Uxbridge Fire Department: 905-852-3393, [email protected], with an after-hours non-emergency line at 416-894-0805
• Property taxes: 905-852-9181 ext. 211 or ext. 216
• Septic systems: the Durham Region Health Department, which the Township has retained to issue permits and inspect systems in Uxbridge

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

Those contacts also explain something about the conversation among hosts here, which is quieter than you'd expect for a market this close to Toronto. Two honest caveats first, because this section is the one most likely to be repeated back to you as fact. Reddit blocks automated access, so I haven't read Uxbridge threads there and won't characterise them. And I couldn't find a BiggerPockets discussion specific to Uxbridge that I could open and verify, which isn't surprising for a township of this size.

What I can describe is the structural position hosts here are in, and it explains most of the sentiment you will run into locally:

• The absence of rules gets read as permission, and that reading is the single biggest error. Secondary write-ups routinely report that Uxbridge has no short-term rental by-law, which is true, and then conclude that short-term rentals are allowed, which does not follow from a closed permitted-use list.
• Nobody can quote a Township position, because there isn't one on the record. In a licensed municipality you can point at a by-law number. In Uxbridge the honest answer to "is this legal" is that it has never been tested publicly.
• The quiet ones stay quiet. Enforcement that starts with a neighbour's written complaint rewards hosts who never generate one, which is also why you'll hear less about problems than in Toronto or Ottawa.
• The regional direction is not ambiguous. Ajax adopted principal-residence and 180-day rules in June 2026, and hosts in neighbouring Durham municipalities are the ones bringing that up.

Take that last point seriously if you're buying rather than converting. A property whose model only works with an unrestricted nightly calendar is one council vote from a different business, and 180 days a year is the number the neighbours picked. Comparing Uxbridge against places where the rules are already written and stable is worth an hour, and the Canada market rankings are a reasonable starting point for that.

A market with no rules isn't a market with no risk. It's a market where somebody else decides later what the rules were, and the operators who come through that are the ones who wrote down what the zoning actually said before they took the first booking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a licence to run an Airbnb in Uxbridge, Ontario?

No. The Township of Uxbridge issues no short-term rental licence, permit or registration, and its Business Licensing By-law 2012-114 contains no accommodation class. The licence types Uxbridge actually issues cover go karts, kennels, pawnbrokers, places of amusement, refreshment vehicles, salvage yards, second hand goods, taxis and transient traders. The absence of a licence isn't the same as permission, though, since Zoning By-law 81-19 never lists a short-term rental as a permitted use in any zone.

Is Airbnb legal in Uxbridge in 2026?

It's unresolved rather than clearly legal or clearly banned. Zoning By-law 81-19 permits only the uses it lists, and short-term rental appears nowhere in it. Hosting paying guests in a home you occupy is the most defensible position, because the by-law's definition of a family already allows up to two roomers or boarders. Letting an entire dwelling nightly while living elsewhere is much closer to the "tourist establishment" the by-law defines but never permits.

What is the fine for an illegal short-term rental in Uxbridge?

A contravention of a zoning by-law passed under section 34 of the Planning Act carries a fine of up to $25,000 on a first conviction, and up to $10,000 for each day the contravention continues after that. A corporation faces up to $50,000, then $25,000 a day. Separately, breaching the Township's Noise By-law 2012-011 is an offence under the Provincial Offences Act with a maximum fine of $5,000.

Does Uxbridge charge a municipal accommodation tax on short-term rentals?

No. Uxbridge has no municipal accommodation tax as of July 2026, and no such by-law appears in the Township's regulatory by-law index. Ontario municipalities have been able to impose one since December 2017 under section 400.1 of the Municipal Act and O. Reg. 435/17, which sets no maximum rate, so Council could adopt one in future. The tax that does apply today is 13% HST on stays under one month costing more than $20 a night.

Can you rent out a basement apartment short-term in Uxbridge?

Only if the house is registered under the Two-unit House Registration By-law 99-107, which prohibits operating or permitting occupancy of a second residential unit in an unregistered two-unit house. Registration costs $125 for application processing plus $125 for the initial and final inspection, with $50 for each additional inspection. The house is inspected against the Ontario Building Code, the Fire Code and Zoning By-law 81-19, and one of the two units must be owner-occupied.

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