Montreal real estate: Know rental rules before buying vacation home!
02 Jul 2019
If you’re thinking of buying a vacation home you can also rent on Airbnb, you should know there’s a lot more to it than just listing your rental property online.
New municipal and provincial regulations on Airbnb-style short-term rentals are imposing more obligations on property owners, and authorities are getting serious about enforcement. It’s not so easy anymore for rental “hosts” to fly under the radar, and the consequences for failing to comply can be significant.
New provincial regulations, set to take effect this fall, will require owners who rent their secondary properties for fewer than 31 consecutive days to ensure they are registered with Corporation de l’industrie touristique du Québec as well as Revenu Québec. Those who rent their properties will have to collect provincial and federal sales tax as well as a lodging tax. They will also have to claim their revenue, or face hefty fines.
Increasingly, municipalities are making their own rules to clamp down on short-term rentals, too, following the example of destinations like Mont-Tremblant, where Airbnb-style rentals have long been limited to certain areas via zoning restrictions.
According to Engel & Völkers realtor Maude Gaudreault, buyers in Tremblant who want the option to rent units by the night or week are mostly limited to condo-hotels (where unit rental is managed by a hotel partner and the owner’s personal use of the unit is restricted to 36 days per year) or condos in zones where short-term rentals are permitted. Only a few neighbourhoods allow short-term rentals of single-family homes.
Gaudreault said the restrictions are pushing some vacation homebuyers to look slightly farther afield, in adjacent towns like La Conception and Lake Superior. Developers there are taking advantage of less stringent zoning rules to build projects that are designed specifically to appeal to buyers who want a detached home they can rent on Airbnb-type websites.
At Bel Air Resort & Residences, which straddles the border between Mont-Tremblant and La Conception, municipal restrictions mean the rules are different depending which side of the border your property is on. Properties on the Tremblant side must be owner-occupied or rented for a month or more at a time. Owners in La Conception will be free to choose whether to list their homes for rent themselves, take advantage of Bel Air’s rental program or keep the property for their own personal use.
According to Eric Harari, the Miami-based developer behind the project, ensuring owners have the right to choose if they want to rent their properties by the night, the week, the month or the season is a key selling feature for many buyers.
“Owners of secondary homes often want the option to rent,” Harari said. “I wanted to give them the freedom to generate income if they want.”
