Airbnb in a Calgary Condo: Licence vs Bylaw

Two authorities, not one

This is the entire article, and most people get it wrong in the same direction.

The City of Calgary regulates short-term rentals as a business. It requires a business licence, sets safety and insurance requirements, and enforces through its bylaw services. Its jurisdiction is the city.

Your condominium corporation regulates what happens inside its own building. It does that through bylaws passed by owners and enforced by the board. Its jurisdiction is your building — including your unit.

These two do not talk to each other, and one does not defer to the other. The City does not require condominium board approval before issuing a short-term rental licence. That means it is entirely possible to hold a valid, paid-up City licence for a unit in a building where short-term rentals are prohibited. The licence is real. So is the prohibition. The prohibition is the one that ends your business.

What the City requires

Every short-term rental host in Calgary needs a valid business licence before listing, whether they rent occasionally or year-round, and it is renewed annually.

Since April 1, 2025, following amendments Council approved in December 2024, there are two licence types:

• Primary Residence — for a property you actually live in.
• Non-Primary Residence — for a property you do not.

This is worth noting because Calgary is more permissive here than several major Canadian cities. Toronto, Mississauga and much of the GTA restrict short-term rentals to a host's principal residence. Calgary permits both, which is a genuine part of the investment case for the city.

Both licence types carry requirements. Expect to provide at least $2 million in liability insurance and a fire safety plan, to pass an inspection as part of the process, and to follow occupancy and booking rules — including a prohibition on overlapping bookings, where two or more unrelated parties are accommodated in the same dwelling unit at once. A short-term rental is defined as temporary accommodation for compensation for periods of up to 180 consecutive days.

Operating without a licence, or outside its conditions, can bring fines and loss of the licence.

These rules change. Verify the current requirements on the City's own short-term rental page before you rely on any of this, including this article.

What the condominium corporation controls

The corporation's bylaws are where the real constraint usually sits, and they can say almost anything the owners have voted for.

Common restrictions include an outright prohibition on short-term rentals, a minimum lease term — a six-month or one-year minimum quietly makes nightly rental impossible without naming it — a cap on the proportion of units that may be rented at all, registration requirements for any tenancy, and restrictions on who may use amenities or hold a fob.

Minimum lease terms deserve special attention because they do not look like short-term rental bans. An investor reading bylaws for the phrase "short-term rental" can miss a clause requiring leases of no less than six months, which accomplishes the same thing.

Enforcement is not theoretical either. Corporations enforce through fines, through legal action, and — practically — through neighbours who notice a different set of people in the elevator every weekend and complain to the board. Short-term rental violations are among the easiest bylaw breaches for other owners to spot.

The risk nobody prices: bylaws can change after you buy

This is the part that turns a working investment into a stranded one.

A condominium corporation's bylaws are not fixed at the moment you purchase. Owners can amend them. If enough owners in your building decide they are tired of short-term rental traffic, they can vote to restrict or prohibit it — and you are an owner in that building, subject to the outcome.

So the question to ask is not only "do the bylaws allow it today." It is also:

• How many units in this building are already operating short-term rentals? A building with several has a constituency that will defend the practice. A building where you would be the first has one that may not.
• What have the board minutes said about it? Minutes are where you find out that a restriction has been discussed, proposed, or is already scheduled for a vote.
• What is the owner-occupier ratio? Buildings dominated by owner-occupiers restrict rentals more readily than investor-heavy ones.

None of this is speculation you have to guess at. It is all in the document package, and the board minutes in particular are where the future shows up before it happens.

How to check, in order

1. The bylaws. Search them for short-term rental, Airbnb, minimum lease term, and rental restrictions generally. This is the binding constraint and it comes first, because if the answer here is no, nothing else matters.
2. The board minutes. Two years' worth. Look for any discussion of rentals, enforcement actions, or proposed bylaw amendments.
3. The City licence requirements. Confirm which licence type applies and what it requires. Verify current rules directly with the City rather than relying on a summary.
4. The numbers. Only now build the model — and build it with the condo fee, the insurance, the licence cost, vacancy, and management included. Short-term rental gross revenue looks very different from short-term rental net.

Doing this in the wrong order is how people end up owning a furnished unit they cannot legally operate.

Is it still worth doing?

For the right unit in the right building, yes. Calgary permitting non-primary-residence short-term rentals is genuinely more favourable than the rules in several comparable Canadian markets, and the apartment segment is currently the softest in the city — a CREB® benchmark near $297,600, down over 8 per cent year over year, with close to five months of supply. Soft segments are where investors get purchase prices that make the math work.

But the building selection matters more than the unit selection, and more than the price. A cheap unit in a building that prohibits short-term rentals is not a cheap short-term rental — it is a long-term rental you overpaid for in furnishings.

If you are evaluating a specific Calgary condo for short-term rental use, send it to me before you write the offer. I will read the bylaws and the minutes and tell you whether the building actually permits what you are planning — including when the answer is no.

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