The Province published an excellent Q&A article last week that I wanted to share. The Executive Director of the Condominium Homeowner's Association, Tony Gioventu, discussed rental bylaws and how they affect strata's rental restriction numbers. 

Here is the situation/question posed in the article dated April 24, 2011.

Q: Our strata has an interesting problem that relates to rental bylaws. We are 297 units in three buildings and we permit a maximum of 10 per cent rentals at any given time.

An owner wishes to rent their unit, but we currently have 35 rentals in the building.

The owner requested a hearing and demanded to know how we were keeping the rental inventory and of the 35 which were family rentals, hardship or exemptions from the original disclosure statement.

Our bylaw clearly states that all rentals shall be counted as part of the rental limitation, but the owner challenged us and claims that we have to keep a rental inventory to properly administer the bylaw.

Our property manager has managed the rentals for us to date, and we were advised that we have no choice but comply with our bylaw, with respects to how we count rentals. Now we have a letter from a lawyer representing the owner contradicting our bylaw and advising that we have to permit his client to rent the unit. Is there a simple way to sort this out?

-Jack Martens

Click here to see Mr. Gioventu's response to this letter and review the article in its entirety.