Selling a House With Tenants in BC: Notice, Timelines and Price

By Dan Marusin PREC October 26, 2026 17 min read

Three months. That's how much notice a tenant gets today when your buyer wants to move in, and the tenant has 21 days to dispute it. If the number in your head is four months, it's out of date: B.C. moved purchaser notices to three months on August 21, 2024, and landlord-own-use notices followed on June 18, 2025. Four months still applies, but only to demolition, conversion and caretaker-use notices.

The other thing sellers get wrong is the starting point. Selling doesn't end a tenancy. The province's own page puts it plainly: when a landlord sells, the tenancy continues, and the landlord can't end it because they want to sell. Your buyer steps into your shoes as the new landlord, on the same terms, unless one of a short list of legal routes ends it first.

So the real question isn't "can I sell with tenants?" You can. It's which buyer you're selling to, and how many weeks your completion date needs.

Notice for buyer's use3 monthsRTB-32P

Tenant's dispute window21 days

Compensation to tenant1 month's rent

If the buyer doesn't move in12× renton top of the 1 month

Buyer must live there12 months

Showing notice24 hoursin writing

Three ways to sell a tenanted home

A tenanted sale ends up on one of three tracks. Pick yours before you list: it decides who you market to, the completion date you can accept, and what you need from the tenant on day one.

Selling a tenanted property in B.C.: the three routes
	Sell with the tenant staying	Buyer moves in (purchaser's notice)	Tenant agrees to leave (RTB-8)
Who buys	Investors; buyers happy to be landlords	Owner-occupiers, or a buyer whose parent, spouse or child moves in	Anyone, once the date is signed
Legal basis	Tenancy continues; buyer becomes landlord	RTA s.49(5), generated notice RTB-32P	RTA s.44(1)(c): written agreement
Notice needed	None	3 months, effective the day before rent is due	Whatever date both sides sign
Tenant compensation	None	1 month's rent	Only what you negotiate
Risk	Smaller buyer pool; rent capped at 2.2% for 2027	21-day dispute; 12× rent if the buyer doesn't move in	Tenant can say no; nobody has to sign

The third route deserves a word. A Mutual Agreement to End a Tenancy (RTB-8) is not a notice. The form itself says neither side has to sign, and that a tenant who signs may be giving up compensation they'd get under a notice. If you go this way, put whatever you offer in writing and let the tenant take their time. A tenant who feels pushed can simply refuse, and you're back to route one or two.

A demolition or conversion notice (RTB-29: four months, 30 days to dispute) rarely fits a sale. It needs every permit in hand, and the province says the new owner serves it after title transfers.

The purchaser's notice, step by step

This is the route most sellers mean when they ask how to sell with tenants. Section 49(5) of the Residential Tenancy Act lets you, the current landlord, end the tenancy for your buyer. Three things must all be true before you do:

You have an agreement in good faith to sell. A real, accepted contract.
Every condition on the sale has been satisfied. Financing, inspection, strata documents: all subjects removed. A notice served while subjects are still open doesn't meet the Act.
The buyer asks you in writing because they, or a close family member, intend in good faith to live there.

"Close family member" is narrow. The Act limits it to the buyer's parent, spouse or child, or the parent or child of the buyer's spouse. The province spells out that brothers and sisters don't count. A buyer who plans to move a sibling or a cousin in can't use this notice. The buyer also has to be an individual or a family corporation, and has to be buying at least half of the property.

One more trap, for owners of small apartment buildings: the purchaser's notice isn't available if the building has five or more rental units and isn't strata-titled, or is strata-titled with all the rental units owned by the same owner. That's section 49(6.1). A buyer of a non-strata six-plex can't use it.

The web portal

Since July 18, 2024, the notice has to be generated through the Residential Tenancy Branch's Landlord Use web portal. A homemade notice, or an old paper form, won't work: the province says any notice other than a generated RTB-32P or RTB-32L is legally unenforceable. Generated notices carry a Notice ID in the top-left corner, and the notice names the purchaser who asked for it. The province also says serving this notice can't itself be a condition of the sale.

The RTB's information sheet says the generator has to be done in one sitting with no save button. For a purchaser's notice you'll upload a completed RTB-58 (Contract of Purchase and Sale Information) and the buyer's written request, and you'll need the buyer's name, birthdate and address, who's moving in, the possession date, the rent, the day rent is due, whether there's a fixed term, and how many people live in the unit.

How long it takes: a worked timeline

The effective date on a purchaser's notice has to clear two bars. It can't be earlier than three months after the tenant receives the notice, and it has to land on the day before rent is due. For a tenant who pays on the 1st, that means the last day of a month. If you put a date that's too early, the Act quietly moves it to the earliest legal date, so a mistake costs you time rather than voiding the notice.

Here's a hypothetical, using dates on this year's calendar and a tenant who pays rent on the 1st:

Hypothetical tenanted sale with vacant possession (rent due on the 1st)
Step	Date	Rule
Offer accepted	Mon Nov 2, 2026	Contract signed; subjects open
Subjects removed, buyer's written request	Mon Nov 9, 2026	s.49(5)(b) and (c)
Notice generated and handed to the tenant	Tue Nov 10, 2026	RTB-32P from the web portal
Tenant's dispute window closes	Tue Dec 1, 2026	21 days after receipt
Earliest effective date	Sun Feb 28, 2027	3 months after receipt, then the day before rent is due
Tenant out	Sun Feb 28, 2027, 1 p.m.	s.37 default move-out time
Completion	Mon Mar 1, 2027	Set after the effective date
Possession	Tue Mar 2, 2027	120 days after acceptance

Roughly four months, offer to keys. Note what happens if the notice slips. Hand it over on Tue Dec 1 instead of Tue Nov 10 and the earliest effective date jumps from Sun Feb 28 to Wed Mar 31, a full extra month. If you mail it, the Act treats it as received on the fifth day after mailing; taped to the door or dropped in the mail slot, the third day. In my example a mailed notice would still make Sun Feb 28, but later in the month it might not.

Why buyers care so much about this date: when the province cut the purchaser notice to three months in 2024, its news release said four months could stop first-time buyers buying tenanted homes, especially under CMHC programs that require the property to be vacant at possession, and that a mortgage commitment could expire before a long closing. If your buyer has an insured mortgage, vacant possession on the completion date isn't a nice-to-have. (More on how insured mortgages work in my CMHC insurance explainer.)

The buyer's home buyer rescission period (three business days, under Property Law Act s.42) starts the day after acceptance and runs alongside the subjects. Realistically, the clock on your notice starts a week or more after the offer, not the day you shake hands.

Fixed-term leases

A fixed-term lease changes the maths. The RTB's Policy Guideline 30 says a purchaser's notice can't take effect before the end of the fixed term. If your tenant signed a one-year lease ending August 31, 2027, a buyer who wants to move in on March 1 is out of luck unless the tenant agrees to leave early in writing.

Read the lease before you list. Look for the end date and for a vacate clause. A vacate clause is only allowed when the landlord is an individual who, or whose close family member, will move in at the end of the term (or in a sublease), so most investor leases shouldn't have one, and one in your lease doesn't automatically help your buyer. If the term has already ended without a new agreement, the Act turns it into a month-to-month tenancy on the same terms, and the normal three-month rule applies.

What the tenant gets, and what bad faith costs

Every tenant served a section 49 notice is owed one month's rent, on or before the effective date. The tenant can take it by simply not paying the last month's rent. On a month-to-month tenancy they can also leave early on 10 days' written notice, paying rent only to the day they go, and they still keep the compensation. That early exit isn't available during a fixed term.

The penalty side is the part that matters to your buyer. If the person named on the notice doesn't move in within a reasonable period after the effective date, or doesn't live there for at least 12 months, the landlord or the purchaser who asked for the notice owes the tenant another 12 months' rent. The RTB can excuse it only for extenuating circumstances, which Guideline 50 describes as things nobody could foresee or control, like a parent who moves in and dies a month later.

Hypothetical: tenant paying $2,200 a month
Situation	Who pays	Amount at $2,200/month
Notice served (always owed)	Landlord who served it	$2,200
Month-to-month tenant leaves early on 10 days' notice	Landlord	$2,200 still owed, plus refund of any prepaid rent
Buyer doesn't move in, or leaves before 12 months	Purchaser who asked for the notice	$26,400 more (12× rent)
Total exposure in a bad-faith case		$28,600

I used $2,200 because that's CMHC's October 2025 average rent for a one-bedroom condo rented out in the City of Vancouver. Plug in your own tenant's rent.

What counts as bad faith? Guideline 2A is direct about it: ending a tenancy to re-rent the unit at a higher rent, instead of occupying it for at least 12 months, is not good faith, and section 49 can't be used to leave a unit sitting empty. The occupant doesn't have to sleep there every night, but can't stay so rarely that the place is basically vacant for the year. The 12-month requirement applies to notices given on or after April 3, 2024; before that it was six months.

As the seller, you're usually not the one at risk here, but I'd still want the buyer's written request to say plainly who is moving in. The notice is in your name, and the Act says a landlord must not serve one unless the grounds apply or the landlord reasonably believes they do.

Showings with tenants at home

Your tenant keeps the right to quiet enjoyment until the day the tenancy ends, sale or no sale. Section 29 of the Act lets you in with the tenant's permission, or with written notice given at least 24 hours (and no more than 30 days) ahead, stating a reasonable purpose and a time between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. The province's showings page adds the details that trip up listings:

Notice of entry has to be written, and it can't be a text message.
You or your agent must be present at every showing. No lockbox without the tenant's permission.
No staging without the tenant's consent, and you can't require the tenant to leave during a showing.
The tenant may be home for any showing. If proper notice was given, you can show the unit when they aren't.
"All-day showings every Saturday for several weeks" is the province's own example of unreasonable entry. A tenant can apply to the RTB to suspend or put conditions on your right to enter.

My read: agree a written showing schedule with the tenant before the listing goes live, keep open houses to a minimum, and send each notice properly even when the tenant is friendly. A cooperative tenant is the single biggest factor in how a tenanted listing shows, and the photos and the first week of showings are when you need them most.

Tenanted or vacant: what it does to your buyer pool

Sell with the tenant staying and you're selling mainly to investors. A buyer who wants to live there can still take possession and then serve their own three-month notice as the new landlord, but that means owning the place for months with someone else living in it. In a quiet condo market, a narrower buyer pool is a real cost. Greater Vancouver Realtors reported 777 apartment sales in September 2026, down 18.6% from a year earlier, with a sales-to-active ratio of 11.4% for apartments. GVR says prices tend to come under downward pressure when that ratio stays below 12%. The apartment benchmark was $682,500, down 6.2% year over year.

EstateBlock's live listing data shows how much competition a tenanted condo is up against. These are asking prices of active listings on EstateBlock.com as of October 26, not sale prices.

Condos for sale by city: EstateBlock.com live listings, snapshot 2026-10-26 (asking prices of active listings, not sale prices)
City	Active condo listings	Median asking price	Median days on market
Vancouver	2,294	$799K	42
Burnaby	1,094	$689K	56
Surrey	1,106	$499K	69
Richmond	891	$687K	72
Coquitlam	605	$631K	47
North Vancouver	468	$792K	37
New Westminster	349	$555K	44
Langley	393	$500K	48

Median days on market, active condo listings Days, by city. Asking-price listings, not sales. Snapshot 2026-10-26

Richmond72Surrey69Burnaby56Langley48Coquitlam47New Westminster44Vancouver42North Vancouver37

Source: EstateBlock.com live listings, snapshot 2026-10-26

Show the numbers

Item	Days
Richmond	72
Surrey	69
Burnaby	56
Langley	48
Coquitlam	47
New Westminster	44
Vancouver	42
North Vancouver	37

Active condo listings in Vancouver have sat a median 42 days so far; in Richmond, 72. Whatever it takes to find your buyer, a vacant-possession sale then adds three months or more of notice before keys change hands. Know that before you commit to buying your next place.

Then there's the rent itself. An investor buying your unit inherits your tenant's rent, and can only raise it once every 12 months, with three months' notice, by no more than the annual cap: 2.2% for 2027 (details in my 2027 rent increase post). A long-term tenant is often well below market, and CMHC's numbers show how wide that gap runs.

Average rent: units that were vacant vs. occupied Purpose-built rental apartments, Vancouver CMA, October 2025, $ per month

Vacant units (what a new tenant pays)
Occupied units

Source: CMHC Rental Market Survey 2025, Table 1.1.9

Show the numbers

	Vacant units (what a new tenant pays)	Occupied units
Studio	$1,988	$1,654
1-bed	$2,147	$1,793
2-bed	$2,903	$2,344
3-bed+	$3,673	$2,978

For a one-bedroom, vacant units averaged $2,147 against $1,793 for occupied ones, a gap of $354 a month or 20%. For two-bedrooms it was $559, or 24%. These are purpose-built apartments, not condos, but the pattern is the point: an investor pricing your unit off a below-market rent will pay less for it, and an owner-occupier doesn't care what the rent was.

My read: if your tenant pays close to market rent, has a clean record and wants to stay, marketing to investors with the tenancy in place is a reasonable plan. If the rent is well below market, or you're selling a one- or two-bedroom condo whose natural buyer is a first-time owner-occupier, plan for vacant possession and price the longer closing into your own timeline. Either way, run your numbers first with my home value estimator; I won't promise either route gets a higher price, because that depends on the unit and the month.

The new government and these rules

B.C. voted on October 24. On Elections BC's preliminary count, as of October 25 at 5:04 p.m., the Conservatives led in 63 of 93 districts, the NDP in 28 and the Greens in 2; David Eby conceded and announced he would step down as NDP leader. These are still preliminary numbers, and the final count is scheduled for November 6, 2026. I cover what each party promised in my election housing post.

On tenancy, I found nothing to report yet. A full-text search of the Conservative platform released October 18 turns up no mention of tenants, tenancies, landlords or renters. The notice periods in this post sit in a regulation, which a cabinet can change without a new Act; that's how they moved twice in 2024 and 2025. So the rules above are the rules today, as of the Residential Tenancy Act and Regulation current to October 20, 2026. Before you serve anything, check the Residential Tenancy Branch's selling page for changes.

Seller checklist

Get the paperwork. A copy of the tenancy agreement, the current rent and the day it's due, the fixed-term end date if any, and the security and pet damage deposits you hold. BCFSA says it's prudent for agents to get a copy of the tenancy agreement before listing; you should want it too.
Ask the tenant what they want. Stay with a new landlord, move on, or open to a mutual agreement. That answer picks your route.
Agree a showing schedule in writing. Then give written 24-hour notices anyway.
Write the contract for your route. Tenanted: say so, and deal with the deposits. The province notes the buyer may end up responsible for returning them, and suggests dealing with them in the contract or the closing settlement. Vacant: completion after the earliest effective date, with a buffer.
After subjects are removed, get the buyer's written request, then generate the RTB-32P on the portal and serve it properly. Keep proof of service.
Pay the one month (or let the tenant skip the last month), and do the move-out condition inspection the Act requires.
Plan the tax side. Selling a rental can mean capital gains tax. See my posts on capital gains on a property sale and the principal residence exemption, try the capital gains calculator, and budget the selling costs in my closing costs guide.

This is general information, not legal advice. Tenancy disputes turn on facts, so confirm your situation with a lawyer (and an accountant for the tax side) before you sign or serve anything.

FAQ

Can a landlord sell a house with tenants in BC?

Yes. The sale doesn't end the tenancy: the buyer becomes the new landlord on the same terms. The tenancy only ends if the tenant agrees in writing, or if a legal notice is served, such as a three-month purchaser's notice when the buyer or a close family member will move in.

How much notice does a tenant get when a house is sold in BC?

Three months for a purchaser's notice (RTB-32P), effective the day before rent is due, and never before a fixed term ends. The tenant has 21 days to dispute it. These periods have applied to purchaser notices since August 21, 2024.

Is it still four months' notice for landlord use in BC?

No. Landlord-use and purchaser notices are now three months with a 21-day dispute window (purchaser notices since August 21, 2024, landlord-own-use since June 18, 2025). Four months still applies to demolition, conversion and caretaker-use notices.

What compensation does a tenant get when the buyer moves in?

One month's rent, paid on or before the effective date or taken as a free last month. If the buyer or their close family member doesn't move in within a reasonable time or doesn't stay 12 months, the purchaser can be ordered to pay 12 more months' rent.

Who counts as a close family member for a purchaser's notice?

The buyer's parent, spouse or child, or the parent or child of the buyer's spouse. Brothers, sisters and other relatives don't qualify.

Sources

Dan Marusin PREC, REALTOR® · Renanza Realty Inc., 777 Hornby St, Suite 600, Vancouver, BC. This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice.