Whether you rent out the basement suite in your home, act as a Property Manager for hundreds of rental units, own or manage a manufactured home community - or anything in between - with over 25 years' experience serving residential landlords and BC's housing market, A. G. Kemp & Associates is here to help you succeed as a landlord.
Either a landlord or tenant filing a monetary claim with the Residential Tenancy Branch must satisfy what arbitrators refer to as the Four Part Test to succeed with the claim.
· a party to the tenancy agreement has failed to comply with the Act, regulation, or tenancy agreement;
· loss or damage has resulted from this non-compliance;
· the party who suffered the damage or loss can prove the amount or value of the damage or loss; and
· the party who suffered the damage or loss has acted reasonably to minimize that damage or loss.
In considereing whether to apply for a monetary order against a tenant or ex-tenant, apply this test to your situation.
On August 26, the BC Government announced the maximum allowable rent increase for 2025 is 3.0%
For rent increases due January 1, 2025, the Notice of Rent Increase must be received by the tenants before September 30.
It’s the latest move by this Government to complicate the life of rental housing providers! It must be used if you intend to end a tenancy for landlord or immediate family occupancy, or if you have sold the unit and the buyer or immediate family will move in. First, you might not know that in the Bill 14 changes passed in May, you must now give four months’ notice, and the occupant(s) must live in the unit for 12 months.
You can only obtain the Four Month Notice to End Tenancy form by applying online through the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) Generated Notice Portal. This onerous process takes about half an hour to complete by requiring every bit of information relative to the potential occupancy – even your and the purchaser’s birth dates! The only good news is once you submit the application, the RTB system issues the Notice to End Tenancy form immediately. It is filled out with the information you provided; you only need to sign and date the form.
To apply for this form – the RTB makes that onerous also - go to the RTB website, click on tenancy forms, resources, and calculators. Click on Tenancy Forms, then in the left column, select Tenancy forms listed by number, then Forms 28 – 36. Finally, scroll down to RTB 32q. Below that click on the link to the Portal.
Short answer: yes. Landlords often need photos for tenancy applicants or potential purchasers. Waiting until a suite is empty adds at least a month, plus photos of an empty unit are hardly attractive. The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner recognizes this fact in a Guidance Document for Private Sector Landlords and Tenants. Section 34 of this Guideline reads, “If the landlord takes photographs in a tenant’s apartment, they must not collect a tenant’s personal information . . . “Collection” could occur if the photographs contained images that would identify a tenant or another individual. To prevent inadvertent collection of personal information, tenants should remove or cover items that contain personal information, such as documents or photographs, when a landlord is photographing their apartment.” Our advice is simply, ensure there are no family photos, diplomas on the wall or any identifying personal information in your photos.