Buying a Tenanted Home in BC: The Three Month Notice and What It Means for Your Move-In Date

A tenanted property looks like an opportunity. The rent covers part of the carrying cost, the price is sometimes softer because the pool of buyers is smaller, and the unit is already earning.

Then you plan to move in yourself, and the timeline becomes the whole story.

The sequence

If you are buying a BC residential property with a tenant in it and you intend to occupy it:

1. You ask the seller, in writing, to end the tenancy for purchaser use.
2. The seller, who is still the landlord until completion, gives the tenant a three month notice on form RTB-32P.
3. The tenant is owed compensation equal to one month's rent, payable by the effective date of the notice.
4. The tenant has 21 days from receiving the notice to apply for dispute resolution.
5. If the tenant disputes, the tenancy continues until the Residential Tenancy Branch decides.

Every one of those five steps sits between you and your keys.

Three months for purchaser use, four for demolition

Purchaser use and landlord use are three month notices, on forms RTB-32P and RTB-32L.

The four month notice covers demolition, renovation or conversion, on form RTB-29. Serve that form for a purchaser use eviction and the notice is unenforceable, so the clock you believed was running never started.

The form has to come from the portal

The province is direct about this: notices must be generated through the Residential Tenancy Branch web portal, and if a notice other than a generated RTB form 32P or 32L is used, it is legally unenforceable.

A letter from the seller does not end a tenancy. An old PDF downloaded years ago does not end a tenancy. A generated notice carries a Notice ID, the effective date, the stated reason and the landlord's signature, and those are the components that make it stand up.

Ask to see the generated notice with its Notice ID. Do not accept a description of one.

Do the arithmetic before you set a completion date

This is where purchases go wrong.

The notice usually goes out after subjects are removed, because a seller will not serve a notice on a deal that might collapse. Count from there:

• Three months for the notice itself.
• Plus the 21-day dispute window, which runs inside those three months but can extend everything if the tenant applies.
• Plus the hearing and decision if they do.

A purchase completing three months after subject removal, where you intend to move in on completion, does not have room in it. Four months is tight. The sequence needs to be discussed with your conveyancer before you commit to a completion date, rather than discovered afterwards.

You have to actually move in

The purchaser must intend in good faith to use the unit as living accommodation or as part of their living space.

If the unit is not used for the stated purpose within a reasonable period, the landlord may owe the evicted tenant compensation. The rule exists to stop vacant possession being used as a route to a higher rent, and the Residential Tenancy Branch does order that compensation.

Do not request a purchaser use notice for a property you intend to re-rent.

If you are keeping the tenant

No notice is needed. The tenancy continues with you as the new landlord, on exactly the terms already in place. You inherit the tenancy agreement as written, including the current rent.

Two consequences follow:

You cannot reset the rent on closing. Rent increases follow the annual limits that apply to every BC landlord, on the schedule the Act allows. Buying the building changes nothing about that.

The in-place rent is a number to verify. If it sits well below market, that gap is part of what you are buying, and it should be in the price. Ask for the signed tenancy agreement, the rent ledger, and the date and amount of the last increase. A summary the seller typed up carries none of the same weight, so ask for the signed documents.

For anyone weighing the holding cost of a rental, this belongs alongside the speculation and vacancy tax, where a tenanted property may claim an exemption that a vacant one cannot.

What your offer should say

A clause that says "vacant possession on completion" and stops there is the one that fails, because it does not say how vacant possession gets produced.

Cover, specifically:

• Whether you are buying with vacant possession or with the tenancy continuing.
• Who requests the notice, and by what date it must be served.
• Who pays the one month of compensation.
• What happens to the completion date if the tenant disputes.
• Evidence you will receive: the generated notice with its Notice ID, and the tenancy agreement.

That last one matters. Ask for a copy of the notice itself, with its Notice ID visible on it.

What this comes down to

• Purchaser use is a three month notice on form RTB-32P. The four month notice is for demolition or renovation.
• The notice must be generated through the RTB web portal, or it is unenforceable.
• The tenant is owed one month's rent in compensation.
• The tenant has 21 days to apply for dispute resolution, and the tenancy continues until that is decided.
• You must genuinely intend to occupy the unit.
• Keeping the tenant means inheriting the tenancy and its rent unchanged.
• Contact our team before writing an offer on a tenanted home, or browse listings.

Plan your next step

Read the home-buying guide to sequence your subject conditions, and house viewing for how to approach a property where somebody else is living while you look at it.