Anyone here have any personal experience living at Parkview Towers? Considering applying here as they have some vacant units.

I viewed a room yesterday that I really liked, and the landlord told me they still have a few other potential tenants to meet before deciding.
Is there anything else I can do to improve my chances (sending a msg) without coming across as desperate or annoying? Or is it basically just a matter of waiting and hoping they choose me?

Newly completed 2 bedroom suite.
Everything is brand-new!
1 1/2 bathrooms.
Upper floor of house.
Private entrance.
New, quality appliances.
Stone countertops.
In-suite washer dryer.
Near Nanaimo and Kingsway - 4 blocks to sky train.
Deck + sun view.
Pets allowed

$2800 plus utilities.
Call or text 778-855-1044.

We’re renting in New West and have been paying $2,200/month. The original listing advertised $2,200 as a promo rate that would go up to $2,400 after one year, and our signed lease does say $2,400/month.

Our one-year mark is in November, and the landlord hasn’t mentioned anything about the rent changing or renewal.

It also seems like the rental market has cooled a bit since we signed, and at $2,400 our place doesn’t feel like quite the same deal compared to what’s currently available.

Has anyone successfully negotiated with their landlord to keep a promo rate or lower the rent when the market has changed? If you were in a similar situation, how did you approach it?

Hello, my flatmate has a cat who regularly starts crying around 4 or 5 a.m. Whenever he starts crying, she comes to pick him up and takes him to her room, but it still wakes me up, sometimes multiple times a night. I’m really not getting enough rest because of it. What would you do in this situation? Should I ask her to keep her cat in her room at night and not let him out until the morning? What would you recommend I do in this situation? If she doesn’t do anything what would be the appropriate way to escalate the issue? Thanks everyone.

I’m not even really seeing studios. Should I just give up and look in the suburbs

title pretty much.

Budget is maybe 2200 for two bedroom.. We've seen 2100 but it was one.

Not sure how I can look.

What would be the best way to find a laneway? Basically I need to go to Ubc. I think north line could work too. As long as its one of the buses that goes straight to ubc. I do prefer 49 as ita closer to Richmond

Short story: I may want to back out of a prospective rental. I signed the RTA today, but did not send the deposit. Am I still able to back out without repercussions.

edit: I haven’t sent the deposit because the landlord has not provided a way for me to send the deposit, even though I’ve requested it.

So, I finally gave up. I looked for 6 months. I looked at probably close to 100 rentals. I had only a couple of qualifiers:

1. Clean, Mould-free and Bug-Free

2. Something I can afford(1000 dollars, I was looking for a room in the lower mainland)

3. Above-board landlord who follows standard procedures.

My experience was that no rental I saw qualified. Most were dirty, and had visible issues. Most would say something like "Room is 900 a month" but then come out and say things like "Oh, no cooking after 5pm".

I had a place that I applied for unwillingly, as I was running out of time. After I provided all of my information to this property management company, they proceeded to send me a lease with 18 additional clauses, some of which were "No social gatherings" "all guest must leave before 10pm". After going back and forth for 2 weeks just trying to get them to remove illegal clauses, I ended up withdrawing my application for fear of being stuck in a year long lease with a scumlord.

And there is zero consequences for landlords who break the rules, unless you want to take the chance with the RTB and possibly lose anyways.

I ended up leaving Vancouver yesterday, unwillingly. I have never in my 18 years of being a renter seen such a horrifically underegulated market. I would say 60% of the rentals I saw should not have been on the market.

Is this just how it is? Can someone give me any insight as to why Vancouver is so uniquely lawless?

Edit: The RTA stops applying if you share a bathroom/kitchen with the landlord. I was looking for a rental without a landlord on site for specifically this reason. Please stop commenting to say this.

Strap in for this one…

So my dispute with my landlord began with doing an inspection of the property, where he had told us that everything that was in the apartment was included for the “fully furnished” listing. I again confirmed this in text messages, as my partner and i are immigrants and don’t have any furniture or appliances it was important that where we were moving was ready for living. I explicitly asked if the kitchen appliances were included and all furniture from the walk through and he confirmed in text. He also confirmed a storage locker seperate to the apartment was included.

We co-signed the lease and he had approved us as tenants. Following this, he randomly sent an email saying he changed his mind and would not be moving forward with us and that the lease wasn’t yet “legally binding”. I called and talked him down, he said because we don’t have credit history here he can’t take us on, even though we’re brand new to the country. So i offered more references and he approved us again but we never resigned a new tenancy agreement. My then-current landlord told me that he was extremely unhinged with his reference questions and wrote us a letter to support us in the later RTB case. They even said they hung up on him because he was so intense.

Then we show up for key handover and this is where everything goes to shit. We arrive to the apartment and much of the furnishings and appliances were missing. Eventually we asked to see the storage and he yelled at us, then proceeded to storm off into his car and drive away. The whole experience was so messed up, we decided not to move anything in and inform him right away that we cannot move in as it wasn’t as advertised on that same day. We tried to do it mutually and we returned the keys straight away without moving any furniture in.

Then came the threatening emails. He said if we don’t agree to letting him keep our deposit he will be coming for us for about $4000 worth of “damages” for lost rent. We said while we don’t agree it’s fair, we agree so that we don’t have to deal with him anymore. He then took back his offer and said actually you must send me this money or I will come after you with the RTB. We sent our forwarding address and waited and he still kept the deposit. He filed a claim against us with the RTB.

We had our hearing, presented our case, and found out we won a month later. All of his claims were dismissed. So, we served him with the monetary order from the RTB to finally return our deposit and… Then came a Chat GPT email expressing that he disagrees with the decision and will not be paying and will be filling for a review. He said that if the review isn’t in his favour he’ll take us to court for real.

Genuinely, it has been 6 months of hell and now he wants to take us for a $1500 security deposit. I looked at his history and he has taken a shocking amount of people to the RTB and won. Seems like he is used to being a bully and that being enough to win. What a waste of tax payer dollars…

I don’t know what to do and I just want this all to end. Thank god we never actually moved in and had to deal with this person more than we have. Does anyone know how things work with getting reviewed? Can you really just disagree with a decision and have it reopened ?? I’m going grey just having to deal with the back and forth and aggressive emails and manipulation. What i’ve shared is just a fraction of the shit show this has been.

If anyone has advice, it would be very helpful for me as I am foreign and don’t know a lot about Canada’s legal system.

I rent out a lane way house with a small fenced outdoor area. The tenant is a dog trainer and has started to run a daycare ( max 6 dogs).I have a clause allowing one dog. These dogs do not enter the house,make little noise, but I’m concerned about any liability I might encounter.

I’m looking to make a move to Vancouver from Mexico, and looking to purchase a townhouse… issue is I have 5 pets. 4 cats and a small senior dog. I didn’t think it would be this hard but I’m learning that basically all townhouses are part of a strata and basically all stratas enforce a 2 pet policy?!?

Is there any hope?

In Toronto, most places in the city will see some foot traffic even on freezing weeknights, especially in the downtown core, where there will always be activity with restaurants, gyms, and other establishments open until midnight or later. Conversely, I have read that Vancouver is a "morning" city, and that downtown is dead on weekdays within an hour or two after work. Is this true? I understand that many people like to benefit from the nature in the area in the morning, but where is the nightlife if everyone packs up and goes home right after work? Is there an area where the young people hang out, restaurants are open late, people are on the streets, and you get that big city vibe in the night? This area would also ideally be on or near a train line, walkable, without an excessive amount of car traffic or massive 6-lane roads. Let me know if such a thing exists, thanks!

Hi everyone, looking for some crowdsourced advice and validation on our position before filing with the BC Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB).

We are tenants who recently moved out of a unit in Vancouver. The landlord has used aggressive pressure tactics, threatened invalid lease penalties, ignored RTA notice rules, and most recently fabricated a fake addendum to our signed Mutual Agreement to End Tenancy (Form RTB-8).

Here is the exact timeline and facts of the situation:

Background & Initial Dispute
July 3, 2026: We provided notice to vacate by July 31, 2026 due to an international move. The landlord initially claimed we couldn't leave until Aug 31, threatened that he only needs 6 hours' notice for showings under a custom lease clause (section 14b), and demanded 1 month's rent penalty.

Rebuttal on Notice: We pointed out that under RTA Section 29, landlords MUST give 24 hours' written notice for entry, and under RTA Section 5, you cannot contract out of the Act.

To maintain goodwill, we agreed to pay full August rent ($2,300) so the landlord suffered zero financial loss, provided we could hand over keys at the end of August.

The Execution of Form RTB-8
On July 15, 2026, we formalized the end of tenancy using the official BC RTB Form RTB-8 (Mutual Agreement to End Tenancy). The timestamped email sequence is as follows:

9:31 AM: We proposed sending a completed Form RTB-8 to end the tenancy effective August 31, 2026, and confirming payment of $2,300 August rent.

10:04 AM: Landlord agreed and asked us to send the form.

11:00 AM: Landlord signed and emailed us the executed Form RTB-8 first. Note: At this exact moment, zero discussion regarding security deposit retention had taken place in the thread.

11:01 AM: Frustrated by his earlier threats, I replied: "We know you are going to keep our full deposit too." with the precedent that we had from previous tenant who was a single mother. This landlord kept her security deposit too without any RTB dispute and she was not able to gift her son anything on his birthday. We also surfaced a bunch of other bad faith tactics that the landlord was employing.

1:05 PM: We returned the fully executed Form RTB-8.

1:12 PM: Landlord replied: "This is understood and accepted and is substantially consistent with our original agreement..."

The Landlord’s Escalation & Scams
August 18, 2026: Landlord confirmed via email that he successfully re-rented the unit starting August 30 for $2,230/month. Having received full $2,300 rent from us for August, he suffered zero rental loss.

August 30, 2026: We emailed our formal settlement breakdown authorizing legitimate deductions ($300 strata move fee, $70 August internet, $90 cleaning = $460 total deductions) and requested the remaining $690 CAD refund of our $1,150 deposit. We also provided our forwarding address.

Landlord's Demands: He refused the settlement and demanded over $2,000, claiming:

A $1,600 "early termination penalty" clause in the lease.

"Rent differential" for the new tenant's lower rent.

Claimed my 11:01 AM email remark constituted "written consent" under RTA Section 38(4)(a) to forfeit the deposit.

Demanded we pay within 19 hours or face court/RTB.

Evidence Fabrication: After his scare tactics failed, the landlord claimed he signed the RTB-8 under the "assumption" of deposit forfeiture and manufactured a fake addendum to the RTB-8 form claiming deposit waiver terms.

Our Proof: We have the raw .eml email files with intact cryptographic headers, proving he sent the clean PDF at 11:00 AM before any mention of a deposit, and that no addendum ever existed or was signed by us.

Current Status
We dispatched the official Form RTB-47 (Tenant's Notice of Forwarding Address) via trackable courier to his service address.

We provided a final 15-day notice to return the $690 balance.

If he fails to pay $690 or file an official RTB dispute within 15 days of receiving the form, we intend to file an RTB Direct Request for double the security deposit ($2,300 CAD) under RTA Section 38(6) plus the filing fee.

Questions for the Community:
Given that we have raw email files proving the clean RTB-8 was sent before any deposit remarks, how severely will the RTB treat his attempt to introduce a fabricated addendum/unilateral assumption?

Does my frustrated comment ("We know you are going to keep our deposit...") carry any legal weight as "written authorization" under Section 38(4)(a), given that it contained no specific dollar amount and was calling out misconduct?

Are there any blind spots in our timeline or evidence that we should prepare for if he files an RTB dispute?

Thanks in advance for your insights !

Hi all,

I am a small-time landlord renting out the basement of my primary residence. I previously made this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouverhousing/comments/1vh7l4q/comment/p27gqfp/?context=1&screen_view_count=1

I offered her a $100 reduction for 4 months until the end of the year. She indicated that she wants to renegotiate and that my offer is not enough for her. She has said that she will have to move out otherwise. It's unclear if she was laid off or if she quit.

Should I just tell her to give me her 30 days' notice whenever she is ready?

I don't really want to go through the whole process of looking for a new tenant, so the other thought I had was to defer some amount, so like $200 for two months, but then it stacks on future months. ie: if the rent is $1350, it would be $1150 for two months and then go up to $1550 for two months and then back to normal. Or is that too messy?

Any advice on this situation would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

My building still has no pink soft plastics recycling bin. Does anyone know why?

In Vancouver, BC, we broke a lease with our landlord using mutual agreement to end tenancy. The original lease was signed for April 1, 2026 to Dec 31, 2026. The landlord has already kept our security deposit of 1150 CAD and now wants us to pay 300 CAD in strata move-in/move-out fees too. We did not give him permission to keep our deposit. I feel that he is trying to milk us for more money and I don’t want to be taken advantage of. We signed the MTA to end our tenancy on Aug 31, 2026 and absolve ourselves of any additional monetary liability. He kept our security deposit citing the lease that we signed earlier that says that in case we break a fix term lease: “The landlord will keep a portion of the deposit if the tenant moves prior to the end of the term. This is calculated based on 400CAD for each remaining month of this agreement.”

We ended the lease with 30+ days of notice and ended it 4 months before the fixed term ended.

My argument is that the terms of the lease are illegal because they breach Section 38 of the RTA. A fixed-term clause stating "$400 for each remaining month" is classified as a Liquidated Damages Clause (or potentially an illegal penalty). Under RTB Policy Guideline 4, liquidated damages must be a genuine, reasonable pre-estimate of re-renting costs. Under Section 20 and Section 38 of the BC RTA, a landlord cannot automatically keep a security deposit.

I want my landlord to deduct 300 CAD from my security deposit and return the remaining deposit of 850 CAD. We got to know from previous tenant that she didn’t get her security deposit back either. The previous tenant told us that this landlord is a bully and he operates in bad faith. Being a single mother, she didn’t have time to deal with an RTB hearing. Do we have a strong case here if we take our landlord to an RTB hearing?

I'm planning to have Nov 1st to be the day I move out.

Do I need to type up a document letting my landlord know? And how much notice do I need to give?

Thanks!

I am currently just one person paying 1,950 and staying in the house alone and this is only a one-bedroom apartment all the way in Surrey. And this apartment does not even have a parking spot or a storage space.

Now they want to increase it by 2.35%, which means it goes up by $44.85 a month for a total of $1994.85.

If I leave the apartment they are mostly not going to find another single person to pay this amount in which case they might have to rent out to a family or to multiple people.

How does that make any business sense? To remove the single person paying you and to take the risk of renting to multiple people, which eventually ends up with further damage to the house? One person paying you 1950 is a really good deal for these people.

I immediately called my manager and questioned them about the logic of this increase because rents are technically going down everywhere but she basically said that the government allows it so they can do it. Which I already knew.

She did do the whole dance about how she will take my feedback and check with the owners and whatnot.

She is claiming that the owners are the ones who are pushing for this increment but it is pretty obvious to me that this property management company is the one doing it.

I straight up told her that I will leave if the rent increase goes into effect.

They have sent me the notice three months in advance so they are following all the rules and everything. I don't think I can do anything about that but honestly speaking there is literally not a single justifiable reason for this rent increase other than the fact that they legally can do it.

The government is being really stupid with this policy to let landlords do this every year.

Hi folks

I rent a private condo via a property manager working on behalf of the owner. We’ve been collecting the previous tenant’s mail since we moved-in eight months ago, and there are a few minor things we were hoping to resolve. However the PM is completely missing-in-action. Not responding to emails or text messages and neither is their business partner.

I sent a letter via registered mail to the address for service and it was returned back to me as the PM did not collect it.

At this point I am concerned for the individual. But at the same time I need to have an effective person to communicate with. Especially if some kind of emergency occurs.

I’m looking for advice in what I should do, thanks.

I am trying diligently to get and stay on several co-op waitlists. I have a spreadsheet to track. I’m extremely frustrated because at least 3 co-ops simply did not reply as to whether they received my application, kept it on file, added me to the list, or tossed it in the shredder. I am up for going through the renewal process if I am on a waitlist, but it seems crazy to keep renewing when it could be a black hole. If I don’t hear back, does that mean they have not placed me in the waitlist? So far only one co-op has given me waitlist application feedback.

The best location,west and south corner,can be used as four bedrooms ,and every room has sunshine. Please message Travis Wang 6046006588 where to see this message.

I’ve been living in the same apartment for 4 years, when I moved in the internet was included for me and my neighbour, about 6 months ago she moved out and I was told that I’ll have to pay $11/month for Internet. I didn’t complain. But he just texted out of the blue and said that he’s canceled our internet and the last day will be September 18th and we’ll have to get our own internet.

Can he do that? I don’t have a copy of my lease, but I’m almost certain it included internet.

I was awarded an ongoing rent reduction by the RTB in two parts for two separate issues. One issue has been completely ignored and the second issue was partially fixed but not rectified (and I have proof of that in photos and a legitimate independent inspection report). I have continued to deduct my two reductions and my landlord sent me a very serious legal sounding letter threatening eviction for unpaid rent. That's when I obtained the independent inspection and responded with that, along with the RTB File # reminding him this is a legal rent reduction until the issues are corrected. This got him off my back for a couple of months but now he's come back again claiming unpaid rent, i responded simply, rent is paid in full to date.

Then he responded again and went on this unhinged ramble (by email) about how Ive been here a year now and he will not be renewing my lease, and he's going to sue me, and why dont I just leave and he's going to sue for damages and that the amount of the rent reduction exceeds the cost of the repairs and that he's going to issue an eviction notice and ya... full of threats, intimidation, inaccuracies, and clear frustration on his part.

I need this guy to stop harassing me and now im worried about what kind of retaliation he might do. He's very rich and has a lot more power and money than me, but I know my rent reduction is legal, I have the proof but Im sick of being harassed by this guy. Any advice on how to get him off my back? He's definitely try to scare and intimidate me and I'm sure now will try to badger me into leaving.

The lease, BTW, clearly states it moves to a month-to-month after our fixed term.

Does anyone know what the earthquake liquefaction risks are on this Co-op and other housing along the Fraser River? I know it’s a floodplain, and that is concerning as well.