GTA Short-Term Rental Bylaws Compared: Toronto, Mississauga, Markham, and Richmond Hill

Toronto's regime is the most publicized and the most mature. Short-term rentals under 28 days are permitted only in your principal residence, you must register with the city and renew annually, the registration number must appear on every listing, an 8.5 per cent Municipal Accommodation Tax applies, and entire-home rentals are capped at 180 nights per year. Fines for operating outside the rules reach $10,000 per offence for individuals.

We cover Toronto's rulebook in detail in our dedicated guide. The one-line version: fully workable for owner-occupants, closed for investment units under 28 days.

Mississauga also restricts short-term rentals to your principal residence with a 180-day cap on entire-home rentals, but it layers a licensing regime on top that is in some ways more demanding than Toronto's.

Markham is the regime that surprises owners most, because there is nothing to register for. The city's comprehensive zoning bylaw does not permit short-term accommodations as-of-right in any zone. No licence category exists. Enforcement is complaint-driven zoning enforcement, and it applies to principal residences and investment properties alike.

The absence of a registry is not permission — it is prohibition by omission. For Markham owners, the workable model is the furnished mid-term stay of 30 nights and up, which falls outside the zoning definition entirely and under Ontario's Residential Tenancies Act. That model is the subject of its own post, and it is the one we operate across our Markham portfolio.

Richmond Hill, as of mid-2026, has no STR-specific licensing regime: no registration requirement, no principal-residence rule, no night cap. That makes it the most permissive corner of the region on paper. It also makes it the most fragile position for an owner, because every other GTA municipality that now regulates short-term rentals looked like this the year before it didn't.

The practical posture for owners in lightly regulated municipalities is to operate as if regulation is coming: professional standards, good neighbour relations, clean records. Operators with that posture absorb new rules as paperwork. Operators without it absorb them as a shutdown.

Since January 1, 2024, federal tax rules deny income tax deductions for expenses on non-compliant short-term rentals — meaning rentals operating where they are not permitted, or without required local registration and licences. A Markham nightly rental or an unregistered Toronto listing is not just a bylaw risk anymore; it is a property where the CRA can disallow every expense against the income.

That changes the math on 'flying under the radar' from risky to plainly uneconomic. The compliant path in each municipality — registration in Toronto, licensing in Mississauga, mid-term in Markham — is also the only path where the expenses count. If you own in the GTA and are not sure which regime your property falls under or which model fits it, that is exactly the question our free property assessment answers.