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Tenancy Agreement
The Residential Tenancy Act requires your landlord to provide you with a written tenancy agreement, so that you have proof of what you and your landlord agreed to. Before signing make sure you can live with the terms of the agreement.
Legally the landlord must give you a copy of the tenancy agreement no later than 21 days after you sign. Insist on receiving a copy as soon as possible after it is signed. If the landlord refuses go to the Residential Tenancy Branch for an order against the landlord. The Residential Tenancy Branch provides a sample tenancy agreement form:
We also have translated Residential Tenancy Agreement Forms in Punjabi, Chinese Simplified, and Chinese Traditional:
Note: These forms are only translations, not actual legal documents.
If you get a new landlord the terms in your old agreement will stay the same. A new landlord cannot change the terms of the agreement that you signed with the previous landlord, nor can he make you sign a new agreement.
Landlords may also use forms printed by the Rental Owners and Managers Association of British Columbia or the The BC Apartment Owners and Managers Association. Although these forms are reliable tenancy agreement forms, samples of them are not available to the public on the internet.
Caution! The sample tenancy agreement form found in the Landlord’s Rental Kit (Self Counsel Press publication) does not include the information required under the Residential Tenancy Act with regards to fixed term tenancies.
Fixed Term Tenancies/Leases
The term ‘lease’ is not used in the Residential Tenancy Act. The Act refers to periodic tenancies and fixed term tenancies. People tend to use the word ‘lease’ when they mean a fixed term tenancy agreement. Therefore, here we are using the term ‘lease’ to refer to a fixed term tenancy agreement.
Leases, or fixed term tenancy agreements, are different from periodic or month to month tenancies, and there are risks attached to breaking a fixed term tenancy/lease. For more information see our Fact Sheet:
Inspection Report
The law in BC requires that you do a condition inspection report with the landlord when you move in and when you move out of your place. You must also do a condition report when you begin keeping a pet if you did not do one when you moved in. Sample condition inspection report forms can be found at:
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