Subletting and Assignment in BC: What Section 34 Requires

Choosing the wrong one is how tenants end up paying rent on a suite they no longer live in. In a sublet you keep your tenancy: you move out, someone occupies the unit for a period shorter than your term and leaves on a stated date, and you stay on the hook for everything. In an assignment you hand the whole agreement over and walk away. Both need the landlord's written consent under section 34(1) of the Residential Tenancy Act. What follows states the law as at 9 August 2026.

The rules, in one table

Rule	What the law says	Source
Consent	Written landlord consent required for both	s. 34(1)
When refusal must be reasonable	Fixed term with 6 months or more left	s. 34(2)
Fees for consenting	Nothing may be charged to consider, investigate or consent	s. 34(3)
Doing it without consent	Cause for a One Month Notice (form RTB-33)	s. 47(1)(i)
Time to dispute that notice	10 days from receiving it	s. 47(4)
Remedy for unreasonable refusal	Director may order the assignment or sublet	s. 65(1)(g)
A sublease must be shorter	Subtenant's term ends on a stated date before yours	s. 1, "sublease agreement"
How a sublease ends	It ends because it is a sublease agreement — no rollover	s. 44(1)(g)
Exemption	Income-geared units of listed public housing bodies escape s. 34(2)	Regulation, s. 2

Sublet or assignment? The Act draws a hard line

Section 1 defines a sublease agreement as one under which the tenant transfers their rights "for a period shorter than the term of the tenant's tenancy agreement," the subtenant "agrees to vacate the rental unit at the end of the term," and the agreement "specifies the date on which the tenancy ends."

Shorter matters. Policy Guideline 19, last revised May 2024, says the sublease must run for a shorter period than the original fixed term, "even just one day shorter," because you have to retain an interest in the tenancy for a sublease to exist. Hand over the full remaining term, reserving nothing, and the guideline says it "likely amounts in law to an assignment of the tenancy rather than a sublease" — a finding an arbitrator can make long after everyone agreed on the wrong word.

An assignment permanently transfers your rights to a third party, who becomes the landlord's tenant on the existing terms. Rent, end date, pet clause and parking stall carry over. It is not a new tenancy, which is why assignment is the usual way out of a fixed term you cannot finish; our guide to what is in a BC tenancy agreement sets out what the assignee inherits.

A third arrangement is neither. Keep living in the unit and rent out a room, and that is a roommate. Guideline 19 is blunt: unless you act as the landlord's agent, the definition of landlord does not support a landlord/tenant relationship between you and them; they are "an occupant/roommate, with no rights or responsibilities under the RTA."

Getting consent, and what the landlord can refuse

Section 34 is three short subsections; most disputes come from people who have only heard the second.

(1) Unless the landlord consents in writing, a tenant must not assign a tenancy agreement or sublet a rental unit. (2) If a fixed term tenancy agreement has 6 months or more remaining in the term, the landlord must not unreasonably withhold the consent required under subsection (1). (3) A landlord must not charge a tenant anything for considering, investigating or consenting to an assignment or sublease under this section.

Notice what is missing: no prescribed form for the request, no deadline for a reply, and no rule that silence means yes. Manufactured home park tenants get all three, including consent "conclusively deemed to have been given" if the park owner stays quiet for 10 days. Rental unit tenants get none of it. Put the request in writing, name the proposed person, attach what the landlord would ask any applicant for, and set a date for a written answer.

The six-month protection is narrower than most tenants assume. Guideline 19 says that by implication the landlord "has the discretion to withhold consent, without regard to reasonableness," on a fixed term with under six months left, and that the Act does not specifically refer to periodic tenancies. On a month-to-month, an arbitrator "may find that a landlord has acted reasonably for withholding consent to assign a periodic tenancy, unless the tenant can demonstrate a compelling reason why the landlord should agree."

Where section 34(2) applies, the question is whether the objection is grounded. A landlord who reasonably believes the proposed person cannot meet the terms — income nowhere near the rent, references that do not check out, more occupants than the unit allows — can refuse. One who refuses in order to re-rent higher cannot; an assignee steps into your existing rent. Refusing over a protected characteristic is a Human Rights Code problem on top of a tenancy one.

If the refusal is unreasonable, section 65(1)(g) lets the director order "that a tenancy agreement may be assigned or a rental unit may be sublet if the landlord's consent has been unreasonably withheld contrary to section 34 (2)." Guideline 19 adds a quieter consequence: refusing a reasonable assignment "may interfere with the landlord's ability to claim for loss of rental income as it may be found that the landlord failed to mitigate that loss." That matters if you are trying to leave a fixed term early — see ending your tenancy in BC.

Subsection (3) is absolute: not a credit-check charge, not a "lease transfer fee" of any size, not an "administration fee" for paperwork. Section 7 of the Residential Tenancy Regulation is a closed list of the non-refundable fees a landlord may charge, and its seven items are minor: keys at cost, a bank's returned-cheque charge, a $25 cap on administration fees for late rent. Assignment and sublet appear nowhere on it, and section 5 of the Act says neither of you can contract out.

Who is liable when it goes wrong

In a sublet, you are still the tenant. Guideline 19: "The original tenant remains responsible to the original landlord under the terms of their tenancy agreement for the duration of the sublease agreement." If the subtenant stops paying you, your obligation to the landlord "is unaffected and the original tenant can be evicted if rent is not paid." Wrecked floors are your damage, off your damage deposit. Your landlord has no contract with your subtenant: the landlord chases you, you chase the subtenant.

The dependency runs the other way too: if the landlord ends your tenancy, the sublease ends with it, and only you can dispute the notice. Anyone taking a sublet should read what a BC eviction notice actually does with that in mind.

In an assignment, you are out — if the paperwork says so. The new tenant takes on the obligations of the original agreement and is usually not responsible for anything you did before handover. Guideline 19 flags two ways you stay liable anyway: the assignment was made without consent, or "the assignment agreement doesn't expressly address the assignment of the original tenant's obligations to the new tenant." A handshake assignment is the one that follows you.

Deposits do not move themselves. Your landlord holds yours and owes it back under section 38; nothing in the Act transfers it to the incoming tenant. Settle it in writing among all three of you beforehand, and walk the unit on handover day, recording its condition on a condition inspection report form.

What a sublet agreement should actually contain

A sublease agreement is a tenancy agreement as the Act defines it, so section 13 applies: in writing, with the standard terms, legal names, address, dates, rent and any deposit. Give the subtenant a copy within 21 days. Beyond that, put in:

• An end date at least one day before your own term ends. Without it you may have assigned by accident. Under section 44(1)(g) a sublease ends on its stated date, with none of the rollover section 44(3) gives ordinary fixed terms.
• The landlord's written consent, attached. Not referenced. Attached.
• A deposit that respects the cap. Once you move out and grant exclusive occupancy you are the landlord in that relationship: half a month's rent maximum under section 19, and section 38's 15-day return clock applies to you.
• Rent amount, due date and method, plus a plain statement that you remain responsible to the head landlord regardless.
• Move-in and move-out inspections between you and the subtenant, with photographs.
• How repair requests get passed along. Only the head landlord can make repairs; Guideline 19 says the subtenant may ask you to request them and may seek a rent reduction if they drag on.
• Insurance. Contents policies often exclude periods when you are not living there. Ask your insurer first.

Doing it without consent

Section 47(1)(i) makes it cause to end a tenancy if "the tenant purports to assign the tenancy agreement or sublet the rental unit without first obtaining the landlord's written consent as required by section 34." The landlord serves a One Month Notice on form RTB-33, effective no sooner than one month out under section 47(2). You have 10 days to dispute under section 47(4); miss it and section 47(5) conclusively presumes you accepted the end of the tenancy.

The defence, where it exists, is that no sublet happened. In one Guideline 19 example a tenant stayed put and let a former subtenant remain as a roommate; the arbitrator cancelled the notice, because that is not a sublet as contemplated by the Act. The next example goes the other way: same facts, plus a term requiring written consent for extra occupants, and the notice stood as a material term breach under section 47(1)(h).

Strata buildings and the short-term rental trap

"The strata doesn't allow sublets" stopped being true in November 2022. Section 141 of the Strata Property Act now reads: "The strata corporation must not screen tenants, establish screening criteria, require the approval of tenants, require the insertion of terms in tenancy agreements or otherwise restrict the rental of a strata lot." Sections 142 to 145, which authorised rental-restriction bylaws, are repealed. A council has no say in who your subtenant or assignee is.

Section 146 survives. Before renting, the landlord must give the tenant the current bylaws and rules plus a Notice of Tenant's Responsibilities in the prescribed form, then file a signed copy with the strata within two weeks. Skip it and the tenant, still bound by the bylaws, may end the agreement penalty-free within 90 days of learning of the failure, with moving expenses covered to one month's rent.

Bylaws restricting short-term accommodation survive, and that is where a lot of "sublets" go wrong. The Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act treats accommodation of under 90 consecutive days as a short-term rental, and since 1 May 2024 its principal residence requirement has confined those to the host's own home plus one secondary suite, in the listed communities — broadly those over 10,000 people. A local government can opt out after two years of vacancy at 3% or higher, as Kelowna did from 1 June 2026, so check the current list. Section 4(e) of the Residential Tenancy Act then says the Act "does not apply to living accommodation occupied as vacation or travel accommodation": a furnished six-week "sublet" marketed to visitors is not a tenancy, and neither side has recourse at the RTB.

The "sublet" that is a scam

Scams cluster around sublets because the format explains away every red flag: no formal application, cash-equivalent payment, a landlord you never meet, urgency because someone flies out Thursday. Across all fraud types, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre logged over 112,000 reports and more than $704 million in reported losses in Canada in 2025, and reckons only 5% to 10% of fraud gets reported.

Two versions turn up on Craigslist and in Facebook housing groups. In the first, nobody involved has any connection to the unit: photos lifted from an old MLS listing, a "tenant" who is overseas, an e-transfer address that stops working. In the second, a real tenant sublets without consent, well above what they pay, and vanishes when the landlord serves a section 47(1)(i) notice.

Before any money moves:

1. See inside the actual unit, in person, with the person you are paying. No video-tour substitutes.
2. Ask for the head tenancy agreement and the landlord's written section 34 consent. A legitimate subletter has both. Anyone who bristles at the question has answered it.
3. Confirm who owns the place. A title search at the Land Title and Survey Authority names the registered owner — $11.06 under the fee schedule in force since 1 April 2026, plus a $2.20 or $3.55 transaction charge. Match the name to the tenancy agreement.
4. Phone the building. Strata and building managers usually confirm whether a unit is tenanted.
5. Reverse image search the photos. Recycled listing photos are the most common tell.
6. Never e-transfer, wire or send crypto before you have signed and hold keys. An unusual payment method is itself the tell.
7. Sanity check the price. CMHC's October 2025 Rental Market Survey put the average purpose-built two-bedroom in the Vancouver CMA at $2,363. A furnished one-bedroom in downtown Vancouver at $900 is not luck.

If it goes wrong, the remedy turns on whether a tenancy existed. Where it did, apply to the Residential Tenancy Branch. Where section 4 puts the arrangement outside the Act — vacation accommodation, or sharing a bathroom or kitchen with the owner — the RTB has no jurisdiction and you are in Small Claims Court or nowhere.

The boring version works: write the request, get the yes in writing, put the dates on paper, and never let "sublet" stand in for an arrangement nobody has defined. None of this is legal advice; the RTB takes questions at 1-800-665-8779, and the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre runs a free infoline.