Eviction Notices in BC: Every Form and Every Deadline

This is written for tenants, not landlords. In BC a landlord can only end your tenancy with one of a handful of notices on an official Residential Tenancy Branch form, and each form gives you a fixed window — somewhere between 5 and 30 days — to file a dispute before the notice is treated as accepted.

Miss that window and the Residential Tenancy Act says you are "conclusively presumed to have accepted that the tenancy ends." Not presumed. Conclusively presumed. At that point the arbitrator is no longer deciding whether the eviction was fair. They are signing an order of possession.

Everything below reflects the Residential Tenancy Act and the Residential Tenancy Regulation as they stood on 9 August 2026. The rules for landlord-use evictions changed twice in 2024, so older guides and forum posts are frequently wrong about the day counts.

Every eviction notice in BC, with its deadline

Notice	Form	Grounds	RTA section	Notice period	Days to dispute
10 Day Notice to End Tenancy for Unpaid Rent or Utilities	RTB-30	Rent unpaid after the due date; or utilities unpaid 30 days after a written demand	s. 46	10 days	5 days
One Month Notice to End Tenancy for Cause or End of Employment	RTB-33	Repeated late rent, significant disturbance, extraordinary damage, illegal activity, unauthorized sublet, breach of a material term not corrected after written warning; or a unit tied to a job that ended	s. 47, s. 48	1 month	10 days
Two Month Notice — tenant no longer qualifies	RTB-32Q	You no longer meet the income or eligibility conditions of a subsidized unit	s. 49.1	2 months	15 days
Three Month Notice — landlord's or purchaser's use	RTB-32L, RTB-32P	Landlord, a close family member, a family-corporation shareholder, or a purchaser intends in good faith to occupy the unit	s. 49(3)(4)(5)	3 months	21 days
Four Month Notice — demolition or conversion	RTB-29, RTB-29C	Demolish the unit, convert to strata lots or a housing co-op, convert to non-residential use, or convert for a caretaker	s. 49(6)	4 months	30 days
Renovations or repairs	No notice — the landlord must apply to the RTB	Vacancy genuinely required for necessary work, permits in hand, no other reasonable way to do it	s. 49.2	Order effective no earlier than 4 months after it is made	No window — you are a party to the hearing

Manufactured home park conversions run on a separate 12-month track under the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act (form RTB-31, 15 days to dispute).

The three-month and four-month rows are the ones people mix up. The Act's own default for a section 49 notice is four months' notice and 30 days to dispute, but sections 42.2 and 42.3 of the Regulation prescribe a shorter 3 months and 21 days specifically for the occupancy grounds in subsections (3), (4) and (5). Demolition and conversion under subsection (6) stay at four months and 30 days.

The five-day window is the one that ruins people

A 10 Day Notice for unpaid rent gives you five days. Not ten. The "10 days" in the name is how long until you have to be out; the number that decides the case is buried further down the form.

Section 46(4) gives you two options within those five days, and either one works:

1. Pay the full overdue amount. If you do, the Act says the notice "has no effect." The tenancy simply continues. You do not need the landlord's agreement and you do not need to file anything.
2. Dispute it. File an Application for Dispute Resolution with the RTB.

Pay a dollar short and you have not satisfied the section. Pay on day six and the notice stands — the statute only cancels it for payment made within the five days. If you genuinely cannot cover the arrears by day five, file the dispute anyway and pay what you can. Filing preserves the argument; paying late does not.

Utilities work differently. A landlord cannot serve a 10 Day Notice the moment a hydro bill goes unpaid. They have to make a written demand first and wait 30 days.

Your deadline starts when the notice is deemed received

This is where a real five days quietly becomes three. Under section 90 of the Act, a notice is not received when the landlord sends it — it is received on a date the statute assigns:

How it was served	Deemed received
Handed to you in person	Same day
Regular or registered mail	5th day after mailing
Taped to your door	3rd day after posting
Left in your mailbox or mail slot	3rd day after it is left
Email or fax	3rd day after it is sent

This cuts both ways. A notice taped to your door on a Friday is deemed received Monday, which buys you time. But if you were away and found it a week later, the clock has already been running. The presumption can be rebutted with evidence of when you actually got it, and that is an argument worth making at a hearing — it is not something you can assume in advance.

Section 66 lets an arbitrator extend a filing deadline, but subsection (3) blocks them from extending it past the notice's effective date. So the outer limit is hard. If you are past the move-out date on the notice, no extension exists.

Landlord's use and purchaser's use: three months, 21 days, and a portal

Since 18 July 2024 a Three Month Notice for purchaser's use, and since 18 June 2025 one for landlord's use, must be generated through the RTB's web portal. A landlord cannot download a blank form and fill it in by hand any more. If you receive one of these on a PDF that was never issued through the portal, that is a defect worth raising.

Two more conditions matter. The occupancy grounds in section 49 are not available where the landlord owns a building with five or more rental units. And section 51 entitles you to one month's rent as compensation, plus a further 12 months' rent if the landlord does not actually use the unit for the stated purpose. That penalty is the enforcement mechanism behind bad-faith "my nephew is moving in" evictions, and it is claimed after the fact, in a separate application.

The same 12-month penalty applies to renovation evictions under section 51.4 if the work is not done within a reasonable time, and in buildings with five or more units you can also claim a right of first refusal on the renovated unit under section 51.2 — but you have to tell the landlord in writing before you move out.

Renovictions no longer come as a notice

This is the biggest structural change and the one that most outdated pages get wrong. A landlord can no longer serve you a Four Month Notice for renovations. Under section 49.2 they must apply to the RTB first and satisfy an arbitrator that permits are in place, that the unit genuinely has to be empty for the work, and that ending the tenancy is the only reasonable way to get it empty. Only then does an order issue, effective no earlier than four months later.

So there is no dispute deadline to miss. You will be served with the application and you are a party to that hearing. Show up. If you do not, the landlord's evidence is the only evidence.

How to actually file the dispute

You apply through the RTB's online Application for Dispute Resolution, which needs a Basic BCeID account, or on paper. The RTB does not publish a standard wait time and says it depends on volume, though it aims to schedule expedited hearings within about 12 days and urgent ones within about 6.

Two practical points. Keep paying rent while the dispute is pending — the RTB is explicit about this, and rent arrears accumulated during a dispute become a separate problem. And gather your evidence before the hearing rather than during it: the notice itself, the envelope or a photo of it on the door, your rent payment records, and any texts where the landlord said something inconsistent with the ground on the form.

If the notice was issued for cause, remember that several of the section 47 grounds require the landlord to have given you written notice and a reasonable chance to fix the problem first. A breach of a material term is not a valid ground unless they warned you in writing and you failed to correct it.

The honest part

Winning a dispute keeps your tenancy. It does not make your landlord like you, and in a market this tight that matters. A landlord who wants you out and loses at arbitration often tries again on different grounds, and each round costs you time you could have spent looking.

That is not a reason to skip the dispute. Filing is the only thing that stops the clock, and the compensation provisions are real money. But it is a reason to start looking at the same time you file, rather than after. A Three Month Notice you contest and lose still leaves you three months, and three months of watching listings is a much better search than three weeks of panic after a hearing goes badly. You can see what is actually coming up on the live listings feed, narrow it to Vancouver or somewhere you would consider moving like New Westminster, and treat the search as insurance rather than surrender.

Nothing here is legal advice. If your situation is complicated, the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre runs a free tenant infoline, and the RTB itself takes calls at 1-800-665-8779. Our other tenant guides cover the rest of the tenancy.