Can you renovate your apartment in Vancouver? Yes, but what you are allowed to change depends first on whether the building is a strata or a purpose-built rental. In a strata, everything inside the walls of your own lot is broadly yours and everything touching common property needs written council approval. In a rental building you own, there is no council and no alteration request, only the City permit and the BC Residential Tenancy Act. Budget $15,000 to $100,000 depending on scope.
Strata Apartment Versus Rental Apartment
These are two different legal situations that look identical from the hallway.
A strata apartment is a strata lot inside a corporation. You own the lot. The corporation owns the common property, which includes the structure, the exterior, the corridors, the plumbing stacks, and in most buildings the floor-ceiling assembly between you and your neighbour. Under the BC Strata Property Act and the bylaws registered against the building, an owner must obtain written approval from the strata corporation before altering common property, including limited common property. Balconies, patios, and storage lockers are typically limited common property, meaning exclusive use rather than ownership.
A purpose-built rental apartment in a building you own has no strata layer at all. There is no alteration request and no council meeting cycle. The constraints are the City of Vancouver permit process and, where a tenant is in place, the Residential Tenancy Act. Most of Vancouver's pre-strata rental stock is 1950s through 1980s construction in the West End, Kitsilano, Mount Pleasant, East Vancouver, and New Westminster.
The practical difference is time. A strata renovation carries 6 to 8 weeks of approval process before the City permit is even applied for. A rental renovation in a building you own can go straight to the permit desk.
What Counts as Cosmetic and What Counts as Structural
The line that matters is not how big the job looks. It is whether the work touches structure, common property, or a building system.
| Change | Usually treated as | Approval needed |
|---|---|---|
| Paint, cabinet doors, light fixtures at existing locations | Cosmetic | None in most buildings |
| Flooring replacement, carpet to hardwood or tile | Cosmetic in appearance, regulated in fact | Strata approval with sound rating specification |
| New plumbing connections or relocated fixtures | Building system | Strata approval plus City permit |
| New or altered electrical circuits | Building system | Strata approval plus City permit |
| Removing or altering any wall | Potentially structural | Engineer assessment, strata approval, City permit |
| Enclosing or resurfacing a balcony | Limited common property | Written strata approval, frequently a three-quarter vote |
Flooring is the trap. It looks cosmetic and it is regulated, because replacing carpet with a hard surface changes how impact sound reaches the unit below. Most Vancouver strata bylaws set a minimum sound rating for the flooring assembly, commonly IIC 55, with some newer buildings requiring IIC 65. The specification for the flooring and the underlay together goes into the alteration request before the product is approved.
Walls are the other one. In a concrete high-rise most interior partitions are non-structural, but the assumption is not free. Shear walls and columns exist inside suites, and the only way to know which wall is which is a drawing review or an engineer's assessment. The corridor wall and the demising wall between suites are common property in most buildings regardless of what is inside them.
Permit Requirements
A City of Vancouver building permit is required for plumbing work, new electrical circuits, structural change, egress window installation, and suite legalization. A cosmetic refresh, flooring, paint, and fixtures at their existing locations, generally does not require one.
Where both apply, the sequence is fixed: strata approval first, City permit second. A council that rejects the scope after the permit has been issued has cost the owner the application. Standard City review runs 4 to 8 weeks. Strata approval runs 2 to 4 weeks at minimum and realistically 6 to 8 weeks accounting for the council meeting cycle, which is set out in the strata renovation approval guide.
Suite legalization is its own permit and its own timeline: 4 to 8 weeks at the City, with 3 to 5 weeks of construction after issuance. A suite cannot legally be rented as a secondary suite until that permit is closed.
Renovating With a Tenant in Place
For landlords, the Residential Tenancy Act sets what is possible while a tenancy is running.
Minor repairs and inspections require at least 24 hours written notice and entry at a reasonable time. The tenant does not have to vacate. For a substantial renovation that requires the unit to be empty, the Act permits a Two Month Notice to End Tenancy for Landlord's Use of Property under Section 49, which requires two months of notice and entitles the tenant to one month of free rent as compensation. A tenant can contest that notice through the Residential Tenancy Branch dispute resolution process.
In practice most landlord-driven renovations in Vancouver happen between tenancies. The outgoing tenant vacates, the work is scheduled, and a new tenant is placed at the updated rent. That avoids the notice requirements and the dispute process entirely. It also puts the vacancy on the clock, because every week the unit sits empty is uncollected rent. A 2 to 4 week window is the realistic target for a basic to mid-range refresh.
Vancouver's rental housing policies operate at the redevelopment scale rather than the unit scale, applying where a building is being demolished or rezoned rather than where a suite is being refreshed. A unit renovation between tenancies is governed by the Residential Tenancy Act, not by a rezoning policy.
Cost Range
| Scope | Range | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Basic refresh | $15K to $35K | LVP flooring throughout, full repaint, fixture and hardware updates. No plumbing or electrical moves. |
| Kitchen and bathroom update | $35K to $65K | Cabinet doors or cabinet swap, countertop, backsplash, bathroom vanity and fixtures, flooring, paint. Existing rough-in locations kept. |
| Full renovation | $65K to $100K | Full cabinet replacement, countertops, bathroom tile and fixtures, new flooring, full repaint, updated lighting and electrical where required. |
Suite legalization is priced separately against existing conditions, and City permit fees sit outside these ranges.
Timeline follows scope. A basic refresh runs 10 to 14 business days. A kitchen and bathroom update runs 15 to 22 business days. A full renovation runs 4 to 6 weeks. The delay that recurs most is material availability, because flooring and cabinet stock that is not held locally adds days, which is why availability is confirmed before the unit is empty rather than after.
Legalizing an Unauthorized Suite
A large share of Metro Vancouver's rental supply is secondary suites built without permits, usually in basement or ground-floor space of older houses and older rental stock. They function, and they do not meet current code for egress, fire separation, ceiling height, or ventilation.
Legalizing one means bringing it up to the BC Building Code: a separate private exterior entry, egress windows in every below-grade bedroom, a fire-rated assembly between the suite and the floor above, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in both units, and a closed building permit. The application shows existing and proposed conditions, and a City inspector walks the suite before and after the work.
Ceiling height is the obstacle that ends most legalization attempts. The BC Building Code sets a minimum of 2.0 metres over the required area of a secondary suite, and the City of Vancouver applies 6 feet 6 inches over 80 percent of the suite area and all exit routes. Where the existing finished ceiling falls below that, the options are lowering the slab, which is major excavation, or rebuilding the ceiling higher where the structure allows. The measurement that decides it is taken after the finished floor and the fire-rated ceiling assembly are accounted for, because those assemblies consume three to four inches between them. A site visit establishes whether the geometry works before any money is spent on drawings.
Two consequences make this worth doing properly. The suite cannot be legally rented as a secondary suite until the permit is closed. And advertising an unlicensed suite as legal in an MLS listing breaches real estate board rules and creates disclosure liability on sale.
Working With a Contractor
In a strata building the contractor's paperwork is part of the approval, not an afterthought. The council wants the business licence, WorkSafeBC registration, and a liability insurance certificate frequently naming the strata corporation as additional insured. An incomplete package restarts the review at the next council meeting, which is how a two-week delay becomes a six-week one.
Older buildings carry conditions worth pricing before the crew mobilizes. Pre-1980 suites often lack dedicated kitchen circuits. Buildings from the 1950s to 1970s commonly have galvanized supply lines that are functional and aging. A targeted refresh works around those conditions and leaves connections where they are. Where a rough-in genuinely fails a safety check, it is disclosed in writing and quoted separately, so the base price holds for the base scope.
Owner-occupied strata work and landlord-driven rental work are different scopes with different processes. The condo renovation page covers the strata council path in full, and the apartment renovation page covers the landlord path including suite legalization. Where flooring is the scope, the sound rating decision is on the flooring installation page.