A BC landlord ending a tenancy for landlord occupancy, purchaser occupancy or caretaker use does not fill in the form. The Residential Tenancy Branch generates those three notices through its web portal, and a notice that did not come out of the portal does not meet the requirement.
The three notices, and the dates they changed
It arrived in two stages, and the date that matters is when the notice is generated, not when the tenancy started.
- RTB-32P, the three month notice for purchaser occupancy. Portal-generated for notices given on or after July 18, 2024.
- RTB-29C, the four month notice for converting a unit to caretaker use. Same date, July 18, 2024.
- RTB-32L, the three month notice for landlord occupancy. Portal-generated on or after June 18, 2025.
The rest of the notice set is unchanged. The 10 Day Notice for unpaid rent or utilities (RTB-30), the One Month Notice for cause (RTB-33), the Two Month Notice for a subsidized unit (RTB-32Q) and the Four Month Notice for demolition or conversion (RTB-29) are still forms you download and complete. If your turnover checklist points at a folder of saved blank PDFs, three of them are now dead links in practice.
A portal notice carries a Notice ID
Notices generated through the web portal have a unique Notice ID in the top left corner. That is the one visible difference, and it works in both directions. A manager taking over a file can tell in two seconds whether the notice already served came from the Branch. A tenant who receives a section 49 notice with no Notice ID has a concrete thing to point at.
Check the unit count before you plan anything else
Personal occupancy is not available in larger buildings. A landlord cannot end a tenancy so that the landlord or a close family member can occupy the unit where that unit sits in a building containing five or more rental units and the building is either not strata-titled, or is strata-titled with five or more rental units owned by the same owner.
Run that test first. It turns on the building rather than on the tenancy, and it decides whether there is a notice to generate at all. A close family member, for this ground, means the landlord's spouse, or the parents or children of the landlord or the spouse. Nobody else counts, however close the relationship is in practice.
Have the birthdates ready before you open the generator
The portal asks for your birthdate and the birthdates of related people, including the purchaser and the person who will move into the unit. Those dates are for internal Branch use and do not appear on the generated notice. The Branch's own instruction is to have them on hand before you start.
The 9 pm cutoff on the last day of a rental cycle
There is a deadline inside the day itself. If you are generating the notice on the last day of a rental cycle and you intend to serve it in person before the next cycle starts, the notice has to be generated before 9 pm. The Branch gives its own worked example: rent is due on the first, the landlord generates the notice on July 31 and intends to take possession on November 1. The notice has to be generated before 9 pm and served in person that same day.
This is the kind of rule that costs a full month. Miss 9 pm on July 31 and the earliest effective date moves to the end of the next cycle.
Three months runs from receipt, not from the day you generate
Section 49 of the Residential Tenancy Act sets the effective date by reference to when the tenant receives the notice, and section 90 decides when that is. Unless it is received earlier, a record is deemed received on the fifth day after it is mailed, on the third day after a copy is attached to a door, and on the third day after a copy is left in a mailbox or mail slot.
So a mailed notice buys the tenant five extra days before the clock starts. Two further constraints sit on the same date. The effective date has to fall on the day before the day rent is payable, which for rent due on the first means the last day of a month. And where the tenancy is a fixed term, the effective date cannot be earlier than the end of that term.
The month of rent is due on or before the effective date
Section 51 entitles a tenant who receives a section 49 notice to an amount equal to one month's rent, payable on or before the effective date of the notice. The tenant can withhold that amount from the last month's rent rather than wait for a cheque, so plan the final ledger around it instead of being surprised by it.
The larger number sits behind the notice. If the stated purpose is not accomplished within a reasonable period, and the unit is not used for that purpose for the required period, section 51 adds an amount equal to 12 times the monthly rent. The Branch describes the occupancy requirement as at least 12 months, beginning within a reasonable period after the effective date.
The tenant has 21 days
A tenant who receives a three month notice has 21 days to dispute it and apply for dispute resolution. Build your vacancy plan around the outcome of that window, not around the effective date on the notice.
The order to work in
- Confirm the ground, then run the five-unit test for personal occupancy.
- Collect the tenancy details and every birthdate the portal will ask for.
- Generate the notice in the portal, watching 9 pm if it is the last day of the cycle.
- Pick a service method, then count the deemed receipt date from section 90 before you count three months.
- Check that the effective date lands the day before rent is payable, and after the end of any fixed term.
- Diarize the compensation so it is paid or credited on or before the effective date, and diarize the 12 month occupancy that follows.
Two pages carry all of this: the Branch's types of evictions page for the forms and the portal rules, and the Residential Tenancy Act itself for sections 49, 51 and 90. Check both on the day you serve. The portal requirement arrived on two separate dates, and the next change will not announce itself either.