A good share of the condos and townhouses I list in Langley and White Rock have a tenant in them, and the owner's first question is always whether the tenancy has to end before the sale. It does not. The rules joining a sale to a tenancy are what people get wrong, mostly because the two month notice older articles describe stopped being the rule years ago. Here is where the Act stands as of October 2026.
The sale does not end the tenancy
The Act defines a landlord to include the heirs, assigns and successors in title of the owner. On completion the buyer becomes the landlord of the tenancy that already exists, on the terms that already exist. Nothing resets. The rent is the rent, the term is the term, and a rent increase the previous owner never took is gone.
Deposits travel with the property too. Section 93 says the landlord's obligations for a security or pet damage deposit run with the land, so the buyer inherits the liability whether or not the money ever changed hands.
How often this comes up here
More often than sellers assume. CMHC's Rental Market Survey counted 56,007 condominium units in its Fraser Valley zone in 2024, 15,806 of them rented out, 28.2 per cent, against 22.5 per cent in 2020. That zone takes in Surrey, White Rock, both Langleys, Delta, Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge. On the 2021 census there were 8,500 renter households in Langley Township and 3,775 in White Rock, where renter households rose 17.6 per cent from 2016 while owner households rose 2.4 per cent.
Showings are the first constraint
Section 29 governs entry. The landlord gives written notice at least 24 hours and not more than 30 days before entering, stating a purpose that is reasonable and the date and time, and the entry has to fall between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. unless the tenant agrees otherwise.
Read literally, that is per entry. In practice you agree a schedule in writing, because a tenant who is on side gives you an hour on a Saturday and one who is not makes you paper every appointment. Offering something for the inconvenience is usually the cheapest money in the transaction.
Vacant possession runs on the tenant's calendar
If the buyer, or a close family member of the buyer, intends to occupy the unit, the tenancy can be ended, but only in a set order under section 49(5). The seller needs a good faith agreement to sell, every condition of the sale has to be satisfied already, and the buyer has to ask the seller in writing to give the notice. The notice has to name the buyer and give their address.
Since July 18, 2024 that notice cannot be filled out by hand. The landlord generates a Three Month Notice to End Tenancy for Purchaser's Use of Property, form RTB-32P, through the Residential Tenancy Branch web portal, and a valid one carries a unique Notice ID in the top left corner. The tenant then has 21 days to dispute. Before August 21, 2024 the same notice ran four months with 30 days to dispute, which is the figure older material still quotes.
Two rules decide the real date. The effective date has to be at least three months after the tenant receives the notice, and it also has to be the day before the day rent is payable. Serve a tenant in person on October 30, with rent due the first of the month, and the earliest effective date is January 31. Mail the same notice on the same day and the Act deems it received on the fifth day after mailing, which pushes three months into early February, so the next available day before rent is payable is February 28. The method of service cost a month.
Two more rules catch people. On a fixed term tenancy the effective date cannot precede the end of the term, so a tenant eight months into a one year lease cannot be handed a notice landing before it expires. And section 49(6.1) blocks the notice where a building holds five or more rental units and is either not strata titled, or strata titled with all the rental units owned by the same owner. One condo in a strata with many owners is unaffected, which covers most of what trades in the Langley real estate market and the White Rock real estate market.
So conditions come off first, completion follows a few weeks later, and the buyer owns a tenanted property for a stretch either way. If vacant possession on the completion date matters, it belongs in the contract and the dates. My piece on subject removal in BC covers how that timeline runs.
What it costs, and who pays
The tenant is entitled to one month's rent under section 51(1), payable on or before the effective date, and may withhold it from the last month's rent. CMHC put the average rent of a rented condominium in that zone at $2,358 in 2024, so that is the order of it.
The second number is the one to know before anyone signs. If the stated purpose is not carried out, section 51(2) requires the landlord, or the buyer who asked for the notice, to pay the tenant 12 times the monthly rent. The buyer or their close family member has to actually live in the unit for at least 12 months, beginning within a reasonable period after the effective date. An arbitrator can excuse it where extenuating circumstances prevented it, and that is the only way out.
Notice who carries that. Section 58 treats the buyer who asked for the notice as the landlord for dispute purposes, and the Branch can hear a section 51 claim up to $65,000. At that average rent, 12 months is roughly $28,000, well inside its reach. Close family member is drawn narrowly too: the buyer's spouse, or the parents or children of either. A sibling does not qualify, and neither does a plan to re-rent at a higher rate.
The deposit, and the 15 day clock
A security deposit cannot exceed half of one month's rent, and the same cap applies separately to a pet damage deposit. Because the obligation runs with the property, the normal handling is a credit to the buyer on the statement of adjustments, taken off the tenancy agreement rather than from memory. When a tenancy ends, the landlord of the day has 15 days from the later of the end date and receiving the tenant's forwarding address in writing to repay the deposit with interest or apply for dispute resolution. Miss that and the right to claim against the deposit is gone and the tenant is owed double.
Sell it tenanted, or sell it empty
That turns on who is buying. Langley apartments recorded 67 sales against 416 active listings in September 2026, and White Rock and South Surrey 43 against 310, so buyers have choice in both. An investor pays for a performing tenancy at a market rent. An owner occupier discounts for the wait. A below market rent is the hard case, because the new owner inherits it.
What I would not do is end a tenancy on the theory that empty shows better, then carry it through a slow stretch. Langley's benchmark apartment price was $525,900 in September 2026, down 9.2 per cent year over year, and White Rock and South Surrey's was $544,400, down 7.7 per cent. Three months of vacancy against prices moving that way is a real cost, not a staging expense. There is more on that side of the Peninsula in the White Rock condo market post.
Before you list
Pull the tenancy agreement and confirm four things: fixed term or month to month, the rent, the deposit amounts, and the dates they were paid. Decide whether you are marketing to an investor or an owner occupier, because that decides whether vacant possession is needed at all. Then agree a showing schedule in writing.
The rest is the ordinary arithmetic of a sale, set out in what it costs to sell a house in BC. To run it against your own unit, start with what your Langley home is worth and how I market homes. Send the tenancy agreement and I will tell you what your dates look like.
Sources
Residential Tenancy Act sections 1, 19, 29, 38, 49, 51, 58, 90 and 93, on BC Laws. Residential Tenancy Branch, Types of evictions, for the three month notice, form RTB-32P, the portal requirement, the 21 day dispute period and close family member. BCFSA advisory for the August 21, 2024 amendments. Prices and listing counts from the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board's September 2026 statistics package. Rented condominium counts, average rents and renter households from CMHC and the 2021 Census, as published in Metro Vancouver's Housing Data Book 2025. Checked October 22, 2026. Not legal advice.