Why you can't Airbnb in Thornbury

Two layers: zoning decides, licensing administers

The Town of The Blue Mountains regulates short-term accommodation with a system most summaries get wrong, because it has two layers that do different jobs.

Zoning decides where short-term accommodation can exist at all. Under the Town’s zoning by-law, short-term accommodation is prohibited in every residential zone, town-wide. It is a permitted use only in the Resort Residential zones - a commercial classification - and every parcel carrying that zoning sits in the Craigleith and Blue Mountain resort area. No land in Thornbury is zoned for it.

Licensing administers the properties zoning allows. Where the use is permitted, an operator still needs a licence: two-year terms, four-figure fees, fire inspection first, licence number on all advertising, and a responsible person reachable around the clock who can physically attend the property within thirty minutes. That machinery is real, but for Thornbury it is beside the point. You cannot licence a use the zoning prohibits.

Four separate locks on the door

For an Applejack unit specifically, four independent barriers stand between an owner and a short-term accommodation licence:

1. The zoning. Applejack sits in a residential zone, where the use is prohibited.
2. The Official Plan. A 2023 amendment confines short-term accommodation to the established resort-area exception, which closes the rezoning path.
3. The moratorium. New licences of the type that would apply outside the resort area have been frozen since early 2023.
4. The closed legacy classes. The remaining licence types are grandfathered categories that required a licence issued years ago.

Any one of these would stop an application. All four hold at once. This is why the question is settled rather than merely difficult.

“But people used to rent here” - true, and it is over

Local memory of short-term rentals at Applejack is not wrong. Under the former Town of Thornbury zoning carried into amalgamation, short-term accommodation was permitted as-of-right in one residential zone, and Applejack’s addresses sat in it. That window closed with the town-wide zoning consolidation in 2021. The rental histories you may see mentioned on listings are either from that era or - far more commonly - the other kind of rental, the legal kind, covered below.

Do the condo rules restrict rentals too?

Even if the Town changed course tomorrow, zoning is only the outer layer. Each of Applejack’s phases has its own rulebook, and rules can restrict rental further than the Town does. At least one phase limits how its units can be occupied by others to periods of no less than thirty days - a short-term rental prohibition in all but name, and it was in place before the Town’s regime existed. The others may or may not match it, which is the kind of thing a current status certificate answers in black and white.

And a tax, for good measure

Since January 2025 the Town levies a 4% Municipal Accommodation Tax on stays under thirty days. It does not touch rentals of thirty days or more. Notice the pattern: every instrument in the regime - zoning, licensing, the tax - draws the same line at roughly the one-month mark. Everything below the line is regulated or prohibited. Everything above it is left alone.

Blue Mountain Village: where the nightly economy lives

The nightly rental economy fifteen minutes east exists on purpose, in a place built for it. The Village core and the resort subdivisions around it are the exception area: commercially zoned, licensed, taxed and professionally managed - the whole system designed around visitors, and it works. The Village hotel-condos take it furthest: buildings where most units serve tourist inventory and an owner enjoys their own unit part of the year while it earns the rest. An Applejack condo and a Village condo are two different ownership regimes serving two different plans, and knowing which plan is yours is half the decision. Both are real markets with real logic - and if the Village side is the one pulling you, I am happy to talk that through too.

What rentals are allowed at Applejack?

Here is the part that matters if you actually want an Applejack unit to earn its keep. Rentals of thirty days or more are legal, need no licence, carry no accommodation tax, and have been standard local practice for decades. Thornbury sits minutes from three private ski clubs and Blue Mountain, and ski season rentals are how families have done winter here for as long as anyone remembers. The same thirty-day math makes summer rentals by the month legal too, though winter is where the demand concentrates. That market is real, it is the one Applejack has always served, and it is the subject of two full guides on this site:

• Ski season rentals at Applejack - the owner’s guide
• Renting an Applejack condo for the winter - the tenant’s guide

Whichever side of that market you are on, the guides above are written for you - and if the bigger question is whether an Applejack unit makes sense to own, with winter income as part of the math, that conversation is what I do.

Before you act on any of this

Municipal rules change, and this Town’s short-term accommodation by-law is under active review. This page describes the regime in general terms as at the date stamped below, and it is not legal advice. Before acting on any of it, confirm the current rules with the Town of The Blue Mountains and, for any condominium question, with a current status certificate for the specific corporation.

Last verified: 2 August 2026