Every winter, ski families take seasonal rentals across the Blue Mountains and Collingwood area, and Thornbury is the town many of them pick. The clubs are minutes away, the town is walkable, and a furnished condo from December to April solves a problem that a hotel cannot. Applejack has served that market for as long as anyone local can remember - quietly, legally, and mostly by word of mouth.
If you own here, or you are thinking of buying here with rental income in mind, here is how it actually works.
First, the ground rules
Nightly and weekly rental is effectively impossible anywhere in Thornbury - that is town-wide zoning, not an Applejack quirk, and I wrote the full explanation here. The seasonal rental is a different animal. A rental of thirty days or more needs no licence, carries no municipal accommodation tax, and sits outside the short-term accommodation regime entirely. A December-to-April lease is the configuration the rules leave wide open, and it is the one this community has always used.
Worth knowing: one phase’s rulebook restricts occupancy periods to a minimum of thirty days - which kills Airbnb but fits a ski season rental perfectly. Each phase has its own rulebook, most of which I have not yet reviewed, so before you plan on anything: current rules, via your manager or a status certificate.
What a winter tenant is actually renting from you
Knowing your unit’s winter story helps you present it honestly and price it sensibly:
The Woods. The premium product: attached garage, gas furnace, central air. A garage in a snowbelt winter is a real amenity, and tenants know it.
Phases 4 and 5 (Victoria Street). Walk-out lower levels add real sleeping capacity - valuable for a family with kids in ski programs. Heat is mostly electric baseboard, so have the hydro conversation before the lease is signed, not after the January bill: decide who pays, and say what winter bills look like.
Phases 1 to 3 (Alfred Street). The value end of the community, with heating that varies unit to unit after decades of upgrades. Know your own systems before you describe them.
Where your phase bundles cable and internet into the fee, say so - a turnkey internet connection is a genuine selling point for a four-month tenant with remote-work days.
The condo layer: what you sign up for as a landlord
A few mechanics show up in the documents I have read, and they are worth expecting everywhere:
- Your tenant signs up to the rules. Corporations here can require a written tenant covenant - your tenant agrees to comply with the corporation’s declaration, by-laws and rules. Your lease should anticipate that.
- You stay on the hook. Leasing out your unit does not transfer your responsibilities. If the tenant breaks rules, it is your problem too.
- Amenities transfer to the tenant. Under the shared facilities arrangement, while your unit is leased, the amenity rights go with it - the tenant uses the pools and courts, and you do not. Here is the part I find genuinely elegant about the winter lease: the marquee amenities are outdoor and summer-facing, so a December-to-April landlord gives up almost nothing. It is the one rental configuration where that clause barely bites.
- Practical expectations for the tenant: amenity access runs on the community’s tag system with guest limits, parking is typically one assigned space, and pet rules are phase-specific. Put all of it in the lease.
Money and tax: the questions to ask your accountant
I am not your accountant, and this section deliberately gives you questions rather than answers:
- How is rent from a lease of thirty days or more treated for HST, compared to nightly rental income?
- Does a history of seasonal rental affect how the eventual sale of the unit is treated?
- What does the seasonal rental do to your expense deductions, given the federal rules tying deductions to local licensing compliance?
The short version of why these questions matter: the tax system, like the licensing system, treats the monthly-plus rental very differently from the nightly one - and in the seasonal lane, the answers are generally friendlier. Get your specific answers from a professional before you count the income.
The lease: get a real one
A ski season tenancy has a genuinely unresolved legal wrinkle: whether it falls under Ontario’s residential tenancy law or its seasonal exemption is fact-specific, and the answer decides what happens if a tenant does not leave in April. I am not going to resolve that on a website, and neither should you on a handshake. Use a properly drafted seasonal lease from someone who knows this answer, and put the money questions - deposit, utilities, water billing, the hot water heater rental - in writing.
What about rates?
I will publish rate guidance when I have a defensible sample to publish, and not before. The market is real but thin, and pricing depends on the unit’s winter story more than its square footage - so treat any number you hear as one data point, not a going rate.
Where I fit in
Renting is not my business - I sell real estate. But the seasonal rental market is a big part of what makes Applejack ownership work, which is why I keep on top of it and why this guide exists. If you are weighing a purchase here with winter income as part of the math, or thinking about what your unit’s rental story means for its eventual sale, that is exactly the conversation to have with me.
Brad Macdonald, Broker
The MAC Team · REMAX All-Stars Realty Inc. Brokerage