Act - Laws - Becoming - Laws for Tenants in Alberta

The Residential Tenancies Act

In Alberta, a provincial law called the Residential Tenancies Act also applies to most agreements to rent residential property. There is also a Voluntary Code of Practice published by the Alberta government, which is an aid to interpreting the Act.

When people make a contract that is a lease agreement their freedom to agree to whatever they want can be limited by the Residential Tenancies Act. The Residential Tenancies Act applies to most rental agreements, but some types of agreements are excluded (see below).

The Residential Tenancies Act calls rental agreements that are covered by the Act, residential tenancy agreements.

The Residential Tenancies Act sets out rules that apply whether or not you or your landlord mention them in your agreement.

For example, notice periods to end a monthly tenancy are set out in the Act. It is not possible to agree to anything less than is stated in the Residential Tenancies Act, but it is possible to agree to more than is stated in the Act. For example, the parties can agree that a landlord will give you four months notice to end a tenancy instead of three, as required by the Act.

The Residential Tenancies Act does not cover everything that people might want to include in a lease agreement. You and your landlord can add anything else to the agreement that is not covered by the Act.

The majority of tenancy agreements in Alberta are covered by the Act, but it is important to note that the Act specifically does not cover the following types of living arrangements:

a mobile home site;
premises that are rented by a single agreement and are occupied for business purposes with living accommodation attached, e.g. a gas station with living quarters;
premises where the landlord actually lives there too;
any of the following where someone lives for less than six consecutive months—hotels, motels, motor hotels, resorts, lodges, tourist camps, cottage or cabin in a camp ground or trailer park, tourist home, bed and breakfast establishment, farm, or vacation home;
student dorms;
certain nursing homes, senior citizens lodges, and social care facilities that are included in other legislation;
prisons;
residential premises on First Nations reserves on federal lands.

May 2005