Last reviewed: 15 September 2026

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British Columbia's home warranty law: licensed builders, licensed insurers

Our Alberta and Quebec pages cover two different models for mandatory new-home warranty coverage in Canada. British Columbia's Homeowner Protection Act builds a third: instead of one insurance classification or one nonprofit administrator, it requires a licensed builder to buy warranty insurance from a private insurer that's separately licensed to sell it — splitting the requirement across two different regulators rather than housing it in one.

Two separate requirements in one Act

The Homeowner Protection Act, S.B.C. 1998, c. 31, and its Homeowner Protection Act Regulation, B.C. Reg. 29/99, do two distinct things. First, it requires a "residential builder" — a person who builds, arranges for, or manages construction of a new home, including a developer or general contractor — to hold a builder's licence before starting construction, with a narrow owner-builder exemption. Second, separately, it makes third-party home warranty insurance mandatory on virtually every new home built in the province: a licensed residential builder generally can't build, offer for sale, or sell a new home unless it's covered by warranty insurance from a qualified provider.

"Warranty provider" means a licensed insurer — not a single designated nonprofit

The Act defines a "warranty provider" as a person holding a business authorization under BC's Financial Institutions Act to carry on insurance business. That's a meaningfully different structure from Quebec's single nonprofit administrator (GCR) or Alberta's insurance-classification approach: in BC, home warranty insurance is underwritten by private insurers competing for the business, each one separately approved to sell it, and regulated as an insurance product by the BC Financial Services Authority (BCFSA) — the province's financial-institutions regulator.

Coverage structure: the "2-5-10"

BC's standard new-home warranty insurance follows a tiered "2-5-10" structure: materials and labour defects for 2 years, building envelope (water penetration) defects for 5 years, and structural defects for 10 years. Combined coverage is capped at the lesser of the first owner's purchase price or $200,000 for a detached home, with different, lower per-unit caps for a strata unit and its common property.

Builder licensing and warranty-insurance oversight sit with two different bodies

Residential builder licensing itself — applications, the owner-builder authorization process, and enforcement against an unlicensed builder — is administered by BC Housing's Licensing and Consumer Services Branch. The warranty insurance a licensed builder has to buy is a separate regulatory track: BCFSA oversees the insurers approved to sell it. That two-body split (one agency licenses the builder, a different one regulates who's allowed to underwrite the warranty) is a different structural answer from Ontario's HCRA/Tarion split described on our Ontario page — Ontario separates licensing from warranty *administration*; BC separates builder licensing from insurer *regulation*, while still relying on a competitive private-insurance market to actually pay claims.