Beverly Hills Short Term Rental Ban: The 12-Month Floor

On August 31, 2026, the Beverly Hills Vacation Rental Alliance filed suit in the US District Court for the Central District of California, asking the court to strike down Ordinance No. 25-O-2918 and permanently bar the city from enforcing it. The group is small, roughly two dozen renters, homeowners, property managers, and short and mid term rental hosts, according to the Beverly Press, which has the only substantial reporting on the filing.

Most coverage is filing this under the familiar heading of a city getting sued over its Airbnb ban. That framing misses the number that makes Beverly Hills different from every other jurisdiction in this fight. The ordinance does not set the floor at 30 nights. It sets it at 12 consecutive months.

That distinction matters well beyond Los Angeles County. When a city bans short stays, the standard operator response has been to move up the calendar into mid term: travel nurses on 13 week contracts, insurance displacement housing, corporate relocations. A 30 day minimum leaves that door open. A 12 month minimum closes it. Beverly Hills wrote the rare rule that eliminates the fallback along with the original business, and the complaint filed against it is the test of whether that survives.

Key facts

• The suit was filed August 31, 2026 in the US District Court for the Central District of California by the Beverly Hills Vacation Rental Alliance, about two dozen renters, homeowners, property managers, and hosts, per the Beverly Press.
• Ordinance No. 25-O-2918 defines a short term rental as "any lease or sublease that is shorter than 12 consecutive months" and requires "a minimum one-year initial lease term with the ability to revert to a month-to-month lease thereafter," according to the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles.
• The rule reaches single-family homes, condominiums, multifamily properties, guest houses, accessory dwelling units, and accessory features including pools, yards, and game courts. In-home caregiving is excluded.
• Before the ordinance, single-family homes and ADUs could be rented for periods of less than six months up to twice per year, and multifamily units for 30 days or longer.
• The complaint pleads an unconstitutional taking, due process, equal protection, and privacy claims under the federal and California constitutions, plus a state law claim that the council substantially modified the ordinance without referring it back to the Planning Commission.

What Ordinance 25-O-2918 actually prohibits

The operative language is a definition rather than a prohibition, which is why the ordinance reads narrower than it is. By defining a short term rental as any lease shorter than 12 consecutive months, the city converts every tenancy under a year into a banned use in single and multifamily residential zones. The requirement runs to the initial term only: once a tenant completes twelve months, the lease may revert to month-to-month.

The breadth is in the covered property list. It reaches condominiums, guest houses, and accessory dwelling units, and extends to accessory features such as pools, yards, and game courts, closing the workaround of renting the amenity rather than the residence. The only carve-out named in AAGLA's summary is in-home caregiving.

The dates deserve care, because sources report them three different ways. AAGLA lists adoption on July 15, 2025 with an effective date of September 5, 2025, while the Beverly Press reported in September 2026 that "the City Council adopted the ordinance on August 5, 2025." July 15 is best read as the public hearing rather than the adoption. The Beverly Press reported on July 2, 2025 that the council had agreed in principle on July 1 and set a hearing for July 15, and RentalScaleUp's account of that July 1 vote describes a 4-1 direction to staff to draft the ban with a final vote expected on or after July 15. An August 5 adoption followed by a September 5 effective date fits the standard thirty day interval. The city's copy of Ordinance No. 25-O-2918 is the tiebreaker, and anyone taking a legal position on the date should read it directly rather than trust a secondary summary, this one included.

Why a 12 month floor is not simply a stricter 30 day ban

Thirty days is not an arbitrary number. It is the line at which a guest in most states stops being a transient occupant and becomes a tenant under landlord-tenant law, which is why so many ordinances stop there: a city regulating short stays can point to a legal category that already exists. Beverly Hills went past that category and set its floor at a full year.

The ordinance therefore removes a use most STR bans deliberately preserve, and that use has been growing fast. Nights booked for stays of 28 days or more rose from 20 million in 2019 to 46 million in 2025, growth the January 14, 2026 Furnished Finder and AirDNA report puts at 136 percent against 52 percent for short term stays over the same period. One caution for anyone quoting that figure: the rounded 20 and 46 million numbers work out to 130 percent, so the 136 percent headline rests on unrounded bases closer to 19.5 and 46 million.

The share figures bear more directly on Beverly Hills. That same report puts monthly stays at about 19 percent of all rental demand nationally and 33 percent of nights booked in urban markets. A rule pitched as ending vacation rentals also forecloses the segment responsible for roughly a third of booked nights in cities like this one. We covered that segment's rise in the quiet shift to monthly rentals. This ordinance tests whether the fallback holds when a city drafts carefully.

The arithmetic of a one-year floor

Measured against what Beverly Hills allowed before, the change is larger than the ordinance text suggests.

For a multifamily unit, the minimum tenancy moved from 30 days to 365, a multiple of roughly 12.2. For a single-family home or ADU, the prior rule permitted stays of less than six months twice per calendar year, so an owner could run two tenancies of up to about 179 days each, close to 358 days of sub-six-month occupancy annually. The new minimum for a single lease is 365 days.

Repricing opportunities are the more useful frame. A 30 day floor permits up to twelve tenancies a year, so up to twelve chances to reset rent to market. A 365 day floor permits one, and the old single-family rule permitted two. Whatever the merits of the housing argument, the ordinance converts an asset that could be repriced monthly into one repriced annually. That is a different investment, and a fair part of what the takings claim reaches for.

Which claim is likely to matter

Constitutional challenges to short term rental rules have a weak record, and hosts reading the complaint should weight the counts accordingly. On August 5, 2026 the Fifth Circuit upheld both New Orleans' one-per-block licensing cap and its platform verification requirement, rejecting takings and First Amendment theories in Bodin v. New Orleans. The takings argument failed there for a reason that transfers directly to Beverly Hills: the properties retained their long-term rental value. A 12 month minimum leaves the long-term use fully intact by design, which is the hardest possible ground for arguing that all economically beneficial use has been taken.

The state law procedural claim is the one to watch. The allegation that the council substantially modified the ordinance without referring it back to the Planning Commission is unglamorous and, on the record of the past year, considerably more dangerous to the city. When a South Carolina judge voided Folly Beach's 800-license cap on August 14, 2026, the ruling turned on procedure and fiscal design, not on the Constitution. Ordinances in this space tend to fall because of how they were enacted rather than because of what they do.

City Attorney Laurence Wiener has said the council "desires to protect the residential quality of life in the city," and the city's position is that a rational basis supports the ordinance. On the federal counts, that is usually enough. On the referral question, it is beside the point.

What hosts in other cities should check

Read your ordinance for the minimum term number rather than the phrase "short term rental." The label tells you nothing. A rule that reads as a vacation rental ban may set the floor at 30 nights, at 90, at six months, or at a year, and only the number determines whether a mid term pivot remains available.

Confirm the fallback is permitted in your specific zone rather than merely absent from the ban. Some cities leave 30 day stays out of the STR definition while restricting them elsewhere in the zoning code.

If your council amended a proposed ordinance late in the process, find out whether the amendment went back to the planning body. That one procedural fact has decided more STR cases in 2026 than every takings argument combined.

California hosts have a second reason to watch. The state's other live regulatory fight, over the Coastal Commission's rejection of Pacifica's owner-residency rule, runs on a separate track, but both will shape how aggressively California cities draft in 2027.

What to watch next

Three things will tell you how this goes. Whether the alliance moves for a preliminary injunction, which would force an early look at the merits and is the fastest signal available. The city's answer, and specifically whether it engages the Planning Commission referral question. And whether any other California city copies the 12 month floor, the outcome that would turn this into a national story rather than a local one.

A rule that closes both the nightly and the monthly channel leaves an owner with one product to sell. In every market where the option still exists, that makes the direct relationship with past and future guests worth more rather than less. Haven builds branded direct booking sites for hosts who would rather own that relationship than rent it from a platform, at bookwithhaven.com.

FAQ

Is the Beverly Hills short term rental ban still in effect while the lawsuit is pending?

Yes. Filing a complaint does not suspend an ordinance. Ordinance No. 25-O-2918 has been in effect since 2025 and remains enforceable unless a court grants an injunction, and as of September 3, 2026 none has been reported. Hosts in Beverly Hills should assume the 12 month minimum applies today.

Does a 12 month minimum lease rule ban 30 day rentals too?

In Beverly Hills, yes. The ordinance defines a short term rental as any lease shorter than 12 consecutive months, so a 30 day or 90 day tenancy falls inside the prohibition alongside a two night stay. This is unusual. Most municipal STR bans set the floor at 30 days and leave mid term rentals available.

Have courts struck down short term rental bans as unconstitutional takings?

Rarely. The Fifth Circuit rejected a takings challenge to New Orleans' licensing cap on August 5, 2026, largely because the properties kept their long-term rental value. Ordinances in this area have more often been voided on state law grounds, such as improper adoption procedure or a fee that functions as a tax, than on federal constitutional theories.

What is the fine for violating Beverly Hills' rental ordinance?

Specific penalty amounts circulate on regulation aggregator sites, but we could not verify them against the ordinance text or the municipal code, so we are not repeating them. Anyone who needs the number for a real decision should read Ordinance No. 25-O-2918 or the city's short term rental page directly rather than rely on a third-party summary.

Who filed the Beverly Hills short term rental lawsuit?

The Beverly Hills Vacation Rental Alliance, roughly two dozen renters, homeowners, property managers, and short and mid term rental hosts, filed on August 31, 2026 in the US District Court for the Central District of California. It is asking the court to declare the ordinance unlawful and permanently enjoin its enforcement.