# The Cost of Compliance in U.S. Short-Term Rental Regulation > Across 13 U.S. short-term-rental pathways with a documented first-year fixed-cost figure as of August 24, 2026, the median government charge was $275 and the mean was $533.72. Those fees exclude lodging taxes and unpriced private costs. The cash price of legal compliance is usually hundreds of dollars; structural rules often bind more than the fee. - Published: 2026-08-23 - Last reviewed: 2026-08-23 - Author: Dustin Hofer, Founder, Book With Haven - Canonical: https://www.bookwithhaven.com/research/the-cost-of-compliance-in-us-short-term-rental-regulation - Cite as: Dustin Hofer. (2026). The Cost of Compliance in U.S. Short-Term Rental Regulation. Haven Research. https://www.bookwithhaven.com/research/the-cost-of-compliance-in-us-short-term-rental-regulation ## Key findings - Among 13 documented first-year pathways as of August 24, 2026, the median fixed government charge was $275, the mean was $533.72, and the range was $75 to $2,100. - Fees and restrictiveness do not rank together. New York City's application floor is $145 plus processing, and Washington, D.C.'s two-year license is $99, but both regimes limit who may supply the unit far more than they charge. - Post-January 2024 change is divergence, not a national fee hike: Houston and San Diego raised fixed charges; Aspen cut renewal paperwork; McCall lost STR operational permits on July 1, 2026 while keeping an 8 percent local-option lodging tax. - Administrative burden is best counted as required events. Los Angeles combines monthly TOT with annual Home-Sharing renewal (13 events). Aspen combines monthly tax filing with two annual licenses (14 events). - AirROI listing counts versus official licenses are an enforcement-observability gap, not a compliance rate: about 30 percent in New York City and 88 percent in San Diego on those unmatched units. ## Report **Snapshot date: August 24, 2026** **Research question:** What does it cost, in dollars and in administrative time, to operate a legal short-term rental in the United States, and how has that burden changed since January 2024? **Scope:** This report audits the largest U.S. short-term-rental markets and a supplementary group of jurisdictions that changed regulation materially after January 2024. It treats municipal codes, ordinances, government fee schedules, tax-administration pages, official program records, and state law as authoritative. Third-party data are used only to select markets, provide context, or construct explicitly qualified listing-count comparisons. The field-level table behind the statistics is published as a [31-jurisdiction dataset](/research/us-str-compliance-audit-2026-08-24.csv). ## Executive summary The central finding is straightforward: **the cash price of legal short-term-rental compliance is usually measured in hundreds of dollars, but the regulatory burden is not.** Across the 13 jurisdictional pathways for which this audit could construct a defensible first-year fixed-cost figure or documented floor, the median was **$275**, the mean was **$533.72**, the interquartile range was **$150 to $642**, and the observed range was **$75 to $2,100**. Those figures exclude transient-occupancy and lodging taxes, which scale with revenue, and they exclude unpriced private costs such as insurance premiums, professional inspections, notarization, construction work, and staff time unless a government source published a mandatory amount. The dispersion is real. A Seattle operator's STR regulatory license is [$75 per unit annually](https://www.seattle.gov/business-regulations/short-term-rentals), although a business license is also required and a dedicated rental may fall under the city's separate [Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance](https://www.seattle.gov/construction-and-inspections/codes/licensing-and-registration/rental-registration-and-inspection-ordinance/owners-and-managers). [Washington, D.C. charges $99](https://dlcp.dc.gov/page/operating-short-term-rental-district-columbia) for a two-year STR or vacation-rental license. [Atlanta charges $150 annually](https://www.atlantaga.gov/government/departments/city-planning/ordinances-regulations/short-term-rental). [Phoenix charges $250](https://www.phoenix.gov/administration/departments/pdd/registration-licensing/short-term-rental-registry.html) for both initial permits and renewals. [Houston's annual registration costs $275](https://houstontx.gov/ara/20250417.html). [Nashville charges $313](https://www.nashville.gov/departments/codes/short-term-rentals/frequently-asked-questions) annually. At the other end, an ordinary San Diego Tier 3 whole-home pathway now entails [$1,170 in STRO application and license charges](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/short-term-residential-occupancy), plus a [$34 annual business-tax certificate](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/taxesfees/btax/btaxfees) and a [$55 rental-unit business tax](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/taxesfees/btax/rtaxfees) for a single-family home or condominium, yielding **$1,259 in documented first-year fixed charges**. A New Orleans commercial STR path involving both the [commercial owner's permit](https://nola.gov/commercial-owners-permit/) and a [single-commercial-unit operator permit](https://nola.gov/str-operators-permit/) produces **$2,100 in documented application and permit charges** before any private compliance expenditure. Those dollar comparisons understate the difference between regulatory systems. New York City's prospective host application [begins at $145 plus a processing charge](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/faq/faq-for-prospective-hosts.page), yet the substantive regime generally requires the host to remain present during a stay of fewer than 30 days and allows [no more than two paying guests](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/registration-law/tips-for-hosts.page). Los Angeles restricts Home-Sharing to a [primary residence and generally limits a regular registration to 120 days per year](https://planning.lacity.gov/project-review/home-sharing). Washington, D.C.'s $99 license similarly requires a natural-person host using a primary residence and [caps host-absent vacation rentals at 90 nights annually](https://dlcp.dc.gov/page/operating-short-term-rental-district-columbia). In these markets, the permit fee is a poor proxy for the economic effect of regulation. The post-2024 direction is also not a simple nationwide march toward higher fees. **Houston clearly raised the fixed burden** by creating an annual $275 STR registration system [adopted in April 2025](https://houstontx.gov/ara/20250417.html) and enforced beginning January 1, 2026. **San Diego increased monetary charges** through a [revised fee schedule effective March 1, 2025](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/short-term-residential-occupancy). **Fredericksburg, Texas increased procedural burden** with an ordinance effective January 1, 2024 that includes annual inspections. **Austin materially tightened the operating framework in 2025 and 2026**, while its current [new-license charge is $836.30](https://www.austintexas.gov/development-services/short-term-rentals). Phoenix added an [owner-occupancy attestation for certain newer accessory dwelling units](https://www.phoenix.gov/administration/departments/pdd/registration-licensing/short-term-rental-registry.html) effective April 4, 2026. There are counterexamples. [Aspen's November 2025 amendments](https://www.aspen.gov/m/newsflash/Home/Detail/897) removed the HOA affidavit from renewals and eliminated a mailing-notice step in uncapped zones, reducing administrative friction even though the city still charges $394 annually for a Classic or Owner-Occupied STR permit plus a [$150 annual STR business license](https://aspen.gov/1386/Obtaining-a-City-of-Aspen-Business-Licen) for a typical small operation. Idaho moved much further. McCall's [June 2026 municipal notice](https://www.mccall.id.us/DocumentCenter/View/3081/Short-Term-Rental-Notice-of-Local-Option-Tax-Lot-Responsibility) states that House Bill 583 prohibits the city from requiring STR operational permits or registrations beginning July 1, 2026. Yet McCall's **8 percent local-option lodging tax remains intact**, and marketplace providers can continue remitting it. Preemption therefore removed a fixed regulatory mechanism without eliminating the revenue mechanism — the same split we traced in our [Idaho and Indiana preemption explainer](/blog/state-preemption-of-short-term-rental-rules-what-the-july-1-laws-in-idaho-and-indiana-actually-change). Administrative time shows the same divergence. Government sources rarely measure host labor, so this report does not present invented hours as observed data. It instead counts mandatory recurring actions and provides a transparent conversion scenario. Los Angeles requires [monthly transient-occupancy-tax remittance](https://finance.lacity.gov/sharing-economy) and annual Home-Sharing renewal, producing at least 13 recurring filing or renewal events per year. Aspen requires monthly lodging/STR tax filing plus annual permit and business-license renewal, at least 14 recurring actions. San Antonio requires [monthly city and county hotel-occupancy reporting](https://www.sa.gov/Directory/Departments/Finance/Taxes-Fees/HOT/STR), including zero returns, while its [STR permit lasts three years](https://www.sa.gov/Directory/Departments/DSD/STR/Permits). San Diego Tier 3 and Tier 4 licensees file [quarterly reports](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/short-term-residential-occupancy) in addition to separate business-tax obligations. Using, solely for illustration, **30 minutes for a routine periodic filing, 90 minutes for a permit renewal, and no allowance for bookkeeping, document collection, inspections, disputes, or corrective work**, Los Angeles' 13-event lower bound converts to roughly **7.5 hours per year**, Aspen's 14 events to about **9 hours**, and San Antonio's 12 monthly filings plus one permit renewal every three years to roughly **6.5 hours annually**. These are modeled administrative-hours estimates, not measured host labor. The most important result is therefore not a national average fee. It is a distinction between **three different kinds of compliance burden**:
Burden What the data show
Fixed cash burden Usually hundreds of dollars among documented ordinary pathways, but can exceed $1,000 where licensing is tiered or multiple permits are stacked.
Administrative burden Varies from a single annual renewal to monthly reporting plus multiple licenses and inspections.
Structural burden Primary-residence rules, permit caps, zoning restrictions, distance requirements, lotteries, and host-absent night limits can matter economically far more than the fee itself.
## How we know ### Market selection The research brief contemplated 40 jurisdictions: 25 of the largest U.S. STR markets by a single active-listing source, 10 resort or mid-size markets with material post-January-2024 changes, and five jurisdictions illustrating new state preemption. It also instructed that unverifiable markets should be dropped rather than completed with guesses. For the large-market frame, this audit used [AirROI's public U.S. market ranking](https://www.airroi.com/airbnb-data/united-states), updated August 8, 2026. AirROI states that its market data are based on analysis of more than 20 million STR listings and ranks the displayed U.S. markets by active listing count. The ranking placed Four Corners, Florida first and Miramar Beach, Florida twenty-first among the relevant results, but both are census-designated geographic areas rather than unitary municipal jurisdictions. To preserve a jurisdiction-level legal unit, this audit dropped those two and moved down the same ranking to Philadelphia and Orlando. The resulting 25-market frame is reproducible from the published ranking. The audit then added six resort, amendment, or preemption cases for which a current municipal primary source could be captured: Fredericksburg, Palm Springs, Aspen, Galveston, Santa Fe, and McCall. Primary documents or government pages establish material recent regulatory developments in each. That produces a **31-jurisdiction research frame rather than the requested 40**. This is intentional rather than cosmetic. Nine weakly sourced markets were not added merely to reach the target. Even within the 25 largest-market frame, current primary legal fee records were not captured for Myrtle Beach, Chicago, Gulf Shores, Hilton Head Island, Miami Beach, Philadelphia, and Orlando. Those rows remain in the reproducibility dataset because their selection is independently verifiable, but they are marked as unverified and are excluded from cost statistics. No third-party fee claim was promoted into a legal fact. Consequently, this report contains three nested samples:
Sample N Use
Selection and audit frame 31 Market coverage, including explicit verification gaps
Markets with a captured governmental regulatory record 22 Qualitative regime and change analysis
Markets with a defensible numeric first-year fixed-cost figure or floor 13 Dollar-distribution analysis
This censoring matters. The $275 median is a statistic of the **documented cost sample**, not an estimate of the nationwide median host cost. ### Source hierarchy The evidence hierarchy follows the assignment. Municipal codes and ordinances, city fee schedules, official tax pages, state statutes or state-authorized notices, council materials, and government program pages are dataset authorities. Third-party sources may identify an issue but do not establish a fee or legal requirement. That distinction excluded several tempting numbers. For example, 2026 reporting says Hilton Head Island changed its STR permit charge from a $250 flat amount to $150 per bedroom. A homeowners association describes the same Town requirement. Because a corresponding current Town fee schedule was not captured in the primary-source audit, the $150-per-bedroom figure does **not** enter the quantitative dataset. The gap is retained rather than silently resolved. The same rule governs Austin's renewal charge. Austin's official STR page captured for this audit states that a new license costs $836.30, consisting of a $789 license fee and $47.30 notification fee. Secondary reports publish a separate renewal figure, but without the corresponding primary fee line captured here, that renewal amount is not used in the recurring-cost calculations. ### Summation rule **First-year fixed cost** is the sum of documented, unavoidable, non-revenue-based government charges for the specified legal operating pathway during the first year. A separate mandatory business license is included where its fixed amount is documented. Taxes proportional to bookings or gross receipts are excluded, as requested. Optional payment-processing fees are excluded where a no-fee payment method is available. Where a fee is explicitly conditional, variable, or missing, the total is labeled a **floor** rather than a point estimate. Nashville illustrates the treatment. Its STR permit costs $313, while its business-tax license can add $15 or $30 depending on gross income and service district. The master table therefore reports **≥$313**, not an artificially precise universal total. **Annual recurring cost** annualizes multiyear licenses. Washington, D.C.'s $99 two-year license therefore contributes $49.50 per year. San Diego Tier 3's two-year $1,170 STRO charge contributes $585 annually, to which the documented $34 and $55 annual business charges are added, yielding $674. A required refundable bond or deposit would be shown separately from an economic cost because posting collateral is a cash requirement but not necessarily an expense. No such amount enters the comparable point estimates in this audit. ### Time-burden rule The objective measure is the **count of discrete recurring compliance actions**: permit renewals, business-license renewals, mandatory inspections, periodic STR reports, and tax submissions. Continuous duties such as keeping records, answering a hotline, or monitoring guests are described but not converted into discrete filings. No government source reviewed here reports measured host labor in hours. Any hour figure therefore requires assumptions. The modeled estimates later in this report use 30 minutes for a recurring routine filing and 90 minutes for a permit renewal. They deliberately omit preparation and bookkeeping. The estimates should be read as low-end administrative scenarios, never as measured averages. ## Market-level cost dataset The master table presents the most decision-relevant variables. “NV” means the amount was **not verified in a captured primary source**, rather than zero. “Floor” means additional mandatory charges may exist but could not be assigned a uniform documented amount.
Jurisdiction First-year fixed cost Annual recurring cost Dominant structural mechanism Evidence
Kissimmee, FL NV NV City and county business-tax receipts; fire review City confirms both BTRs and inspection, but the captured page does not publish a uniform amount.
Panama City Beach, FL ≥$250 ≥$150 Certificate + fire-safety process New certificate $250; standard renewal $150; published fines begin at $500.
New York City, NY ≥$145 NV Hosted primary-residence model Application is $145 plus processing; host-presence and two-paying-guest rules dominate economics.
Los Angeles, CA NV NV Primary residence + regular 120-day limit Annual Home-Sharing registration; registration number required; current fee not captured in this audit.
San Diego, CA $1,259, Tier 3 $674 annualized Tiering + Tier 4 cap Tier 3/4 STRO charge $1,170 per two years plus documented annual business charges.
Houston, TX $275 $275 Annual registration $275 annual certificate, with enforcement active from Jan. 1, 2026.
Miami, FL Property-specific Property-specific Zoning and change-of-use Legal STR use may require zoning, conversion, certificate-of-use and building review; no honest uniform total exists.
Austin, TX $836.30 NV Licensing + density/platform controls Current official new-license fee is $836.30.
Myrtle Beach, SC NV NV Primary legal record not captured Market selection verified; third-party fee claims excluded.
Sevierville, TN NV NV Annual safety permit Annual operational permit includes Fire Department life-safety inspection; fee not captured.
Chicago, IL NV NV Primary legal record not captured Market selection only.
Atlanta, GA $150 $150 Primary residence + one additional dwelling Annual STR license $150; processing can take up to ten business days.
Phoenix, AZ $250 $250 per renewal cycle State-constrained permit Initial and renewal permit fee $250; complete application must be decided within seven days.
Honolulu, HI NV NV Resort-zone restriction + legacy NUCs New STRs confined to eligible areas; annual registration; ads require license/NUC and TMK.
Nashville-Davidson, TN ≥$313 ≥$313 Annual permit Permit and renewal each $313; separate conditional business-tax license can apply.
Seattle, WA ≥$75 ≥$75 Operator license + RRIO overlay $75 annual STR license; business license required; dedicated units may incur RRIO charges.
San Antonio, TX NV NV Type 1/Type 2 permit Permit lasts three years and the city publishes a five-business-day complete-application standard.
Gulf Shores, AL NV NV Primary legal record not captured Market selection only.
New Orleans, LA $2,100, CSTR path NV Residential cap/lottery + commercial permits Commercial owner path $1,050 plus single-CSTR operator path $1,050.
Washington, DC $99 $49.50 annualized Primary residence + 90-night host-absent cap $99 two-year license; no pre-license housing inspection.
Dallas, TX Not determinable Not determinable Tax registration City HOT registration is free, but that is not evidence of a zero total STR compliance cost.
Hilton Head Island, SC NV NV Primary fee schedule not captured Secondary 2026 fee reports deliberately excluded from cost statistics.
Miami Beach, FL NV NV Primary legal record not captured Market selection only.
Philadelphia, PA NV NV Primary legal record not captured Market selection only.
Orlando, FL NV NV Primary legal record not captured Market selection only.
Fredericksburg, TX NV NV Annual permit + inspection Current regime requires inspections on initial permitting and annual renewal.
Palm Springs, CA $642, Junior path NV Certificate classes + neighborhood caps Junior certificate fee is $642 and allows no more than six contracts annually.
Aspen, CO $544, Classic $544 Zonal caps + permit classes $394 Classic/Owner-Occupied permit plus $150 annual STR business license.
Galveston, TX NV NV Registration + centralized enforcement City took over registration/HOT administration in 2025 and adopted a new ordinance later that year.
Santa Fe, NM NV NV Distance and multifamily density limits Residential STR separation is 50 feet; multifamily limits also apply.
McCall, ID STR permit: not required after July 1, 2026; total ambiguous Ambiguous State-preempted local operations HB 583 removes STR operational permit/registration authority, while local lodging tax survives.
### What the dollar distribution says Among the 13 documented pathways with a numeric first-year figure or defensible floor:
Statistic First-year fixed cost
Minimum $75
First quartile $150
Median $275
Mean $533.72
Third quartile $642
Maximum $2,100
The gap between the $275 median and $533.72 mean is caused by the high-cost tail, particularly New Orleans' commercial path and San Diego Tier 3. It is not evidence that a typical American host pays $534. The sample combines floors, category-specific pathways, and jurisdictional systems with different scopes. For the **eight markets where annual recurring fixed costs can be annualized cleanly**, the median is **$212.50**, the mean **$278.81**, and the observed range **$49.50 to $674**. Again, these exclude revenue-based taxes and unpriced private compliance expenditures. That eight-market slice is Washington, D.C.; Seattle; Atlanta; Panama City Beach; Houston; Nashville-Davidson; Aspen Classic; and San Diego Tier 3. Phoenix is excluded from the recurring slice because the captured record is a charge per renewal cycle, not a clean annual figure. The documented first-year figures expose two different policy models. Atlanta, Phoenix, Houston, Panama City Beach, Washington, D.C., and Seattle use comparatively low fixed fees. San Diego and New Orleans impose materially larger fixed cash barriers for the whole-home categories shown. Austin and Aspen sit between those groups, albeit with very different structural rules. Fees and restrictiveness plainly do not rank markets in the same order. New York City's fixed application floor is lower than Houston's annual charge, yet New York prohibits the ordinary host-absent, whole-apartment weekend-rental model in covered dwellings. Washington, D.C.'s annualized license price is only $49.50, while host-absent vacation-rental use is limited to 90 nights a year and investment properties are ineligible. Miami demonstrates the other extreme: the important compliance question can be whether the use is permitted by zoning and building classification at all, rather than what the STR license costs. Those zoning and covenant questions are legally distinct from the fee schedule; [what courts have actually held about short-term rentals](/research/what-courts-have-actually-held-about-short-term-rentals) is the companion survey of the private-restriction side of that line. ### Taxes are a separate burden Keeping taxes outside the fixed-cost totals avoids conflating entry barriers with revenue-linked obligations, but tax rates can be economically larger than permit fees. Los Angeles' municipal transient-occupancy tax is [14 percent](https://finance.lacity.gov/transient-occupancy-tax-requirements) and is remitted monthly. San Diego's current TOT varies by zone at [11.75, 12.75, or 13.75 percent](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/taxesfees/tot). San Antonio imposes 9 percent city HOT and 1.75 percent Bexar County HOT in addition to Texas' 6 percent state rate, producing a combined 16.75 percent before considering the legal incidence between guest and operator. Dallas' city HOT is [9 percent](https://dallascityhall.com/departments/budget/financialtransparency/Pages/Short-Term-Rentals.aspx). Aspen's city lodging plus STR levy is 12 percent for a Classic STR and 7 percent for Owner-Occupied or Lodging-Exempt permits, before other sales taxes. McCall's local-option taxes on lodging [total 8 percent as of 2026](https://mccall.id.us/197/Local-Option-Tax). A $150 license therefore cannot sensibly be compared with a percentage tax as though both were the same form of burden. At $50,000 of taxable annual room revenue, for example, a 10 percent lodging levy corresponds to $5,000 of tax collections, an order of magnitude above most fixed permit charges. That arithmetic does not establish who ultimately bears the tax, but it shows why a credible regulatory-cost dataset must keep fixed entry costs and revenue-linked taxes separate. ### Hours and administrative actions The strongest objective time metric is not hours, because cities do not publish measured completion times for host paperwork. It is **required event count**.
Jurisdiction/path Minimum recurring discrete events Illustrative annual hours, not measured
Atlanta 1 annual STR renewal ~1.5
Seattle At least STR renewal + business-license cycle ~2.0 lower-bound scenario
San Diego Tier 3 4 quarterly STR reports + annual business obligations + biennial STRO renewal ~3.75
Washington, DC 1 license renewal every 2 years ~0.75 annualized
Los Angeles 12 monthly TOT submissions + 1 annual Home-Sharing renewal ~7.5
San Antonio 12 monthly HOT reports + 1 permit renewal every 3 years ~6.5
Aspen Classic 12 monthly tax filings + annual permit + annual business license ~9.0
The event counts come directly from local requirements. Atlanta's license is annual. Seattle's STR license is annual and a business-license certificate is also required. San Diego Tier 3 and Tier 4 operators file quarterly reports, while STRO licenses run two years. Washington, D.C.'s license runs two years. Los Angeles combines annual registration with monthly TOT remittance. San Antonio requires monthly HOT reporting and issues permits for three years. Aspen combines monthly tax filing with annual STR and business licensing. The hours column applies a stated assumption of 30 minutes to a routine filing and 90 minutes to a permit renewal. It is deliberately conservative. It excludes bookkeeping, gathering proof of residence, certified mail, scheduling inspections, travel, correction cycles, learning a new portal, contacting neighbors, responding to notices, and preparing floor or evacuation plans. A city can therefore have a low objective action count while imposing substantial actual labor per action. ## Change since January 2024 The evidence does not support a claim that U.S. STR regulation has uniformly become more expensive. It supports a narrower and more useful conclusion: **regulation has become more operationally specific, while jurisdictions are diverging over whether that specificity should be implemented through fees, supply controls, reporting, or state preemption.** The [short-term rental laws-by-state briefing](/blog/short-term-rental-laws-by-state-2026) maps the same split at the statute layer; this audit prices the municipal instruments those statutes leave in place. ### Clearly higher burdens **Houston is the cleanest before-and-after case in the large-market sample.** City Council approved an STR registration ordinance on April 16, 2025. The current fee schedule establishes a $275 registration certificate, and enforcement began January 1, 2026. The regime also requires a 24-hour emergency contact and imposes daily penalties of $100 to $500 for operating without the certificate. Relative to January 2024, Houston therefore moved from the absence of this STR-specific annual certificate to a recurring fixed regulatory charge and dedicated enforcement system. **San Diego raised monetary cost.** Its current official STRO page lists fees effective March 1, 2025 of $33 plus $193 for Tier 1, $33 plus $284 for Tier 2, and $41 plus $1,129 for Tiers 3 and 4. City materials tie the fee revision to program revenues and operating costs. The expensive categories are also the supply-controlled ones, particularly Tier 4, for which the city reported no licenses remaining as of August 21, 2026. **Austin's 2025 overhaul increased structural compliance even where it simplified individual documents.** The city's current new-license price is $836.30. The 2025 policy work altered the framework for multifamily concentration, licensing, and platform participation. This is an example of why “burden” should not be reduced to a fee change. A regime can eliminate one document while making unlicensed market access less viable. **Fredericksburg moved toward recurring physical verification.** The city's current regime, effective January 1, 2024, requires inspections not merely on initial permitting but on annual renewal, as well as after transfers, certain complaints, or structural changes. Even without a verified inspection dollar amount, the action count increased in a way that is observable and economically meaningful. **Phoenix tightened a narrower subclass.** Effective April 4, 2026, owners seeking an STR permit for property with an ADU whose certificate of occupancy was issued on or after September 14, 2024 must submit a notarized owner-residency attestation and proof of address. This does not raise every Phoenix host's fee, but it raises the compliance burden for the affected property class. ### Lower or simplified burdens Aspen is the clearest municipal example of targeted simplification. In November 2025 the City Council approved amendments that removed the HOA affidavit from STR renewal, removed a mailing-notice requirement in uncapped zones, and created other procedural adjustments. Aspen did not deregulate STRs. Classic permits remain zonally capped and the current annual charges remain $394 for a Classic or Owner-Occupied permit plus a $150 STR business license. It did, however, reduce paperwork that did not directly alter the underlying supply constraint. McCall demonstrates a much larger decrease in STR-specific fixed regulation. Its June 4, 2026 official notice states that Idaho House Bill 583 prohibits the city from requiring operational permits or registrations for STRs effective July 1, 2026. The city separately states that it is repealing many of its STR codes because of the new legislation. Yet McCall simultaneously increased the local-option tax burden on lodging. The city's 2026 material states that lodging is subject to an 8 percent local-option tax combination. The important directional result is therefore **fixed burden down, transaction-linked burden up**. Looking only at the former would call McCall deregulation; looking only at the latter would call it a tax increase. Both are true. ### Mixed or difficult-to-code changes Palm Springs adopted Ordinance 2133 on July 8, 2026, amending Chapter 5.25 and the appeals framework while integrating state facilitator-law issues. Its Junior Vacation Rental certificate remains a distinct reduced-fee class at $642 and no more than six contracts annually. Because the current and prior standard-certificate fee series was not fully reconstructed from primary schedules, the change is coded **mixed**, not “higher” or “lower.” Galveston's government shifted STR registration and hotel-occupancy-tax administration to the city effective October 1, 2025 and subsequently approved a new STR ordinance in November 2025. That is a material institutional change, but without the full before-and-after fee schedule it would be inappropriate to convert administrative centralization into an assumed dollar increase. Honolulu's current rules refer to [Ordinance 25-52](https://www.honolulu.gov/dpp/permitting/str/str-faq/) in defining where STR registration is permitted. The geographic eligibility change is structurally significant, yet the captured record does not support a uniform monetary before-and-after calculation. The aggregate pattern is thus more informative when separated by mechanism than when forced into a single severity index:
Mechanism of change Examples Direction
New recurring registration Houston Higher fixed cost
Fee revision San Diego Higher fixed cost
Additional physical verification Fredericksburg Higher procedural burden
Stronger licensing/platform architecture Austin Higher structural compliance
Property-class residency requirement Phoenix Higher for affected subclass
Removal of paperwork Aspen Lower administrative burden
State preemption of STR-specific permits McCall Lower fixed local burden
Tax increase surviving deregulation McCall Higher revenue-linked burden
Regulatory redesign without complete fee series Palm Springs, Galveston, Honolulu Mixed/indeterminate
That pattern is more defensible than claiming a single national trend. ## Regulatory archetypes and the enforcement gap ### A mechanism-based taxonomy The data yield five useful archetypes. **Registration-and-safety regimes** primarily legalize an otherwise permissible use through a certificate and operational rules. Houston's $275 annual system is the clearest recent example. Panama City Beach also fits substantially within this category, combining a vacation-rental certificate, fire review, local-contact signage, and escalating fines. Atlanta is close, although its primary-residence linkage makes it a borderline case. **Primary-residence regimes** control who may supply the unit rather than merely registering it. New York City's rules require host presence for ordinary stays under 30 days and cap paying guests at two. Los Angeles restricts Home-Sharing eligibility to a primary residence. Washington, D.C. requires a natural person using a primary residence and limits host-absent vacation-rental nights to 90 annually. These regimes can have modest fees but high opportunity cost. **Capped-supply regimes** make the right to operate scarce independently of fee payment. San Diego's Tier 4 category is capped and had no licenses available in the city's August 2026 status report. New Orleans generally limits non-commercial STRs to one per square, resolves excess applications by lottery, and permits limited special exceptions. Aspen caps Classic permits in specified zones. Palm Springs uses neighborhood caps, while its Junior class is structured differently. That is the same constraint [World Cup host-city demand made visible](/blog/what-the-world-cup-is-revealing-about-short-term-rental-supply-constraints): when legal supply is rationed, a higher fee is not what binds. **Zone and use-restriction regimes** determine legality through land-use classification. Miami's current guidance directs prospective operators through Miami 21 zoning, building/use conversion, certificate-of-use and operational-plan requirements, with many residential areas not eligible for lodging use. Honolulu restricts new STR registration to resort-zoned or ordinance-designated eligible areas while maintaining a legacy NUC system. In these places, asking “what is the STR fee?” can miss the principal barrier. **Preempted or state-constrained regimes** operate under a state-imposed ceiling. Phoenix's permit framework exists because Arizona's legislature authorized specified local permit mechanisms, a constraint the city itself identifies on its STR page. McCall is the stronger 2026 example: Idaho's new law removed STR-specific operational licensing while leaving other generally applicable and tax powers in place. The borderline cases are instructive. Seattle looks like a low-cost registration jurisdiction until a dedicated STR falls under RRIO, adding a separate registration and inspection system. Atlanta is primarily a primary-residence regime but permits one additional dwelling. Phoenix is a $250 permit regime in form, but state law sharply shapes what that local permit may do. A useful taxonomy therefore classifies the mechanism limiting supply, not the adjective a city uses for its program. ### Where cost looks like cost recovery Some jurisdictions provide evidence that their fee structure is tied to administration rather than general revenue generation. San Diego's revised STRO fees sit within a program budget and cost framework, and the city maintains a substantial licensing, reporting, and enforcement apparatus. That evidence does not prove a particular fee is exactly equal to marginal enforcement cost. It does show why a $150 or $1,170 charge cannot automatically be interpreted as fiscal extraction. The stronger claim requires city-level cost accounting: fee revenue, staff cost, vendor cost, inspection cost, adjudication expense, and ideally permit volume. Most cities do not publish all of those components together. Conversely, the McCall case separates regulation from revenue unusually cleanly. STR-specific operational permitting was preempted while the 8 percent local-option lodging tax survived. That makes clear that taxation and STR-specific land-use control are legally and fiscally distinct instruments. ### The enforcement gap New York City and San Diego are the two markets in the sample for which an official permit count and the common AirROI listing source support a useful, though highly qualified, comparison. AirROI reported **10,069 active New York City listings** in its August 2026 ranking, while an [NYC Office of Special Enforcement report](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/news/new-report-sheds-fresh-light-on-how-local-law-18.page) described roughly **3,000 active registrations**. Dividing those figures produces approximately **30 percent**. San Diego presents a much smaller numerical gap. AirROI reported **9,580 active listings**, while San Diego's official page reported **8,448 STRO licenses** across its tiers as of August 21, 2026. The simple ratio is about **88 percent**. Neither percentage is a compliance rate. A third-party “active listing” count and a government license count do not measure the same unit. A host may advertise on multiple platforms; one regulatory license may correspond to listings that appear more than once in scraped platform data; an active listing may be configured for stays outside the local STR definition; exempt hotel or legacy categories can enter a market dataset differently; and an issued license can exist while its associated listing is temporarily inactive. New York City's 30-day boundary is particularly important because Local Law 18 targets the short-term category, while a market-data provider may continue observing longer-stay inventory. The comparison is therefore best read as an **enforcement-observability gap**, not proof that 70 percent of New York listings are illegal or that 88 percent of San Diego listings are compliant. A rigorous future enforcement study would need listing-level deduplication, license-number matching, stay-length filters, and exemption classification. ## Preemption and the state-local boundary State preemption is often described too broadly. The McCall record shows why statutory carve-outs matter. The city's June 4, 2026 notice expressly states that Idaho House Bill 583 prohibits McCall from requiring **operational permits or registrations for short-term rentals** as of July 1, 2026. The notice cites Idaho Code §50-1047 and McCall Ordinances 965 and 1028. The city's STR page separately says many McCall STR codes are being repealed effective July 1 because of the legislation. What survives is at least as important. Lodging operators remain liable for McCall's local-option taxes, and the city says Airbnb and Vrbo collect and remit when a property is rented solely through those platforms. Ordinary generally applicable rules are not transformed into nullities merely because STR-specific licensing is preempted. The municipal record also contains a live ambiguity worth preserving. McCall's Local Option Tax material says an active business license is required to operate a lodging establishment, including an STR. Its newer STR notice says HB 583 bars STR operational permits and registrations. A generally applicable business license might legally survive because it is not an STR-specific operational license, but the captured city pages do not reconcile the two statements clearly enough to assign a current fixed dollar total. The dataset therefore records the **STR-specific permit as not required and the total fixed local burden as ambiguous**. Resolving the ambiguity silently would violate the assignment's evidentiary rule. Phoenix offers a useful comparison even though Arizona's underlying enabling/preemption architecture predates the requested 2024 window. The Phoenix government states that Arizona Senate Bill 1168 authorized cities and towns to create a limited STR permit or license process, after which Phoenix moved from registration to permitting in November 2023. Phoenix can charge $250, require neighboring-property notices, mandate a permit number in advertising, and suspend a permit after specified violations, but its authority is framed by the [state statute](https://www.azleg.gov/ars/9/00500-39.htm). Taken together, the cases show at least three possible state-local arrangements:
State-local structure Local result
Broad municipal discretion City can combine fees, primary-residence rules, caps, inspections and reporting subject to ordinary state law.
State-authorized limited permit power Local government may license and enforce, but within statutory boundaries, as Phoenix illustrates.
Strong STR-specific preemption Local permit and registration tools disappear while taxes and generally applicable law can survive, as McCall illustrates.
This matters for cost analysis because preemption does not necessarily make an STR “unregulated.” It can instead move the burden from an STR-specific permit system into taxation, statewide safety rules, ordinary nuisance enforcement, platform duties, or generally applicable business law. The original assignment called for five markets in states enacting relevant preemption during the January 2024 to August 2026 window. **This audit does not claim to have completed that five-market component.** McCall is the only post-2024 preemption case for which both the recent legal change and a current municipal implementation record were captured to the required standard. Expanding that portion without primary local implementation documents would have contradicted the report's source rule. ## Limitations, research gaps, and prioritized next steps The largest limitation is coverage. The assignment requested 40 jurisdictions. The reproducible file contains 31, with only 22 supported by a captured current governmental regulatory source and 13 supporting usable first-year fixed-cost figures or floors. That shortfall should be visible in any citation of the results. It means the distribution statistics characterize the documented sample, not all U.S. STR regulation. A second limitation is **censoring toward transparent governments**. Cities that publish consolidated STR pages, fee schedules, and current FAQs are easier to quantify than cities that distribute the same requirements across zoning code, finance schedules, fire rules, and county documents. The audit therefore risks making transparent jurisdictions appear more administratively burdensome simply because their costs can be observed. Third, a fixed fee is not equivalent to total economic cost. New York's host-presence rule, Washington, D.C.'s 90-night unhosted cap, San Diego's exhausted Tier 4 supply, New Orleans' one-per-square residential regime, Santa Fe's 50-foot separation rule, and Miami's zoning limitations can affect revenue or asset use far more than an application fee. Pricing those structural restrictions requires a different empirical design, ideally property-level counterfactual revenue and occupancy data. Fourth, **private compliance spending is mostly invisible in public records**. A requirement for liability insurance does not reveal the incremental premium. Washington, D.C., for example, requires at least $250,000 in coverage, but that does not justify assigning a dollar cost without an insurance quote dataset. A fire inspection can trigger corrective work whose cost depends on the property. Miami's building or change-of-use path is especially resistant to fixed pricing. Those expenses should be investigated, not estimated away. Fifth, administrative hours remain modeled. Some cities publish decision standards, such as Phoenix's seven-day complete-application requirement, San Antonio's five-business-day standard, Aspen's 15-business-day review target, and Palm Springs' stated 30-to-90-day processing range. Those are elapsed calendar or business times, not applicant labor. A defensible “hours” study would require host diaries, portal telemetry, or a timed standardized application experiment. Sixth, the dataset records a **legal pathway**, not every host's individual path. San Diego Tier 3 is used as the whole-home comparison category, while Tier 1 and Tier 2 are cheaper. Palm Springs' $642 observation is specifically its Junior certificate, not its standard vacation-rental certificate. New Orleans' $2,100 figure is the documented CSTR owner plus single-CSTR operator pathway, not a universal New Orleans host charge. Treating those as citywide averages would be erroneous. ### Implications for policy and market analysis For municipal policymakers, the data suggest that **fee transparency is itself part of compliance design**. Houston, Phoenix, Nashville, San Diego, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Seattle publish clear current dollar charges on official pages. Where a prospective operator must reconstruct a cost from multiple departments, informational friction becomes a genuine compliance burden even before money changes hands. For marketplaces and STR operators, a national “regulatory fee” estimate is the wrong abstraction. The useful unit is a **jurisdiction-by-regime-class compliance profile**. A $75 Seattle primary-residence operator, a $1,259 San Diego Tier 3 operator, and a New York host operating under Local Law 18 are not variants of the same permitting problem. Their binding constraints differ. For researchers, the highest-value extension is no longer another descriptive law tracker. It is a longitudinal **versioned fee-and-obligation database**. Every row should preserve an effective date, ordinance version, fee schedule, prior value, change event, and archival URL. Only then can researchers test whether cities are actually increasing fees, substituting enforcement for fees, or replacing local licensing with platform obligations. ### Prioritized research agenda The first priority is to complete the primary-source record for the unresolved large markets: Myrtle Beach, Chicago, Gulf Shores, Hilton Head Island, Miami Beach, Philadelphia, Orlando, and the remaining variable-fee components in Kissimmee, Los Angeles, Miami, Honolulu, San Antonio, and Sevierville. These should be added only when a current ordinance or fee schedule can be archived. The second is to reconstruct **January 1, 2024 historical fee schedules** for every current point estimate. Current law is substantially easier to retrieve than superseded schedules. Without archived schedules, “cost changed” often has to be coded from the creation or amendment of an obligation rather than from an exact dollar delta. The third is to finish the **five-market preemption cohort** using enacted session law and the first post-effective-date municipal ordinance for each market. McCall shows the right design: statutory text, local repeal or implementation, surviving tax duties, and any unresolved conflict should be placed side by side. The fourth is an empirical time study. A standardized applicant could complete ten representative jurisdictions while screen-recording every action and separating active labor from government wait time. That would replace the illustrative 30-minute and 90-minute assumptions used here with measured distributions. The fifth is to link registration data to deduplicated listings. New York and San Diego show how attractive but dangerous the raw ratios can be. Matching permit numbers, property addresses, platform duplicates, minimum-stay settings, and exemptions would turn the current “enforcement gap” into an actual compliance study. The sixth is to price structural restrictions. The research question would move from “what does a permit cost?” to “what is the annualized economic effect of losing 275 nights of host-absent eligibility, entering a capped zone, or being excluded by a primary-residence rule?” That analysis would require STR revenue microdata and a credible counterfactual, but it would measure the portion of regulatory burden that this report shows fixed-fee comparisons cannot capture. ## Sources - [AirROI — Best places to invest in Airbnb in the United States (updated 2026-08-08)](https://www.airroi.com/airbnb-data/united-states) - [City of Seattle — Short-term rentals](https://www.seattle.gov/business-regulations/short-term-rentals) - [City of Seattle — Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance](https://www.seattle.gov/construction-and-inspections/codes/licensing-and-registration/rental-registration-and-inspection-ordinance/owners-and-managers) - [DC Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection — Operating a short-term rental](https://dlcp.dc.gov/page/operating-short-term-rental-district-columbia) - [DC DLCP — License and corporate filing fees](https://dlcp.dc.gov/page/dlcp-license-corporate-filing-fees) - [City of Atlanta — Short-term rental](https://www.atlantaga.gov/government/departments/city-planning/ordinances-regulations/short-term-rental) - [City of Phoenix — Short-term rental registry](https://www.phoenix.gov/administration/departments/pdd/registration-licensing/short-term-rental-registry.html) - [City of Houston — Council approves short-term rental regulations (2025-04-17)](https://houstontx.gov/ara/20250417.html) - [City of Houston — Newly adopted short-term rental ordinance](https://www.houstonpermittingcenter.org/news-events/update-administration-regulatory-affairs-department-newly-adopted-short-term-rental) - [Metropolitan Nashville — Short-term rental property FAQs](https://www.nashville.gov/departments/codes/short-term-rentals/frequently-asked-questions) - [City of San Diego — Short-term residential occupancy](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/short-term-residential-occupancy) - [City of San Diego — Business tax rates and fees](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/taxesfees/btax/btaxfees) - [City of San Diego — Rental unit business tax fees](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/taxesfees/btax/rtaxfees) - [City of San Diego — Transient occupancy tax](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/taxesfees/tot) - [City of Austin — Short-term rentals](https://www.austintexas.gov/development-services/short-term-rentals) - [NYC Office of Special Enforcement — FAQ for prospective hosts](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/faq/faq-for-prospective-hosts.page) - [NYC Office of Special Enforcement — Tips for hosting a legal short-term rental](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/registration-law/tips-for-hosts.page) - [NYC Office of Special Enforcement — Local Law 18 report announcement](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/news/new-report-sheds-fresh-light-on-how-local-law-18.page) - [NYC Office of Special Enforcement — Data and reports](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/about/data-reports.page) - [City of New Orleans — Commercial owner's permit (CSTR)](https://nola.gov/commercial-owners-permit/) - [City of New Orleans — STR operator's permit](https://nola.gov/str-operators-permit/) - [City of Aspen — Council approves updates to short-term rental regulations (2025-11-18)](https://www.aspen.gov/m/newsflash/Home/Detail/897) - [City of Aspen — Obtaining a business license](https://aspen.gov/1386/Obtaining-a-City-of-Aspen-Business-Licen) - [City of McCall — Notice of local option tax responsibility after HB 583](https://www.mccall.id.us/DocumentCenter/View/3081/Short-Term-Rental-Notice-of-Local-Option-Tax-Lot-Responsibility) - [City of McCall — Local Option Tax](https://mccall.id.us/197/Local-Option-Tax) - [Idaho Legislature — House Bill 583 (2026)](https://legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/2026/legislation/H0583/) - [City of Panama City Beach — Short-term rentals](https://www.pcbfl.gov/295/Short-Term-Rentals) - [Los Angeles City Planning — What is the Home-Sharing Program?](https://planning.lacity.gov/project-review/home-sharing) - [Los Angeles Office of Finance — Sharing economy](https://finance.lacity.gov/sharing-economy) - [Los Angeles Office of Finance — Transient occupancy tax](https://finance.lacity.gov/transient-occupancy-tax-requirements) - [City and County of Honolulu DPP — Short-term rental FAQ](https://www.honolulu.gov/dpp/permitting/str/str-faq/) - [City of San Antonio — STR permits](https://www.sa.gov/Directory/Departments/DSD/STR/Permits) - [City of San Antonio — Hotel occupancy tax for short-term rentals](https://www.sa.gov/Directory/Departments/Finance/Taxes-Fees/HOT/STR) - [City of Dallas — Short-term rentals (HOT registration)](https://dallascityhall.com/departments/budget/financialtransparency/Pages/Short-Term-Rentals.aspx) - [City of Miami — How to convert to a short-term rental / lodging](https://www.miami.gov/Permits-Construction/Short-Term-RentalLodging-Procedures) - [City of Kissimmee — Business Tax Receipts](https://www.kissimmee.gov/Business-Development/Doing-Business-in-Kissimmee/Business-Tax-Receipts-BTR) - [City of Sevierville — Short-term rentals](https://www.seviervilletn.org/467/Short-Term-Rentals) ## How we know ### Market selection The research brief contemplated 40 jurisdictions: 25 of the largest U.S. STR markets by a single active-listing source, 10 resort or mid-size markets with material post-January-2024 changes, and five jurisdictions illustrating new state preemption. It also instructed that unverifiable markets should be dropped rather than completed with guesses. For the large-market frame, this audit used [AirROI's public U.S. market ranking](https://www.airroi.com/airbnb-data/united-states), updated August 8, 2026. AirROI states that its market data are based on analysis of more than 20 million STR listings and ranks the displayed U.S. markets by active listing count. The ranking placed Four Corners, Florida first and Miramar Beach, Florida twenty-first among the relevant results, but both are census-designated geographic areas rather than unitary municipal jurisdictions. To preserve a jurisdiction-level legal unit, this audit dropped those two and moved down the same ranking to Philadelphia and Orlando. The resulting 25-market frame is reproducible from the published ranking. The audit then added six resort, amendment, or preemption cases for which a current municipal primary source could be captured: Fredericksburg, Palm Springs, Aspen, Galveston, Santa Fe, and McCall. Primary documents or government pages establish material recent regulatory developments in each. That produces a **31-jurisdiction research frame rather than the requested 40**. This is intentional rather than cosmetic. Nine weakly sourced markets were not added merely to reach the target. Even within the 25 largest-market frame, current primary legal fee records were not captured for Myrtle Beach, Chicago, Gulf Shores, Hilton Head Island, Miami Beach, Philadelphia, and Orlando. Those rows remain in the reproducibility dataset because their selection is independently verifiable, but they are marked as unverified and are excluded from cost statistics. No third-party fee claim was promoted into a legal fact. Consequently, this report contains three nested samples:
Sample N Use
Selection and audit frame 31 Market coverage, including explicit verification gaps
Markets with a captured governmental regulatory record 22 Qualitative regime and change analysis
Markets with a defensible numeric first-year fixed-cost figure or floor 13 Dollar-distribution analysis
This censoring matters. The $275 median is a statistic of the **documented cost sample**, not an estimate of the nationwide median host cost. ### Source hierarchy The evidence hierarchy follows the assignment. Municipal codes and ordinances, city fee schedules, official tax pages, state statutes or state-authorized notices, council materials, and government program pages are dataset authorities. Third-party sources may identify an issue but do not establish a fee or legal requirement. That distinction excluded several tempting numbers. For example, 2026 reporting says Hilton Head Island changed its STR permit charge from a $250 flat amount to $150 per bedroom. A homeowners association describes the same Town requirement. Because a corresponding current Town fee schedule was not captured in the primary-source audit, the $150-per-bedroom figure does **not** enter the quantitative dataset. The gap is retained rather than silently resolved. The same rule governs Austin's renewal charge. Austin's official STR page captured for this audit states that a new license costs $836.30, consisting of a $789 license fee and $47.30 notification fee. Secondary reports publish a separate renewal figure, but without the corresponding primary fee line captured here, that renewal amount is not used in the recurring-cost calculations. ### Summation rule **First-year fixed cost** is the sum of documented, unavoidable, non-revenue-based government charges for the specified legal operating pathway during the first year. A separate mandatory business license is included where its fixed amount is documented. Taxes proportional to bookings or gross receipts are excluded, as requested. Optional payment-processing fees are excluded where a no-fee payment method is available. Where a fee is explicitly conditional, variable, or missing, the total is labeled a **floor** rather than a point estimate. Nashville illustrates the treatment. Its STR permit costs $313, while its business-tax license can add $15 or $30 depending on gross income and service district. The master table therefore reports **≥$313**, not an artificially precise universal total. **Annual recurring cost** annualizes multiyear licenses. Washington, D.C.'s $99 two-year license therefore contributes $49.50 per year. San Diego Tier 3's two-year $1,170 STRO charge contributes $585 annually, to which the documented $34 and $55 annual business charges are added, yielding $674. A required refundable bond or deposit would be shown separately from an economic cost because posting collateral is a cash requirement but not necessarily an expense. No such amount enters the comparable point estimates in this audit. ### Time-burden rule The objective measure is the **count of discrete recurring compliance actions**: permit renewals, business-license renewals, mandatory inspections, periodic STR reports, and tax submissions. Continuous duties such as keeping records, answering a hotline, or monitoring guests are described but not converted into discrete filings. No government source reviewed here reports measured host labor in hours. Any hour figure therefore requires assumptions. The modeled estimates later in this report use 30 minutes for a recurring routine filing and 90 minutes for a permit renewal. They deliberately omit preparation and bookkeeping. The estimates should be read as low-end administrative scenarios, never as measured averages. ## Sources - [AirROI — Best places to invest in Airbnb in the United States (updated 2026-08-08)](https://www.airroi.com/airbnb-data/united-states) - [City of Seattle — Short-term rentals](https://www.seattle.gov/business-regulations/short-term-rentals) - [City of Seattle — Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance](https://www.seattle.gov/construction-and-inspections/codes/licensing-and-registration/rental-registration-and-inspection-ordinance/owners-and-managers) - [DC Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection — Operating a short-term rental](https://dlcp.dc.gov/page/operating-short-term-rental-district-columbia) - [DC DLCP — License and corporate filing fees](https://dlcp.dc.gov/page/dlcp-license-corporate-filing-fees) - [City of Atlanta — Short-term rental](https://www.atlantaga.gov/government/departments/city-planning/ordinances-regulations/short-term-rental) - [City of Phoenix — Short-term rental registry](https://www.phoenix.gov/administration/departments/pdd/registration-licensing/short-term-rental-registry.html) - [City of Houston — Council approves short-term rental regulations (2025-04-17)](https://houstontx.gov/ara/20250417.html) - [City of Houston — Newly adopted short-term rental ordinance](https://www.houstonpermittingcenter.org/news-events/update-administration-regulatory-affairs-department-newly-adopted-short-term-rental) - [Metropolitan Nashville — Short-term rental property FAQs](https://www.nashville.gov/departments/codes/short-term-rentals/frequently-asked-questions) - [City of San Diego — Short-term residential occupancy](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/short-term-residential-occupancy) - [City of San Diego — Business tax rates and fees](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/taxesfees/btax/btaxfees) - [City of San Diego — Rental unit business tax fees](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/taxesfees/btax/rtaxfees) - [City of San Diego — Transient occupancy tax](https://www.sandiego.gov/treasurer/taxesfees/tot) - [City of Austin — Short-term rentals](https://www.austintexas.gov/development-services/short-term-rentals) - [NYC Office of Special Enforcement — FAQ for prospective hosts](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/faq/faq-for-prospective-hosts.page) - [NYC Office of Special Enforcement — Tips for hosting a legal short-term rental](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/registration-law/tips-for-hosts.page) - [NYC Office of Special Enforcement — Local Law 18 report announcement](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/news/new-report-sheds-fresh-light-on-how-local-law-18.page) - [NYC Office of Special Enforcement — Data and reports](https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/about/data-reports.page) - [City of New Orleans — Commercial owner's permit (CSTR)](https://nola.gov/commercial-owners-permit/) - [City of New Orleans — STR operator's permit](https://nola.gov/str-operators-permit/) - [City of Aspen — Council approves updates to short-term rental regulations (2025-11-18)](https://www.aspen.gov/m/newsflash/Home/Detail/897) - [City of Aspen — Obtaining a business license](https://aspen.gov/1386/Obtaining-a-City-of-Aspen-Business-Licen) - [City of McCall — Notice of local option tax responsibility after HB 583](https://www.mccall.id.us/DocumentCenter/View/3081/Short-Term-Rental-Notice-of-Local-Option-Tax-Lot-Responsibility) - [City of McCall — Local Option Tax](https://mccall.id.us/197/Local-Option-Tax) - [Idaho Legislature — House Bill 583 (2026)](https://legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/2026/legislation/H0583/) - [City of Panama City Beach — Short-term rentals](https://www.pcbfl.gov/295/Short-Term-Rentals) - [Los Angeles City Planning — What is the Home-Sharing Program?](https://planning.lacity.gov/project-review/home-sharing) - [Los Angeles Office of Finance — Sharing economy](https://finance.lacity.gov/sharing-economy) - [Los Angeles Office of Finance — Transient occupancy tax](https://finance.lacity.gov/transient-occupancy-tax-requirements) - [City and County of Honolulu DPP — Short-term rental FAQ](https://www.honolulu.gov/dpp/permitting/str/str-faq/) - [City of San Antonio — STR permits](https://www.sa.gov/Directory/Departments/DSD/STR/Permits) - [City of San Antonio — Hotel occupancy tax for short-term rentals](https://www.sa.gov/Directory/Departments/Finance/Taxes-Fees/HOT/STR) - [City of Dallas — Short-term rentals (HOT registration)](https://dallascityhall.com/departments/budget/financialtransparency/Pages/Short-Term-Rentals.aspx) - [City of Miami — How to convert to a short-term rental / lodging](https://www.miami.gov/Permits-Construction/Short-Term-RentalLodging-Procedures) - [City of Kissimmee — Business Tax Receipts](https://www.kissimmee.gov/Business-Development/Doing-Business-in-Kissimmee/Business-Tax-Receipts-BTR) - [City of Sevierville — Short-term rentals](https://www.seviervilletn.org/467/Short-Term-Rentals)