US Short-Term Rental Rules Still Vary Block by Block

There is no single US rulebook for short-term rentals. Regulation sits with states, counties, cities and, in plenty of cases, individual neighbourhoods, and the rules do not line up. An operator with listings in three cities is not running one compliance programme. They are running three, and none of them expire, renew or get inspected on the same schedule.

Registration and licensing rules do not transfer across a city line

New York City's Local Law 18, in force since September 2023, requires hosts to register with the city and generally bars stays under thirty days unless the host is present in the unit, a rule that gutted the city's whole-home short-term listing inventory almost overnight. San Francisco takes a different route, permitting short-term rentals only in a host's primary residence and only if they live there at least 275 days a year. Other cities cap the total number of permits issued, run annual inspections, or bar short-term letting from certain zoning districts outright. A licence in good standing in one jurisdiction says nothing about whether the same property would even be legal one county over.

Occupancy tax obligations sit on top of the licensing patchwork

Even where a listing is legally permitted, lodging or occupancy tax still has to be collected and remitted, and the rate and the collecting authority both vary by jurisdiction. Airbnb and Vrbo automatically collect and remit these taxes in a number of markets under agreements with local governments, but not everywhere, and hosts remain on the hook to confirm whether their specific city or county is covered or whether they need to file separately themselves.

What this costs operators in practice

None of this is new in principle, but it does not get simpler as a portfolio grows. A manager with ten units across four states is tracking four sets of renewal dates, four definitions of a legal stay length, and at least four tax jurisdictions, on top of whatever a homeowners' association or a state fire code adds locally. Missing a renewal date or misreading an occupancy cap is not a paperwork slip; in cities running active enforcement, it can mean a listing pulled from the market or a fine. Property management platforms, including Lodgify's own guidance for owners, have increasingly built out compliance tracking and jurisdiction-specific resources for exactly this reason, because keeping the paperwork straight has become as much a part of running a rental business as keeping the calendar full.

The practical takeaway for anyone scaling past a single market: treat every new city as a fresh compliance project, not a copy-paste of the last one.