Baltimore County, Maryland Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Baltimore County, Maryland and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and you don't have to be sleeping down the hall while your guests are there. The county licenses both hosted and un-hosted units, so an investor who lives in Columbia can still run a whole house in Parkton or Perry Hall. That already puts Baltimore County in a friendlier position than Baltimore City next door, where a short-term rental has to be the operator's own residence unless it was grandfathered in before 2019.

The catch is that the county got a lot more specific about it recently. Until October 2024 a short-term rental here was simply rental housing, licensed the same way as a year-long lease and not even counted separately. Then Bill 68-24 built a whole subtitle around it, and the license now carries a $300 fee, an inspection, a million dollars of liability cover, hard guest ceilings, a parking minimum, and a civil penalty of $1,000 for every single day you operate without one.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: which code sections govern you, what the license costs and how long it lasts, the documents Permits, Approvals and Inspections wants in the envelope, the two layers of tax you'll be collecting, how the county finds people who skip all of it, and who to call when something doesn't fit your property. Every number here traces back to a Baltimore County or Maryland document I opened in July 2026, and wherever a source blocked me or disagreed with another, I've flagged it. And before you spend the $300, do run the property through BNBCalc so you know what an 8-guest ceiling does to the numbers.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Baltimore County, Maryland?

Two pieces of county law do almost all the work here, and telling them apart clears up most of what confuses people. The first is the license, and the second is the tax, and they're administered by different offices with different deadlines.

The license lives in Article 35, Title 6, Subtitle 2 of the Baltimore County Code, sections 35-6-201 through 35-6-215, which the County Council created with Bill 68-24. That bill was introduced on August 5, 2024, enacted on September 23, and took effect on October 7, 2024, with anyone already hosting given 180 days to come into compliance. The tax sits somewhere else entirely, in Article 11, Title 4, Subtitle 4, and section 35-6-211 simply points at it and says a short-term rental is subject to it.

A "short-term rental" under section 35-6-201 is a residential dwelling unit that can be leased for occupancy through a hosting platform for rent or monetary compensation for no more than 30 consecutive days. The County Council Auditor's analysis of the bill spells out what falls outside that: a bed-and-breakfast inn, a hotel and a motel aren't short-term rentals, although they still pay the same occupancy tax. Note the "through a hosting platform" wording, because the definition is built around Airbnb, Vrbo and their competitors rather than around a handshake deal with a friend.

Three limits are structural, meaning no amount of paperwork moves them:

• Thirty consecutive days is the ceiling for one guest. Section 35-6-208 caps a single guest's stay, so the month-plus corporate booking that saves so many calendars elsewhere isn't available on this license. A longer stay belongs under a long-term rental license instead.
• You can't hold both licenses on the same unit. Section 35-6-202 bars a short-term rental license for a dwelling that already has a long-term rental license under Subtitle 1, and that expressly includes a dwelling inside an apartment complex.
• Accessory dwelling units are out. The same section rules out an ADU, so the finished apartment over your garage can't be licensed as a short-term rental even though it can be rented long-term.

What the county did allow is the part investors care about. Section 35-6-201 defines a hosted unit as one where the host lives on the property during the rental and an un-hosted unit as one where the host doesn't, then treats both as licensable and asks you to tick which one you are on the application. There's no annual night cap either way, which matters more than it sounds.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Baltimore County

That missing night cap wasn't an oversight, and the story behind it tells you a lot about how this county thinks. The Planning Board studied short-term rentals in 2023 at the Council's request and recommended a tiered limit, modeled on Prince George's County: 120 nights a year for un-hosted units and 180 for hosted ones. The Council took the license, the guest caps and the parking rule from that report and left the night limits on the table.

The same report is worth reading for what it says about the neighbors. Anne Arundel County caps an owner at two short-term rentals countywide, Prince George's and Montgomery both make you notify the HOA and adjoining neighbors before you start, and Baltimore City requires owner occupancy. Baltimore County adopted none of those, so nobody counts your nights, nobody caps how many licenses you hold, and nobody makes you knock on doors first. That's unusual in this state. If you're comparing the metro's jurisdictions before you buy, the Baltimore City guide and the Anne Arundel County guide cover the two closest alternatives.

Where the county does bite is on occupancy, and that's the section deciding whether a property pencils out. Section 35-6-208 sets a hard ceiling of 8 guests in a single-family detached dwelling and 6 in a single-family attached or semi-detached dwelling, whatever the square footage says, and inside that ceiling you're capped at 2 guests per bedroom while supplying one parking space for every 2 guests.

Then, if the house sits on septic, you can't exceed the system capacity approved by the Department of Environmental Protection and Sustainability, which can pull the number lower still.

Work that through on a real property and you lose beds quickly. A five-bedroom detached house in Phoenix or Monkton could sleep ten by the two-per-bedroom rule, but the 8-guest ceiling cuts it back, and to host those 8 you need four parking spaces the Director accepts. A three-bedroom townhouse in Catonsville stops at 6 no matter how you furnish it.

And section 35-6-205 quietly removes inventory that a lot of owners were counting on, because every bedroom has to be at least 100 square feet, and a below-ground bedroom only counts if it has its own door with direct exterior access. That finished basement suite is either a legal bedroom with a walkout or it isn't a bedroom at all.

Two more things get decided by someone other than you. The building itself has to meet the minimum requirements for residential structures in its zone, comply with the county's Fire Prevention Code for lodging or rooming houses, and have at least two doors with direct exterior access.

Then section 35-6-206 hands the Director of Permits, Approvals and Inspections sole discretion over whether your dwelling counts as a short-term rental at all, how many bedrooms you may advertise, and how many parking spaces you actually have. Keep in mind that a listing which quietly claims one more bedroom than the Director approved is a violation in its own right.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Baltimore County

Assuming your building clears all of that and you're able to move forward, there's still the license to get, though by comparison that part is refreshingly plain. Section 35-6-203 sets the application fee at no less than $300, and the county's Register or Renew Your Rental Property page publishes the actual figure as $300 per unit as of July 2026, against $48 to $60 for an ordinary long-term rental. So the fee isn't the obstacle.

You can apply online through the county's Citizen Access portal with an email address and a Visa or Mastercard, or else post the paperwork to Rental Housing License Payments, Historic Courthouse, Room 150, 400 Washington Avenue, Towson.

Once it's issued, the term runs three years, expiring on the third anniversary of its effective date, and renewal costs another $300 for three more years under section 35-6-207. One detail catches sellers out, though: the license isn't transferable to another host for any reason, including the sale of the property. A buyer inherits nothing and applies from scratch, so don't let a listing agent price a "licensed short-term rental" as though the license conveys. It doesn't.

Then there's the insurance, which is the requirement most owners haven't budgeted for. The enacted bill requires proof of an active liability insurance policy of at least $1,000,000 at application, and section 35-6-209 makes maintaining it an ongoing condition rather than a one-time box. The county's own supplemental application questions put it as question six, in exactly those words. Be aware that the separate certification sheet hosts also sign doesn't mention insurance at all, so bring the declarations page regardless of which form you're working from.

Once the license is in hand, a licensed host carries a running set of duties under sections 35-6-209 and 35-6-210 that the county's short-term rental certification makes you sign for:

• Put the license number in every advertisement or listing, and display inside the unit that it's registered with the department.
• File your platform list and keep it current, updating the department within 10 days of adding or dropping any hosting platform.
• Keep electronic guest records for three years and hand them over on written request.
• Answer the phone. You or your representative must be able to respond to emergency services and government agencies and be onsite within 60 minutes, which is what a local co-host is for if you're an out-of-area owner.
• At least one guest per booking has to be 21 or older. That single line does the work a party-house ban would otherwise do.
• No private or public event space, ever, in the listing or in practice, and the property has to keep to a waste collection schedule.
• Clear your county balance first. You may not advertise, accept a booking or rent at all while taxes or fines owed to Baltimore County are overdue.

Inspection runs on two tracks, so it's worth knowing which one you're on. Before issuing or renewing, the Director may require an inspection by Code Enforcement or the Fire Marshal under section 35-6-203. Separately, section 35-6-212 makes letting the county in a condition of holding the license at all, and lets it inspect any time during the three-year term on 24 hours' notice, during normal business hours.

What makes an unlicensed listing expensive here is the clock rather than the fine itself. Advertising, booking or renting without a license carries a civil penalty of $1,000, and section 35-6-214 states that each day of a violation is a separate offense, with the county's remedies cumulative rather than exclusive. Take that daily line seriously, because a listing left up through one summer isn't a $1,000 problem. It accrues.

On top of the money, section 35-6-213 lets the Director deny, suspend or revoke a license on nine separate grounds, including fraud in the application, violating Article 13 of the Code, failing to correct a final order, and failing to levy, collect or remit the occupancy tax. You do get a hearing: appeals go to the county's Office of Administrative Hearings.

Required Documents for Baltimore County Short-Term Rentals

Since a denial costs you the season rather than the fee, it's worth assembling the file properly the first time. Short-term rentals are also the one category with no way out, because the county's exemption page states plainly that short-term rentals aren't eligible for a rental registration exemption, however the property would otherwise qualify.

Here's what goes in the envelope, or into the online portal:

• The Rental Housing License Application. The general form covers every rental type in the county and lists the short-term rate at $300 per unit, alongside $48 and $60 for long-term units.
• The Short-term Rental License Certification, signed. It restates the 8 and 6 guest ceilings, the two-per-bedroom rule, the event-space ban, the 21-year-old requirement, the 60-minute response, the three-year guest records and the septic ceiling.
• The Short-Term Rental License Supplemental Application Questions. Eleven questions covering existing licenses on the property, whether it's an ADU, bedroom count and whether each bedroom hits 100 square feet, hosted or un-hosted, the $1,000,000 insurance, every parking space with its surface and status, and every website you'll advertise on.
• An Inspection Sheet completed by a state-licensed home inspector, one per unit. The county doesn't set inspector rates, so that price is between you and the inspector.
• A lead inspection certificate if the dwelling was built before January 1, 1978, plus a current Maryland Department of the Environment tracking number. The application is explicit that you can't be licensed without a valid tracking number.
• A Maryland Legal Agent designation. Owners living in Maryland can name themselves; owners who don't must designate a Maryland resident, at their home address, who signs to accept service of process. Your tenant can't be your agent.
• The payment coupon and fee, made payable to Baltimore County, Maryland.

One document you can leave out is the New Tenant Information form, which the registration page marks as not needed for short-term rentals. Sensible, given you'd be filing one every weekend.

What the inspector is checking is published too, and it's a short list worth reading before you book anyone: smoke detectors, carbon monoxide alarms in the common area outside sleeping areas and on every level, no visible electrical hazards, functional plumbing, every openable window working, all combustion appliances properly vented, and a secondary means of escape from sleeping areas with no exterior hazards. Fixing those before the inspection is cheaper than paying for a second visit.

Baltimore County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming the inspection goes your way and you manage to get the license issued, there's still tax waiting, and it stacks in two layers with two different governments behind it. The county piece is the bigger one, and it's the piece the license explicitly hangs on, since skipping it is a ground for revocation.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Transient occupancy tax	9.5%	Baltimore County Office of Budget and Finance
Maryland sales and use tax	6%	Comptroller of Maryland
Maryland sales tax on Airbnb service fees	3%	Comptroller of Maryland

The 9.5% comes straight off the county's own return. Both the paper Transient Occupancy Monthly Tax Return and the online transient tax filing compute the tax as net room rental collections multiplied by 9.5%, and the underlying authority is County Code section 11-4-401. You can file monthly or quarterly, and the return is due at the end of the month after the period closes, so a June return is due July 31 and a quarter ending in August is due September 30.

Miss it and interest runs at 1% of the tax for each month the return is late, with a 10% penalty added once you're a month past due.

Two exemptions exist on that county tax, although one of them can't help a licensed short-term rental. Room rental to a non-transient, meaning sleeping accommodation for more than 90 consecutive days, comes off the taxable base, as does a stay by a federal, state or county official or employee on official business, each backed by a signed exemption certificate. Since section 35-6-208 caps one guest at 30 consecutive days, that 90-day exemption belongs to landlords, not to you.

Whether you handle any of this yourself depends on where the booking came from. Airbnb's Maryland tax page says it collects and remits three things for reservations of 88 nights or shorter: the 6% state sales tax on the listing price including cleaning fees, 3% on its own service fees, and the county's 9.5% on that same listing price. So a host booking only through Airbnb has both layers handled already. Nothing to file. I couldn't verify Vrbo's Maryland behavior from anything except platform marketing, so do check your own payout statements rather than assuming the two work alike.

Direct bookings are a different matter, and this is where hosts get caught. Take a reservation off your own site and you're a vendor making a taxable sale of an accommodation, which means a sales and use tax license from the Comptroller of Maryland under Tax-General section 11-702. No fee appears anywhere in that subtitle, and the license stays effective until you surrender it or the Comptroller revokes it, so it's a one-time errand rather than an annual renewal, and registration and filing both run through Maryland Tax Connect. Then there's the county's 9.5%, which is on you for those bookings too.

Maryland-Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That split between what the state taxes and what the county licenses is the shape of Maryland short-term rental law generally, so it's worth understanding the layer above Towson before you plan around any of it. There's no statewide short-term rental license, permit or registry, because registration, zoning, occupancy limits and enforcement all sit with counties, Baltimore City and municipalities, and the state keeps going out of its way to leave them there.

The clearest statement of that came in 2026, in Chapter 9 of the 2026 session, the Jillian and Lindsay Wiener Short-Term Rental Safety Act. It added a new Public Safety section 9-1106 saying the subtitle can't be read to require a county to authorize short-term rentals, nor to stop a county enacting other measures about them. Two 2026 bills did try to chip a narrow preemption out of that, mind you, and both fell short: HB 993 and its Senate companion passed the House 102 to 31, then died in the Senate without a third reading. So local control stands.

Still, what Chapter 9 does impose is a safety floor, and it lands on Baltimore County hosts on October 1, 2026. Any unit offered for fewer than 30 consecutive days has to carry a posted evacuation diagram and emergency numbers, a working fire extinguisher, and working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Those alarms then have to be interconnected wherever multiple smoke alarms are required, and replaced outright if they're non-functioning, over ten years old, or undated. And booking services have to notify hosts and collect their compliance documentation, so expect Airbnb to ask you for it.

Further out, every county where short-term rentals are allowed must require an annual inspection of every unit by July 1, 2028, and nothing readable on Baltimore County's site says how it intends to run that yet.

The other date to write down is July 1, 2027, when Chapter 638 of 2025 changes who collects the county tax. From that day an accommodations intermediary above a $100,000 or 200-transaction threshold collects the county hotel rental tax and hands it to the Comptroller for distribution, rather than paying Towson directly. And state tax law starts prevailing over any conflicting county hotel tax provision on the same date.

So for a host, the practical effect is that the 9.5% stops being a Towson errand and turns into part of the state filing chain. Our Maryland statewide guide tracks that across all 24 jurisdictions, and the Harford County guide covers the market immediately northeast if you're comparing exurban options.

Does Baltimore County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Since the state is about to make platforms report more and inspect more, the fair question is what the county already does with what it knows. The honest answer is that enforcement here runs quieter than New York's, yet it's far better armed than it was three years ago.

That started with the county buying its way out of ignorance, because the Planning Board's report records that the County Executive authorized the purchase of Host Compliance, tracking software that monitors more than 60 vacation rental websites and matches listings by address against the county's license records. Before that, PAI couldn't say how many short-term rentals existed, because nothing distinguished them from long-term rentals in the license file. Address matching is exactly how an unlicensed listing gets found now, and it doesn't need a neighbor to complain.

Complaints still drive the other half, and the public nuisance procedure under section 35-6-110.1 is unusually specific about the sequence. Code Enforcement takes no action until a citizen files a signed affidavit and the Code Official confirms two complaints or calls for service within a six-month window, logged with the Police Department, Animal Control or Code Enforcement, and not two reports of the same incident.

That triggers a notice to the owner and a meeting within two weeks to discuss your plan to abate the problem. A third affidavit within six months of that notice sends you to the Code Enforcement Hearing Officer, where suspension, revocation or a fine is on the table.

Read that as a two-strikes system with a slow fuse rather than a lenient one. The county's Office of Law told the Planning Board plainly that it can't revoke a license on complaint volume alone, since due process needs proof of actual violations and a police report of a member of the public's allegation doesn't carry that weight. Hence the affidavit.

The flip side is that once the county does have its proof, section 35-6-214's daily accrual means you owe $1,000 for every day the listing stayed up, while the general rental law adds $25 a day per violation plus $200 a day for ignoring a correction notice.

There's also a party rule sitting underneath all of it. Bill 60-21, passed in 2021 after a pilot in Towson and Arbutus, lets county police issue warnings and civil citations for an unruly social gathering, defined as four or more people at a private property where the conduct substantially disturbs the peace. Combine that with the event-space ban and the 21-year-old requirement and you can see what the Council was aiming at.

One 2026 development is worth watching even though it doesn't touch you yet. Bill 92-25, enacted January 22, 2026 and effective February 5, created a University Housing Neighborhood Preservation District covering any block within a mile of Towson University's main campus, and barred new rental housing licenses where 30% or more of the residential properties on that block already hold one.

It only applies to Subtitle 1 licenses, so short-term rental licenses aren't capped by it. Not yet, anyway. Still, a council that's willing to cap license density by block has shown it'll do that, and the act self-repeals on June 30, 2029 after a report on how well it worked.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Baltimore County

Given that the county can find an unlicensed listing by address, the order you work through this in matters. Get the first few steps wrong and you'll have paid an inspector to look at a property that was never going to qualify.

1. Check the disqualifiers before anything else. An accessory dwelling unit can't be licensed, and neither can a unit that already holds a long-term rental license, including anything in an apartment complex. Confirm your zoning designation using the county's My Neighborhood tool, since the registration page asks you to certify compliance with the zoning regulations.
2. Count your legal bedrooms, not your rooms. Each one needs 100 square feet, and a below-ground room only qualifies with its own door to the outside. Then apply the ceilings: 8 guests detached, 6 attached or semi-detached, 2 per bedroom.
3. Count your parking spaces the way the county will. One space per two guests, with each space's location, surface and registered-parking status listed on the supplemental form. Advertising more parking than you have is its own violation.
4. Get the septic capacity in writing if you're not on public sewer, since the Department of Environmental Protection and Sustainability's approved maximum becomes your guest ceiling regardless of bedroom count.
5. Buy the liability policy. At least $1,000,000, active at application and maintained for the whole term. Don't forget that a standard homeowner's policy usually excludes commercial short-term letting, so ask your carrier directly rather than assuming.
6. Book a state-licensed home inspector and get the Inspection Sheet completed. Sort out the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, the venting and the secondary escape route before the visit, not after.
7. Handle lead if the house predates 1978. Register with the Maryland Department of the Environment, get the tracking number, and get the inspection certificate. Without a valid tracking number the license doesn't issue.
8. Name a Maryland Legal Agent, and if you live out of state, remember that it has to be a Maryland resident at a Maryland home address who signs to accept service.
9. Apply and pay the $300, online through Citizen Access or by mail to Room 150 at 400 Washington Avenue, with the certification, the supplemental questions, the Inspection Sheet and the lead certificate attached.
10. Set up the tax account before your first booking. Decide whether you're filing monthly or quarterly with the Office of Budget and Finance, and get a Comptroller sales and use tax license if you'll take a single direct booking.
11. Diarize the three-year expiry and the October 1, 2026 state safety deadline, then keep the guest records rolling for three years from the start.

Who to Contact in Baltimore County about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Wherever you get stuck in that list, three county offices handle nearly all of it, and knowing which one owns your question saves an afternoon.

Licensing, applications and renewals

Rental Housing Registration, inside the Department of Permits, Approvals and Inspections, issues and renews the short-term rental license.

• Address: County Office Building, Room 216, 111 West Chesapeake Avenue, Towson, Maryland 21204
• Phone: 410-887-6060
• Fax: 410-887-3970
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Mail applications and payments to: Rental Housing License Payments, Historic Courthouse, Room 150, 400 Washington Avenue, Towson, Maryland 21204

Zoning, code enforcement and inspections

The wider Department of Permits, Approvals and Inspections covers zoning review, code enforcement and the inspections behind the license, and its director, C. Pete Gutwald, is the "Director" whose discretion sections 35-6-206 and 35-6-213 keep referring back to.

• Address: County Office Building, 111 West Chesapeake Avenue, Towson, Maryland 21204
• Main phone: 410-887-3353
• Zoning regulations: 410-887-3391
• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Nuisance complaints: the affidavit form goes to the Rental Housing Program, 111 West Chesapeake Avenue, Room G-9

Transient occupancy tax

The Office of Budget and Finance takes the 9.5% return, the exemption certificates and any question about filing frequency.

• Address: 400 Washington Avenue, Room 150, Towson, Maryland 21204
• Phone: 410-887-2404
• Fax: 410-887-3882
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

State tax, and the Council

The 6% sales and use tax, the vendor license and every direct-booking question belong to the Comptroller of Maryland, through Maryland Tax Connect, rather than to the county. And if your question is about the law itself rather than your file, the Baltimore County Council sits at 400 Washington Avenue, Room 205, Towson, Maryland 21204, on 410-887-3196.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Baltimore County on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those offices have only been fielding short-term rental questions since late 2024, which is why host sentiment here still sounds like people learning a new rule rather than fighting an old one. These are the themes I keep running into in public discussion rather than the findings of any survey, and I should say plainly that Reddit blocks automated access, so I haven't read individual threads and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

• The insurance line surprises people more than the fee does. Three hundred dollars over three years is trivial against a nightly rate. A million dollars of commercial liability cover on a house that was previously insured as a second home is a real annual number, and it's the one that changes a pro forma.
• The 60-minute response duty is what pushes owners toward a local co-host. An out-of-county owner can hold the license, but somebody has to be able to stand in the driveway within the hour, and that arrangement has a price.
• Investors read the absence of a night cap as the county's most valuable feature, and they're right to. In a state where Prince George's caps un-hosted units at 90 nights and Anne Arundel caps an owner at two properties, an uncapped un-hosted license is genuinely unusual.
• I haven't seen anyone argue that these rules go unenforced. The debate is about the guest ceilings, mostly from owners of large houses in the northern county who can sleep twelve and may only book eight.

That last point is the one worth sitting with. The binding constraint in Baltimore County isn't legality, it's capacity: an 8-guest ceiling and a one-space-per-two-guests parking rule set your revenue line before you buy a single towel. So model the property at its licensed occupancy rather than its physical one, and if you're weighing this county against the rest of the state, the Maryland market data is the place to see what the difference is worth.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a license to run an Airbnb in Baltimore County, Maryland?

Yes. Since October 7, 2024, Baltimore County Code sections 35-6-201 through 35-6-215 make it unlawful to advertise a short-term rental on a hosting platform, accept a booking or rent to a guest without a short-term rental license from the Department of Permits, Approvals and Inspections. The license costs $300 per unit, lasts three years and can't be transferred, including when the property is sold. Operating without one carries a civil penalty of $1,000, and each day counts as a separate offense.

How many guests can a Baltimore County short-term rental sleep?

Eight in a single-family detached dwelling and six in a single-family attached or semi-detached one, and those are hard ceilings that no bedroom count overrides. Within them you're limited to two guests per bedroom, each bedroom has to be at least 100 square feet, and a below-ground bedroom only counts if it has a door with direct exterior access. You also need one parking space per two guests, and on a septic system the approved capacity can lower the number further.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in Baltimore County?

Two layers. Baltimore County charges a 9.5% transient occupancy tax on net room rental collections under County Code section 11-4-401, filed monthly or quarterly with the Office of Budget and Finance and due at the end of the following month. Maryland adds 6% state sales and use tax on the listing price including cleaning fees, plus 3% on Airbnb's service fees. Airbnb collects and remits all of it for reservations of 88 nights or shorter; direct bookings are yours to handle.

Can you run a short-term rental in Baltimore County without living there?

Yes. The county licenses un-hosted units, meaning the host doesn't live on the property during the rental, and there's no annual limit on how many nights either a hosted or un-hosted unit may be booked. You do have to designate which type you are on the application, and you or a representative must be able to respond to emergency services and be onsite within 60 minutes, which usually means hiring locally if you're out of the area.

What changes for Maryland short-term rentals in 2026 and 2027?

From October 1, 2026, Chapter 9 of the 2026 session requires every Maryland unit offered for fewer than 30 consecutive days to post an evacuation diagram and emergency numbers and to keep a working fire extinguisher plus working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, with booking services collecting proof. From July 1, 2027, large booking platforms start collecting the county hotel rental tax and remitting it to the Comptroller rather than to the county. Counties must require annual inspections of every unit by July 1, 2028.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.