Bend Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Bend and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that short-term rentals are legal here, and have been since the city first regulated them back in 2006. Bend sits in Deschutes County, in Central Oregon, and it treats vacation rentals as an actual licensed business category rather than an afterthought, which puts it ahead of plenty of Oregon towns that either ban the whole-house version outright or leave hosts guessing.

The catch is that "legal" and "easy" are two different things here. Before you can even apply for the operating license required under Bend Code Chapter 7.16, you need a land use permit under Bend Development Code § 3.6.500. And if you're planning a whole-house rental in a residential zone, a 500-foot buffer around every existing permit narrows your options fast. Stack the land use permit fee, the operating license, the transportation fee supplement and the city's 10.4% room tax on top of each other, and you're looking at real money before a single guest checks in.

So this guide walks through what Bend actually requires in 2026: how the permit types split, what a license costs and how long it takes, the tax layers, how strictly the city enforces its own rules, and who picks up the phone when something goes sideways. Every figure below comes from the City of Bend's own code sections and program pages, checked in July 2026, and I've flagged the couple of things that are still moving. Run the numbers through BNBCalc before you commit to a property here, because the fees alone can climb past $4,000.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Bend

That $4,000 figure only makes sense once you know what you're actually applying for, so let's start with the two-step system itself. Bend defines a short-term rental as any dwelling, or part of one, rented for fewer than 30 consecutive days to the same tenant, under Bend Code Chapter 7.16. Nearly every nightly or weekly stay falls under this chapter, whether it's a whole house, an accessory dwelling unit, or a couple of spare bedrooms.

Every legal short-term rental in Bend needs two approvals, in that order: a land use permit under BDC § 3.6.500, then an operating license under Bend Code Chapter 7.16 once the permit is granted. The land use permit is where the city decides whether your property and zone even qualify, and it splits into two review types.

Type I permits cover the lower-friction paths and are exempt from the density buffer:

• Owner-occupied rentals of up to two bedrooms while you're home
• Infrequent whole-house rentals: 30 days or fewer per year, capped at four rental periods
• Whole-house rentals inside commercial or mixed-use zones, including the Mixed-Use Riverfront area within the Old Mill District
• Properties inside Mount Bachelor Village, the Deschutes Landing subdivision, or the Courtyards at Broken Top (Lots 1-8 and 21-32), which skip the land use permit step entirely but still need the operating license

Type II permits cover whole-house rentals in residential zones, meaning rented more than 30 days a year or more than four rental periods, and this is where the density rule bites. Bend requires 500 feet of separation between Type II properties, measured radially from the property boundary. If a whole-house rental already holds an approved permit within that radius, your application gets denied automatically, no matter how good your case is otherwise. The city doubled this buffer from 250 feet after a City Council vote on October 5, 2022, and cut the share of eligible residential land from roughly 66% to 46%, according to Bend's alt-weekly, the Source Weekly.

Bend publishes an eligibility map that shows every parcel as cleared or blocked. Make sure you check it before you make an offer on a property, since one existing permit nearby can sink an otherwise good deal. One more detail worth catching: only one dwelling per property can hold a Type II permit. A lot with an ADU, duplex, or triplex only gets one shot at a short-term rental, not one per unit.

Occupancy and parking come with their own formulas. Under BDC § 3.6.500(G), maximum occupancy is two people per bedroom plus two more, so a two-bedroom rental tops out at six guests. Owner-occupied rentals use two people per rented bedroom, on top of whoever already lives there. Parking isn't required at all, but if you do provide it, each space needs to be at least 20 feet deep and 9 feet wide, paved rather than gravel, and it has to sit entirely inside your property line. Tandem parking counts.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Bend

Tandem parking counts, but that's a small detail compared to what comes next: once your zoning clears, the operating license is the second half of the puzzle, and clearing zoning is honestly the easier part. Under Bend Code Chapter 7.16, you can't advertise, offer, or operate a short-term rental without this license, and you have 60 days after your land use permit is approved to apply for it. Miss that window and the land use permit itself gets voided, sending you back to square one under whatever rules apply by then, including the 500-foot buffer if it didn't apply to your original approval.

The fees, as of July 2026, break into three pieces. The land use permit itself runs $1,314.53 plus a 4% Long Range Planning Surcharge for Type I, or $3,657.44 plus the same surcharge for Type II. The operating license adds $350 to apply and $255 a year to renew. On top of both sits a Transportation Fee Supplement, set at its current Phase 2 rate by City Council on May 7, 2025 and effective July 1, 2025: $200 a year for a whole-house rental, $108 a year for everything else.

Add it up. A Type II whole-house application runs near $4,475 before you've taken a single booking, once you fold in the required $121 business registration. A Type I application runs closer to $1,946.

Processing takes time on both ends. Land use permits are decided within 30 days of an application being deemed complete, and the operating license takes another 3 to 4 weeks once you submit it. Do check that your room tax filings are current before you file for renewal, too, since a slow filing history is exactly what stretches that window further.

The license itself lasts one year and is not transferable. It terminates the moment you sell or transfer the property, though a new owner gets 60 days from closing to apply for their own license under the existing land use permit. Renew late and you'll pay a $55 penalty within a 30-day grace period; miss that grace period entirely and both the license and the underlying land use permit go void, meaning you're reapplying from scratch, buffer rule and all.

If you decide to appeal a denial, revocation, or suspension, BC § 7.16.110 gives you 12 calendar days to file, and the city charges $200 per appeal. The City Council hears it within 21 days and has to rule within 30 days of the hearing closing. Whatever they decide is final and reviewable only by writ of review to Circuit Court, so it's worth making your case well the first time.

Required Documents for Bend Short Term Rentals

Making your case well starts with the paperwork itself, and knowing what Bend actually wants up front saves you from making that case twice. Before you begin your operating license application, Bend asks for:

• Proof of notice to neighbors. You must notify every property owner within 250 feet of your rental, either by mailed or hand-delivered letter, or by a posted sign no larger than two square feet, readable from the property edge. Submit a photo of the envelopes and a copy of the letter, or a photo of the sign.
• A Declaration of Notice to Neighbors confirming you completed that step.
• A Fire Safety Self-Inspection Checklist and Reply Card, covering smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, and extinguishers.
• A Short Term Rental Acknowledgement, certifying you've read the operating rules.
• A parking diagram, plus a dated photo of the garage if one is available for guest use.
• Proof of Good Neighbor Guidelines posting, either inside the unit or in your online listing.
• A Change of Information/Authorization Form, only if a property manager or other authorized agent will act on your behalf.
• An active City of Bend business registration, which costs $121 to open and $94 a year to renew, separate from the short-term rental fees above.

Don't forget that your land use permit number, or PZ number, has to already be on file, since the operating license application references it directly. There's also no save-for-later feature on the online form, so gather everything first rather than starting the clock early.

Withdraw an application partway through and the refund shrinks the further you get. Pull it before staff review even starts, or because of your own error, and you get a full refund. Withdraw after initial review but before completion, and it drops to 75%. Mid-review, it's 50%. After a revision notice, 25%. Once the record is ready for issuance, or already issued, it's zero. The Transportation Fee Supplement follows its own separate rule: 100% refundable if the license hasn't been issued yet, non-refundable once it has.

Bend Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to get licensed, there's still tax to file, and Bend stacks two layers rather than three. That's a small mercy: Deschutes County runs its own 8% transient lodging tax, but it applies only to unincorporated parts of the county, explicitly excluding Bend, Redmond, Sisters, and La Pine. Since your property sits inside Bend's city limits, the county tax doesn't touch you.

The city's own Room Tax is the bigger number: 10.4% of the gross revenue you receive from short-term rental activity. Every operator owes it except Type I infrequent-use permit holders (the 30-days-or-fewer-a-year crowd) and hosts who can prove a qualifying long-term lease of 12 months or more, which exempts you for up to three license renewals.

Reports and payment are due between the 1st and 15th of the month following the rental activity, and anything submitted after the 24th counts as late. If your average monthly tax comes to $100 or less, you can switch to quarterly filing instead, due April 15, July 15, October 15, and January 15 for the prior quarter.

Here's the part that trips people up: even when Airbnb, Vrbo, or HomeAway remit the room tax to the city automatically on your behalf, which they typically do, you still have to file the reports yourself. The platforms don't share your address-level detail with Bend, so your filing is what confirms rental activity for your annual license renewal. Skip the paperwork and you can lose the license even if the tax itself got paid in full.

On top of the city layer sits the Oregon state transient lodging tax, currently 1.5% and rising to 2.75% on January 1, 2027 under enacted House Bill 4134. Whoever collects payment for the stay, host or platform, remits it, and it's filed quarterly with the Oregon Department of Revenue rather than the city.

Be aware of one nuance if you're running a Type I infrequent rental. The state's small-scale exemption for units rented fewer than 30 days a year, under ORS 320.308, doesn't apply once that unit is listed through a booking platform at all. So you can be exempt from Bend's room tax and still owe the state's, depending on how you advertise. Our Oregon statewide guide breaks that state layer down in more detail if you're weighing markets across the state.

Bend-wide Short Term Rental Rules

Once the money side is settled, Bend layers a set of ongoing operating rules on top, and these are the ones that actually determine whether you keep the license past year one. You or your authorized agent must be reachable by phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while the property is occupied for rent, and the city maintains a public lookup tool where anyone can search an address and pull up that contact number. Neighbors are meant to call you first; only a failed or inadequate response escalates to the city's Code Enforcement Division.

Your license number has to appear on every advertisement, and the license itself, showing occupancy limits, parking spaces, and expiration date, has to be posted inside the unit near the front door. Keep in mind that renewal depends on proof of use: you need to show the property was rented at least once in the prior 12 months, usually through your room tax filings, or the operating license lapses and the underlying land use permit voids with it.

A long-term rental exemption covers you here too, for up to three renewal cycles, if you switch to a 12-month-plus lease under Oregon's Residential Landlord and Tenant Act instead.

A few blanket prohibitions round things out. No recreational vehicle, travel trailer, or tent can be used as part of the rental. Legal nonconforming uses that predate the current code can keep operating, but they can't expand. Any short-term rental that sits idle for more than 12 months loses its permit outright, with narrow hardship exceptions for a medical emergency, a death in the family, or structural damage that makes the unit uninhabitable.

Does Bend strictly enforce STR rules? Is Bend Airbnb friendly?

Whether all of that adds up to a friendly market or a hostile one depends heavily on where in Bend you're looking, and the honest answer sits somewhere in between. Bend doesn't cap the total number of short-term rentals citywide, and it hasn't banned the whole-house model the way some Oregon coastal towns have, which puts it ahead of Portland's far stricter approach. But the 500-foot buffer functions as a de facto cap in practice: once a neighborhood fills up, no amount of paperwork gets you a Type II permit there.

Enforcement runs complaint-driven day to day, through the Code Enforcement Division, rather than proactive inspection sweeps. That said, the city has been tightening administration rather than loosening it. In December 2025, Ordinance NS-2530 cleaned up the definitions in Chapter 7.16 to draw a clearer line between the land use permit and the operating license. That followed a June 2025 move ending a long-standing informal arrangement the city had with a large local property manager, a change reported by OPB to be projected at roughly $40,000 a year in additional city revenue.

There's also a change still working through the process, as of my last check in July 2026. A proposed amendment to BDC 3.6.500 (city file PLTEXT20250659) would bring Neighborhood Commercial-zoned short-term rentals under the same rules as residential Medium Density zones: Type II review, the 500-foot buffer, and one rental per property. The Planning Commission held its hearing on February 23, 2026, but I couldn't confirm from the city's own pages whether City Council has since adopted it, so treat that zone's current, looser treatment as temporary if you're eyeing a Neighborhood Commercial property.

Violations themselves are Class A civil infractions, and the city treats each day of noncompliant use as a separate offense rather than a single fine, so a small problem left unaddressed compounds fast. Revocation runs on a three-strike system within any 12-month period: a warning for the first offense, a second warning or a 90-day suspension for the second, and automatic revocation for the third. Be aware that a revoked license also blocks you from reapplying for that same property for a full year.

That's a meaningfully harder landing than most Oregon cities hand out, which is worth weighing against a market like Medford's, where the process runs lighter. If you're also cross-shopping Central Oregon, the Eugene market page on BNBCalc is worth pulling up too, so you can see how the revenue side compares once all this paperwork math is done.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Bend

Assuming Bend still looks like the right call after all that, here's the order that actually works, since doing these steps out of sequence tends to waste both time and application fees.

1. Check the eligibility map before you buy or commit. Confirm your zone and, if you're planning a whole-house rental, that no existing Type II permit sits within 500 feet.
2. Review your HOA covenants and any deed restrictions. The city's map only covers zoning; a homeowners' association can still bar short-term rentals outright.
3. Apply for the land use permit under BDC 3.6.500, budgeting $1,314.53 (Type I) or $3,657.44 (Type II) plus the 4% surcharge, and expect about 30 days for a decision.
4. Register your business with the City of Bend, a separate $121 requirement, before or alongside the license application.
5. Notify your neighbors within 250 feet by letter or posted sign, and keep the photo evidence the application asks for.
6. Complete the fire safety checklist, parking diagram, and Good Neighbor Guidelines posting, and gather everything before you start the online form, since there's no save-for-later option.
7. Apply for the operating license within 60 days of land use approval, budgeting $350 plus the $200 or $108 transportation fee supplement.
8. Register for room tax and set up monthly or quarterly filing, even if your booking platform remits automatically.
9. Post your license and diagrams inside the unit, put your license number on every listing, and diarize your renewal date a year out.

Who to contact in Bend about Short Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever of those steps trips you up, Bend splits responsibility across a few specific offices rather than routing everything through one number, so it helps to know which one owns your question.

Land use permits and zoning eligibility

The Planning Division, inside Community Development, handles land use permits, the 500-foot buffer, and zoning questions.

• Phone: 541-388-5580 ext. 3
• Email: [email protected]
• Address: 710 NW Wall Street, Bend, OR 97703

Operating licenses and renewals

The Licensing Division handles the operating license application, renewals, appeals, and the required documents.

• Phone: 541-388-5580 ext. 8
• Email: [email protected]

Room tax

The Room Tax office handles registration as a lodging operator, filing, and corrections.

• Phone: 541-385-6682
• Email: [email protected]

Complaints about an active rental

The Code Enforcement Division takes complaints once an owner or representative has failed to resolve one directly. Reach it through the city's online reporting portal, or call the main Permit Center at 541-388-5580.

Hours and general contact

• Customer Resources: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Permit Inquiries: Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Closed most major holidays.
• Location: 710 NW Wall Street, Bend, OR 97703

What do Airbnb hosts in Bend on Reddit and Bigger Pockets think about local regulations?

Outside office hours, the conversation about Bend's rules mostly happens on BiggerPockets, and the recurring themes there track pretty closely with what the code itself makes hard. What follows is my read of that discussion rather than a survey, so weigh it accordingly.

• The eligibility map comes up constantly. Investors researching a Bend purchase are consistently told to check the city's map before making an offer, since one existing permit within the buffer can sink an otherwise good deal. One host who had already gone through the process called it "quite the process" and offered to answer questions for others considering it, which tells you something about how much explaining a first-timer needs.
• The density rule reads as unfair to hosts who got there late. Local coverage from the Source Weekly captured a duplex owner's frustration at watching a nearby triplex keep operating as short-term rentals while her unit couldn't qualify under the newer 500-foot standard, a complaint that echoes what shows up in forum threads too.
• Nobody argues the process is quick. Between the land use permit, the operating license, and the required documentation, the general advice is to start the paperwork well before you plan to list, not after you've already got a booking calendar to fill.

One thing worth flagging: the 500-foot figure is relatively new, so watch out for older sources still quoting the old 250-foot buffer from before the October 2022 change. If a number doesn't match what's above, it's probably out of date rather than wrong on its own terms.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Bend in 2026?

Yes. Bend allows short-term rentals citywide, but every property needs two approvals: a land use permit under Bend Development Code 3.6.500, then an annual operating license under Bend Code Chapter 7.16. Whole-house rentals in residential zones also have to clear a 500-foot buffer from any existing permit. Owner-occupied room rentals and infrequent whole-house rentals of 30 days or fewer a year face lighter requirements and skip the buffer rule entirely.

How much does a Bend short-term rental permit and license cost?

Budget the land use permit fee first: $1,314.53 for Type I or $3,657.44 for Type II, plus a 4% surcharge. The operating license adds $350 to apply and $255 a year to renew, plus a Transportation Fee Supplement of $200 a year for whole-house rentals or $108 for everything else. A separate business registration runs $121 initially and $94 a year after that. A Type II whole-house application totals roughly $4,475 in year one.

What is Bend's short-term rental room tax rate?

Bend's Room Tax is 10.4% of gross revenue from short-term rental activity, collected by the city rather than the state. Most operators owe it, though Type I infrequent-use permit holders and hosts with a qualifying 12-month lease are exempt. On top of that sits Oregon's state transient lodging tax, currently 1.5% and rising to 2.75% on January 1, 2027. Deschutes County's separate 8% lodging tax doesn't apply inside Bend city limits.

How far apart do short-term rentals have to be in Bend?

Whole-house rentals in residential zones, known as Type II, need 500 feet of separation from any other approved Type II property, measured radially from the property line. The city doubled this buffer from 250 feet in October 2022. It doesn't apply to owner-occupied rentals, infrequent rentals of 30 days or fewer a year, or rentals in commercial and mixed-use zones.

What happens if you run a short-term rental in Bend without a license?

Operating without a valid license is a Class A civil infraction, and Bend counts each day of noncompliant use as a separate violation, so fines compound quickly. Getting caught on an active complaint can also trigger the city's three-strike system once you are licensed: a warning, then a 90-day suspension, then revocation within any 12-month period. A revoked license also blocks you from reapplying for that property for a full year.

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