Cobb County, Georgia Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Cobb County, Georgia and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and the county has said so in writing since January 1, 2023. Short-term rentals are permitted in every Residential zoning district in unincorporated Cobb, the certificate that makes one legal costs $55 a year, and nothing in the ordinance caps how many the county will issue or forces you to live in the house yourself.

The catch isn't the fee, though. It's the paperwork stacked behind it, because before Cobb will even open your file you have to write to your homeowners association and to every adjoining property owner by certified mail and prove that you did. Then a Zoning staff member signs a form fixing how many adults and how many cars your particular house is allowed to hold. Skip the certificate and rent anyway, and the county fines you $500 for each day the place was occupied, which is the sort of number that turns a good summer into a bad one.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in 2026: which properties qualify, what the certificate involves, the documents Cobb wants notarized, the three tax layers sitting on top of a Cobb stay, how hard the county pushes once a neighbor picks up the phone, and who to call when something stalls. Everything below comes from Cobb County's own ordinance, application packet and tax forms, or from Georgia's Department of Revenue, all checked in July 2026. Before you spend a dollar on furniture, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Cobb County, Georgia?

Before any of those numbers mean much, though, you need to know which rulebook your address falls under, and in Cobb that's a real question rather than a formality. The county ordinance covers unincorporated Cobb County only, so if your house sits inside Marietta, Smyrna, Kennesaw, Acworth, Austell, Powder Springs or Mableton, the county certificate isn't yours to get. The city's rules apply instead.

Assuming you are in unincorporated Cobb, one section carries almost the whole weight. Section 78-407 of the Official Code of Cobb County arrived as Division 11 of Chapter 78 and took effect on January 1, 2023. It treats a home as a short-term rental whenever someone pays to stay in it "for a period of time not to exceed 30 consecutive days." Rent to the same guest for 31 nights or more and you've left the ordinance behind entirely, which matters later when we get to tax.

Within that definition, five rules do most of the day-to-day work.

• Residential zoning only. Short-term rentals are permitted in all Residential (R) districts, and the county's own guidance puts the other half of that plainly: it's prohibited to operate one in any property zoned Commercial (C). You can check your designation on Cobb's My Neighborhood GIS map before you go any further.
• The main house, and nothing else. Cobb's short-term rental application is blunt about this: "Short term rentals are only permitted in the main house with proper Certificates of Occupancy. Short terms rentals are not permitted outside of the main house, in accessory structures, or campers and the like." The garage apartment, the tiny house out back and the RV in the driveway are all out.
• One certificate per dwelling unit. Commissioners added that limit late in the 2022 drafting to stop a single house being carved into several simultaneous listings, and East Cobb News reported the 4-1 vote that put it in.
• Occupancy and parking come from the zoning code, not the STR ordinance. Section 78-407 points at Sec. 134-1 instead of setting its own numbers, and Sec. 134-1 requires at least 390 square feet of living building square footage per adult occupant, measured off the Tax Assessor's records, with the county's application packet applying the same 390 square feet to off-street parking. Vehicles run on the same arithmetic, one per 390 square feet, with no more than four parked outside a garage or carport in PRD, OSC, RA-5, R-15, R-20 and R-30, and no more than five in R-40, R-80 and RR.
• Your advertising has to carry the paperwork. Every listing must show the certificate number, the maximum occupancy, the maximum number of vehicles and the noise provisions, and the same information gets posted inside the unit.

Do work out that occupancy number early, because it sets your revenue ceiling before you've bought a single mattress. A 2,000 square foot house in Cobb clears five adults and five cars, not the eight your comparable listings are advertising.

One more thing sits outside the county's reach and catches people anyway. The ordinance says explicitly that allowing short-term rentals doesn't prevent "private enforcement of additional restrictions" in restrictive covenants, so a certificate from Cobb is no answer at all to an HOA that has banned nightly rentals in its own documents. Read your covenants first.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Cobb County

Since covenants and city limits both settle the question before the county even gets a say, the sensible first move is to pin down which government you're dealing with. Cobb contains six long-standing cities plus Mableton, which incorporated in 2022, and the county's application tells you to "verify that the proposed location of your rental is in fact located in unincorporated Cobb County" before you fill in a single box.

The cities are not all doing the same thing, either. Kennesaw went furthest in 2025, and its short-term rental page now requires a city business license plus a separate rental certificate under Chapter 22 of the city code, charging a $250 application fee and a $90 inspection fee. It also caps each owner at two properties, puts a 250-foot separation between rentals, and leaves a nonconforming route for anything running before January 1, 2025 that registered by the end of that year. Cobb County Courier's coverage of the July 2025 vote adds the numbers that didn't make the city page, a 150-license cap citywide and roughly 70 properties expected to grandfather in.

Two of the others I can't be as precise about. Smyrna runs its own short-term rental license and occupation tax certificate through its Community Development department, though its website refused every automated request I made, so treat the specifics there as something to confirm by phone. For Mableton I couldn't reach the city's site at all, and since the county certificate stops at the city line, a Mableton address needs a call to City Hall rather than an assumption either way.

Assuming your address is genuinely unincorporated, you can then work through the rest in the order that saves the most wasted effort. Confirm the zoning first, since Residential is the only category that works. Read the covenants second. Then, and this is where most first-timers lose two weeks, send the notices.

That notification requirement is the part of Cobb's process with no equivalent in most Georgia counties. Section 78-407 requires a sworn statement that any applicable homeowners or property owners association has been told about your application, plus written notice to every adjoining property owner as shown on the current tax records, with proof of the notification filed alongside.

On top of that, Cobb's application packet specifies certified mail for both, and it hands you the letter template you're expected to send, a plain "Dear Neighbor" notice that names you, names your agent, and passes on the Code Enforcement phone number. So keep in mind what that means in practice, because by the time you're approved, everyone who shares a property line knows you're running an Airbnb and has been given the number to call about it.

You'll also need a short-term rental agent before you apply, and that person is more than a formality. The ordinance requires the agent to be reachable at all times and "customarily present at a location within the county for purposes of transacting business." They also accept service of any violation notice, keep their emergency number posted inside the unit, and put the certificate number on each online listing. You can serve as your own agent if you live nearby, but managing a Cobb rental from another state without one isn't an option the ordinance leaves open.

If you're comparing Cobb against the rest of metro Atlanta while you're at it, the Fulton County guide, the DeKalb County guide and the Gwinnett County guide cover the three counties most Cobb investors look at next.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Cobb County

Once you've got an agent lined up and the certified-mail receipts in hand, the certificate itself is the least painful step of the lot, and by then most of the work is behind you. Applications go to the Cobb County Business License Division, and the application packet sets the fee at a non-refundable $55.00 per property, submitted with the application rather than on approval.

A few mechanics are worth having straight before you start:

• Certificates run on the calendar year. The county's guidance says certificates expire on December 31 and must be resubmitted every year, so an application filed in October buys you about two months.
• Reviews are by appointment only. The packet says so in capital letters, and you book through the Business License Division on 770-528-8691 or at [email protected].
• The decision window is 30 days. Section 78-407 says a decision "shall be issued within thirty days of all required information being received," and that clock starts when your file is complete, not when you first walk in.
• Certificates don't travel. One is tied to the address it was issued for, it can't be transferred or assigned, and a change of ownership means the new owner applies fresh. Change your agent and you have five business days to tell the county.
• No occupation tax attaches. Cobb states that occupation tax is not collected on short-term rentals, so the $55 is the whole of the county's fee.

What the county doesn't ask for is as telling as what it does. Cobb requires no inspection, no life-safety sign-off and no proof of liability insurance, which is lighter than the $90 inspection Kennesaw charges a few miles up the road. The standards don't vanish, though. Section 78-407 still requires the property to meet the county's building, fire and health regulations and to be "properly maintained and regularly inspected by the owner or short-term rental agent," so the inspection duty has been handed to you rather than removed.

The penalties are where casual non-compliance stops being cheap, and the county publishes them without softening:

• Operating without a certificate: $500, and each day the unit is rented for overnight accommodation counts as a separate violation.
• First violation in any 12-month period: $500.
• Second violation inside that 12 months: $750.
• Three violations on one property inside 12 months: Cobb revokes the existing certificate, cancels anything pending, and refuses every application for that address for 12 consecutive months.
• A violation more than 12 months after the last one resets the ladder to first-offence.

That third-strike clause deserves a second read, because it's the only penalty here that removes the business rather than taxing it.

Two bad guests and a noise complaint inside a single year, and the property is off the market until the next one.

Decisions of the Business License Division can be appealed to the Cobb County License Review Board, which is worth knowing before you accept a denial as final.

Required Documents for Cobb County Short-Term Rentals

Given that a denial costs you the $55 and an appeal costs you weeks, the practical answer is still to arrive with a complete file. Cobb's packet is longer than most, and five of its attachments have to be notarized, so build in a trip to a notary rather than discovering it at the counter:

• Proof of ownership, in the form of a deed or bill of sale.
• A notarized Short Term Rental Agent Acknowledgment Affidavit, signed by the agent, confirming they've read Section 78-407 and will perform the duties in it.
• A notarized Verification of Notice Affidavit, plus the certified-mail proof that your HOA or POA and every adjoining owner were written to.
• A completed Zoning Verification form, signed by a member of Cobb's Zoning staff, carrying the maximum adults and maximum vehicles for your address. Call Zoning on 770-528-2035 to get it done.
• Proof of adequate parking, which the county accepts as a photo of the house showing the spaces, against the standard of one off-street space for each 390 square feet of floor area.
• A notarized Statement of Facts Affidavit from the applicant.
• A notarized private employer affidavit, with an E-Verify number if you employ more than ten full-time staff company-wide.
• A notarized citizenship affidavit under O.C.G.A. § 50-36-1(e)(2), plus a secure and verifiable document such as a driver's license or passport.
• Certificate of Incorporation or Organization if the property is held by a corporation or an LLC, along with the names, addresses and ownership percentages of the people behind it.

That last one catches investors who assumed an LLC would keep their details off a public form. Unless the entity runs a leasing office on site where the agent is customarily present, Cobb wants every partner, member, officer and director listed, with personal contact information.

Once you're approved, two postings then become permanent fixtures. A legible copy of the certificate goes inside the unit, showing the agent's name, address, phone and email, the certificate number, the maximum occupancy, the maximum number of vehicles and the noise provisions. The same four operating facts go into every advertisement you run.

Cobb County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you clear all that paperwork and are able to start taking bookings, there's still tax to sort out, and three separate charges land on a Cobb stay. Two of them belong to the state and one belongs to the county, which is why they're filed in two different places on two different schedules.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Hotel/motel occupancy excise tax	8%	Cobb County Business License Division
Georgia state sales and use tax	4%	Georgia Department of Revenue
Cobb local sales tax (schools plus a special-purpose penny)	2%	Georgia Department of Revenue
Georgia state hotel-motel fee	$5.00 per night	Georgia Department of Revenue

The county piece is the big one, since Cobb levies its 8% hotel/motel occupancy excise tax under O.C.G.A. 48-13-51(a)5.1, a rate confirmed both by the county's own Hotel/Motel Occupancy Excise Tax Report Form and by Georgia DCA's hotel-motel rate report updated August 8, 2025.

Returns are monthly, due between the first and the twentieth of the month after collection, and the form builds in a 3% collection fee you get to keep if you file on time. Miss the date and it goes the other way fast, at 10% penalty per month plus 1% interest per month on the gross tax due. Do keep your supporting records for three years, because the form says exemptions get audited.

On the sales tax side, Cobb sits lower than most of its neighbors. Georgia's rate chart effective July 1, 2026 puts the combined rate in Cobb at 6% as of July 2026, made up of the 4% state rate and two local pennies, one for schools and one for capital projects. Cobb runs no ordinary local option sales tax, which is why it lands below the 7% and 8% you'll see across most of the metro. Then the state hotel-motel fee adds a flat $5.00 per night on top of everything, for the first 30 nights of any stay.

Length of stay changes all of it, so make sure you count the nights properly. Cobb's tax form treats revenue from the first 30 consecutive days per guest as taxable and specifically not eligible for the permanent-guest deduction, while Georgia's $5 fee stops once a guest reaches 31 consecutive nights. So a 29-night booking is fully taxed on every layer, whereas a 45-night booking is taxed on the first stretch and then largely isn't.

Who actually hands the money over is the part hosts get wrong most often, because the platform and the county describe it differently. On one side, Airbnb's Georgia tax page says it collects the 4% state sales tax, 2% to 5% of county and local sales tax and the $5 nightly fee. It then goes further still, saying "all locally imposed Occupancy Taxes will be collected on reservations in Georgia."

On the other, Cobb words it cautiously. Those taxes "may be automatically collected" by the host company, the county says. Even so, it remains "the short-term rental property owner/agent's responsibility to ensure all applicable taxes are collected and paid." Both can be true at once, so to settle it for your own listings, open a payout breakdown and look for the 8% line. Direct bookings are a different matter, and if you take those, expect to file the Cobb return yourself.

Possible Write-Offs or Deductions

Your rental income is ordinary taxable income, so the usual deductions for a rental property apply, and that means mortgage interest, property tax, insurance, utilities, cleaning and turnover costs, supplies, platform fees, repairs and depreciation on both the building and the furniture. Cobb's $55 certificate fee and any city license count too, as does the mileage between your home and the property whenever you're driving out there to work on it.

Two wrinkles are worth flagging to whoever prepares your return. Renting only part of your own home means apportioning nearly every shared cost by floor area or by days of use, which is fiddlier than a spreadsheet makes it look. And the 8% excise tax you collect isn't your income at all, so it shouldn't appear in revenue and then reappear as an expense.

I'd point a CPA at both before the first filing rather than after.

Georgia Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Sitting above the county line, Georgia's own framework is thinner than most states' and got noticeably heavier in 2026. There's no statewide preemption statute, no statewide short-term rental license and no state registry, which is exactly why a Cobb address and a Kennesaw address a mile apart can face completely different rules.

What changed this year, though, applies to every operator in the state. Senate Bill 570, the Georgia Human Trafficking Prevention Training Act, took effect on July 1, 2026, and the enrolled bill writes a new O.C.G.A. § 43-21-16 that reaches "every operator of a short-term rental property," defined as a residential unit offered for tourist or transient use through a hosting platform.

Four duties come with it. You complete an approved human trafficking awareness training within 60 days and annually after that, finishing the first one by December 31 of your first full year. You adopt written procedures for reporting suspected trafficking to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, the Statewide Georgia Hotline for Domestic Minor Trafficking, or local law enforcement. You comply with the posting requirement in O.C.G.A. § 16-5-47. And you keep the training records for three years.

Willful violations draw $500 for a first offence, $1,000 for a second and $2,000 for a third or later, payable to the state and separate from anything Cobb might fine you. Be aware that nothing in Cobb's certificate process checks any of it, so nobody is going to remind you.

Georgia's tax layer is the other statewide piece, and most of it is already handled for you. Airbnb and Vrbo both operate at "marketplace innkeeper" scale in Georgia, which under the Department of Revenue's rules puts collection and remittance of the state sales tax and the $5 state hotel-motel fee on the platform rather than on you. Local governments get their excise tax on top under O.C.G.A. § 48-13-51, capped at 3% by simple ordinance and rising to 8% where the General Assembly has passed a local Act allowing it, which is the authority Cobb's 8% runs on.

One unresolved thread is worth knowing about, because a sitting commissioner raised it on the record. O.C.G.A. § 36-74-30 says that "in no event may a local government require the registration of residential rental property" under the Local Government Code Enforcement Boards Act, and Commissioner Keli Gambrill cited exactly that when she cast the lone vote against Cobb's ordinance in 2022.

The statute lives inside the code-enforcement-board chapter rather than in any general licensing chapter, though, and Cobb licenses short-term rentals under separate authority, so the two have coexisted for three years without a challenge that I could find. Still, it hasn't been tested in court, and it's where any future challenge would start. For the wider picture beyond Cobb, our Georgia statewide guide maps how differently this plays out from one county to the next.

Does Cobb County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Given how lightly the state layer polices itself, almost all of the enforcement risk that's left in Cobb is still local. It works one way. Somebody complains. Cobb's Code Enforcement Division describes itself as responding to complaints from the public rather than running sweeps, and the short-term rental page sets out the route in detail. A complaint can arrive in writing, by email, through the county's online system or by phone, it has to name the property address, and it can be made anonymously on 770-528-2180 or at [email protected].

From there the process is more structured than the informal start suggests. The complaint generates a notice to the agent and the owner, and the agent is the one required to contact the guests and fix the problem. If the county believes the ordinance has been broken, Code Enforcement investigates and issues a written notice of violation and of its intention to impose a penalty, served by mail, courier, in person or by email.

Citations are then heard in Magistrate Court, and the Cobb County Police Department is separately authorized to enforce the section and write citations, which matters at 1 a.m. on a Saturday when Code Enforcement is closed. The non-emergency police line is 770-499-3900.

Two design choices make Cobb's system bite harder than the fine schedule alone suggests. The county keeps a file on each short-term rental property recording every code violation charge, founded accusation and conviction relating to it, so the three-strikes count isn't reconstructed from memory. And the community development agency notifies the owner every time a guest's nuisance behaviour or the agent's conduct produces a citation, meaning the strikes are visible as they accumulate.

Then there's the quiet effect of that certified-mail notice at the start. Cobb hands your neighbors the Code Enforcement number, in writing, as a condition of your approval, which is a very different starting position from a county where the first complaint has to find its own way to the right department.

Nobody has to hunt for anyone.

What I can't tell you is the volume. Cobb publishes no count of certificates issued, denied or revoked since 2023, and I found no open dataset behind it, so anyone quoting you a compliance rate here is guessing. The honest read is that the machinery is complaint-driven, and a well-run house on a street with no complaints is unlikely to hear from anybody at all.

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

So if the enforcement risk is mostly about neighbors, then the order of these steps matters even more, because the ones that decide whether the plan works at all sit right at the front:

1. Confirm the property is in unincorporated Cobb. Marietta, Smyrna, Kennesaw, Acworth, Austell, Powder Springs and Mableton all run their own licensing, and Kennesaw in particular caps licenses and charges ten times what the county does.
2. Check the zoning on Cobb's My Neighborhood GIS map. Residential works and Commercial doesn't.
3. Read your covenants and HOA rules. A county certificate is no defense against a private ban, and this is the cheapest step on the list.
4. Call Zoning on 770-528-2035 for the maximum adults and vehicles at your address. That number sets your revenue ceiling, so do get it before you buy anything.
5. Line up your short-term rental agent, who has to be reachable around the clock and customarily present somewhere in Cobb County.
6. Send the certified-mail notices to your HOA or POA and to every adjoining owner on the current tax records, using the template in the county's packet, and keep the receipts.
7. Get everything notarized in one visit: the agent acknowledgment, the verification of notice, the statement of facts, the private employer affidavit and the citizenship affidavit.
8. Book your review appointment on 770-528-8691, file the application with the $55, and expect a decision within 30 days of the file being complete.
9. Post the certificate inside the unit and put the certificate number, occupancy cap, vehicle cap and noise provisions into every listing you run.
10. Set up the tax side before your first guest. Check whether your platform is remitting the 8% county excise, register with the Business License Division if it isn't, and diarise the 20th of each month.
11. Complete your human trafficking awareness training within 60 days of starting to operate, then again every year, and hold on to the record.
12. Diarise December 31. The certificate expires then regardless of when you got it, and renewal means a fresh $55 and a fresh application.

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

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, four county offices handle nearly all of it between them, and knowing which one owns your question saves a lot of transferred calls.

The certificate, the application and renewals

The Cobb County Business License Division issues the short-term rental certificate and takes the hotel/motel tax return.

• Address: 1150 Powder Springs Street, Suite 400, Marietta, GA 30064
• Mailing: P.O. Box 649, Marietta, GA 30061-0649
• Phone: 770-528-8410, or 770-528-8691 to book an application review
• Fax: 770-528-8414
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 5:00pm

Remember that reviews are by appointment only, so turning up with a folder gets you nowhere.

Occupancy, vehicles and zoning verification

The Cobb County Zoning Division signs the Zoning Verification form and fixes the maximum adults and vehicles for your address from the Tax Assessor's square-footage records.

• Phone: 770-528-2035

Complaints, violations and citations

Cobb County Code Enforcement investigates complaints and issues notices of violation.

• Phone: 770-528-2180 (anonymous inquiries accepted)
• Email: [email protected]
• Online: the complaint form linked from Cobb's code enforcement page, which needs no account
• After hours: Cobb County Police non-emergency, 770-499-3900

Everything else about the ordinance

Cobb County Community Development, directed by Jessica Guinn, owns Section 78-407 itself. It works from the same address, and you reach it at [email protected], Monday to Friday from 8:00am to 5:00pm.

State sales tax, the $5 hotel-motel fee and the Georgia Tax Center account all belong to the Georgia Department of Revenue rather than to Cobb, and its state hotel-motel FAQ answers most of what hosts ask about the fee.

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

Since none of those offices publish sentiment, the only read still available is what hosts say in public, and I should be straight about the limits of mine. Reddit blocks automated access and its platform terms don't allow the commercial use this would amount to, so I haven't read Cobb's Reddit threads and won't pretend otherwise. No substantial Cobb-specific short-term rental discussion turned up on BiggerPockets either. What follows comes from the local coverage and public filings I could read, so weigh it accordingly.

• The loudest objection has always been the notification requirement, not the fee. Nobody I've read argues that $55 is unreasonable. Writing to every adjoining owner by certified mail, before you know whether you'll even be approved, is the step that turns a private business decision into a neighborhood conversation you can't take back.
• The one-certificate-per-unit rule ended the room-by-room model. Cobb owner Jonathan Tremblay's petition against the ordinance, started days after the September 2022 vote, put it squarely: the code "will effectively kill the ability of homeowners to use short term rental platforms such as Airbnb to supplement their income," specifically for people renting individual rooms. It gathered 47 supporters, which says something about the size of that group as well as the strength of feeling inside it.
• Occupancy limits are the recurring complaint from the other direction. When Cobb floated widening its definition of a single-family dwelling unit in November 2024, the Planning Commission voted 5-0 to recommend denial, with residents warning about rooming houses in single-family streets. The code still reads narrowly. Anyone hoping Cobb will loosen occupancy in the near future should read that vote as the answer.
• The cities are tightening while the county holds still. Kennesaw's 2025 ordinance, with its 150-license cap and 250-foot buffer, is the direction of travel inside Cobb's municipalities, and it passed with grandfathering for the roughly 70 operators already there. Unincorporated Cobb has changed nothing since 2023.

Take that last point seriously if you're buying, because the gap between unincorporated Cobb and its cities is wider in 2026 than it was in 2023, and it's widening in one direction. For a sense of what the numbers look like across the state before you settle on a county, the Georgia market page is where I'd start.

Strip out the forms and the fee schedule, though, and this stops being a licensing story at all. Cobb's rules mostly ask one question, in several expensive ways: can the people who live on either side of you live with what you're planning? Answer that honestly before you buy, and the paperwork turns into a formality. Get it wrong, and no certificate in the world will save the business.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Cobb County, Georgia in 2026?

Yes, in unincorporated Cobb County, provided the property is zoned Residential and you hold a short-term rental certificate from the Cobb County Business License Division. The certificate costs $55 a year, expires every December 31, and covers the main house only, not accessory structures. There's no owner-occupancy requirement and no cap on how many the county issues. Properties inside Marietta, Smyrna, Kennesaw, Acworth, Austell, Powder Springs or Mableton fall under those cities' rules instead.

How much does a Cobb County short-term rental certificate cost?

The application fee is $55.00 per property, non-refundable, and payable when you file rather than on approval. Each property needs its own application and its own fee, and no occupation tax is charged on top. Certificates expire on December 31 regardless of when they were issued, so a renewal costs another $55 every year. Reviews are handled by appointment only through the Business License Division.

What happens if you rent a Cobb County property on Airbnb without a certificate?

Operating without a short-term rental certificate carries a $500 penalty, and every day the unit is rented for overnight accommodation counts as a separate violation. Once you hold a certificate, a first violation in any 12-month period is $500 and a second is $750. Three violations on one property inside 12 months and Cobb revokes the certificate, cancels pending applications, and refuses new applications for that address for 12 months.

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

Three layers. Cobb charges an 8% hotel/motel occupancy excise tax, filed monthly with the Business License Division between the first and the twentieth of the following month. Georgia's combined state and local sales tax in Cobb is 6%, made up of the 4% state rate plus two local pennies. And the state hotel-motel fee adds $5.00 per night for the first 30 nights. Airbnb states that it collects Georgia state and local sales tax, the $5 fee and locally imposed occupancy taxes, but the owner remains responsible for making sure all of it is paid.

How many guests can a Cobb County short-term rental hold?

Cobb doesn't publish one number, because the limit is calculated per property. Section 134-1 of the zoning code requires at least 390 square feet of living building square footage per adult occupant, measured from the Tax Assessor's records, and applies the same 390 square feet per vehicle parked overnight. A Zoning staff member writes both figures onto your application, so call the Zoning Division on 770-528-2035 before you advertise a sleeps-number.

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