Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, in all six island towns, and not one of them has tried to ban the practice outright. The complication is that "Martha's Vineyard" isn't a town at all. It's an island in Dukes County made up of six of them, Aquinnah, Chilmark, Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, Tisbury and West Tisbury, and those six stopped moving as one back in 2024.

Two of them now have teeth. West Tisbury makes you register with the town, pay $400 as of July 2026, pass a joint building, health and fire inspection, live in the house 30 days a year and rent out only one property. Tisbury, meanwhile, caps every house at 75 nights a calendar year, which is the only night cap anywhere on the island. The other four have no local registration yet, although Oak Bluffs is drafting one for a December town meeting, and a change to the state building code has since put an annual inspection certificate on the shoulders of anyone renting a house they don't live in.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in 2026: which town you're actually in and what that town demands of you, what registration costs and how long it lasts, the layers of tax that stack on a Vineyard booking, how hard any of it gets enforced in practice, and who to call when your situation doesn't fit the form. Every figure below comes from a town, county or Commonwealth document rather than a summary of one, and where I couldn't confirm something I've said so instead of guessing. Before you buy anything on the strength of a July rate card, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts?

Since the island splits six ways, the first useful thing to know is that there's no island-wide short-term rental licence and no island-wide regulator handing one out. Massachusetts hands that power to individual cities and towns instead, and it hands over a great deal of it, because G.L. c. 64G, § 14 lets a municipality cap the number and location of local licences, cap the days a unit may be rented, run its own registration, demand proof there are no open building, fire, health or zoning violations, charge for inspections and set civil penalties. So whatever your own town meeting has voted for, that's your law.

Underneath all six sits one shared definition. A short-term rental in Massachusetts is a stay of 31 days or fewer, and both Vineyard towns that have written their own rules pulled the line in slightly, to 30 days or fewer. Cross that line by a night and you leave the regime entirely, which is why seasonal and year-round leases sit outside everything described here.

Here's where the six towns stood as of my last check in 2026.

Town	Local registration	Night cap	Where it stands
West Tisbury	Yes, $400, renewed every two years	None	In force since January 1, 2025, inspections running
Tisbury	Yes, under the town's own STR regulations	75 nights per calendar year	Zoning §07.18 adopted December 2024
Oak Bluffs	Not yet	None	Bylaw being drafted for a December 2026 town meeting
Edgartown	Not yet	None	$80,000 study of the local market funded in 2026
Chilmark	Not yet	None	Codifying bylaw tabled indefinitely in April 2026
Aquinnah	None found	None	No local bylaw surfaced in my research

One more thing hangs over that table, and Vineyard planning boards talk about it openly. In June 2025 the Massachusetts Land Court decided Ward v. Town of Nantucket, holding that Nantucket's zoning bylaw didn't permit sub-31-day rentals of primary dwellings in one residential district, because a rental whose only link to the home is financial fails the "incidental" half of the accessory-use test. That's a Nantucket case about a Nantucket bylaw, so it bans nothing here.

It does explain the drafting, though. Chilmark and Oak Bluffs have both written bylaws that say short-term rentals are a permitted accessory use, and our Nantucket short-term rental guide covers how that fight resolved next door. As Oak Bluffs planning board vice chair Chris Chambers put it to the Vineyard Gazette, "all it takes is for one person to have an issue and all our short-term rentals vaporize."

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Martha’s Vineyard

Given how much that table varies, the town you buy in decides what kind of business you get to run, and on the Vineyard that gap is unusually wide, since two of the towns will let you operate a straightforward investment rental and two of them will not.

West Tisbury is the strict one, and it's strict on purpose. Its short-term rental bylaw was approved by the Attorney General on July 7, 2024 and took effect on January 1, 2025. Under it, an owner may rent only one property in town short-term, and the owner or an immediate family member has to live at that property for at least 30 days of every calendar year, though not necessarily in one stretch. It also sets a two-night minimum stay and blocks a long-term tenant from subletting.

Read together, those clauses close the door on the pure absentee investment model. The town says as much in its own purpose clause, which talks about deterring "commercial interests from buying housing to use as short-term rental businesses."

If you're buying into West Tisbury from a seller who's been renting several houses there for years, do check whose exemption you're inheriting, because the answer is nobody's. Owners who held multiple short-term rentals before April 9, 2024 are excused from the single-property and 30-day residency rules, yet the bylaw states plainly that the exemption is personal to that owner and does not run with the property. It dies at the closing table.

Tisbury takes a different route to a similar place. Its zoning bylaw §07.18 was adopted at a special town meeting on December 17, 2024, and it permits short-term rentals only where they're accessory and incidental to using the property as a single-family residence. On top of that, no person or entity may control more than one short-term rental property in town, and no house may be rented short-term for more than 75 nights in a calendar year.

Seventy-five nights is about two and a half months of the year. A Vineyard Haven house can carry a summer season on that, but nothing beyond one.

The select board did ask voters to delete that cap at the April 28, 2026 town meeting, and the Planning Board's own fact sheet for Article 24 laid out what deletion would mean without taking a side. Voters kept the cap anyway.

That leaves Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, Chilmark and Aquinnah, where you can list a whole house with no town permission at all, subject to the state rules further down. Edgartown is the big one, with roughly 1,400 short-term rentals by the town's own count, and rather than regulate first it voted $80,000 at its 2026 annual town meeting to have the UMass Amherst Donahue Institute study the market and report back.

Oak Bluffs is closest to acting, though. Its short-term rental ad hoc committee has been meeting weekly through the summer of 2026, and the minutes of its August 3 meeting record a plan to bring a zoning bylaw to the Planning Board by August 20 and on to a December special town meeting. A companion general bylaw would cover registration, inspections and enforcement. The committee's working position is annual registration with no fee at first, so keep an eye on that town meeting if you own there.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Martha’s Vineyard

Assuming your town is one of the two that licenses, there's still a genuine permit to get rather than a form you file and forget. West Tisbury's registration rules and regulations, promulgated under the same c. 64G authority, set a $400 non-refundable registration fee, and the registration has to be renewed every two years. Applications are due at least 30 days before the rental period begins, so a March offer for a June week is fine and a late-May scramble is not.

The expiry mechanic catches people out, so make sure you diarise it properly. Every registration expires on December 31 of its expiry year rather than on its own anniversary, which means a certificate issued in February 2025 and one issued in April 2025 both die on December 31, 2027. Registration is also non-transferable: any change in the designated owner, or any transfer of the property, requires a brand new one.

The inspection is where the fee earns its keep, and it's a real visit rather than a rubber stamp. Before the town registers you, and again at every renewal, the building inspector, the board of health and the fire department each sign off, and the inspection fees are included in that $400. That visit sets two numbers you'll be living with: your maximum occupancy, and, at the inspector's discretion, the maximum number of vehicles allowed at the property during a rental. Both go on the notice you post inside the house.

Then there are the standing duties that survive the inspection. You or a designated agent must respond to a renter's complaint or query within 24 hours, and the registration form goes further, asking for a local manager who answers within 24 hours generally and within 30 minutes in an emergency. Contact details have to stay current too, with any change filed inside 10 days, so missing either duty puts you in violation.

Violations then bite at $300 per day, and they stack. West Tisbury's own worked example runs like this: an owner who lets a house rated for 10 people to 15 people for a single night breaks both the occupancy condition and another condition at once, which makes the penalty for that day $600 rather than $300. Every day a violation continues counts as a fresh offence, and more than three violations inside one registration period can cost you the registration itself.

Keep in mind too that the town can refuse to register you in the first place, if you owe property taxes or if the property is sitting under a notice of violation, an order of abatement or a cease and desist.

Tisbury's registration works differently, though, and I have to be straight about a gap here. Its zoning bylaw requires every short-term rental unit to be registered "in accordance with the Town of Tisbury Short-term Rental Regulations," yet the select board page that carried those regulations and their fee now returns a 404, and the document didn't surface in the town's document centre either. A secondary source puts the fee at $115, which I wasn't able to confirm against anything the town publishes, so treat that number as unconfirmed and call the select board rather than budgeting around it.

Required Documents for Martha’s Vineyard Short-Term Rentals

Since that $400 doesn't come back and a returned application costs you a rental window, it's worth getting the file complete the first time. West Tisbury's registration form is short, though two of its attachments take longer to produce than the form itself, and the town won't process a registration without them.

• A copy of your Massachusetts Department of Revenue Certificate of Registration. The bylaw requires you to register with the Commonwealth before you register with the town, and one certificate is issued per property.
• A certificate of insurance. G.L. c. 175, § 4F requires at least $1,000,000 in liability insurance for each short-term rental unless your platform carries equal or greater cover, and West Tisbury treats a failure here as grounds to revoke.
• Owner and caretaker details in full. Name, mailing address, email and phone for you, and the same set again for the primary caretaker or manager who fields complaints.
• The property's map and lot numbers, not only the street address.
• Entity paperwork, if a trust or LLC holds the title. The town registers entity-owned properties only where every owner, member or beneficiary is a natural person, documented to the town's satisfaction, and one of them has to be nominated as "the owner" for registration purposes.

Once you're registered, one more document lives inside the house permanently. The posting has to be at least 8.5 by 11 inches, laminated or framed, and carry the street address with map and lot, 911 information, the local emergency contact, the maximum occupancy and vehicle count, the town registration number, the state certificate and the location of the fire extinguisher. Don't forget to email the same information to every guest before they arrive, because the regulations require both.

Martha’s Vineyard Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you clear the paperwork and are able to start taking bookings, there's still tax on every night you sell, and on the Vineyard it arrives in layers rather than as one rate. The layers below are what a guest pays on top of your nightly price.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
State room occupancy excise	5.7%	Mass. Dept. of Revenue
Local option excise	Up to 6%, set by each town	Mass. DOR, returned to the town
Cape Cod and Islands Water Protection Fund excise	2.75%, Oak Bluffs only, from October 1, 2026	Mass. DOR
Community impact fee	Up to 3% where a town has adopted it	Mass. DOR

The state piece is fixed at 5.7%, because G.L. c. 64G, § 3 codifies 5% while DOR's Room Occupancy Excise Tax page notes an uncodified surtax of 0.7% on top, and it applies to any stay of 31 days or fewer. There's no excise where rent is under $15 a day, which on this island is theoretical.

The local piece is where the six towns differ, and it's the number I'd most want you to check yourself. Edgartown at least publishes its own: an October 2024 selectboard notice confirms that April 2024 town meeting Article 59 raised the local room occupancy excise from 4% to 6% effective January 1, 2025 under § 3A, taking an Edgartown booking to 11.7% all in.

For the other five towns, though, I'd rather admit a gap than fill it badly. DOR's own rate report wouldn't load for me on any attempt, and the secondary tables floating around still show Edgartown at 4%, which its own town notice disproves. So ring your treasurer or collector, and be aware of the rule buried in that same notice: the rate that applies is the one in force on the night of occupancy, not the night of booking, so a rise between deposit and arrival lands on a contract you've already signed.

Oak Bluffs then adds a fourth layer this autumn, and it's brand new: the town joined the Cape Cod and Islands Water Protection Fund on August 5, 2026, so from October 1, 2026 a 2.75% fund excise applies to taxable lodging stays in Oak Bluffs, short-term rentals included.

Nothing about how you file changes, at least. The town's guidance says operators keep using the DOR systems they already use, and that platforms already collecting room occupancy tax may pick the new charge up automatically. Membership buys Oak Bluffs a 25% subsidy on qualifying wastewater work, which was the trade the town made. Barnstable County next door has been paying the same excise since 2019, and our Cape Cod short-term rental guide covers how it behaves there.

The community impact fee is the layer I'd watch next. § 3D lets a town that has already adopted the local option excise add up to 3% more on "professionally managed" units. That means an operator's second or later unit in the same town, outside their own home, and at least 35% of what it raises has to go to affordable housing or local infrastructure. Tisbury put a version of that to voters in 2026. I couldn't confirm from a primary source which Vineyard towns, if any, currently levy it, so ask before you quote a guest a tax-inclusive price.

Whoever collects the rent files the return, and all the layers land on a single monthly filing through MassTaxConnect, made either by you or by the platform that took the money. Airbnb states that it collects and pays over Massachusetts occupancy taxes on the bookings it handles, though that relief covers collection rather than registration, so you still register every property yourself. I wasn't able to verify Vrbo's collection on a primary source, so if you list there, confirm it directly rather than assuming parity.

On the income side, your rental profit is ordinary taxable income, and the usual deductions apply: mortgage interest, insurance, utilities, cleaning, repairs, platform fees, the $400 registration and depreciation on the building.

Two Vineyard wrinkles are worth knowing before you build a spreadsheet around that. Because West Tisbury asks for 30 days a year of personal occupancy and Tisbury caps you at 75 rental nights, a good many island owners land squarely in mixed personal and rental use, where every expense gets split by days rather than claimed whole. Then there's the small-scale exemption: an owner renting 14 days or fewer in a year can elect out of collecting the excise, although they still have to register with DOR and file that election by January 15. A tax professional who knows Massachusetts lodging rules will earn their fee on this one.

Massachusetts Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those tax layers are only part of what the Commonwealth asks of you, and the rest applies whether your town has a bylaw or not. Massachusetts doesn't preempt local short-term rental regulation, which is exactly why the Vineyard looks the way it does; Chapter 337 of the Acts of 2018 built the state tax and registration system and then handed towns broad power to layer on their own.

Every operator has to register with DOR under G.L. c. 62C, § 67, through MassTaxConnect, by adding a Room Occupancy Consolidated account. You then get a Certificate of Registration for each property, which you post inside the house and hand the number of to any platform or agent handling your bookings. There's no stated fee and no state licence beyond that certificate, although registration is required even if you rent a handful of nights a year. Platforms and agents register once and have to confirm your certificate before they collect rent.

Then there's insurance, which is the requirement island owners most often discover late. Chapter 337 wrote $1,000,000 of liability cover per short-term rental into G.L. c. 175, § 4F, unless the platform maintains equal or greater coverage, and it also obliges you to tell your existing homeowners' or renters' insurer before you offer the property short-term. Mass.gov's short-term rental insurance guidance is blunt about the consequence of skipping that call: an insurer may exclude short-term rental claims, or cancel the policy outright, if it wasn't notified.

The building code changed under everyone's feet, though, and this is the statewide rule with the sharpest teeth on the Vineyard. Under the 10th edition of 780 CMR, state guidance for building officials confirms that a house you don't mainly live in, rented short-term, now needs an annual inspection and certificate, while an owner-occupied home run as a short-term rental lodging house needs one at least every five years.

Two details there decide whether it costs you anything. You have to request the inspection before your current certificate expires, since nobody sends a reminder, and each municipality sets its own fee. Because most Vineyard rental houses are second homes, that annual certificate is the rule touching the largest number of island owners, whatever their town has or hasn't voted for. Our Massachusetts statewide short-term rental guide works through how the state layer applies elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

Does Martha’s Vineyard Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

That building code requirement makes a useful test of enforcement, and the honest answer is that the Vineyard is failing it almost everywhere. In July 2026 the Vineyard Gazette reported that West Tisbury is the only island town regularly inspecting short-term rentals at all, with Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, Aquinnah and Chilmark not doing them despite the state requirement. Oak Bluffs building commissioner Adam Petkus put a number on why, though, telling the paper that doing it comprehensively would cost "conservatively... half a million dollars of added employee cost."

West Tisbury is the exception, and it's a serious one. The town had taken in around 100 registration applications by mid-2026 and was running joint building, health and fire inspections at two or three a week. And what they find is mundane rather than exotic: expired smoke alarms are the most common failure, building inspector Joe Tierney told the paper, though one house did turn up an unpermitted basement bedroom with no egress window.

So don't wait for the inspector to find your detectors. Replace anything past its date stamp before you book the visit.

Elsewhere, thin enforcement isn't the same as no exposure, and I'd be careful about reading it as permission. Tisbury has now hired a full-time inspector and its administration has said it's working on short-term rental compliance, so its 75-night cap and registration requirement are about to get real.

A 2024 study of the Tisbury market, reported by the Vineyard Gazette, found 726 units registered since 2019, growth of 138%, with 14% of listings unregistered and roughly $181,000 in tax going uncollected. That's the sort of number that funds an enforcement hire rather than getting forgiven. And in the towns with no bylaw, the Ward decision still sits there as an invitation for one aggrieved neighbour to litigate.

The tax side gets enforced quietly and continuously, whatever your town does. Platforms report what they collect, DOR knows what a valid certificate number should look like, and the Gazette's tally put the six towns' combined short-term rental tax at $9.3 million in fiscal 2024, up from $8.8 million the year before. That money now sits in six budgets, which tends to concentrate official attention rather than scatter it.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Martha’s Vineyard

Given how much of that depends on your address, the order below matters more than it looks, because the first two steps tell you whether the rest is worth your time.

1. Confirm which town you're in, and read that town's bylaw before anything else. Postal addresses mislead here. Vineyard Haven is in Tisbury, and West Tisbury is a separate town with entirely separate rules.
2. Check the deal-breakers for your town. In West Tisbury that means the single-property limit and the 30 days a year you'll have to spend in the house. In Tisbury it means whether a 75-night season pays for the property at all.
3. Register with the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Add a Room Occupancy Consolidated account in MassTaxConnect and get a Certificate of Registration for each property, since your town will ask for a copy of it.
4. Sort your insurance and tell your existing insurer. You need $1,000,000 of liability cover per unit, and notifying your homeowners' insurer protects the policy you already have.
5. Book the state building inspection if the house isn't where you mainly live. Ask your town's building department for the certificate of inspection and its fee, and remember that requesting it is your job, not the town's.
6. Apply for town registration where one exists, at least 30 days before your first rental period, with the DOR certificate, the insurance certificate, map and lot, and your local manager's details attached.
7. Pass the town inspection and note the two numbers it gives you, maximum occupancy and maximum vehicles. Both are enforceable, and exceeding either is a separate daily violation.
8. Put the posting up and email it to guests, then set a calendar reminder for the December 31 expiry rather than the anniversary of your certificate.
9. Decide how tax gets collected before your first booking, confirming what your platform remits and what you'll be filing monthly yourself.

Who to Contact in Martha’s Vineyard about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever step you get stuck on, the office you want is a town office rather than a county one, so start with your own town hall. These are the departments that actually own short-term rental questions on the island.

West Tisbury, where registration is handled

The West Tisbury Building Department runs short-term rental registration and the inspections behind it, with Joseph K. Tierney Jr. as inspector of buildings.

• Address: 1059 State Road, 1st Floor, West Tisbury, MA 02575 (PO Box 278)
• Phone: 508-696-0113
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

The town's Short-Term Rental Committee handles policy questions rather than applications, and its staff contact is Sarah Toste on 508-696-0105 or [email protected]. Town Hall's general line is 508-696-0100, open Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Tisbury, for the 75-night cap and registration

The Tisbury Select Board office is the right first call, with Joseph LaCivita as town administrator.

• Address: 115 High Point Lane, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568 (PO Box 1239)
• Phone: 508-696-4200, or 508-696-4204 for the town administrator
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

For inspection and sanitary code questions, the Tisbury Board of Health sits at 66 High Point Lane, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568 (PO Box 666) on 508-696-4290, Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Oak Bluffs, for the bylaw in progress and the new water fund excise

The Oak Bluffs Building Department issues certificates of inspection and is where the building commissioner, Adam Petkus, sits.

• Address: 56 School Street, Oak Bluffs, MA 02557 (PO Box 1327)
• Phone: 508-693-3554, ext. 123
• Email: [email protected], or [email protected] for the commissioner
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., closed 12:00 to 1:00

The town's short-term rental page and its select board agendas carry the ad hoc committee's drafts as they move toward the December town meeting.

Edgartown, for the study and the 6% local excise

The Edgartown Selectboard office handles town meeting articles and the local room occupancy excise.

• Address: 70 Main Street, Edgartown, MA 02539 (PO Box 5158)
• Phone: 508-627-6180 (town hall main line 508-627-6100)
• Fax: 508-627-6183

Chilmark, Aquinnah and the county

I'd normally list contacts for all six towns, and here I can only stand behind four. Both the Chilmark and Aquinnah municipal websites refused every automated request during this research, and I couldn't reach an archived copy either, so any phone number I printed for those two would be secondhand. Call Dukes County on 508-696-3840 instead and ask to be pointed at the right town office, or work from the town listings on the county's site.

State tax registration isn't a town matter at all, though. Operator registration, the monthly return and the Certificate of Registration all run through DOR's MassTaxConnect portal, while correspondence with its Rulings and Regulations Bureau goes to PO Box 9566, Boston, MA 02114-9566.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Martha’s Vineyard on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Since the towns have been arguing this out in public for two years, the island's own record tells you more than a forum thread would, and I should say plainly that both Reddit and BiggerPockets blocked automated access during this research, so I'm not going to characterise threads I couldn't read. What I can report is what islanders did when they voted, which is a stronger signal anyway.

• Owners are not winning the votes. Tisbury's select board argued that the 75-night cap was costing the town revenue, and voters rejected removal at the April 2026 town meeting. West Tisbury adopted its registration, occupancy and inspection regime and has kept it. Two towns tabled bylaws in 2026, though neither tabling was a vote for looser rules; Chilmark's came from its own planning board chair over drafting concerns, and Oak Bluffs' committee went straight back to work on a replacement.
• Housing is the argument that keeps landing. A 2024 island assessment by the Martha's Vineyard Commission, as reported by the Vineyard Gazette, counted roughly 4,000 short-term rentals against roughly 1,600 year-round rental units, and every bylaw drafted since has carried a version of the same purpose: keep commercial buyers from converting year-round housing.
• The revenue argument keeps losing. It's not that islanders dispute the money. The six towns' $9.3 million in fiscal 2024 tax receipts is uncontested. Voters keep deciding they'd rather have the housing.
• Professional operators and family owners get treated differently, deliberately. West Tisbury permits LLC and trust ownership only where every member is a natural person, Oak Bluffs' committee spent an August meeting on exactly that line, and the state's community impact fee exists to charge second-and-later units more. Watch out for that distinction if you're structuring a purchase, because "one house, owned by people" is the shape the island keeps voting to protect.

My read is that the Vineyard is heading toward island-wide registration over the next two or three years, town by town rather than all at once, and that caps will stay rare because Tisbury's is unpopular with the officials who have to administer it. For the revenue side of that picture, the Massachusetts market rankings show where the state's short-term rental demand actually sits.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb on Martha's Vineyard in 2026?

Yes, in all six island towns, but the requirements differ. West Tisbury requires town registration costing $400, a joint building, health and fire inspection, a two-night minimum stay, one short-term rental property per owner and 30 days of owner or family occupancy a year. Tisbury requires registration and caps every house at 75 nights a calendar year. Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, Chilmark and Aquinnah have no local registration yet. Every operator, in every town, must register with the Massachusetts Department of Revenue.

How much does short-term rental registration cost on Martha's Vineyard?

West Tisbury charges a non-refundable $400, which covers the building, board of health and fire inspections, and the registration runs for two years, expiring on December 31 of its expiry year. Tisbury requires registration under its own short-term rental regulations, but the town page carrying the fee was unreachable, so confirm the amount with the select board. The other four towns charge nothing because they have no local registration.

What taxes do you pay on a Martha's Vineyard short-term rental?

A state room occupancy excise of 5.7% applies to every stay of 31 days or fewer, plus a local option excise of up to 6% set by each town. Edgartown's has been 6% since January 1, 2025, giving an 11.7% total there. From October 1, 2026 an extra 2.75% Cape Cod and Islands Water Protection Fund excise applies in Oak Bluffs. A community impact fee of up to 3% is available to towns for professionally managed units. Airbnb collects and remits the Massachusetts layers on bookings it handles.

Does Martha's Vineyard cap how many nights you can rent?

Only Tisbury does. Its zoning bylaw §07.18, adopted in December 2024, bars any house from being rented short-term for more than 75 nights in a calendar year, and voters rejected the select board's attempt to delete that cap in April 2026. No other Vineyard town has a night cap. West Tisbury limits owners to one short-term rental property instead, and requires the owner or immediate family to live there 30 days a year.

Do you need a building inspection for a Martha's Vineyard short-term rental?

Usually yes, under state law rather than town law. The 10th edition of the Massachusetts building code requires an annual inspection and certificate for a one- or two-family house rented short-term that isn't primarily owner-occupied, which describes most Vineyard rental houses. Requesting it before the current certificate expires is the owner's job, and the town sets the fee. West Tisbury adds its own joint inspection at registration and renewal.

Regulation on an island tends to arrive late and then arrive all at once, because pressure builds for years before anyone writes it down. So wherever you're buying, the useful question isn't what the rules say today. It's which way the last three town votes went.

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