Nantucket, Massachusetts Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place on Nantucket, Massachusetts and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and after four years of the island arguing about it, that's finally a clean answer rather than a hedge. At the Special Town Meeting of November 4, 2025, voters amended the zoning bylaw to allow short-term rentals as a principal use by right in every zoning district except the Commercial Industrial district, and they did it by a counted vote of 1,045 to 421. The Massachusetts Attorney General approved the amendment on May 18, 2026, which is the step that made it stick.

The catch, and there is one, is that zoning was never the part that would fine you. Nantucket has run a registration system through its Board of Health since January 2023, and it has teeth: a $250 certificate per dwelling unit, renewed every year by November 1, a million dollars of liability cover, somebody on the island who can be at the property within two hours, quarterly reports, and a bylaw that shuts corporations and real estate investment trusts out altogether. Nantucket is also both a town and its own county, so at least there's no county layer underneath to worry about.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in 2026: what the zoning now says and how it got there, what registration costs and how long it lasts, the three charges that land on every booking, how hard the town pushes on enforcement, and who to call when the application form makes no sense. Every figure below comes from the town's own bylaws and pages or from the Commonwealth's, checked in July 2026, and where something is still moving I've said so. Before you model any of it, run the property through BNBCalc first, because Nantucket's carrying costs are unlike anywhere else in Massachusetts.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Nantucket, Massachusetts?

Before the carrying costs, though, come the rules, and three documents do almost all of that work. Once you see how they stack, the island's long argument makes more sense.

The top layer is the zoning bylaw, Chapter 139, and it's the one that changed. Article 1 at the November 4, 2025 Special Town Meeting, a citizen petition filed by Brian Borgeson and others, added definitions of Short-Term Rental and Long-Term Rental to § 139-2, rewrote "Use, Principal" so that it expressly includes renting or leasing a dwelling unit, and put both uses into the Use Chart at § 139-7A with a "Y" in every district column except Commercial Industrial, where the answer is "N". A footnote carries the sting: a dwelling unit may be used as a short-term rental principal use only if it complies with all provisions of Chapters 123 and 338 of the Town Code, and "All other Short-Term Rentals are expressly prohibited."

The middle layer is Chapter 123, the general bylaw Town Meeting adopted in May 2022 and that took effect on January 1, 2023. It's short, and its definition is the part to read twice. A short-term rental is a dwelling unit or part of one, not a transient residential facility, where at least one room is rented and all accommodations are booked in advance, though rental periods with a change in occupancy in excess of 31 calendar days fall outside it, as does the rental of a property for a total of 14 days or less in any calendar year. Keep in mind that those 14 days are cumulative across the year rather than per booking, so two long weekends and a week in August will put you over.

The bottom layer is Chapter 338, the Board of Health regulations that the Board and the Select Board jointly adopted on September 21, 2022 to carry Chapter 123 into practice, and that's where the fee, the occupancy limit and most of the things that get people cited all live.

Now, how did the island end up needing a town-meeting vote to confirm something people had been doing since the whaling era? The short version is a housekeeping error and a lawsuit. The petition's own findings say the zoning bylaw expressly recognised renting and leasing as a lawful principal use before 2015, when the language was dropped in a routine cleanup article, and nobody noticed for years. Then in Ward v. Town of Nantucket, 24 Misc. 000543, Land Court Judge Michael Vhay ruled on June 6, 2025 that the bylaw as written didn't permit rentals shorter than 31 days of primary dwellings in the Residential Old Historic district, other than the rental of rooms inside an owner-occupied unit, and the town's own page notes that the reasoning might extend to other residential districts too. So Article 1 was the answer to that ruling, and the vote was the fifth attempt at codifying short-term rentals in as many years.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Nantucket

Since Article 1 restored the use rather than creating a licence lottery, there's no cap on registrations, no minimum stay, and no limit on how many nights a year you rent. That last point deserves a moment, because the alternative on the same ballot would've changed it completely. Article 2, sponsored by the Planning Board, would've capped a unit at 49 rental days between June 15 and August 31 and 70 days in any calendar year, imposed a seven-day minimum stay across the summer, and allowed only seven changes of occupancy in that window. It didn't carry. The Planning Board had voted 3 to 2 to take no action on Article 1, saying it "was not restrictive enough and did not include adequate limitations," while the Finance Committee recommended adoption as written. Voters sided with the Finance Committee, and by a wide margin.

Where the door does close is on who owns the property. Chapter 123 bars short-term rentals in dwelling units owned by a corporation, a partnership, a real estate investment trust or a similar entity, a prohibition the town's own Special Town Meeting warrant lists among the four short-term rental articles voters passed between 2022 and 2024. An LLC or an S corporation is treated differently, though not generously, and the Board of Health tightened that carve-out in 2026. Under the amendment to Chapter 338 published by the town, an LLC or an S corporation can apply only if all of its members, partners, beneficiaries or shareholders are natural persons. Then comes the tighter half. None of those people may serve as "an officer or director of a Corporation, a member of a Partnership, or an officer or investor in a Real Estate Investment Trust" that owns or operates a Nantucket short-term rental, whether directly or indirectly. So the applicant carries the burden of proving it, by affidavit signed under the pains and penalties of perjury, and anyone already holding a certificate had 30 days from the regulation's effective date to document compliance or lose it.

Read plainly, that shuts out the operator model that has consolidated inventory on the mainland. A single-purpose LLC owned by you and your spouse is fine, whereas the same LLC stops being fine if one of you also sits on the board of another entity renting a house two streets over. Unfortunately for anyone hoping to assemble a small Nantucket portfolio under a management brand, the island has spent four years writing rules aimed at exactly that, and the 2026 amendment closed the LLC workaround that had been used to get around the 2024 vote.

For everyone else, the shape of a Nantucket short-term rental is what it has always been: an owner, one house or one unit, a local caretaker, and a summer season. The economics are unusual too, since the island prohibited new hotels in the Residential Old Historic district back in 1980 and the Commonwealth's Affordable Homes Act of 2024 designated Nantucket a Seasonal Community. Both facts sit in the petition's findings, and both matter when you compare this market with Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard, where the same state framework produces quite different local answers.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Nantucket

Assuming your ownership structure survives that, the certificate is the next hurdle, and the Board of Health administers it rather than a building or zoning office. Under § 123-3 of the Town Code, nobody may operate a short-term rental without first obtaining a certificate of registration, and the application has to carry your Massachusetts Department of Revenue identification number, or proof of exemption, along with a copy of the DOR certificate itself. So the state registration comes first, always, because you can't complete the town's form without it.

The money and the calendar are set by Chapter 338 of the town regulations, which fixes an annual fee of $250 per unit. Each dwelling unit needs its own certificate and its own fee, as the town's FAQ spells out, even where two sit on the same lot. Certificates run for one year, renewal is at the town's discretion and conditional on your having complied during the preceding year, and the renewal application with the fee is due no later than November 1. In practice the town opens the GovOS portal on September 1 and asks you to be done by October 31, so the season you're registering for is always the one after the deadline you're meeting.

Two structural details catch people out. First, the certificate is issued to the operator and doesn't run with the land, so a sale ends it and the new owner has to file a fresh application before rentals resume. Do check that before you close on a house advertised as a proven rental, because you're buying the building and not the permission. Second, § 123-3 requires an attestation that you're current on town taxes, water and sewer, and that the property carries no outstanding building, sanitary, zoning or fire code violations, abatement orders or stop-work orders, so an unresolved septic order is enough to stall the whole thing.

Beyond the form, the Board of Health needs three things before it grants anything: a complete application with the fee paid, contact details for whoever will handle problems at the property within two hours' notice, and a certificate of insurance. Chapter 338 sets that insurance floor at $1 million per claim, though it accepts cover carried by a hosting platform where the platform maintains equal or greater limits. Be aware that a rental agency isn't a platform for this purpose, since the town's FAQ says plainly that agencies don't provide that protection, so if you rent through a broker rather than Airbnb or Vrbo, the policy has to be yours.

Then there are the operating rules, which bind you for as long as the certificate is live. Occupancy is limited to two people per bedroom plus two additional people in the unit, and every advertisement, online or in an agency window, must carry your certificate number and match what you told the town, with the town's FAQ adding that both the Massachusetts and the Nantucket numbers belong in the listing. Parking can't create congestion or a safety problem either, and the Board can refer parking complaints to other town enforcement agents. On top of that you owe a quarterly electronic report covering where each listing is, whether it's a room, an apartment or a whole house, how many nights it was occupied, and your contact details.

Required Documents for Nantucket Short-Term Rentals

Since the fee is charged per unit and an incomplete application can be rejected outright, assemble the file before you open the portal. Chapter 338 § 338-4 lists what has to go with it:

• Ownership information, including the legal form of ownership and whether the unit is professionally managed as defined in G.L. c. 64G, an attestation that everyone with an ownership interest has been told the application was filed, and a statement of whether any deed restriction or covenant limits short-term rental use.
• The property description: address, square footage per the Nantucket Assessor's records, and the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and parking spaces. Remember that the bedroom count is what sets your occupancy cap, so it needs to match the assessor.
• A copy of your current DOR certificate of registration, which you get by adding a Room Occupancy Consolidated account on MassTaxConnect.
• A named local designated person, with address and contact details, available on site 24 hours a day to deal with anything at the property within two hours' notice, including conditions that could endanger occupants under 105 CMR 410.750.
• A certificate of insurance evidencing at least $1 million per claim, unless the platform carries equal or greater cover.
• A compliance attestation covering federal, state and local law, including G.L. c. 64G and the Fair Housing Act, G.L. c. 151B, and confirming you're current on town taxes, water and sewer.
• An affidavit on entity ownership where the applicant is an LLC or an S corporation, sworn under the pains and penalties of perjury, showing every member is a natural person and none is an officer, director, partner or REIT investor in another entity operating a Nantucket short-term rental.

A few things aren't filed with the application but have to exist before your first guest arrives, and they're what an inspector looks for. Exit diagrams go in all bedrooms and on all egresses, while the Noise Bylaw, the Outdoor Lighting Bylaw and waste instructions requiring trash to leave at every turnover or weekly, whichever comes first, get posted centrally. Guests also need the certificate, the maximum number of occupants and vehicles, and your written policy on parties, events and weddings before they book.

Then keep the paperwork, because producing it is a condition of holding the certificate. Operators must keep records for at least three years covering the type of rental, the dates and nights, the guests and the vehicles for every stay, plus the income and evidence that the room occupancy tax reached the Department of Revenue.

Nantucket Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get the certificate and are able to start hosting, there's still the tax stack to deal with, and Nantucket's is at the heavy end for Massachusetts. The town publishes its own fee schedule, effective October 1, 2024, and it's the cleanest statement of what a booking carries.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
State room occupancy excise	5.70%	Massachusetts DOR
Local room occupancy excise	6.00%	Massachusetts DOR, remitted to the town
Community impact fee (professionally managed units)	3.00%	Massachusetts DOR, remitted to the town
Town registration fee	$250 per unit per year	Town of Nantucket

So a normal owner-operated booking carries 11.7% in tax and a professionally managed unit carries 14.7%, and everything in the first three rows is filed and paid to the Commonwealth rather than to Nantucket, which surprises people who assume a local excise is a local payment.

The community impact fee is the row worth understanding, because whether it applies turns on a definition rather than on how you'd describe your own operation. Nantucket adopted it by vote of the November 7, 2023 Special Town Meeting under Article 3, and the town's FAQ says it took effect for rentals after October 1, 2024. It reaches a professionally managed unit, which the Commonwealth defines as one of two or more short-term rental units in the same town with the same operator, where the unit isn't inside a single-family, two-family or three-family dwelling that includes the operator's primary residence. So own one rental house here and the fee doesn't touch you, whereas owning a second makes both of them professionally managed, whether or not anyone is managing them professionally.

What you won't pay here is the Cape Cod and Islands Water Protection Fund excise of 2.75%, and this is where older guidance goes wrong. The Cape Cod Commission lists the fund's 15 member communities, all of them in Barnstable County, and Nantucket's town manager sits on its board only as a non-voting ex-officio member, which isn't membership. So anyone quoting you 14.45% or 17.45% for Nantucket is adding a charge the island doesn't levy.

Underneath those rates sits the state's machinery, and the Department of Revenue's room occupancy guidance sets out the parts that decide your filing life. The 5.7% headline is 5% in statute plus an uncodified 0.7% surtax, and as of July 2026 no excise is due at all where the rent runs under $15 a day. Every operator registers on MassTaxConnect and gets a Certificate of Registration for each property, which has to be posted in the unit and whose number goes to any intermediary you use. Returns are monthly, due on or before the 30th day following the month they cover, and one return carries every layer.

Two wrinkles are worth marking in your calendar. The first is the 14-day exemption: rent a property for 14 days or less in a calendar year and you collect no tax, but you have to claim it per property by January 15 of that year, and if you go over 14 days you owe the tax on those first 14 days as well. The second is who collects. Airbnb states on its Massachusetts tax page that it collects and remits Massachusetts room occupancy tax, with the 5.7% base plus applicable local options, and that hosts must still register with DOR regardless. I couldn't confirm Vrbo's collection on a primary source, so don't assume it. Where a rental agency collects your rent, the agency is the intermediary and files for you, which is why agencies want your DOR certificate number before they'll list you.

Rental income is ordinary income, and the usual deductions apply: the $250 registration fee, the liability policy, cleaning and turnover costs, the caretaker's retainer, ferry and freight on furnishings, mortgage interest, utilities and depreciation. Nantucket's cost base is high enough that the deductible side matters more here than in most markets, so make sure you're tracking the boat and the caretaker with the same discipline you'd apply to a mortgage statement.

Massachusetts Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those state-collected rates are only one part of what the Commonwealth asks of you, and the rest of it applies whether you rent on Nantucket or in Newton.

Massachusetts doesn't preempt local short-term rental rules, because Chapter 337 of the Acts of 2018, the law that built the state's registration and tax system, hands towns broad authority in the other direction, and Section 14 of Chapter 64G is what Nantucket cites at the head of its own bylaw. That statute lets a town cap the number, class or location of local licences and the days per year a unit can be rented, require its own registration, demand proof of no open building, fire, health or zoning violations, charge for inspections, set civil penalties, and publish a public registry. Nantucket has used most of those powers and declined the day cap, which is exactly the choice Article 2 would've reversed.

Registration with the state is mandatory and separate from anything a town asks. Under Section 67 of Chapter 62C, every operator and every intermediary registers with DOR, operators get a certificate per property, and intermediaries confirm that certificate before collecting rent. There's no separate state licence beyond that, and no fee is stated for the certificate.

The insurance rule is the one people miss until a claim goes wrong. Section 4F of Chapter 175 requires every operator to carry at least $1,000,000 in liability insurance per short-term rental unless the hosting platform maintains equal or greater coverage, and to notify your homeowner's or renter's insurer before offering the property short-term. The Commonwealth's own short-term rental insurance guidance warns that an insurer may exclude short-term rental claims, or cancel the policy outright, if you don't tell them. Don't forget that call, because it costs nothing and it's the difference between a covered loss and an uncovered one.

The exemptions run on their own logic. A stay with a change in occupancy beyond 31 days isn't a short-term rental for state tax purposes, rent under $15 a day is untaxed, bed-and-breakfast homes of three rooms or fewer are exempt, and the 14-day exemption sits on top of all of it. Nantucket borrowed the same 31-day and 14-day tests for its own bylaw, which is convenient, because a stay that escapes the state definition escapes the town's too. For the picture beyond this island, our Massachusetts statewide guide covers how the same framework plays out in cities that made harsher choices.

Then there's one bill still moving that might touch you later. S.2736, filed in June 2025 as the Maggie Hubbard rental safety act, would set inspection requirements for buildings occupied as short-term rentals, and it had a hearing in November 2025. As of my last check in July 2026 no further action was recorded, so it isn't law, and a bill in committee is not a rule you plan around.

Does Nantucket Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Yes, and enforcement here is unusual in running through the Board of Health rather than a zoning inspector, which means the people who can turn up at your property are the people who issue your certificate.

The ladder is graduated and it accelerates. Under § 338-9 the Board may, after a public hearing, issue a warning letter for a first offence. After that, § 123-5 sets non-criminal disposition penalties of $100 for a first offence, $200 for a second and $300 for a third and subsequent, and each day or portion of a day counts as a separate offence. That last clause is what turns a small fine into a real one, because a listing that runs a fortnight out of compliance isn't one violation. Sitting above it, § 123-5(D) allows a civil penalty of up to $5,000 for any violation, again with each day treated separately. That adds up fast. Violations can also be prosecuted on complaint in district court.

Losing the certificate is the outcome that ends a business, though. After a notice of violation and a hearing, the Board of Health may suspend a certificate for a period it chooses or revoke it until the violation is cured, and multiple violations can disqualify an operator for up to three years. Watch out for the renewal attestation too, since it asks you to certify that you complied with every town bylaw and regulation the previous year, which turns a noisy summer into a signed statement.

Detection is easier here than in most markets, and that's worth being honest about. Advertisements must display the certificate number, so an unregistered listing identifies itself. Nobody has to go looking. Then the quarterly reports mean the town already holds occupancy data on everyone registered, and on top of that there's a complaint line on 508-221-6998 that asks callers for the address, the date and the details. And an inspection needs no appointment, since operators are subject to inspection by the Board of Health on reasonable notice by consent or administrative warrant, and without notice at all where there's an imminent threat to public health or safety.

One live piece of legal housekeeping deserves a mention rather than a prediction. The Attorney General's decision approving Article 1 closes by reminding the town that under G.L. c. 40, § 32 no bylaw takes effect until the posting and publishing requirements are satisfied. I couldn't find a town notice confirming when that happened, so if you're relying on the zoning change for something consequential, ask Town Counsel or the Town Clerk rather than treating the vote date as the answer. The town also voted in June 2025 to seek appellate review in Ward, and I found no official record of how that appeal ended.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Nantucket

Knowing how the town enforces makes the order of these steps matter, since two are checks you want to fail cheaply rather than expensively.

1. Test your ownership structure first. A corporation, a partnership or a REIT is a dead end. An LLC or an S corporation works only where every member is a natural person and none of them is an officer, director, partner or REIT investor in another entity running a Nantucket short-term rental, because you'll be swearing to that.
2. Clear the property's record. Open building, sanitary, zoning or fire violations, abatement orders and stop-work orders all block a certificate, and so do unpaid town taxes, water and sewer charges.
3. Register with the Commonwealth. Add a Room Occupancy Consolidated account on MassTaxConnect, get your Certificate of Registration for that property, and decide by January 15 whether you're claiming the 14-day exemption.
4. Buy the insurance and tell your existing insurer. At least $1 million per claim, or platform cover of equal or greater limits, plus the notification your homeowner's policy requires.
5. Line up your local designated person, someone on the island who's reachable around the clock and can be at the house within two hours. That one is a genuine constraint here rather than a formality.
6. Apply through the GovOS portal and pay the $250, one certificate and one fee for each dwelling unit, with the assessor's square footage and your bedroom, bathroom and parking counts to hand.
7. Set the property up before the first booking: exit diagrams in every bedroom and on every egress, the noise and lighting bylaws and the trash instructions posted centrally, the certificate displayed.
8. Write the listing to match the file. Both certificate numbers in every advertisement, occupancy no higher than two per bedroom plus two, and a stated policy on parties, events and weddings.
9. Diarise the recurring duties: quarterly reports to the Board of Health, monthly returns to DOR by the 30th of the following month, three years of stay records, and renewal between September 1 and October 31 every year.

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

Most of that list runs through one department, so the contacts are mercifully short compared with the paperwork.

Registration, renewals, complaints and the rules themselves

The Nantucket Health Department, part of Health and Human Services, issues and renews every certificate and enforces both Chapter 123 and Chapter 338.

• Address: 131 Pleasant Street, 1st Floor, Nantucket, MA 02554
• Phone: 508-228-7200
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
• Short-Term Rental Liaison: Lauri Elliott, [email protected], 508-221-6998

That direct line doubles as the town's complaint number, which cuts both ways: it's how you report a problem next door, and it's how a neighbour reports you, giving the address, the date and the details.

The application portal

Registrations and renewals are filed through GovOS at nantucket-ma.munirevs.com, using your Nantucket account number, and portal support runs through [email protected] or 888-751-1911. Anything about the rules themselves belongs with the Health Department rather than the vendor.

Zoning, the bylaw and town records

General town business, including the Town Clerk, sits at 16 Broad Street, Nantucket, MA 02554, on 508-228-7200. Questions about whether a particular structure or lot is what you think it is belong with the Planning and Land Use Services building department rather than with the Board of Health, while the Town Clerk is who to ask about when a bylaw amendment was posted and published.

State tax and registration

Room occupancy registration, monthly returns and the 14-day exemption belong to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue through MassTaxConnect rather than to the town, and the DOR room occupancy pages carry the current rates, the registration route and the deadlines.

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

Sentiment on Nantucket has been shaped by that complaint line and by four years of ballots, and it splits along lines you don't see in an ordinary market. What follows is my read of the public record rather than any kind of survey, and I should say plainly that I've drawn it from town documents, the Attorney General's decision and island reporting rather than from Reddit, which blocks automated access and whose terms don't permit the use we'd need.

• Relief is the dominant note among owners, and it's recent. Four zoning votes failed first, and the tallies in the Attorney General's decision show how close the island stayed: 476 to 293 against in May 2024, 416 to 472 in September 2024, 468 to 321 in May 2025. Then Article 1 carried 1,045 to 421, and owners who'd spent three summers unsure whether a neighbour could shut them down read that as the argument ending.
• The worry has shifted from legality to renewal. With the use settled, the risk people talk about now is administrative: an attestation signed after a summer that went badly, a certificate that doesn't transfer on sale, a quarterly report nobody filed. Those are the failure modes the bylaw punishes.
• Investor interest keeps colliding with the ownership rule. Nantucket Current reported in December 2025 that a mainland operator was running six island rentals through LLCs registered to an individual, which is the gap the 2026 Board of Health amendment closes. An entity structure that worked in another state should be expected to fail here.
• The housing argument hasn't gone anywhere. Article 2's supporters wanted day caps because year-round housing is scarce, and the Planning Board said on the record that Article 1 lacked adequate limitations. My guess is that this returns to Town Meeting in some form, since four years of votes suggest nobody here treats one of them as final.

If you're weighing the island against the rest of the state now that the rules are clear, the Massachusetts market rankings are the place to see how Nantucket's nightly rates and occupancy sit against mainland alternatives before you commit to a $250-a-year certificate and a caretaker on retainer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Nantucket in 2026?

Yes. Voters made short-term rentals a principal use permitted by right in every Nantucket zoning district except Commercial Industrial at the Special Town Meeting of November 4, 2025, by a vote of 1,045 to 421, and the Massachusetts Attorney General approved the amendment on May 18, 2026. You still need a certificate of registration from the Nantucket Board of Health and a registration with the Massachusetts Department of Revenue before you take a booking.

How much does a Nantucket short-term rental registration cost?

The town charges $250 a year per dwelling unit, set by Chapter 338 of the Nantucket town regulations. Two units on the same lot need two certificates and two fees. Certificates run for one year and must be renewed by November 1, with the town's portal open for renewals from September 1 to October 31. The certificate belongs to the operator and does not transfer with the property when it sells.

What taxes do you pay on a Nantucket short-term rental?

A booking carries 11.7% in total: a 5.7% state room occupancy excise plus Nantucket's 6% local excise. A professionally managed unit, meaning one of two or more units in the town with the same operator and not inside the operator's owner-occupied home, carries a further 3% community impact fee, for 14.7%. All of it is filed monthly to the Department of Revenue, and Nantucket doesn't charge the Cape Cod and Islands Water Protection Fund excise.

Can an LLC or a company own a short-term rental on Nantucket?

Corporations, partnerships and real estate investment trusts cannot. An LLC or an S corporation can, but only if every member, partner, beneficiary or shareholder is a natural person, and none of them serves as an officer or director of a corporation, a member of a partnership, or an officer or investor in a REIT that owns or operates another Nantucket short-term rental. The applicant proves it by affidavit signed under the pains and penalties of perjury.

How many guests can stay in a Nantucket short-term rental?

Occupancy is capped at two people per bedroom plus two additional people in the unit, so a three-bedroom house tops out at eight. The bedroom count comes from the Nantucket Assessor's records you file with the application, not from how many beds you can fit, and your listing has to state the maximum occupants and vehicles and match the town's file.

Rules that arrive by referendum tend to leave the same way, and a place that has asked the same question five times in five years is telling you something about how settled the answer is. Wherever you end up buying, read the renewal terms before the purchase terms. Permission is usually easier to lose than property.

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