Narragansett, Rhode Island Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Narragansett, Rhode Island and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and the seven-night minimum you've probably read about isn't being enforced against anyone. A Superior Court judge restrained the town's short-term rental ordinance in October 2024, and it has stayed restrained ever since, so what actually binds you here in Washington County, on the Rhode Island coast between Point Judith and the Pettaquamscutt River, is a $120 town rental registration and a $25 state one.

The catch is that nothing was repealed. Chapter 1123 still sits in the town code word for word as adopted, seven-night minimum and all, and through the back half of 2025 the town council was working out how to bring the same rules back inside the zoning ordinance instead. So you're operating in a window rather than under a settled rule, and that's a genuinely different thing to underwrite a purchase against.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly in 2026: what's enforceable today, what the blocked ordinance would demand of you if it ever revives, the three layers of tax riding on every booking, how hard the town pushes on the rules it can still enforce, and who to call when something doesn't add up. Every figure below comes from Narragansett's or Rhode Island's own pages, checked in July 2026, and where something is still moving I've said so. Before you commit to a Narragansett purchase on summer nightly rates, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Narragansett, Rhode Island?

Two articles of the town code do all the work here, and telling them apart is most of the battle, because one of them is live and the other one isn't.

The live one is the old one. Article XVI of Chapter 14, "Rental Dwellings", says at Section 14-518 that no rental dwelling may be let, leased or occupied by a paying tenant "unless and until the record owner has registered such property with the building inspector." That applies whether you rent by the week in July or by the academic year to a University of Rhode Island student. The registration itself runs 1 September to 31 August, and the filing deadline is 31 August. Section 14-521 sets the fee at $120 per rental unit, plus a $300 late fee if you miss the date.

The dormant one is Article XVII, "Short-term Rentals", added by Chapter 1123, which the town council adopted on 6 May 2024 to take effect on 1 September 2024. It defines a short-term rental as occupation of a dwelling unit "for a period of less than thirty (30) consecutive nights," and then layers a separate town permit on top of the registration you already owe. Three provisions in it are the ones people argue about:

• A seven-night floor. Section 14-543(b)(2) says a short-term rental "shall be for a period of more than six (6) consecutive nights," and that rentals of fewer than seven nights are prohibited outright. No weekend bookings, in a beach town whose whole demand curve is weekends.
• A shrinking permit cap. Section 14-545 hands the town council the power to set a hard ceiling on permits, then writes the first three years in: 1,100 for the permit year beginning September 2024, 1,000 for September 2025, and 900 for September 2026. Applicants past the ceiling go on a first-come waiting list.
• A ban on the events business. Section 14-549(d)(2) prohibits weddings, banquets, bachelor and bachelorette parties and corporate events as part of a short-term rental use, and bars you from advertising the house for them.

Then a group of landlords and property managers called Narragansett 2100 sued, and the ordinance never got off the ground. In Narragansett 2100, Inc. et al. v. Town of Narragansett et al., No. WC-2024-0372, the Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction on 2 October 2024, blocking implementation. The reasoning was preemption, since a blanket ban on advertising rentals under seven nights runs into Rhode Island General Laws § 42-63.1-14(a), which says a town "shall not prohibit the owner from offering the unit for tourist or transient use through such hosting platform." That account comes from Partridge Snow & Hahn's April 2025 summary of the Rhode Island short-term rental litigation, since no court-published copy of the order was reachable when I looked.

A few things sit outside all of this. Lodging establishments already licensed under other articles of Chapter 14, meaning hotels, motels, boardinghouses, bed and breakfasts, tourist camps and trailer parking sites, are exempt from the short-term rental article entirely under Section 14-543(c). Stays of thirty consecutive nights or more aren't short-term rentals under the definition at all, though do remember they still need the ordinary rental registration. And zoning, so far, has nothing to say on the subject: the zoning definitions in Appendix A of the code published in February 2026 contain no short-term rental use or definition anywhere.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Narragansett

That absence in the zoning code matters more than it looks, because zoning is exactly where the town wants to put these rules next. So the honest way to describe Narragansett in 2026 is a market that's open on paper, cheap to enter, and carrying a policy risk that no spreadsheet handles well.

What you owe today is short. Register the unit with the state, register it with the town, collect the lodging tax or let your platform collect it, and you're compliant. That's it. The town's rental registration page confirms as much: it lists one standard registration form covering academic, academic plus summer, summer only, yearly and "Short-Term (less than 30 days)" occupancy, all at the same $120 per unit. Narragansett is not currently running a separate short-term rental permit system, and the town said why back on 31 January 2025, when it postponed short-term and summer-only registration because of the restraining order and told owners to register under Sections 14-518 to 14-520 instead.

What you're carrying is the risk that this reverses. The Narragansett Times reported on 19 December 2025 that the ordinance had been unenforceable for more than a year and that the council had decided not to fight the stay. Town Solicitor James Callaghan told them the fix was to re-enact the substance as zoning instead, since "the better path would be to enact some version of this as a zoning ordinance," and Council President Alex Menzies then said he had "high confidence that we can get there."

So I'd treat that as a live threat to any model built on three-night summer bookings, because a zoning version would sit on much firmer legal ground than the business-ordinance version that got enjoined.

If the numbers only work at nightly rates, be aware of what the revived ordinance would do to them. The 900-permit ceiling for the year beginning September 2026 is written into the code today, and under Section 14-546(f) Narragansett residents get an exclusive fourteen-day window at the start of the annual application period for their own principal residence, which pushes every out-of-town owner into the back half of a capped queue.

Then occupancy would cap at two people per bedroom under Section 14-547, but only where the bedroom runs at least 70 square feet for one occupant or 120 for two, where the septic system is rated for that many bedrooms, and where you have one dedicated on-site parking space per bedroom with a minimum of two. Bedrooms that fail any of those tests get struck from the count, which the town's own question-and-answer sheet puts plainly: "the number of bedrooms permitted will be adjusted."

The obvious hedge is the market Narragansett was built around anyway. Stays of thirty nights or more fall outside the short-term rental definition, and a URI academic-year let is the standard version of that trade here, subject to the state household rule the town circulated capping unrelated occupants at one per bedroom and five per dwelling. It pays less per night, but it prices out most of the volatility. Owners weighing one coastal town against another will want the Jamestown regulation guide and the Tiverton regulation guide beside this one, since neither town is under an injunction.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Narragansett

Assuming you're comfortable with that risk and are able to move ahead, the licensing you'll do this year is still the light version, and there are only two pieces to it.

The state piece comes first in logic, if not in time. Every unit offered for thirty nights or fewer through a hosting platform has to be registered with the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation under § 42-63.1-14(b), and the implementing regulation 230-RICR-30-20-4 sets the terms: $25 to register, $25 to renew, one year from issuance, one registration per rental unit. Your listing has to display the registration number and the expiration date. Narragansett's own ordinance points at this too, since Section 14-543(a) conditions any local short-term rental on "registration with the State of Rhode Island, as per Rhode Island General Laws § 42-63.1-14."

The town piece is the $120 rental registration under Section 14-518, filed with the building inspector, valid 1 September through 31 August, renewed by 31 August each year. Miss it and Section 14-521 adds a $300 late fee, the town charges $250 for failing to register at all, and Section 14-520 sets a minimum mandatory fine of $500 for violating the article, which the municipal court can stack additional costs on top of. Make sure you file before the deadline rather than after your first tenant moves in, because the ordinance bars occupancy until the property is registered, not until the fine is paid.

Now, what would licensing look like if Chapter 1123 came back? Considerably heavier, and the fee table in Section 14-553 is the part most owners react to first, since it charges non-residents double at every line. These are the rates as of July 2026, unchanged since adoption.

Charge	Narragansett resident	Non-resident
Short-term rental permit (annual)	$375	$750
Short-term rental permit application	$50	$100
Re-inspection fee	$375	$375
Re-schedule inspection fee	$100	$100

So the first-year cost of a permit is $425 for an owner living in town and $850 for everyone else, on top of the $120 registration and the $25 state fee. Every permit expires on 31 August whenever it was issued, and Section 14-548(c) is blunt that it "does not renew," so you'd reapply from scratch each year. It can't be transferred, assigned or loaned, it dies automatically on the sale of the house, and it gets refused outright where you have unresolved code compliance issues, past due property taxes on any dwelling you own in Narragansett, or a town lien on the property.

Getting one would also mean letting people in. Section 14-544(b) schedules an inspection by both the Building Official and the Fire Marshal before any permit issues, the Building Official writes the approved maximum occupancy onto the permit itself, and any deficiency has to be fixed before the house can be used again. A third-party inspector books the visit, per the town's Q&A sheet, and you or your representative must be on site for it.

Two ongoing duties would come with the permit as well, and the second is much the harder one to arrange from out of state. First, you'd carry general liability insurance for short-term rental use at a minimum of $1,000,000 combined single limit. Then you'd name a Local Representative who is reachable twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, because that person has to answer a complaint about noise, condition or guest conduct within four hours and stop the behavior recurring.

The penalty schedule underneath all that is where casual non-compliance would stop being cheap. Section 14-551 splits violations into minor and major, and the minor ones run $250 for a first offense in a permit year, $500 for a second, and $1,000 for a third, with that third citation itself converting into a major violation. A major violation costs $1,000 and immediate revocation of the permit, and the list of majors is broader than you'd guess: operating without a valid permit or pending application, misrepresenting a material fact on the application, refusing an inspection, hosting while a Building Official or Fire Marshal deficiency is outstanding, or failing to keep the tenant records the ordinance demands.

Then it compounds, because each day a major violation continues counts as a separate violation, and once a permit is revoked Section 14-548(d) bars that dwelling from holding another one for twelve months.

Required Documents for Narragansett Short-Term Rentals

Since a revoked permit would cost a full season, it's worth getting the paperwork exactly right at the point where paperwork is still easy, which is where the town sits in 2026.

For the registration you actually file today, Section 14-517 and Section 14-518(b) tell you what the form wants:

• The tax assessor's plat and lot number, plus the address of the rental dwelling or unit.
• The number of rental dwelling units and the number of bedrooms in each.
• The record owner's name and permanent mailing address.
• The maximum number of tenants at one time.
• The period of occupancy, meaning summer, September to June, or other.
• An online affidavit signed by the record owner. Every application goes through the Building Department for review before the town collects any money, so a form with a gap in it stalls at review rather than bouncing back after payment.

Owners who live outside Narragansett file the town's non-resident landlord form alongside it. And do check the format before you assemble anything on paper, because the town announced on 5 August 2026 that from 1 September the Building Department is paperless: "All permits and associated documents will only be accepted digitally via our online permit system."

Two things then have to live inside the house, because Section 14-519 requires the record owner to post, in plain view and in a conspicuous place, a notice of the town ordinances covering the dog leash law, trash disposal, the winter parking ban, parking restrictions, noise and dwelling occupancy limits. A copy of the current lease and the registration form goes on the inside of the primary access door as well, where police, zoning, building or minimum housing officials can read it without asking you for anything.

Under the blocked ordinance the document load roughly triples, so keep the shape of it in mind if you're buying with a five-year hold in view. Section 14-546 would want your contact details and your Local Representative's, the bedroom and on-site parking counts, proof of the $1,000,000 liability cover, and a certification that no private covenant on your deed forbids short-term renting. Then Section 14-549(e) would require a separate written lease for every single booking, with a full copy of the ordinance attached to each one as an exhibit.

The wall of the house would carry a packet too, under Section 14-549(f): the permit, the host and representative contacts, the approved occupancy and parking numbers, local emergency information, the trash, recycling, noise, parking and water rules, the current lease naming that week's renters, and a statement making renters liable for their own violations. And Section 14-550 would put you on the hook for the name, home address and phone number of everyone who signs a rental agreement, held through the rental period and for a year afterward, ready to hand to town officials investigating an offense.

Narragansett Short-Term Rental Taxes

Records are the town's business; the money is Rhode Island's. Narragansett levies no lodging tax of its own, so every cent a guest pays on top of your nightly rate goes to the state, and the structure changed on 1 January 2026 under Article 5 of the state's fiscal 2026 budget.

Charge	Rate	Applies to	Collected by
State sales tax	7%	Every stay of 30 nights or fewer	Host, or the platform as "room reseller"
State hotel tax	5%	Single-room rentals	Same
Whole-home short-term rental tax	5%	An entire dwelling rented in full	Same
Local hotel tax	2%	All stays, room or whole dwelling	State-collected, distributed to Narragansett

No stay pays both fives. Rent a room inside your own house and the 5% hotel tax applies; rent the whole cottage and the 5% whole-home tax applies instead, which lands almost every Narragansett listing in the second row. Either way the combined bill is 14%, up from roughly 13% before the change, and it follows the date of occupancy rather than the date of booking, so a reservation taken in 2025 for a July 2026 stay pays the 2026 rates.

None of that 14% is a local levy you set or file, though the town does see some of it. The 2% local piece is uniform statewide rather than a Narragansett add-on, and a quarter of the whole-home tax comes back to the town, with another quarter to the regional tourism district and half to the state's housing and homelessness account.

In practice most hosts here never touch any of it. Under § 44-18-7.3(b)(4)(i) a hosting platform acting as a room reseller has to register with the tax administrator and collect and remit sales, use and hotel taxes on what it processes, and Airbnb's Rhode Island tax page confirms it collects all four charges above on listing price and cleaning fees for stays of 30 nights or shorter. Rent exclusively through a registered platform and the platform carries the filing. Take a single direct booking, though, and that stay is yours to register, collect on and hand over, which catches out more owners than any other line in this guide.

Tax Deductions and Write-Offs

Federal income tax is a separate conversation from all of that, and the deductions available to a Narragansett owner are the ordinary rental ones. Mortgage interest, property tax, insurance, utilities, cleaning and turnover, supplies, repairs and platform fees all come off, and so does depreciation on the building and its furnishings. The $120 registration, the $25 state fee and, one day, a $375 or $750 permit are deductible business expenses too.

Where it gets fiddly is mixed use, since a beach house you also use yourself in August forces an allocation between personal and rental days, and the fourteen-day rule can put a lightly-rented cottage outside the rental rules altogether. Keep in mind that a returning seven-night minimum would also push your average stay past the thresholds that decide whether the IRS treats you as a rental or as a business, which changes the self-employment tax answer. That one belongs with an accountant rather than a calculator.

Rhode Island Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

The tax answer is uniform across Rhode Island, and so is a surprising amount of the rest of it, which is why the Narragansett fight ended up being about state law rather than town law.

Start with the registration, because it applies to you no matter which town you buy in. Every short-term rental of thirty nights or fewer that's listed on a third-party hosting platform must be registered with the Department of Business Regulation under § 42-63.1-14(b), at $25 a year per unit, with the registration number and expiration date shown on the listing. There's no exemption for owner-occupied or seasonal rentals, per the DBR's short-term rental FAQs, and the penalties escalate with time rather than with severity. You'll pay $250 for the first thirty days out of compliance, $500 from thirty-one to sixty days, and $1,000 once you're past sixty. Local registration sits on top of all that rather than replacing it, which is exactly why Narragansett owners file twice.

Then the preemption, which is the whole reason this town's ordinance is frozen. Section 42-63.1-14(a) says that where a unit is offered through a hosting platform that collects and remits the applicable sales and hotel taxes, a city or town can't prohibit the owner from offering it through that platform or stop the platform enabling the booking. It doesn't hand you a right to operate, mind you, and Rhode Island's courts have drawn that line twice in opposite directions. Narragansett's advertising ban was enjoined in October 2024, whereas the Superior Court upheld Exeter's special-use-permit requirement in Hughes v. Town of Exeter Zoning Board of Review, No. WC-2024-0058, on 6 January 2025, on the ground that Exeter had restricted operating rather than advertising.

So that distinction is the map for what any future Narragansett zoning amendment would try to do, and it's why the town solicitor reached for zoning rather than a redraft of the business ordinance.

One statewide prohibition has no wiggle room at all. Since 25 June 2024, § 45-24-73(b)(8) bars accessory dwelling units anywhere in Rhode Island from tourist or transient use, or from being offered through a hosting platform. If your plan was to build an ADU behind the main house and run that on Airbnb, that plan is dead statewide, injunction or no injunction. Our Rhode Island statewide guide covers the framework in full, and the Providence regulation guide is the useful contrast if you're comparing a coastal seasonal play against a year-round urban one.

Does Narragansett Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Yes and no, and the split follows exactly the line the court drew: the rules the town can still enforce it enforces with real appetite, while the ones sitting under the injunction it can't touch at all.

Take the enforceable side seriously, because it's older and better established than the short-term rental ordinance ever was. Registration isn't voluntary: Section 14-518 forbids occupancy until the owner has registered, Section 14-520 carries a minimum mandatory $500 fine, and the town publishes its list of registered rental properties by street address, which makes an unregistered summer let about as discreet as a bonfire. Narragansett runs its own municipal court as well, and the town warns on the same registration page that "additional municipal court fees may be imposed for non-compliance."

Then there's the neighbor layer, which in a town of this size does more work than any inspector. The Narragansett Police Department publishes monthly nuisance complaint statistics and has done so continuously since 2013, with reports posted through April 2026. A town that has been counting party complaints by the month for thirteen years is not a town that will shrug at a house full of weekend renters, and my read is that those numbers carried a lot of the political case behind Chapter 1123. Watch out for noise and parking in particular, since both are ordinary code matters that survive the injunction untouched.

What can't happen right now is a citation for renting three nights, for renting without a short-term rental permit, or for exceeding a permit cap, because the ordinance creating all three is restrained. That's the whole of the relief, though, so be precise about what it leaves standing: your state registration, your tax duty, the town's rental registration, the zoning household limits and the noise ordinance. And it isn't a ruling on the merits, which is why the town could go back to the drawing board in December 2025 rather than giving up.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Narragansett

Knowing the enforcement picture is what makes the order of these steps matter, since the cheap checks at the top tell you whether the expensive commitments below are worth making.

1. Check the deed and the plat before anything else. Private covenants and condominium documents override the town's permission entirely, and Section 14-546(a)(7)(d) of the blocked ordinance says as much in writing. Confirm too that the unit isn't an accessory dwelling unit, because § 45-24-73(b)(8) bans those from short-term use across Rhode Island with no local workaround.
2. Count your legal bedrooms and your on-site parking spaces honestly. Two people per bedroom, one 10-by-20 foot space per bedroom with a minimum of two, and a septic system rated for the bedroom count are the numbers the town would use if the ordinance revives. Do that arithmetic now, since it decides your revenue ceiling under any future version of the rules.
3. Register with the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation. $25, one year, one registration per unit, and the number plus the expiration date go on every listing you run.
4. File the town rental registration with the Building Inspector. $120 per unit, on or before 31 August, valid 1 September to 31 August. From 1 September 2026 the Building Department takes it digitally only.
5. Post the required notices inside the house. The town ordinance notice in plain view, and the current lease plus the registration form fixed to the inside of the primary access door.
6. Settle the tax question before your first guest. Booking exclusively through a registered platform means it collects and remits the 14%. Any direct booking is yours to handle, so decide deliberately rather than discovering it in April.
7. Line up a local contact anyway. A revived ordinance would want a Local Representative on call around the clock with a four-hour response window, and in a town that logs its noise complaints, having one is sensible before it's mandatory.
8. Watch the town council calendar. The zoning route the town solicitor recommended in December 2025 is the thing most likely to change your business, and a zoning amendment gets a public hearing first.
9. Model the downside honestly. Run the property at a seven-night minimum and at a thirty-night academic let as well as at your base case, and if only the base case works, you're buying the litigation rather than the house. The Providence market is the nearest benchmark for what Rhode Island short-term rental demand and pricing actually look like when you need a reference point outside the summer coast.

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

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, almost everything lives in one building, and the town is small enough that the right extension usually gets you a person rather than a queue.

Rental registration, permits and inspections

The Narragansett Building Inspection Department handles rental registrations, building permits, minimum housing, flood zone requirements and zoning enforcement, so it's the first call for anything touching your registration or an inspection.

• Address: 25 Fifth Avenue, Narragansett, RI 02882
• Rental Registration Clerk: Kayla Donoghue, 401-782-0613, [email protected]
• Building Official's office: 401-782-0619
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Online: the rental registration page links the current form, and the Building Inspection department page carries the e-permitting portal

Zoning, land use and any future ordinance

Questions about what the zoning ordinance permits, and about any amendment moving short-term rental rules into it, belong to the Department of Community Development on 401-782-0632 rather than to the Building Official. Town Hall's main line is 401-789-1044, the fax is 401-783-9637, and the building keeps the same 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. hours.

State registration and state tax

Your $25 registration is administered by the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation, Real Estate and Commercial Licensing. Its short-term rental pages wouldn't load for me when I checked in July 2026, so rather than quote a portal address or a phone number I couldn't verify, I'd point you at the DBR short-term rental FAQs and suggest you confirm the current application link there before paying anything.

Sales tax, the state hotel tax, the whole-home tax and the local hotel tax all belong to the Rhode Island Division of Taxation rather than the town, and Narragansett is not one of the direct-to-city remitters. So if a platform isn't handling your bookings, the state is who you register and file with.

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

Contacts get you the rules; other owners get you the mood, and the mood in Narragansett is unusually polarized even by short-term rental standards. What follows is my read of the recurring themes across reachable public discussion and local reporting rather than any kind of survey, so do weigh it accordingly.

• Owners treat the injunction as a reprieve, not a verdict. The consistent read among people who rent here is that the seven-night rule is coming back in some form, which is why so much of the conversation has shifted from "can I still rent weekly" to "what does a zoning version look like." That instinct matches what the council was told in December 2025.
• The seven-night minimum is the provision that draws the anger, not the fees. A $425 or $850 permit is annoying and survivable. Losing every two and three-night booking in a market whose demand is Friday to Sunday is a different order of problem, and opponents argued from the start that it would gut the seasonal economy without moving the housing needle.
• Investors from outside Rhode Island mostly steer around the town. The permit cap and the resident priority window read, to an out-of-state buyer, as a system designed to rank them last, and the natural response has been to look at towns where the rules are settled even if the beach is a little further away.
• Year-round residents point at the police complaint log. The counter-argument here is concrete rather than ideological, and thirteen years of monthly nuisance statistics give it more weight than the usual anecdote. Nobody I've read seriously claims the complaints were invented.

Take that first point seriously if you're buying rather than already holding, since today's permissiveness rests on a preliminary injunction in an unresolved case, and those get dissolved about as routinely as they get granted.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Narragansett, Rhode Island in 2026?

Yes. Narragansett adopted a short-term rental ordinance in May 2024 imposing a seven-night minimum stay, an annual permit and a shrinking cap on permits, but the Rhode Island Superior Court restrained it in October 2024 and it has not been enforceable since. What applies instead is the town's ordinary rental registration at $120 per unit per year, plus a $25 annual registration with the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation for any unit listed on a hosting platform.

Is there a seven-night minimum stay in Narragansett?

Not one that can be enforced right now. Section 14-543(b)(2) of the town code prohibits rentals of fewer than seven consecutive nights, and that language is still on the books, but the whole article containing it was blocked by a preliminary injunction in Narragansett 2100 v. Town of Narragansett on 2 October 2024. The court's reasoning was that a ban on advertising sub-seven-night stays conflicts with Rhode Island's hosting-platform statute, § 42-63.1-14(a). The town has been working on a zoning-based replacement since late 2025.

How much does it cost to register a short-term rental in Narragansett?

$145 a year in total as things stand: $120 for the town rental registration per unit, filed with the Building Inspector by 31 August, plus $25 for the annual state registration with the Department of Business Regulation. Missing the town deadline adds a $300 late fee, failing to register at all costs $250, and the ordinance sets a minimum mandatory fine of $500. Were the blocked permit system to revive, it would add $425 a year for a resident owner and $850 for a non-resident.

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

14% in total since 1 January 2026, and none of it is a Narragansett tax. Rhode Island charges 7% state sales tax on every stay of 30 nights or fewer, plus either a 5% state hotel tax on a single-room rental or a 5% whole-home short-term rental tax on an entire dwelling, plus a 2% local hotel tax that the state collects and passes back to the town. Airbnb collects and remits all four on bookings it processes. Direct bookings are the host's responsibility.

Can you rent a house in Narragansett to students instead?

Yes, and that's the standard alternative here. A let of thirty consecutive nights or more falls outside the short-term rental definition entirely, which is how University of Rhode Island academic-year rentals work, though the same $120 town registration still applies. Occupancy is capped either way, since Rhode Island's household rule allows one person per bedroom up to five unrelated occupants per dwelling, and Narragansett's zoning applies that same ceiling to student-occupied dwellings in the R-10, R-10A and R-20 districts.

Rules sitting unenforced in a code aren't dead rules, they're rules waiting for a better legal vehicle, and the gap between the two is the window an owner gets to work out whether the business still stands up once that vehicle arrives. So wherever you're buying, price the version of the rules that survives the challenge rather than the version that happens to be convenient today.

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