St. Louis County, Missouri Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in St. Louis County, Missouri and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that no county short-term rental permit stands between you and your first booking, because the county has never written one. Going through the county's Code of Ordinances in July 2026, there's no chapter and no section devoted to short-term rentals, and the zoning ordinance doesn't use the phrase at all. That sounds like freedom, and in part it is, but the absence of a rule isn't the same thing as permission.

Two things trip people up before they ever reach the rules, so let's clear both out of the way. St. Louis County and the City of St. Louis have been separate governments since 1876. That means the city's short-term rental permit programme, its inspections and the 3% short-term rental licence fee its aldermen passed as Ordinance 72095 in February 2026 reach no address in the county. Then comes the second split, and it's the one that decides everything: the county's zoning ordinance governs only unincorporated land, while dozens of separate cities, towns and villages inside the county boundary write their own rules for everyone else.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in 2026: what the county code does and doesn't say, what your own municipality can add on top, the two lodging taxes you'll be filing by hand every quarter, how any of it gets enforced, and who to call when a question doesn't fit neatly into one office. Every figure below comes from the county's own code, Missouri statute or a city's own pages, and where a page wouldn't open for me I've said so rather than guessed. Before you buy anything on the strength of a nightly rate, do run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in St. Louis County, Missouri?

Since the county never wrote a short-term rental rule, the question becomes what its existing zoning ordinance already says about who can sleep in a house and on what terms. That's Chapter 1003, the zoning ordinance, and the county's own Department of Planning is clear that it governs the unincorporated portions of the county rather than the whole map.

Read Chapter 1003 with an Airbnb listing in mind and three definitions start doing real work. A hotel is "a building in which lodging is provided to the public usually on a transient basis," which describes a whole-house nightly rental about as well as anything else in the code. Alongside it sits "family," defined as related people or "not more than three (3) persons who need not be related by blood or marriage." Since a single-family dwelling is a building occupied exclusively by one family, a booking party of four unrelated adults is already more people than the definition contemplates.

Then there's the home occupation. It can cover the keeping of up to two roomers or boarders, yet the same definition goes out of its way to say that "tourist homes, including bed-and-breakfasts" are not home occupations. Keep that one in mind. It's the closest the county comes to naming what you're planning.

Where those uses are allowed matters more than what they're called. The R-1 Residence District permits churches, community gardens, day care homes, single-family dwellings, farming, golf courses, small group homes, home occupations, libraries, parks and schools, so lodging appears nowhere on that list or among its conditional uses. Hotels turn up as a permitted use in the C-2, C-3 and C-4 commercial districts, and as a conditional use in R-8, the densest residence district in the county. Nothing in the districts most county houses sit in authorises transient lodging by name.

One route in the whole chapter does put a lodging-style use into a residential district, though it's narrow enough that most owners can stop reading at the second sentence. The Special Business Permit Procedure lets an existing single-family house be reused for offices or personal services, and the authorised list expressly includes "tourist homes." It's available in the NU district and every R district. That sounds generous until you reach the catch, which is that "lots considered for the Special Business Permit Procedure must have direct access onto any four-lane or wider State Highway or County arterial roadway." A house on an ordinary subdivision street doesn't qualify, full stop. Getting one approved means a Planning Commission hearing noticed the same way a rezoning would be, a preliminary development plan, and a filing fee of $1,500 that the same section says isn't refundable once the case has been advertised.

Put all of that together and the honest read is a shrug rather than a yes or a no. The county hasn't banned short-term rentals, hasn't licensed them, and hasn't published a reading of its own zoning that says whether a three-night booking in an R-1 house is a dwelling or a hotel. Plenty of owners in unincorporated pockets host anyway. Be aware, though, that you're working in a gap the county could close whenever a council member decides to, and that if a neighbour complains, the officials answering the phone will be reading the same ambiguous definitions you are. Anyone weighing this against the city across the border should read the St. Louis city guide, where the rules are written down in detail and have been fought over in court.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in St. Louis County

Because the county code leaves so much unsaid, the first practical job isn't filling in a form, it's working out which government regulates your address. Most of the county's housing sits inside one of its incorporated cities, towns and villages, and every one of those writes its own zoning code, its own occupancy rules and its own position on nightly rentals. Your county tax bill looks identical either way, so don't use that as your guide. Look up the address on the county's municipal boundary map, or call the city hall whose name is on your trash bill, and get a straight answer before you spend money on furniture.

Two municipalities inside the county show how far apart the answers can sit, and they're worth studying even if you don't own in either one. Maryland Heights adopted a full short-term rental regime by Ordinance 2023-4831, and the city's own short-term rental page says the regulations took effect on January 1, 2024.

Its zoning Article 29 permits whole-dwelling rentals while prohibiting the rental of individual rooms, so the unit of business there is the house. On top of that it bars accessory buildings from being used as living space, allows no on-site advertising signage of any kind, caps the rental period at thirty days, and requires the renter to be at least twenty-one and to show a state ID or passport at booking. You don't have to live there. What you do need, though, is for you or your manager to be close enough to reach the property inside an hour if the police, the fire service or the city asks.

Webster Groves, by contrast, runs the opposite model, and its definition is where you see it. The city's zoning chapter treats a short term rental as an arrangement where "a portion of a single family residence is provided for lodging for a period of time not to exceed fourteen (14) consecutive days," which quietly rules out the whole-house listing most investors have in mind. The development standards that follow require the owner to keep the property as a permanent residence and to be on the premises whenever a guest is registered, cap the arrangement at two rooms and four guests, limit any one guest to thirty days a year, forbid signage, and mandate an annual occupancy inspection on top of the business licence. The city then mails your responsible-contact details to every property within three hundred feet, at your expense.

Same county, same metro, and one city hands you an investment property while the other hands you a spare-room side income. Whichever side of that line you land on, remember that a municipality's rules sit on top of the county's taxes rather than replacing them, so clearing your city hall is the start of the work and not the end of it.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in St. Louis County

If your property turns out to be in unincorporated St. Louis County, the county does have one licence that reaches rental housing, and it's worth knowing whether you fall inside it. Chapter 825, the Residential Rental Property Licensing Code, was adopted by Ord. No. 26211 in October 2015 and by its own terms is "effective within the unincorporated parts of St. Louis County." It covers one-family, two-family, attached townhouse and small multi-family dwellings of four units or fewer that are "offered for rent or lease" to someone who isn't the owner of record.

The mechanics are straightforward, at least on paper. The owner applies annually, before the property is rented, on a form from the Director of the Department of Transportation and Public Works. Section 825.200 wants your name, address and phone number, the address of every dwelling you're licensing, the name and contact details of any agent responsible for each property along with the limits of that agent's authority, an affirmation that you owe no outstanding fines to the St. Louis County Municipal Court, and an affirmation that the premises comply with the county's waste management code. Where you're renting to a close relative, or to someone who part-owns the business that owns the house, you declare an exemption instead.

Two warnings attach to it. The county can pull the licence if you leave property maintenance violations uncorrected for thirty days, if you make a material false statement, if you owe maintenance fines, or if you skip the occupancy permits, and more than two suspensions in twelve months turns into revocation. You then have ten working days to appeal in writing to the Director. Renting without the licence carries a fine of up to $1,000, up to a year in the county jail, or both, and each day of non-compliant occupancy counts as its own violation. As for the fee, Chapter 825 doesn't set one, and the county's own licensing pages sit behind an automated-access block I couldn't get past, so I'm not going to publish a number I haven't read. Call 314-615-8504 and ask before you budget for it.

The other county requirement is the one owners forget, and it isn't a licence at all. Chapter 1110 applies "in the portions of St. Louis County outside of incorporated areas," and it says nobody may occupy a dwelling the owner doesn't occupy unless an occupancy or re-occupancy permit has been issued and is available for inspection at the unit. Section 1110.1050 then requires a re-occupancy permit "for each change of occupancy." The inspection fee is $80 for each single-family unit and $40 for each unit in a multi-family building, payable when you apply, with $40 for any additional follow-up inspection. Section 1110.1045 also tells anyone who conveys or rents property to disclose the permit requirement in writing before the contract is signed.

Read literally, "each change of occupancy" would mean a permit for every guest, which is plainly not what a code written for tenancies was built to do. The county hasn't published a short-term rental reading of it either way, so I'd treat this as the single most important question to put to the Department of Transportation and Public Works before you list, rather than assuming your answer is the same one the inspector has in mind. If your property is in a municipality instead, its own occupancy permit takes the place of this one. Maryland Heights, for instance, charges $75 for the initial short-term rental application and $25 for the annual inspection, which is the sort of number the county simply doesn't publish an equivalent for.

Required Documents for St. Louis County Short-Term Rentals

Since none of the paperwork above is a short-term rental application in name, it's easy to arrive at your first booking having filed nothing at all. Here's what a compliant county host is holding, assuming an unincorporated address:

• Your Chapter 825 rental licence application, filed annually with the Department of Transportation and Public Works before the property is rented, with the owner and agent details, the municipal-court affirmation and the waste-code affirmation the section calls for. Or the exemption declaration, where a relative or a part-owner is the occupant.
• Occupancy or re-occupancy permits issued under Chapter 1110 for the unit, plus the written disclosure of that requirement to whoever is taking occupancy.
• A Missouri retail sales tax licence. Charging guests for a room is a taxable sale under RSMo 144.020.1(6), which puts you in the same position as any Missouri retailer. You register with the Department of Revenue online through MyTax Missouri or by mailing Form 2643, and the registration requirements page confirms there's no state filing fee.
• Quarterly lodging tax returns on the forms the county's Division of Licenses supplies for its hotel/motel and convention and tourism taxes, covered in the next section.
• Your municipality's own application, where you're inside a city. Maryland Heights, to take the documented example, wants the completed short-term rental form, a copy of a state-issued photo ID and the fee, submitted by email to [email protected], by post to Community Development at 11911 Dorsett Road, or in person at the Government Center.

One thing the county does put in writing is that a licence gets withheld until your slate is clean. Section 825.250 blocks approval of a rental licence until the annual application is on file and every outstanding St. Louis County Municipal Court fine has been paid, so make sure you clear old tickets before you apply rather than after.

St. Louis County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through whichever of those hurdles applies to your address and are able to start taking bookings, there's still tax to deal with, and this is the one part of the county's regime that has never been ambiguous. Two county lodging taxes apply throughout St. Louis County, inside municipalities as well as outside them, and they stack on top of the ordinary Missouri sales tax. Every rate below was checked against its source as of July 2026.

Charge	Rate	Who you file it with
Missouri state sales/use tax on the room charge	4.225%	Missouri Department of Revenue
Local sales tax add-ons (city, county, district)	varies by address	Missouri Department of Revenue
County hotel/motel tax	3.5%	St. Louis County Division of Licenses
Regional convention and tourism tax	3.75%	St. Louis County Division of Licenses
Municipal lodging or tourism tax	varies (Maryland Heights charges 0.5%)	your city hall

Take the county's own hotel/motel tax section first, since it levies "a tax of three and one-half (3½) percent on the amount of sales or charges for all sleeping rooms paid by the transient guests of hotels and motels situated within St. Louis County," under the authority of RSMo 67.657. The definition that follows is the one that catches an Airbnb, because a hotel or motel there is any structure containing rooms furnished for the lodging of guests and "kept, used, maintained, advertised or held out to the public as a place where sleeping accommodations are furnished for pay," while a transient guest is anyone who stays thirty-one days or fewer in a calendar quarter. A listing that advertises a house to the public for nightly stays fits that wording without much argument.

The second tax needs a moment of digging, because the rate printed in the county code isn't the rate you pay. Section 502.180 levies a convention and tourism tax of 3%. Then RSMo 67.619 lets the regional convention and visitors commission put a tax of "not to exceed three and three-fourths percent" on sleeping rooms to the voters of the city and the county, and subsection 5(2) says that while the regional tax is in effect, no convention and tourism tax under section 66.390 may be collected by the county. So the county's own 3% sits dormant, and the regional 3.75% is what gets filed. The City of St. Louis License Collector describes the identical pair on its side of the border, noting that these taxes reach "transient home rentals through online providers like AirBnb" and that in St. Louis County they're collected by the License Division of the county's Department of Revenue.

Filing runs on a quarterly rhythm you'll want in your calendar now. Under Section 502.530 you sign and file a return by the twentieth day after each calendar quarter and send the money with it, although where your quarterly liability comes in under $45 you can ask in writing to file once a year instead, due by January 20. You keep 2% of what you collect as a collection allowance, which is a small consolation, and pay a penalty of 1% a month plus 2% a month in interest if you're late. Miss a return or file a false one and the fine runs from $50 to $1,000 under Section 502.550, or $50 to $500 on the convention and tourism side. The county can sue you for unpaid tax on top of that, and file a lien in the Recorder's office.

Now the part that costs county hosts real money, because it runs against the habit most of us have picked up from other markets. Airbnb's Missouri tax page does collect the state's 4.225% sales tax and assorted local sales taxes on stays of 29 nights or fewer, and it has a jurisdiction section listing the 3.5% and 3.75% rates, but that section opens "Guests who book Airbnb listings that are located in the City of St. Louis, MO." There is no St. Louis County section. Missouri doesn't force the issue either, since RSMo 144.752 carves travel agency services, including lodging, out of the marketplace facilitator collection duty, which makes platform collection a voluntary policy here rather than a legal obligation. So don't assume your platform is filing the county's two lodging taxes for you. Call the Division of Licenses, confirm in your own words, and start filing quarterly if the answer is no.

Tax Deductions and Write-Offs

Federal treatment is the one layer that doesn't change at a municipal boundary, and it's where a marginal county rental often becomes a workable one. IRS Publication 527 covers residential rental property, including the split between personal and rental use that catches owners who spend weekends at their own listing. Under the rule in IRS Topic 415, if you rent a dwelling you also use as a residence for fewer than 15 days in the year, you don't report the rental income at all and you don't deduct the expenses. Above that line the ordinary deductions apply: mortgage interest, property tax, insurance, cleaning, supplies, repairs and depreciation over 27.5 years for residential property. Keep in mind that substantial services, the sort a hotel provides, can push the activity onto Schedule C and into self-employment tax, so worth getting an accountant's view before you build a business plan on Schedule E arithmetic.

Missouri-Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That federal layer sits above a state layer that turns out to be unusually thin, which is why the county's silence hurts more here than it would elsewhere. Missouri has no statewide short-term rental licence, no statewide registry, and no general statute preempting local regulation of short-term rentals. Cities and counties act under their own police and home-rule powers, which is exactly why one municipality in this county permits whole-house rentals and its neighbour a few miles away permits two rooms.

The legislature has come close to changing that and hasn't managed it. HB 109 in the 2025 session would've barred local ordinances that ban or cap short-term rentals in residential zones or require owner-occupancy, while still letting cities license them and impose health and safety rules. It got a 12-0 "Do Pass" out of the House Special Committee on Tourism in April 2025, then had action postponed on May 15, 2025, the day before adjournment, and died there. Had it passed, Webster Groves' owner-occupancy requirement would've been in serious trouble. It didn't, so the patchwork stands.

The live one to watch is about property tax rather than permits, and it's the reason Missouri host groups have spent two sessions in Jefferson City. Several county assessors around the state have reclassified short-term rentals as commercial property, which moves the assessment ratio from residential to commercial and removes the residential cap on value increases. HB 1768 would classify a qualifying single-family home rented for thirty consecutive days or less as residential for ad valorem purposes, capped at fifteen properties per owner. The House passed it 110-35 on April 2, 2026 and it was referred to Senate Fiscal Oversight on April 29, 2026, which is the last action recorded on the House's own tracking page as of my check in July 2026. I could not confirm from a primary source whether it was truly agreed and finally passed before the session ended, or signed, so treat your classification as unsettled and check your assessment notice carefully.

For the wider picture, the Missouri statewide guide sets out the state framework in full, the Jackson County guide covers the equivalent county-level questions on the Kansas City side, and the O'Fallon guide covers the St. Charles County suburbs just across the Missouri River, where the county has been drafting rules of its own.

Does St. Louis County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Not in the way that question usually means, because there's no short-term rental rule for the county to enforce. Nobody at the county is checking listings against a permit database, no platform is being asked to verify a county registration number, and no county inspector has a short-term rental checklist. What you get instead is ordinary zoning and property maintenance enforcement. That's complaint-driven, slower, and a good deal less predictable than a registration system.

Where a complaint does land, Section 1003.200 gives the county real tools. The Director of Transportation and Public Works acts as Code Official alongside the Director of Planning, issues stop-work and stop-use orders, and can refer a matter to the County Counselor for prosecution or seek a court order for abatement with the county's costs entered as a personal judgment. Conviction carries a fine of up to $1,000 for any one offence, up to six months in the county jail, or both, and failing to correct a violation after written notice makes each day a separate offence. The occupancy permit side has its own graduated schedule, running $100 for a first violation, $500 for a second and $1,000 for anything after that.

Municipal enforcement is where things get sharp, though, which is another reason your address matters more than the county line. In Maryland Heights the city council can revoke a short-term rental occupancy permit outright on written notice of violations, leaving the owner thirty days to request a hearing, while the building commissioner can separately issue a summons to municipal court and nuisance complaints go to the police department under the city's criminal nuisance section. That's a faster and more painful path than anything the county runs.

The tax side is the exception to all this, and it's the risk most county hosts underestimate. The Division of Licenses knows what a hotel/motel tax return looks like because hotels have been filing them since 1990, the code lets the Director audit your records during business hours, and unpaid tax can become a recorded lien and a civil action against you personally. A zoning complaint might never arrive. A tax liability accrues quietly at 1% penalty and 2% interest a month whether anyone complains or not.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in St. Louis County

Given how much of the above turns on which government your house sits in, the order of these steps matters more than it looks. Answer the cheap questions first, because two of them can end the project before you've spent anything.

1. Establish your jurisdiction. Confirm in writing whether the address is unincorporated or inside a municipality. Everything downstream changes on that answer, and a tax bill won't tell you.
2. If you're in a city, read its zoning code before anything else. Ask specifically whether whole-dwelling rentals are permitted, whether owner-occupancy is required, and what the occupancy permit costs. Maryland Heights and Webster Groves show how far apart two neighbours can be.
3. If you're unincorporated, call the Department of Planning about Chapter 1003. Ask how the department reads a nightly rental in your zoning district, and get the answer from the office that administers the ordinance rather than from a forum.
4. Ask Transportation and Public Works about Chapter 825 and Chapter 1110. Establish whether you need the annual rental licence, what it costs, and how the department treats "each change of occupancy" for a guest who stays three nights.
5. Clear any outstanding County Municipal Court fines, since Section 825.250 blocks a rental licence until they're paid.
6. Register with the Missouri Department of Revenue through MyTax Missouri or Form 2643, before your first paid night rather than after it.
7. Contact the county Division of Licenses about the 3.5% and 3.75% lodging taxes. Get the current return forms, confirm whether your platform remits anything on your behalf, and diarise the twentieth of January, April, July and October.
8. Sort out insurance and your responsible-contact arrangements. Even where the county requires neither, most municipal regimes want a person who can reach the property quickly, and a standard homeowner's policy usually won't cover paid guests.
9. Model the property on the taxes you'll actually be filing, not on the headline nightly rate. If you're comparing this metro against elsewhere in the state, the Missouri market data is the place to see how the numbers move between cities.

Who to Contact in St. Louis County about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Because no single office owns short-term rentals here, you'll be splitting your questions across three county departments plus your own city hall. Knowing which one owns which question will save you a lot of transferred calls.

Zoning, districts and the Special Business Permit

The St. Louis County Department of Planning administers Chapter 1003 and staffs both the Planning Commission and the Board of Zoning Adjustment.

• Address: 41 South Central Avenue, Clayton, MO 63105
• Phone: 314-615-2520
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Rental licences, occupancy permits and code enforcement

The Department of Transportation and Public Works holds the Director role named throughout Chapters 825 and 1110. It's your office for the rental licence, occupancy and re-occupancy permits, and property maintenance complaints.

• Address: 41 South Central Avenue, Clayton, MO 63105, and 1050 North Lindbergh Boulevard, Saint Louis, MO 63132
• Phone: (314) 615-8504
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Lodging taxes

The Department of Revenue, and its Division of Licenses, collects the 3.5% hotel/motel tax and the 3.75% convention and tourism tax. Note the unusual opening hours before you drive to Clayton.

• Address: 41 South Central Avenue, Clayton, MO 63105
• Phone: (314) 615-7100
• Hours: Monday to Thursday, 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

One caveat on those three entries. The county's website blocked automated access throughout this research, so each set of details comes from an Internet Archive snapshot of the department's own page rather than a live read, the Revenue one dated May 2026 and the other two 2025. Do confirm by phone before you post anything important.

State tax registration

Sales tax registration and returns belong to the Missouri Department of Revenue, not to the county. Register through MyTax Missouri or by mailing Form 2643, and expect the department to assign you a monthly, quarterly or annual filing frequency based on your expected liability, with a return due every period even when there's no tax to report.

Your municipality

Where the address is incorporated, your city hall is the office that decides whether you can host at all. Maryland Heights, as the documented example, takes short-term rental questions at (314) 291-6550 or [email protected], Monday to Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

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

Given how thinly documented the county's position is, it's no surprise that host discussion of this market is mostly people trying to work out which rules apply to them. What follows is my read of the recurring themes rather than a survey. Reddit blocks automated access, so I haven't read individual threads, and you should weigh the four points below accordingly and verify anything that matters against the offices named earlier.

• The city and county get conflated constantly, including by sources that ought to know better. Search for St. Louis County short-term rental rules and you'll find write-ups confidently describing a county permit programme adopted in November 2023, complete with a 24/7 designated contact. That's the City of St. Louis and its Ordinance 71729, which has no application in the county. Watch out for this one, because it's the single most common error in circulation about this market.
• Owners in unincorporated pockets read the silence as permission. The practical experience many describe, of hosting for years without a county permit and hearing nothing, is consistent with what the code says: there's no permit to be missing. It's a different thing from a zoning department having blessed the use, though, and the two get run together in conversation.
• The municipal patchwork is the recurring frustration. Buyers report doing the research for one suburb and having it turn out irrelevant three streets away. That matches what the codes themselves show, since Maryland Heights and Webster Groves reached opposite conclusions in the same decade.
• Taxes surface later than they should. Hosts used to markets where the platform remits everything are surprised to learn the 3.5% and 3.75% are theirs to file quarterly. Don't forget that this is the county obligation with the clearest legal footing and the sharpest collection tools behind it.

There's a wider lesson buried in that last point, and it applies well beyond this county. A place with no rule written down isn't a place with no risk; it's a place where the risk hasn't been priced yet, and where the eventual rule arrives on someone else's timetable rather than yours. Build the business so it survives the ordinance that hasn't been written, and the quiet years in between are a bonus rather than the plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a permit to run an Airbnb in St. Louis County, Missouri?

There's no county short-term rental permit, because St. Louis County has never adopted a short-term rental ordinance. What may apply instead is the county's annual residential rental property licence under Chapter 825 for unincorporated addresses, plus occupancy or re-occupancy permits under Chapter 1110. If the property sits inside one of the county's municipalities, that city's own permit rules govern, and several of them do require a short-term rental permit and an annual inspection.

What taxes do short-term rental hosts pay in St. Louis County?

Four layers, and two of them are county taxes you file yourself. Missouri charges 4.225% state sales tax on room charges, plus local sales tax add-ons that vary by address. St. Louis County levies a 3.5% hotel/motel tax and the region levies a 3.75% convention and tourism tax on sleeping rooms, both filed with the county's Division of Licenses by the twentieth day after each calendar quarter. Some municipalities add a small tourism tax of their own.

Does Airbnb collect St. Louis County lodging taxes automatically?

Not according to Airbnb's own Missouri tax page, which collects the 4.225% state sales tax and various local sales taxes but lists the 3.5% and 3.75% rates only under a heading for the City of St. Louis. Missouri's marketplace facilitator statute expressly excludes lodging, so platform collection is voluntary here rather than required. Confirm your own position with the county's Division of Licenses before assuming anything is being remitted for you.

Is a short-term rental legal in unincorporated St. Louis County?

The county's zoning ordinance neither permits nor prohibits it by name. Lodging isn't listed among the permitted or conditional uses in the R-1 residence district, hotels are permitted only in commercial districts and conditionally in R-8, and tourist homes are expressly excluded from the home occupation definition. The one route into a residential district, the Special Business Permit, needs direct access onto a four-lane or wider highway or county arterial and a $1,500 non-refundable filing fee.

How is St. Louis County different from the City of St. Louis for Airbnb hosts?

They're separate governments and have been since 1876. The City of St. Louis runs a written short-term rental permit programme under Ordinance 71729, has been through litigation over enforcing it, and adopted a 3% short-term rental licence fee effective February 23, 2026. None of that touches an address in St. Louis County, where there's no county STR ordinance and your municipality, or county zoning if you're unincorporated, sets the rules instead.

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