Stonington, Connecticut Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Stonington, Connecticut and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that the town doesn't regulate short-term rentals at all. There's no town licence, no annual registration, no permit fee and no inspection to book, and the Department of Planning & Land Use puts it in writing on its own short-term rental flyer: "The Town of Stonington does not currently regulate short-term rentals."

That's a lighter touch than almost anywhere else on this stretch of shoreline, though it isn't the free-for-all it sounds like either. Stonington sits in New London County right on the Rhode Island line, and it takes in the east side of Mystic, the village of Pawcatuck and the historic Borough of Stonington down on the point. The Borough is where this gets complicated, because it's a separate municipal corporation with its own Planning and Zoning Commission and its own rules about renting to transient guests. Those Borough rules are being rewritten as I write this, and the town's own zoning code has a quiet clause in it that nobody mentions.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: where the town's silence helps you and where it stops helping, what the Borough permits today and what it's about to permit, the 15% state tax that lands on every booking, how complaints get handled when a neighbour makes one, and who to call. Every figure below comes from the town's, the Borough's or Connecticut's own pages, checked in July 2026. Before you buy anything on the strength of the word "unregulated", run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Stonington, Connecticut?

Those official pages tell a short story at the town level and a much longer one inside the Borough, so it helps to take them in that order.

At the town level there is no short-term rental ordinance, full stop. The town's A-to-Z index of special acts and local ordinances runs from Acme Wire to Zoning Violation Citations without one, and the planning department's flyer says the same thing in a sentence. Stonington did try to write one, mind you, and the attempt died at the ballot box. Voters killed a proposed registration-and-permit ordinance at a referendum on March 13, 2023, and the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments recorded the result in its regional review that October. Patch reported the count as 694 against to 342 in favour, on about 7% turnout.

Now, one thing worth getting straight before you read anything else about this town. The General Assembly's own research office published a report in February 2024, 2024-R-0044, that describes Stonington in the present tense as "the only town we identified that requires property owners to annually register with the town through a platform", complete with permit numbers, a primary-residence rule and $250 fines.

That report is describing the ordinance voters rejected eleven months earlier. It is still online, it still gets cited by rental blogs and AI summaries, and it is wrong about what applies here. Be aware of it, because a lot of secondary guidance about Stonington traces straight back to it.

What does apply is ordinary zoning, and here's the quiet clause. The Town of Stonington Zoning Regulations, 29th Edition, effective March 4, 2026 never use the words "short-term rental" anywhere across their 200-odd pages. Section 4.2 then says that the uses listed in Sections 5 and 6 "shall be the only uses permitted or allowed," and that "all other uses are hereby prohibited and shall not be permitted by variance." Read strictly, a closed list like that has no room for a use it doesn't name.

In practice the department that enforces the code reads it the other way, and says so plainly: short-term rental properties are "held to the Zoning Regulations and Town Ordinances," and violations there "will be addressed the same as any other property within the Town." That's the town treating your rental as a dwelling, not as an unlisted commercial use. It isn't a written zoning determination for your address, though, so if you're buying on a thin margin, do check the position with the zoning enforcement officer in writing rather than relying on a flyer.

The one lodging use the code does name in residential districts is a bed and breakfast, and that route is much heavier than it looks. Section 5.3.5 puts a B&B behind a Special Use Permit and a site plan, caps it at five guest rooms or half the building's floor area, requires the facility to be the owner's principal residence, and only allows it in a building constructed before 1940. The permit comes up for renewal every three years and no single guest may stay more than two consecutive weeks.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Stonington

Since the town's rules turn on where the code applies rather than what you plan to charge, the first job is still working out which set of regulations your address sits under. Get that wrong and everything after it is wasted effort.

Most of Stonington, including Mystic's east side, Pawcatuck and the rural north of the town, answers to the town's zoning regulations and nothing else. No licence, no registration, no fee. You furnish the place, you list it, you handle the tax, and the only local rules touching you are the noise and nuisance ordinances that apply to every house on the street.

The Borough is a different jurisdiction with a different answer. It's a separate municipal corporation, and its Planning and Zoning Commission writes and enforces its own zoning regulations from 26 Church Street. Under the regulations currently in force, last revised March 2, 2020, the closest listed use to an Airbnb is a "Tourist Home". The code defines that as an owner occupied building in which more than one but not more than five guest rooms are used to provide overnight accommodation to transient guests for compensation.

Read that definition twice, because two words in it do all the work. Owner occupied.

A tourist home is a permitted principal use in the Residence Preservation District and the Residence District, and a special permit use in the RA district and on the Planned Waterfront, yet in every one of those it assumes you live there. The Borough then defines an "Illegal Use" to include any use "not specifically listed as permitted in these Regulations," which is about as direct as a zoning code gets. An absentee owner renting a whole Borough house by the weekend is not operating a listed use.

That's about to be written down explicitly, which is the part to watch if you own inside the Borough. The Commission has been rebuilding its regulations for eighteen months, and application P26-15 touches close to 150 sections across all eleven articles. The draft dated February 13, 2026 adds a definition the current code lacks. A "Short Term Rental/Tourist Home" becomes "the use of an owner-occupied furnished legal dwelling unit, in whole or in part, providing transient lodging to the general public, for compensation, for a period of thirty (30) days or less."

The draft then lists that use as a permitted accessory use in the two main residence districts and a special permit use in RA, and it bars accessory dwelling units from being rented either way.

Owner-occupancy survives the rewrite, in other words, and it arrives with a number attached to it. The Commission closed its public hearing at 7:00 p.m. on July 9, 2026 and voted 4-0 to take up the approval motion at its August 6, 2026 regular meeting. I couldn't confirm the outcome of that vote, since no minutes for it had been posted when I checked, so treat the 2020 regulations as the operative text and the draft as a very strong signal about where the Borough is heading.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Stonington

Given how much of that turned on zoning rather than paperwork, the licensing question has a short answer and a couple of asterisks. There is no short-term rental licence in Stonington. Nobody issues one, nobody charges for one, and no office is set up to process an application for one.

What you might still pay for depends on which of three situations you're in. These are the fee schedules as of July 2026.

• A plain rental outside the Borough. Nothing. No town application, no fee, no renewal. Your only registration is with the state tax department, covered further down.
• A rental inside the Borough. No STR licence exists here either, though the Borough's fee ordinance SBO-19 charges $25 for a zoning compliance certificate where no other application is required, and $200 for a special permit. Add the $60 state land-use fee the ordinance flags under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 22a-27j.
• A bed and breakfast in the town. This is the expensive one. A Special Use Permit under the town's fee ordinance starts at $500 plus $100 per 1,000 square feet of gross floor area, and the permit has to be renewed by the Planning and Zoning Commission every three years.

The absence of a licence cuts both ways, mind you, and hosts underrate the second edge. A permit is also a defence. In a town that issues one, a neighbour complaint runs into a document showing you cleared the rules; in Stonington there's no document, so a dispute lands directly on the zoning code and on whoever is reading it that week. Keep in mind that this town has now had one referendum and, in the Borough, two nights of public hearing on the subject. That's not a place where nobody is paying attention.

Required Documents for Stonington Short-Term Rentals

Since no permit file exists to assemble, the paperwork here is still the paperwork you keep for yourself and for the state. It's a short list, and every item on it is optional in the sense that nobody will chase you for it until something goes wrong.

• Your DRS room occupancy registration, if you take any booking that a platform doesn't collect tax on. Registration costs $100 and is waived where you already hold a Connecticut sales-and-use-tax permit.
• Proof of what your platform collects. Airbnb collects and remits Connecticut room occupancy tax, and other facilitators may or may not. Save the statement showing it, because the exemption that protects you is booking-by-booking.
• A written zoning answer for your address, especially inside the Borough. The Borough charges $25 for a zoning compliance certificate, which is a cheap piece of certainty against a use that isn't listed in its code.
• Working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, with a dated record of the last test. The rejected 2023 ordinance would have made you swear to these annually, in a sworn statement filed with the town. Nobody collects that statement now, so keep the evidence yourself.
• Your insurer's written confirmation that short-term letting is covered. A standard homeowner's policy usually isn't, and platform host protection is not the same thing as your own liability cover.

Two of those exist because of what didn't pass rather than what did, and that's the honest shape of compliance in a town with no ordinance. You're documenting your own position instead of satisfying a checklist somebody else wrote.

Stonington Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming your address checks out and you're able to start taking bookings, there's still tax to deal with, and this is where Connecticut stops being relaxed. The state charges lodging at 15%, well over double its ordinary 6.35% sales tax.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
State room occupancy tax, furnished residence	15% of rent	Airbnb and other qualifying facilitators, otherwise you
State room occupancy tax, bed and breakfast establishment	11% of rent	Airbnb and other qualifying facilitators, otherwise you
Town of Stonington lodging tax	none	not applicable
Borough of Stonington lodging tax	none	not applicable
DRS operator registration	$100 one-off, waived with a sales-and-use-tax permit	Department of Revenue Services

The 15% comes from Conn. Gen. Stat. § 12-408(1)(B), which charges that rate on rent from a "lodging house" in place of the ordinary 6.35% sales tax. Section 12-407(17) then defines a lodging house to include a "furnished residence or similar accommodation," which is exactly what a whole-home Airbnb is.

The lower 11% band belongs to a bed and breakfast establishment under § 12-407(42), meaning an operator-occupied house of twelve rooms or fewer where a full morning meal is included in the rent. Note the mismatch there: the state's B&B definition and the town's zoning definition are not the same test, so a property can be one and not the other.

The tax runs on the first 30 consecutive days of a stay and stops after that, which is the single biggest lever on the arithmetic for anyone weighing nightly against monthly lets in this market. A month-plus booking sheds the whole 15% at day 31.

Who hands the money over depends on how the booking arrived. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 12-408h makes any short-term rental facilitator with more than $250,000 of Connecticut rental sales in the trailing twelve months the retailer of record, so it collects and remits, and you're not separately liable for that booking. Airbnb lists Connecticut among the places where it collects and remits automatically.

Take a direct booking, or book through a channel that doesn't collect, and the obligation is yours: register with DRS, then file Form OP-210 monthly and electronically through myconneCT. Make sure you check your own platform's current position rather than assuming, because the facilitator threshold is a dollar test that a smaller channel can fail.

There is no local lodging tax on top, in Stonington or anywhere else in Connecticut. No statute currently lets a town levy one, and the 2026 attempt to create that power died with the bill it was riding on.

Connecticut Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That missing local tax is a good illustration of how thin the state framework above Stonington actually is. Connecticut regulates the money and leaves the housing to the towns.

The statute that matters for towns is Conn. Gen. Stat. § 7-148qq, added by Public Act 24-143 and effective October 1, 2024. It lets any municipality, by vote of its legislative body, "adopt an ordinance requiring the licensure of short-term rental properties in such municipality and regulating the operation and use of such properties."

Before it existed there was a genuine argument that towns had no such authority at all, and that argument is what sank Stonington's ordinance in 2023. The regional council's report quotes an attorney's letter to the town claiming that "the Town of Stonington does not have statutory authority to regulate renting of residential property based on the length of stay of the renters." That objection is dead now. The power exists, Stonington has had it since October 2024, and Stonington hasn't used it.

Note what § 7-148qq is not. It sets no ceiling, no floor and no standard form, so what a Connecticut town requires is whatever that town wrote for itself. Our Connecticut statewide guide maps how differently that has played out, and Norwich up the Thames is the closest example of a New London County city that took a different road. Down the shoreline, Branford and the rest of New Haven County show what a regulated Connecticut coastal market looks like by comparison.

There's still no statewide registry, and I'd expect that question back in 2027. House Bill 5536 would have made every operator advertising outside a facilitator register each property annually with the Department of Revenue Services for $100. It cleared the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee 36-18 on March 30, 2026 and was tabled for the House calendar on April 16, yet it never reached a floor vote before the session adjourned on May 6, 2026, so it did not become law.

The Office of Legislative Research confirms in 2026-R-0025 that Public Act 24-143 remains the only enacted short-term rental provision on the books, with nothing passed in 2025.

Does Stonington Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Not on short-term rentals, because there are no short-term rental rules here to enforce. Enforcement in Stonington means the ordinary machinery a neighbour reaches for, and that machinery is real enough to be worth pricing.

Noise is the first door. The town's nuisance ordinance, effective since May 3, 1997, bars unreasonably loud or disturbing noise before 6 a.m. or after 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and before 8 a.m. or after 10 p.m. on Sunday. The Department of Police Services enforces it, has to notify the responsible person to stop first, and the fine tops out at $100. Each continuing day counts as a separate offence, though, which is how a $100 ceiling turns into a real number over a bad summer.

Zoning is the second door, and it's the sharper one. Under the town's zoning violation citations ordinance, the Zoning Enforcement Officer issues citations under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 8-12a at a flat $150 per citation. You get 30 days to pay without contesting it. Contest it and a Hearing Officer appointed by the First Selectman, who by rule can be neither the zoning officer nor the building inspector, holds a hearing 15 to 30 days later, and an unpaid assessment ends up filed with the clerk of the Superior Court.

Inside the Borough the picture shifts again, because the Borough has a zoning official of its own and a code that defines an unlisted use as an illegal use. That's a live enforcement hook rather than a theoretical one, and a Borough commission that has just spent eighteen months and two hearing nights on its regulations is not a commission that has stopped reading complaints.

Practically, all of this is complaint-driven. Nobody in Stonington is auditing listings, and the town has no registry to audit them against. What triggers a case is a neighbour, which means the thing that protects you isn't a permit at all. It's parking that fits on your own lot, a guest cap your house can actually hold, and a phone number somebody can reach at eleven at night.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Stonington

Complaint-driven enforcement rewards doing the boring steps in order, and the order below is deliberate, because two of the early ones can end the project before you spend anything serious.

1. Find out whether your address is inside the Borough. This is the fork in the road. Borough addresses answer to a separate commission with a code that assumes an owner-occupied tourist home, and the town's silence does nothing for you there.
2. Get the zoning position in writing. Outside the Borough, ask the Department of Planning & Land Use for its read on your specific property. Inside the Borough, the $25 zoning compliance certificate does the same job for a trivial fee.
3. Check the Borough's August 2026 decision if you own inside it. The P26-15 amendments were set for a vote on August 6, 2026, and they would define short-term rentals for the first time, keep the owner-occupancy requirement, and bar accessory dwelling units from being rented this way.
4. Sort out the tax before your first booking. Register with DRS if you'll take direct bookings, and get written confirmation of what your platform collects if you won't.
5. Confirm your insurance covers paid guests. Do this before the listing goes live rather than after the first claim.
6. Fit and test smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, then keep a dated record. This is the cheapest paperwork you'll ever produce and the most useful one to have if anything goes wrong.
7. Solve parking on your own lot. In the Borough especially, where streets are narrow and lots are small, guest parking on the road is what turns a neighbour into a complainant.
8. Publish house rules that match the noise ordinance. Quiet from 10 p.m. every night, and no earlier start than 6 a.m., or 8 a.m. on Sunday.
9. Give neighbours a number that gets answered. The rejected 2023 ordinance would have demanded a 60-minute response; adopting that standard voluntarily costs you nothing and heads off most of what would otherwise reach the town.

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

Steps two and three both end in a phone call, so here's who picks up. Four offices cover nearly everything between them, and the one you need depends far more on your address than on your question.

Zoning, land use and the town's official position

The Department of Planning & Land Use administers the zoning regulations and publishes the town's short-term rental information sheet.

• Address: 152 Elm Street, Stonington, CT 06378
• Phone: 860-535-5095, fax 860-535-1023
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
• Director of Land Use: Paul Dickson, [email protected]
• Zoning Enforcement Officer: Candace Palmer, CZEO, [email protected]
• Planning & Zoning Specialist: Adrianna Bancroft-Jones, CZEO, [email protected]

Candace Palmer is the person who would issue a citation, which makes her the right person to ask before there's anything to cite.

The Borough of Stonington

If your property is inside the Borough, this is your zoning authority and the town's planning department is not.

• Address: Borough Hall, 26 Church Street, Stonington, CT 06378
• Phone: 860-535-1298
• Email: [email protected]
• Zoning Official: Tom Zanarini, CZEO
• Planning and Zoning Commission: meets monthly on a Thursday at 6:00 p.m. at Borough Hall, with agendas and minutes posted online

Building, fire and life safety

The Building Official handles permits for any conversion work, and has been online-only since May 3, 2021.

• Address: 152 Elm Street, 3rd Floor, Stonington, CT 06378
• Phone: 860-535-5075
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
• Building Official: Christopher Tehan; Assistant: Tom McCluskey

Lodging establishments such as hotels, motels, rooming houses and bed and breakfasts are licensed and inspected annually by the Ledge Light Health District, working with the Connecticut Department of Public Health. Stonington's contact there is Wendy Ireland at 860-910-0440, 216 Broad Street. Their page doesn't say whether an ordinary vacation rental falls inside that licensing category, so ask rather than assume.

Town government and state tax

The First Selectman's Office at 152 Elm Street, on 860-535-5050 or [email protected], is where ordinance questions land and where any future short-term rental proposal would start. Bill Middleton is First Selectman, and the office keeps the same 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. weekday hours.

Room occupancy tax belongs to the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, not to the town. Registration, Form OP-210 and monthly filing all run through myconneCT.

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

Those offices see the polite version of this argument. The public record shows a blunter one, and since Reddit blocks automated access while BiggerPockets serves its threads through JavaScript that wouldn't load for me, what follows is my read of the documented record rather than a survey of either forum.

• The 2023 vote was lopsided, and that says something. A 694 to 342 defeat on 7% turnout isn't a town narrowly deciding against regulation. It's a motivated minority of property owners turning out against a proposal that most residents shrugged at, which is the pattern in a lot of Connecticut shoreline towns.
• The winning argument was legal, not economic. The attorney's letter quoted in the regional council's report attacked the town's authority to regulate by length of stay, rather than arguing that short-term rentals are good for Stonington. Public Act 24-143 has since removed that argument, so a second attempt would be fought on completely different ground.
• Owners inside the Borough and owners outside it are not in the same conversation. Two nights of Borough hearings in mid-2026 produced written exhibits from residents, while the wider town has been quiet since the referendum. That split is the most useful thing to understand about sentiment here.
• Nobody I can find claims Stonington is aggressively policing rentals. Enforcement runs on complaints, and hosts describe the risk in those terms: parking, noise, and the neighbour who has had enough. That matches what the ordinances themselves allow.

One caution on all of it. "Unregulated" reads as permanent when you're doing the numbers on a purchase, and it isn't. This town has voted on the question once, and the Borough was scheduled to vote on its own version in August 2026. Regulation here is a live file, not a closed one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a licence to run an Airbnb in Stonington, Connecticut?

No. The Town of Stonington does not regulate short-term rentals and issues no licence, permit or registration for them, and its Department of Planning & Land Use says so on its own short-term rental information sheet. A registration-and-permit ordinance was proposed and defeated at a town referendum on March 13, 2023, by 694 votes to 342. The only registration a Stonington host may need is with the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, for room occupancy tax.

How much tax do you pay on a short-term rental in Stonington?

Connecticut charges a 15% room occupancy tax on rent from a furnished residence, which covers a typical whole-home Airbnb or Vrbo, and 11% on a qualifying bed and breakfast establishment. It applies to the first 30 consecutive days of a stay. Neither the Town nor the Borough of Stonington levies a local lodging tax on top. Airbnb collects and remits the state tax automatically; direct bookings require the host to register with DRS and file Form OP-210 monthly.

Are short-term rentals allowed in Stonington Borough?

The Borough of Stonington is a separate municipality with its own zoning regulations. Under the regulations in force, last revised March 2, 2020, the closest permitted use is an owner-occupied "tourist home" of two to five guest rooms, and any use not specifically listed is defined as an illegal use. A draft rewrite would add a "Short Term Rental/Tourist Home" use, still owner-occupied, and was scheduled for a Commission vote on August 6, 2026.

What are the penalties for a short-term rental problem in Stonington?

There is no short-term rental penalty schedule, because there is no short-term rental ordinance. Ordinary town enforcement applies instead. A zoning citation from the Zoning Enforcement Officer carries a flat $150 fine under the town's citation ordinance, payable within 30 days or contestable at a hearing. A noise violation under the nuisance ordinance carries a fine of up to $100, with each continuing day treated as a separate offence.

Can a Connecticut town still decide to regulate short-term rentals?

Yes. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 7-148qq, added by Public Act 24-143 and effective October 1, 2024, lets any Connecticut municipality adopt an ordinance licensing short-term rental properties and regulating their operation, by vote of its legislative body. It sets no statewide standard, so requirements vary town by town. A statewide registry bill, House Bill 5536, cleared committee in March 2026 and died without a floor vote when the session adjourned on May 6, 2026.

Whether a market is regulated tells you what the paperwork costs. It never tells you what the property earns, and the two get confused constantly by people shopping for a town rather than for a building. The numbers behind the Connecticut market are the other half of that decision, and the half that survives whatever the next ordinance says.

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