East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, in most of the borough anyway, provided you're willing to get licensed, insured and inspected before you take a single booking. This isn't a market where you quietly list a spare room and hope nobody notices. East Stroudsburg passed its own short-term rental ordinance back in 2021, and it treats the whole thing as a regulated land use, not a hobby.

The borough sits in Monroe County, right at the edge of the Poconos and next to East Stroudsburg University, which is exactly why council felt it needed rules in the first place. Two ordinances do the actual work: Ordinance No. 1379 creates the licensing system, and Ordinance No. 1380 tells you where you're even allowed to try. Layer Monroe County's own hotel tax and Pennsylvania's statewide framework on top of that, and you've got three governments with an opinion on your listing before a single guest checks in.

So that's what this guide walks through: which zoning districts allow it, what the license costs and demands, the tax stack you're collecting on every stay, and how seriously the borough enforces all of it. Every figure below comes from East Stroudsburg's or Monroe County's own pages and documents, checked in July 2026. If you're deciding whether this property or a different Pennsylvania market makes more financial sense, run the numbers through BNBCalc before you commit to either one.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in East Stroudsburg

That three-government stack sounds heavier than it is once you break it into pieces, and zoning is the first one to sort out. East Stroudsburg's Ordinance No. 1380 amended the borough's Table of Land Uses to make short-term rentals a permitted use by right in the R-2 and R-3 residential districts, plus every commercial, office and institutional district: C-1, C-1A, C-1B, C-2, OM-1, S-1 and I-U. Notice what's missing from that list. R-1, the borough's single-family detached district, isn't on it at all, which means a short-term rental there needs a variance rather than a routine permit. A fair number of third-party sites describe East Stroudsburg as "commercial and industrial only," and that's simply wrong. The primary ordinance shows two residential districts permitted outright, so do check your parcel's actual zoning designation on the borough's map before you assume either way.

Assuming your property sits in an allowed district, the definition you need to clear is narrower than it sounds. A short-term rental here is "any Residential Dwelling Unit utilized as a single-family residence rented for the purpose of overnight lodging for a period of not less than one (1) day and not more than thirty (30) days," and it has to meet Monroe County's own definition of a "Hotel" for tax purposes. In practice that covers the whole spread you'd expect: a house, a condo, a cabin rented whole. If your building holds more than one dwelling unit, each unit needs its own license, so a duplex you're renting both halves of on Airbnb is two separate applications, not one.

What you're building here is closer to a small licensed lodging business than a side project. The borough's own preamble to the ordinance says short-term rentals had "become a significant segment of the local tourism economy" by 2021. That tracks: East Stroudsburg draws university visitors, Delaware Water Gap tourists and Poconos weekenders all at once. That demand is real, but it's also why the borough decided a light-touch approach wasn't going to hold. Once you know your property clears zoning, the next question is what the license itself demands, and that's a longer list than most Pennsylvania boroughs bother with.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in East Stroudsburg

Zoning tells you where you're allowed to operate; the license is what lets you flip the switch. No owner may operate a short-term rental in East Stroudsburg without a Short-Term Rental License from the Code Enforcement Officer, and running one without it is a violation on its own, separate from anything that happens afterward. The license attaches to a specific dwelling unit rather than to you as an owner, runs for one year from issuance, and has to be renewed annually with a fresh inspection each time.

Getting one issued isn't just a form and a fee. The borough wants proof that someone can reach you and hold you accountable if something goes wrong. If you don't live in the borough full-time, and you don't have a primary residence or work address within twenty miles of it, you have to designate a local manager who does, and that manager needs written authorization to accept service on your behalf. Own the place through an LLC or corporation? Same rule applies; a manager within that radius is mandatory, not optional. Since you'll be certifying a 24-hour contact number either way, it's worth setting that up before you fill out anything else.

The operating standards attached to the license are where a lot of hosts get tripped up, mostly because they read like hotel rules rather than Airbnb rules:

• One family per dwelling unit overnight, and day guests capped at 75% of that maximum overnight occupancy.
• Three off-street parking spaces per unit, stacked parking allowed, with overnight guests required to park off-street and day visitors following the normal on-street rules for that block.
• A private solid waste hauler with weekly pickup. The borough's municipal collection service doesn't cover short-term rentals at all, and dumpsters aren't permitted regardless.
• No overnight sleeping in RVs, campers or tents on the property, and no outdoor overnight sleeping by anyone.
• A posted notice inside the unit, near the front door, listing the owner or manager's 24-hour contact number, the 911 address, maximum occupancy and day-guest limits, maximum vehicle count, and a warning that violations can be cited and fined.

On top of that, you're on the hook for your guests' behavior in a way a typical landlord isn't. The ordinance requires you to notify occupants of the rules and to "promptly use best efforts to prevent a recurrence" the moment you learn of a noise complaint or disorderly conduct, which is a genuinely proactive duty rather than a box you check once at check-in. And the license itself carries a $600 annual fee per unit, as of July 2026, set in the borough's 2026 Fee Schedule, on top of a $75 zoning permit application fee that Ordinance 1380 requires separately.

Charge	Amount	When it applies
Residential Short-Term Rental License	$600.00/year per unit	Annual license and renewal
Late fee	$30.00/month per unit	Added on top of the annual fee if you're late
Inspection fee, 3rd+ inspection	$150.00 per inspection	Once the first two inspections aren't enough
Reinstatement fee	$194.00 per unit	After a revoked or suspended license
Appeal to the Property Maintenance Board	$1,032.00 plus a $700 refundable advertising deposit	If you contest a denial or revocation

You'll also need at least $500,000 in general liability insurance on the property for the entire time the license is active, issued by a carrier licensed in Pennsylvania. That's a meaningfully higher bar than the homeowner's policy most people already carry, so it's worth pricing before you count on the revenue. Clearing the license, mind you, is only half the job. The paperwork behind it is specific enough that a plausible-looking substitute document will get your whole application bounced.

Required Documents for East Stroudsburg Short-Term Rentals

Since the license and zoning permit share nearly identical paperwork, it's worth gathering everything once rather than twice. The Short-Term Rental License Application itself is short, but the documents you attach to it are specific enough that a close substitute gets returned rather than accepted:

• Owner and manager information, including the 24-hour contact number required for anyone who doesn't meet the twenty-mile residency test.
• A legible floor plan showing total habitable floor space and the exact number of bedrooms.
• A site plan showing on-site parking spaces and, if you're not on central sewer, the location, approximate age and capacity of your septic system.
• A current recorded deed proving ownership of the property.
• A trespass waiver, signed by the owner, granting the Code Enforcement Officer and the Rental Housing Inspector access for compliance inspections.
• Copies of your current Monroe County Hotel Room Excise Tax Certificate and Pennsylvania Sales and Use Tax License. You need both licenses in hand before the borough will license the property itself, which is why getting the tax registrations done first saves you a second trip.
• Evidence you have no delinquent borough water, sewer or solid waste fees, and separately, no delinquent county hotel tax or state sales tax, on any property you own in the borough.
• A signed contract with a private solid waste hauler committing to weekly pickup, since the property isn't covered by municipal collection.
• A certificate of insurance showing the $500,000 general liability minimum is in force.

Don't overlook the smaller conditions buried in that list. If the building is a multi-dwelling structure, you have to disclose the total number of units and how many are being used as short-term rentals, since each one needs its own separate license. And if you've got any delinquent utility or tax balance anywhere in the borough, on any property you own, it blocks this application too, not just the one tied to the delinquent parcel. Once all of that clears and the borough issues your license, remember that issuance isn't a warranty that the property is safe or lawful. It's only confirmation that it met the code on the day it was inspected, which is exactly why the annual reinspection exists.

East Stroudsburg Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that licensing and are able to open your calendar, there's still tax to collect on every stay. Two governments tax a short-term rental in East Stroudsburg, and because Monroe County isn't one of the two Pennsylvania counties with a state-administered local sales tax add-on, the math here is simpler than it looks at first glance:

Tax	Rate	Collected by
Pennsylvania State Hotel Occupancy Tax	6%	State (Airbnb collects and remits automatically)
Monroe County Hotel Room Rental Excise Tax	3%	Monroe County Treasurer
Combined rate on a guest's stay	9%	Split between the two

The state's 6% Hotel Occupancy Tax applies under the Tax Reform Code, and since 2019's Act 109 made "booking agents" like Airbnb and Vrbo legally responsible for collecting it, Airbnb confirms it collects and remits this automatically on reservations of 29 nights or fewer. If you take direct bookings outside a platform, or use one that doesn't collect on your behalf, you're the one who has to register for Pennsylvania's Sales, Use and Hotel Occupancy Tax License through myPATH and remit it yourself.

Monroe County's 3% Hotel Room Rental Excise Tax, authorized under Ordinance #2017-1, is a different animal, and here's the part worth reading carefully rather than skimming. The county's own registration form has checkboxes specifically for "Short Term Rental," "Airbnb" and "VrBo/HomeAway," so it was clearly built with platform hosts in mind, and the Treasurer requires every operator to register regardless of who's collecting the money. From what I can tell going through the Treasurer's own forms, you file a quarterly report by the 25th of the month following each calendar quarter, whether or not you owe anything. And if a platform already collected the tax on your behalf, you still mark the return "NO TAX DUE" rather than skipping it. Miss that filing and interest runs at 1.5% per month. I couldn't confirm from an official Airbnb page whether Airbnb specifically remits the county's 3% for you the way it does the state's 6%, so treat that piece as unconfirmed and call the Treasurer's office directly before you assume either way.

Both certificates, the county excise tax certificate and the state sales/use license, have to exist before the borough will even issue your short-term rental license, so register for these before you touch the borough's own paperwork.

Pennsylvania Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Zoom out from East Stroudsburg and the state framework above it explains why Monroe County's rules exist at all. Pennsylvania has no statewide preemption law and no statewide short-term rental registry, so the Joint State Government Commission's March 2025 staff study describes the whole state as "a patchwork of primarily county and municipal zoning ordinances and regulations," with even the definition of a short-term rental varying town to town. That's precisely what you're seeing here: East Stroudsburg wrote its own ordinance because nothing above it did the job.

Three bills are pending in Harrisburg that could change that, though none of them has passed as of this writing. House Bill 2303 would add a full "Transient Lodging" framework to Title 48, with tiered operator categories and a countywide registry, while House Bill 1256, the Short Term Rental Compliance Act, and Senate Bill 1105, aimed at hotel tax reporting in counties outside Philadelphia and Allegheny, are both still sitting in committee. So don't plan around a statewide registry or a state-mandated tax structure that doesn't exist yet. For the fuller picture of how Pennsylvania's patchwork plays out, our Pennsylvania statewide guide covers the framework in more depth than fits here, and it's worth comparing East Stroudsburg against a couple of other eastern Pennsylvania counties before you assume the rules travel. Our Bucks County guide and Lehigh County guide cover two markets that are a similar drive from Philadelphia and New York, and neither one regulates short-term rentals the same way Monroe County does.

Does East Stroudsburg Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Given how detailed that licensing scheme is, you'd expect the borough to use it, and the mechanics back that up. Enforcement here runs on two tracks: routine annual inspections tied to your renewal, and complaint-driven investigations the rest of the year. Either one can turn into a formal Notice of Violation, and the Code Enforcement Officer has real teeth behind it: fines of $100 to $1,000 per violation before a Magisterial District Judge, with each day a violation continues counting as a separate offense. That's not a one-time cost. It compounds for every day you're out of compliance and don't fix it.

The license itself is revocable in practice, not just on paper. Three violations inside any rolling twelve-month period lets the Code Enforcement Officer deny your renewal or revoke the license outright, which then bars you for six months on a first revocation and a full year on any repeat. You can appeal to the Property Maintenance Board of Appeals within 30 days, and you'll get a hearing within 60 days and a written decision within 45 days after that, but appealing costs $1,032 plus a $700 advertising deposit. So it's not a step to take lightly over a minor infraction.

I didn't turn up any specific East Stroudsburg lawsuit or news story documenting a crackdown, which is different from saying nothing is enforced. The structure itself, annual inspections plus an escalating revocation ladder plus a marketing rule that bans advertising an occupancy above your licensed maximum, functions as real enforcement even without headline cases. Watch out for that marketing clause specifically: listing "sleeps 12" on a property licensed for 8 is a violation on its own, independent of what happens during any given stay.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in East Stroudsburg

Once your enforcement risk is clear, working through the steps in order matters more than it might seem, mostly because a few of the early ones are prerequisites the borough won't let you skip.

1. Confirm your zoning district first. Check whether your parcel sits in R-2, R-3, or a commercial, office or institutional district. If it's zoned R-1, you're looking at a variance before anything else, not a routine permit.
2. Register for both tax certificates before you touch borough paperwork. Get your Monroe County Hotel Room Excise Tax Certificate from the Treasurer's office and your Pennsylvania Sales and Use Tax License through myPATH. The borough won't issue your license without copies of both.
3. Line up your $500,000 liability policy and a solid waste hauler contract. Both need to be in place, in writing, before you submit.
4. Gather the deed, floor plan, site plan and trespass waiver. If you're not local, add your manager's information and their written authorization to accept service.
5. Submit the Short-Term Rental License application and the separate zoning permit application together, along with the $600 annual license fee and the $75 zoning permit application fee.
6. Pass the initial inspection. The property has to meet the 2006 International Property Maintenance Code, and a third inspection or later costs an additional $150.
7. Post the required notice inside the unit, near the front door, with your 24-hour contact, the 911 address, occupancy limits and the violation warning.
8. Set your guest agreements and house rules to match the licensed limits exactly, since advertising a higher occupancy than what's licensed is its own violation.
9. File your Monroe County quarterly report on time, even when a platform already collected the tax, and diarize your license renewal date a year out.

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

Whichever step trips you up, three offices between them handle almost everything on that list.

Borough licensing, zoning and STR applications

The East Stroudsburg Borough Zoning and Codes Department administers the Short-Term Rental License, the zoning permit and inspections.

• Address: 66 Analomink Street, East Stroudsburg, PA 18301
• STR application submission (in person or mail): 24 Analomink Street, East Stroudsburg, PA 18301
• Phone: (570) 421-8300
• Fax: (570) 421-5575
• Email: [email protected] (PDF applications only)
• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Monroe County Hotel Room Rental Excise Tax

The Office of the Treasurer of Monroe County handles the county's 3% hotel excise tax, registration and the quarterly report.

• Address: One Quaker Plaza, Room 103, Stroudsburg, PA 18360
• Phone: 570-517-3180
• Fax: 570-517-3859
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday

State hotel occupancy tax and the Sales and Use Tax License

The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue handles the state's 6% Hotel Occupancy Tax and the Sales, Use and Hotel Occupancy Tax License you'd register for through myPATH if you don't book exclusively through a collecting platform. Its general information line is 717-787-1064. Do check with them directly on anything that sounds like it might've changed since this was written, since the department's own pages don't spell out every renewal cycle in plain language.

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

I'll say upfront that I couldn't reach Reddit directly for this one, so nothing below claims to summarize a Reddit thread I haven't read. What I did find and read directly is a BiggerPockets thread breaking down short-term rental rules across several Poconos townships in Monroe County, and while it doesn't name East Stroudsburg specifically, the pattern it describes matches what you'd expect from a regulated Pocono market. The thread walks through occupancy formulas, tax registration order and inspection requirements township by township, and its overall tone is that compliance is workable rather than prohibitive: get your paperwork in the right order and "you should have no problem getting by," as the poster put it.

That lines up with East Stroudsburg's own ordinance, honestly. Nothing in it bans short-term rentals; it makes them a licensed, inspected, insured business instead, which is a meaningfully higher bar than a lot of Pennsylvania municipalities set but still a long way from a prohibition. The investors who do well in markets like this tend to be the ones who treat the license fee and the insurance premium as a real line item from day one, rather than something to figure out after the first guest books. That's easier to judge with real numbers in front of you than with a spreadsheet you built from guesswork, and BNBCalc's Pennsylvania market data is a reasonable place to check whether a given nightly rate and occupancy assumption for the Poconos holds up before you sign anything. Given how much of Pennsylvania still regulates short-term rentals ordinance by ordinance, that discipline about reading the actual rule before you buy tends to matter more here than in states with one uniform law to check.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in East Stroudsburg in 2026?

Yes, in most of the borough. Short-term rentals are a permitted use by right in the R-2 and R-3 residential districts and in every commercial, office and institutional district, but not in the R-1 single-family district without a variance. Wherever it's allowed, you still need a Short-Term Rental License from the Code Enforcement Officer, a separate zoning permit, $500,000 in liability insurance and both the county and state tax certificates before you can legally take a booking.

How much does an East Stroudsburg short-term rental license cost?

The Residential Short-Term Rental License costs $600.00 per year per dwelling unit, plus a separate $75 zoning permit application fee. Renewal happens annually and requires a fresh inspection. Late renewals add a $30 per month fee, and a third or later inspection during that cycle costs an additional $150.

What taxes do you owe on an East Stroudsburg short-term rental?

Two layers apply: Pennsylvania's 6% state Hotel Occupancy Tax, which Airbnb collects and remits automatically, and Monroe County's 3% Hotel Room Rental Excise Tax, for a combined 9% on a guest's stay. You need both a Pennsylvania Sales and Use Tax License and a Monroe County Hotel Room Excise Tax Certificate before the borough will issue your license, and the county requires a quarterly filing even when a platform already collected the tax.

Can you rent out a home in East Stroudsburg's R-1 zoning district?

Not as a permitted use. The borough's zoning ordinance lists short-term rentals as permitted by right in R-2, R-3 and the commercial, office and institutional districts, but R-1 isn't on that list. A property there would need a zoning variance before it could legally operate as a short-term rental, and that's a separate, discretionary process through the borough rather than a routine application.

What happens if you operate an unlicensed short-term rental in East Stroudsburg?

You're looking at a fine of $100 to $1,000 per violation before a Magisterial District Judge, and each day the violation continues counts as a separate offense, so it adds up fast. Beyond the fine, operating without a license is a violation in its own right, independent of anything else that happens on the property, and three violations within a rolling twelve months can get a license revoked or a renewal denied for six months to a year.

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