Contra Costa County, California Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Contra Costa County, California and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that the county allows it, and has done since June 2020, when the Board of Supervisors adopted Ordinance 2020-12 and wrote short-term rentals into the zoning code as a permitted use. Meet the standards, file the application, and a planner signs it off without a hearing.

Unfortunately, that permission comes with a calendar stapled to it. A rental where the host is away is capped at 90 days a year, a hosted one at 180, and 180 is the hard ceiling however you run it. So if you were picturing a house that pays for itself 300 nights a year, that isn't on offer here. The other thing to settle early is whether these rules reach you at all, since Chapter 88-32 binds the unincorporated county and nothing else. The 19 cities inside the county lines, Concord and Walnut Creek and Richmond and Antioch among them, each write their own, and several are stricter.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: which lots qualify, what the permit costs in 2026, the paperwork the county wants with it, the charges you'll be handling once guests arrive, how hard code enforcement pushes when a neighbor complains, and who to call. Every figure below comes from Contra Costa County's own ordinance code, its permit pages and its fee schedule, checked in July 2026, and where I couldn't pin something down I've said so. Before you spend anything on an application, run the property through BNBCalc with 90 nights in the model instead of 300, because that change decides most of these deals.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Contra Costa County

Those day caps do most of the deciding, so it's worth seeing how the county gets to them. The definitions in Chapter 88-32 split every short-term rental into two kinds, and the split turns on one thing: whether a host is physically present at their primary residence, on the same lot, for the whole booking. Stay put and you're hosted, but leave for even part of the booking and you're non-hosted.

That distinction then drives the calendar, because under section 88-32.602 a non-hosted rental gets 90 days a calendar year, a hosted rental gets 180, and no short-term rental of any kind may exceed 180 days in a year. Read those two numbers together and the shape of the business becomes obvious: the county is regulating for people who live in Contra Costa and rent out their home some of the time, rather than for investors buying a house to run as a hotel.

So price the year at 90 nights and see whether the deal still stands.

There's a second thing buried in those definitions that anyone shopping for an investment property should raise before they sign anything, since both "hosted" and "non-hosted" are written around a host whose primary residence sits on the same lot. That's a strange way to describe an absentee owner's rental house.

Even so, the ordinance never says in terms that a property with nobody living on it is barred, and the application form only demands primary-residence documents where the rental "will be hosted for any period". I couldn't resolve it from the text either way, so do check it with the Department of Conservation and Development for your specific parcel rather than assuming an answer that suits you.

Assuming the calendar still works for you, the next question is the lot itself. Section 88-32.404 allows a short-term rental on any lot in a single-family residential district (R-6 through R-100), a planned unit district (P-1) put to residential use, the water recreational district (F-1), or a multiple-family residential district (M-6 through M-29). Agricultural districts from A-2 to A-80 qualify too, with one exception: a lot under a Williamson Act contract can't host one at all.

Then come the exclusions, and there are more of them than the zoning list suggests:

• One short-term rental per lot. Two units on a parcel doesn't mean two permits.
• Nothing inside a building of five or more dwelling units. So a condo in a small four-plex may qualify while the identical unit in a mid-rise doesn't.
• No accessory dwelling units, full stop, under section 88-32.606. California law points the same way, which I'll come back to.
• No deed-restricted below-market-rate units. That's one of the grounds for denial in section 88-32.408.
• No events, meaning no conferences, weddings, fundraisers or commercial gatherings of any description, and no signage anywhere on the lot advertising the rental.

Occupancy and parking are fixed by the same section. You get two guests per bedroom plus two more, with children under 12 not counted, and never more than 20 people including children on the property at any one time. A rental with three bedrooms or fewer needs at least one off-street parking space for guests, and four bedrooms or more needs two, on the same lot though it may sit in the setback. Guest vehicles are then capped at the number of spaces you provided, so the count on your site plan is the count of guest cars you're allowed.

Now, what if your plan needs more than 90 nights, or the parking doesn't work? There's a route for that, the discretionary short-term rental permit, which is processed like a land use permit and can include a noticed public hearing if anyone asks for one. It can extend the day caps, reduce the parking, or raise the guest count, and it can run up to five years instead of one.

What it can't do is bend the operational standards, because the county's own summary of the ordinance says no deviation from those is allowed under either permit type. Keep in mind, though, that discretionary means exactly what it says. You're asking, not filing.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Contra Costa County

Whichever of those two routes fits, nothing happens until a permit exists, because section 88-32.402 bars anyone from establishing or operating a short-term rental in the unincorporated county without one. The ordinary route is ministerial. In plain terms, that means staff have no discretion to turn you down once you meet the standards, and nobody holds a hearing.

The county's Land Development Fee Schedule sets the prices, and there are three of them worth knowing before you start: a short-term rental permit costs $350, the annual renewal costs $200, and the land use permit behind a discretionary application takes a $2,000 minimum deposit and then bills time and materials on top.

One warning about that first number, though. The fillable application form the county still publishes is stamped February 2021 and prints "$380.00 Application Fee", which predates the fee schedule above. Treat that figure as stale, then, and expect the planner assigned to your file to send you the current amount.

The clock is short. A ministerial permit expires one year from the date it was approved, and a renewal has to be filed at least 30 calendar days before that date. Miss the window and lateness itself becomes a ground for denial, which is an unusually unforgiving rule, so make sure you diarize the expiry the day the permit lands. Permits also can't be transferred under section 88-32.414, meaning a sale hands the buyer a property, not a permission.

Approval isn't quite automatic either. Section 88-32.408 lists eight grounds for denial, and two of them have nothing to do with the rental itself: an applicant who is delinquent on county taxes gets refused, and so does anyone whose short-term rental permit, or the permit on that unit, was revoked within the previous 24 months. Both are easy to trip over. The rest are what you'd expect, covering incomplete applications, false statements, unpaid fees, the location rules, deed-restricted units, and any existing code violation on the property, building standards included.

Then there's the part hosts underestimate. Once the permit issues, the department notifies every property owner within 300 feet that it exists, and hands them the responsible party's contact details along with code enforcement's.

So your neighbors never have to discover the rental for themselves. They're told, in writing, along with the number to call when a Saturday night goes sideways.

Two more approvals sit behind the zoning permit, and both are conditions of renting rather than optional extras. Section 88-32.614 requires a valid business license under Chapter 64-14 before you rent or offer to rent, and section 88-32.616 requires a valid transient occupancy registration certificate under Chapter 64-4 on the same terms. The county's short-term rental page repeats both and asks you to file a copy of the business license back with Community Development staff.

Once you're operating, there's still more attached to the permit itself. Section 88-32.612 says you must post the permit, the business license and the applicable standards in every room a guest is expected to sleep in. Every advertisement you run then has to carry the permit number, the business license number, the maximum occupancy, the maximum number of vehicles and the quiet hours. That last requirement reaches your Airbnb listing text directly, so don't forget to update it when a renewal changes your permit number. Quiet hours themselves run 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., and outdoor amplified sound is banned outright, at any hour.

Record-keeping is the quieter obligation, and it's the one hosts skip, even though section 88-32.618 makes you log every date the place was rented, the overnight occupancy on each of those dates and the rent paid per night, then keep all of it for three years. A copy goes in with each renewal application, while holders of a discretionary permit file theirs annually on the permit's anniversary. Since that log is also what proves you stayed inside the 90 or 180 day cap, it's worth getting the habit right from the first booking rather than reconstructing a year later.

Required Documents for Contra Costa County Short-Term Rentals

Because that renewal turns on paperwork you kept, it helps to know the county wants a fairly thick file at the start too. Section 88-32.406 and the county's fillable short-term rental application between them spell out what a complete submission looks like:

• Names, addresses and contact details for the applicant and the property owner, plus the address and assessor's parcel number for the lot.
• Primary residence documentation for the host, where the rental will be hosted for any period, proved by at least two of these: motor vehicle registration, driver's license, California state identification card, voter registration, income tax return, property tax bill, or a utility bill.
• A legible site plan showing every structure on the lot, marking which dwelling unit is proposed for rental, and showing where the required guest parking sits.
• A legible floor plan of the unit itself.
• The property owner's written consent, which matters when the applicant is a lessee rather than the owner.
• A statement that no restrictive covenant prohibits the rental. Where one does, attach written consent from the HOA or whoever holds the benefit of it.
• A responsible party, aged 18 or over, who lives within a 30-mile radius of the rental and is reachable by phone for the whole of any rental period to answer complaints.
• A signed indemnification holding the county and its officers harmless over the application, the approval and the operation of the rental.

Send the completed checklist and application to [email protected], and a planner gets assigned who then emails you a fee request with payment instructions. Be aware that the front counter at 30 Muir Road runs by appointment only these days, so email is genuinely the faster path rather than a fallback.

The business license then needs its own small pile, and the county's business license instructions put the short-term rental form or land use verification from Conservation and Development first in the stack. After that comes a federal tax ID or Social Security number, a Secretary of State entity number where you're using an LLC or corporation, and a fictitious business name statement from the Clerk-Recorder where you're trading under a name that isn't your own.

The application itself is online, though the county's warning on that page is worth reading twice, since failing to produce the required documentation can void the license, with no refund and a penalty on top.

Contra Costa County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming the permit comes through and you're able to take that first booking, there's still the tax layer to sort out, and it's simpler here than in most California jurisdictions because the state adds nothing of its own on top.

Charge	Rate	Who collects it
Transient occupancy tax	10% of rent, on stays of 30 days or less	Contra Costa County Treasurer-Tax Collector
Business license tax	$100 per business entity, plus $10 per full-time-equivalent employee over one	Contra Costa County Treasurer-Tax Collector
Income tax on your profit	Your California rate	Franchise Tax Board

The county's transient occupancy tax, the bed tax in plain English, runs at 10% of the rent for accommodations in the unincorporated areas, which is a charge Revenue and Taxation Code section 7280 lets every California county set at whatever rate it likes. A guest counts as transient for 30 consecutive calendar days or less, counting part days as full days, so a 31-night booking falls out of the tax altogether. You register with the tax collector within 30 days of starting up and get a registration certificate back, which has to be available on the premises on demand.

Filing is quarterly. Under Chapter 64-4 the return is due on or before the last day of the month following the close of each calendar quarter, and you pay the whole amount over at the same time. Until you hand it across, the money is held in trust for the county rather than sitting in your account as revenue.

Miss the deadline and the penalties stack: 10% on the original delinquency, another 10% if it's still unpaid 30 days later, 25% more where the tax collector makes a written finding of fraud, and interest at 0.5% per month running from the date it first went delinquent. All of it then merges into the tax itself, so the records behind it have to be kept for three years.

The good news is that platform collection saves most hosts a real chunk of that work. Airbnb's California occupancy tax list confirms that it collects and remits the county's 10% transient occupancy tax for reservations of 30 nights or shorter in unincorporated Contra Costa County, calculated on the listing price including cleaning fees.

Airbnb's collection doesn't retire your filing obligation, though, and the county makes the point in the most practical way possible by publishing step-by-step instructions for exporting your Airbnb Gross Earnings Report quarter by quarter so you can complete the return. I could not confirm the same arrangement for Vrbo or any other platform, so if you list anywhere besides Airbnb, assume the tax is yours to collect until the tax collector tells you otherwise.

The business license tax is smaller and stranger. Chapter 64-14 puts a Class A business at a $100 flat fee per entity plus $10 for each full-time-equivalent employee over one, on a license year that runs July 1 to June 30 with new businesses prorated to the quarter they start in. Late payment draws a 25% penalty after 30 days plus 1.5% monthly interest.

Then comes the oddity, because the same chapter exempts "businesses which rent or lease to others no more than four residential dwelling units," which on its face describes almost every short-term rental host, while the short-term rental ordinance separately requires a valid license before you rent. Exemptions have to be requested with proof, so put that one to the Tax Collector's office instead of assuming it covers you.

Two more charges sit above the county, starting with income tax, since your profit is ordinary taxable income to the Franchise Tax Board. It taxes residents on all rental income and non-residents on income from California property, and the usual deductions apply for mortgage interest, depreciation, insurance, cleaning, supplies and platform fees.

California then runs a Tourism Assessment on accommodations, self-assessed and filed with the state Office of Tourism, though revenue from stays of 31 or more continuous days by the same person isn't assessable. I couldn't verify the current-year rate from a live official source, so check it with the Office of Tourism before you budget for it rather than taking a figure off a blog.

California Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That absence of a state tax layer is part of a bigger pattern, since California leaves almost all of this to cities and counties. There's no statewide short-term rental permit, no state registry and no state occupancy tax, so what the state does instead is draw boundaries around what a local government may do, and a handful of those boundaries shape everything you just read.

The clearest of them is the fine ceiling, since Government Code section 25132 caps county fines for short-term rental infractions at $1,500 for a first violation, $3,000 for a second inside a year and $5,000 after that. It also demands a hardship-waiver process, and it reserves the higher tiers for violations that threaten public health or safety. Compare all that with Contra Costa County's own schedule further down and you'll notice the county copied the figures exactly, which means it's charging the maximum the Legislature allows.

Three more state rules land directly on this kind of property:

• Your HOA can ban it even though the county won't. Civil Code section 4741 lets a common interest development prohibit rentals "for a period of 30 days or less" while barring it from banning longer ones. That's why the county asks about restrictive covenants on the application, and why an HOA letter can end the project before planning ever sees it.
• Accessory dwelling units are off the table twice over. Government Code section 66323 requires rentals of ADUs approved under that section to run "for a term longer than 30 days," and AB 1154 of 2025 extended the same floor to junior ADUs. Contra Costa's own section 88-32.606 bans ADU short-term rentals outright, so the state rule and the county rule agree for once.
• Your listing has to price honestly. Business and Professions Code section 17568.6 has required advertised nightly rates to include every mandatory fee except government taxes since July 2024, and section 17568.8 has required cleaning tasks and any fee for skipping them to be disclosed and acknowledged before booking since July 2025.

One newer law is worth tracking rather than acting on. SB 346 of 2025, the Short-Term Rental Facilitator Act, took effect on January 1, 2026 and added Government Code sections 50990 and following. Where a local agency adopts an ordinance under it, platforms must report each rental's physical address to that agency and carry local license numbers and tax certification inside the listing. It's opt-in, and I found no sign that Contra Costa County has adopted one, though given the direction the Board took in March 2026 it's the sort of tool a county reaching for better enforcement would look at.

Since the rules change so completely at every jurisdiction line, the comparisons are still worth making before you commit to a market. Our California statewide guide maps the overall framework, the San Francisco County guide covers the strictest version of this in the Bay Area, and the Solano County guide and San Joaquin County guide cover the counties immediately north and east, where the day caps work differently.

Does Contra Costa County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

The county charges the state's maximum fine, which tells you something about intent, and 2026 is the year that intent turned into action. On March 31, 2026 the Board of Supervisors passed an item authorizing the Conservation and Development Director to evaluate the short-term rental ordinance and recommend amendments to address unpermitted activities. The staff report behind it says the county has been receiving community complaints about "disruptive parties, excessive noise, and safety concerns arising from properties operating as short-term rentals without valid permits," and that any amendment goes to the County Planning Commission before it reaches the Board.

As of July 2026 nothing has come back yet, so the rules in this guide are still the current ones. The direction of travel isn't subtle, though.

Day to day, enforcement is complaint-driven, and the mechanics are set out on the county's code enforcement page. Most complaints start with a Courtesy Letter telling the owner they may have a violation and asking them to call the officer, whereas serious health and safety problems, disabled-access problems and unpermitted work get an officer on site and a Notice to Comply instead. The county wants voluntary compliance and says so, which in practice means a first-time host who fixes the problem quickly is unlikely to see a fine.

Ignore it, though, and the costs arrive from two directions at once. A Notice to Comply carries a code enforcement fee of twice the relevant permit fee or a $300 minimum, and zoning violation clearance runs a $300 minimum of its own. Every officer visit after that then adds $150 per trip until you comply, all of it stacked on top of whatever permit or zoning fee you owed anyway.

On top of that, Chapter 14-8 of the ordinance code fines short-term rental violations at $1,500 for the first, $3,000 for a second within a year and $5,000 for each one after that, with a lighter $100 reserved for failing to register or pay the business license fee. A hardship waiver exists, though you have to show a bona fide effort to comply after the first violation and file an affidavit proving real financial hardship. It isn't a formality.

Watch out for one detail in that chapter, because it changes the total completely: acts or conditions that continue on more than one day count as separate violations on each day. A summer of unpermitted weekend bookings isn't one $1,500 problem. It's a running meter.

And the ordinance's own enforcement section keeps revocation, administrative fines, infraction citations and any other lawful remedy on the table together, so nothing stops the county running more than one of them at once.

There's a structural reason all of this bites harder here than the fine schedule alone suggests. Because every owner within 300 feet is notified when a permit issues, the neighbors of a permitted rental know exactly who to call, while the neighbors of an unpermitted one never got that letter, which is often what prompts the first call. The county has not published permit counts or citation numbers, so I can't tell you how many hosts have actually been fined. What the Board's own March 2026 language tells you is that complaints have been arriving in enough volume to put an ordinance rewrite on the agenda.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Contra Costa County

Given how much of that turns on getting the sequence right, the order below matters more than it looks, because the early steps are the ones that tell you whether the later ones are worth paying for.

1. Confirm the property is in the unincorporated county. Inside any of the 19 city limits, Chapter 88-32 doesn't apply and the city's own rules do. Call the Application and Permit Center at 925-655-2700 for zoning use verification if you're unsure which side of a line you're on.
2. Check the zoning district and the Williamson Act. R, P-1 residential, F-1, M and A districts qualify; a lot under a Williamson Act contract does not.
3. Rule out the disqualifiers before you spend anything. A building with five or more dwelling units, an accessory dwelling unit, a deed-restricted below-market-rate unit, or an existing code violation on the property will each stop the application dead.
4. Read your CC&Rs and your lease. You'll be certifying that no restrictive covenant prohibits the rental, and where one does, you need written consent to attach.
5. Model the year at 90 nights rather than 365. Non-hosted is capped at 90 days, hosted at 180, and 180 is the ceiling either way. Remember that this is the number the whole deal turns on, so run it before the paperwork rather than after.
6. Line up a responsible party. Someone 18 or over, living within 30 miles, contactable by phone for the duration of every booking.
7. Assemble and email the application. Site plan, floor plan, two primary-residence documents, owner consent, covenant statement, signed indemnification, then send it to [email protected] and wait for the assigned planner's fee request.
8. Get the business license and the transient occupancy registration certificate. Both are conditions of renting rather than follow-ups, and the business license goes through the Treasurer-Tax Collector after Conservation and Development signs off on the use.
9. Set up the postings and the log on day one. Permit, license and standards in every sleeping room; permit number, license number, occupancy, vehicle limit and quiet hours in every advertisement; dates, occupancy and nightly rent in a log you keep for three years.
10. Diarize the renewal 30 days ahead of expiry. The permit runs one year, the renewal is $200, and filing late is itself a ground for refusal.

Who to Contact in Contra Costa County about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, two county offices handle essentially all of it between them, and knowing which one owns your question will save you a transferred call.

Permits, Zoning and the Application Itself

The Department of Conservation and Development runs the short-term rental permit, the zoning verification and code enforcement, and its contact page carries the current details.

• Address: 30 Muir Road, Martinez, CA 94553
• Main phone: 925-655-2774 (TTY: call 711)
• Toll free: 1-855-323-2626
• Application and Permit Center: 925-655-2700
• Hours: Monday to Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., by appointment only
• Short-term rental applications: [email protected]
• Zoning and land use questions: [email protected]
• Building and code enforcement questions: [email protected]

For a complaint about a rental, yours or someone else's, the Code Enforcement Division takes calls on 925-655-2710 or toll free on 877-646-8314, and it runs an online complaint form as well, which is a number worth knowing in both directions.

Taxes, Licenses and the Registration Certificate

The Treasurer-Tax Collector administers the transient occupancy tax and the business license program for the unincorporated county, and publishes its details on the transient occupancy tax page.

• Office: Finance Building, 625 Court Street, Room 100, Martinez, CA 94553
• Mailing address: Contra Costa County Treasurer-Tax Collector, P.O. Box 631, Martinez, CA 94553
• Phone: (925) 608-9500 (TTY: call 711)
• Fax: (925) 608-9598
• Email: [email protected]
• Walk-in hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• Call center and chat: Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

The Board of Supervisors sits at the County Administration Building, 1025 Escobar Street in Martinez, and its agendas are the place to watch for the ordinance amendment the Board asked for in March 2026.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Contra Costa County on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those agendas are where the loudest local opinion has landed, and that's the first thing to say about host sentiment here. Before I characterize any of it, though, one disclosure. Reddit blocks automated access and its platform terms don't permit the kind of commercial data use these guides would involve, and I couldn't reach a Contra Costa thread on BiggerPockets either. So what follows is my read of the recurring themes plus what the county's own record shows, not a survey, and you should weigh it accordingly.

The county's record is the more reliable half of that, and in its March 2026 report to the Board, the Department of Conservation and Development described complaints about "disruptive parties, excessive noise, and safety concerns" at properties running without valid permits. Notice which side of the line those complaints fall on, because the friction in this county isn't hosts fighting the rules, it's residents reporting people who never applied.

Three themes come up consistently among hosts, and I'd treat all three as impressions rather than findings:

• The 90-day cap is the whole conversation for investors. Anyone comparing Contra Costa to a Tahoe or Palm Springs style market runs into the same wall, and most of them end up looking at either the 30-plus-night furnished market, which sits outside this ordinance entirely, or a different county.
• Owner-occupiers are broadly fine with it. A 180-day hosted allowance is generous for someone renting a spare room or leaving town for stretches, the $350 and $200 fees are small next to Bay Area carrying costs, and a ministerial permit with no hearing is about as painless as California land use gets.
• The 300-foot notice is the sleeper issue. Hosts underestimate what it means to have every neighbor within 300 feet handed the responsible party's phone number and code enforcement's at the same time. It cuts both ways, since a permitted rental has a paper trail on its side, but the first noisy weekend is unlikely to go unnoticed.

Assuming you're still weighing this county against the rest of the state, the California market page is the place to see where the demand sits before the rules narrow your options for you.

The pattern underneath all of this is one that turns up wherever a housing-pressured county writes rental rules. The permission is real, the paperwork is manageable, and the calendar is where the policy actually lives. So wherever you're buying, find the number that caps your nights before you fall in love with the nightly rate, because that's the number you're underwriting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Contra Costa County, California in 2026?

Yes, in the unincorporated parts of the county, with a short-term rental permit from the Department of Conservation and Development. A non-hosted rental is capped at 90 days a calendar year and a hosted one at 180, with 180 the ceiling for any short-term rental. Inside the county's 19 incorporated cities, including Concord, Walnut Creek, Richmond and Antioch, the county ordinance doesn't apply and the city's own rules govern instead.

How much does a Contra Costa County short-term rental permit cost?

The county's Land Development Fee Schedule sets a short-term rental permit at $350 and the annual renewal at $200. A discretionary permit, which is what you file when you want to exceed the day caps or reduce the parking, takes a $2,000 minimum deposit and is then billed on time and materials. The fillable application form still prints an older $380 figure, so go by the assigned planner's fee request.

What tax do you pay on a short-term rental in Contra Costa County?

Transient occupancy tax at 10% of the rent applies to stays of 30 consecutive days or less in the unincorporated county, and is filed quarterly with the Treasurer-Tax Collector by the last day of the month after each quarter closes. Airbnb collects and remits it for reservations of 30 nights or shorter. A business license tax of $100 per entity plus $10 per employee over one applies as well, and your profit is taxable by the Franchise Tax Board.

What happens if you run an unpermitted short-term rental in Contra Costa County?

Fines run $1,500 for a first violation of the short-term rental ordinance, $3,000 for a second within a year, and $5,000 for each additional one, which is the maximum California law allows a county to charge. Failing to register or pay the business license fee alone draws $100. Every day the violation continues counts as a separate violation, and the county can also pursue revocation, administrative fines and infraction citations together.

Can you short-term rent an ADU or a condo in Contra Costa County?

Not an ADU. Section 88-32.606 of the county code bans it outright, and California's own ADU law requires those units to be rented for terms longer than 30 days. A condo depends on the building: a unit inside a building with five or more dwelling units can't be a short-term rental, and your HOA can prohibit rentals of 30 days or less regardless of what the county allows.

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