Logan Short-Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Logan, Ohio and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, in most of the city anyway. Logan sits in Hocking County at the edge of the Hocking Hills, and since October 2023 it's had its own short-term rental ordinance that spells out exactly where a listing is legal and what it takes to get licensed.

The catch is that "most of the city" isn't "all of it." Buy in the wrong zoning district and there's no short-term rental business here for you, no matter how nice the cabin looks. Buy in the right one and you're still capped: only 60 licenses total get handed out across the two busiest residential districts, and Hocking County layers its own 6% lodging tax on top of whatever you already owe the city. The county is also drafting a separate short-term rental ordinance of its own right now, in 2026, for the unincorporated parts of Hocking County. It won't touch a listing inside Logan's city limits, but it tells you where the whole area is heading.

So let's get into what actually applies here: which zoning districts allow a short-term rental, what the license costs and requires, the taxes that stack on top, how strictly Logan enforces its own rules, and who to call when you get stuck. Every figure below is checked against Logan's, Hocking County's, and Ohio's own sources as of July 2026, and I've said so plainly anywhere I couldn't pin a number to an official page. Before you commit to a property here, it's worth running it through BNBCalc first, since the licensing caps alone can make or break a deal.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Logan

Before you run those numbers, you need to know which zoning district your address sits in, because that single fact decides whether a short-term rental business exists here for you at all. Logan's council spent nearly a year working this out. Ordinance 54, adopted October 24, 2023 under Chapter 157.163 of the city code, passed with no opposing votes, though one councilman abstained because he owns a short-term rental himself and another was absent that night. The people writing the rules were, in part, the people who'd have to live under them.

The ordinance splits the city into two very different experiences depending on where you land. R-1, the single-family district, is a flat no. The ordinance doesn't allow short-term rentals there, full stop. R-2 and R-2-B are allowed, but they're the tightest, capping out at 60 combined licenses between the two districts, with a 500-foot separation from schools and other short-term rentals and a 10-guest occupancy limit.

B-1, Logan's downtown business district, is the loosest by far: no unit cap, no occupancy limit, and no parking requirement, which likely explains why so much of the existing Airbnb inventory near the town center already sits in that zone. B-2, M-1 and M-2 fall in between, allowed with a 300-foot separation rule and one parking space required per occupant. R-3, the multi-family district, keeps operating under the conditional-use standards that predate Ordinance 54.

Zoning district	Short-term rentals	Key limits
R-1 (single-family)	Not permitted	None allowed under any circumstance
R-2 / R-2-B	Permitted	60 combined licenses citywide, 10-guest cap, 500-ft separation, 1 parking space per bedroom
R-3 (multi-family)	Permitted	Under pre-existing conditional-use standards
B-1 (downtown business)	Permitted	No unit cap, no occupancy cap, no parking requirement
B-2, M-1, M-2	Permitted	300-ft separation, 500 ft from schools, 1 parking space per occupant

Unfortunately for anyone who already owns in R-1, there's no path around it, not through a variance, not through an LLC, not through anything else the ordinance offers. Assuming your address clears zoning, you're not out of the woods yet either: R-2 and R-2-B require checking how many of the 60 available licenses are already claimed, since that ceiling fills up fast in a tourism town this size. Do check with the city before you buy on the strength of a listing photo alone. A cabin that looks perfect on Zillow does you no good if the license pool in its district is already full. Check first.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Logan

Once your zoning checks out, the next question is still what the license itself costs and requires. Reporting on the council vote put the application fee at $50 and the annual license fee at $500 per unit, which lines up with every other tracker following this ordinance, though I should be upfront that Logan's own hosted copy of Chapter 157.163 blocked automated access on every attempt I made, so I couldn't cross-check the fee against the code's exact wording myself. Treat the $50/$500 figures as well-corroborated rather than personally verified against the statute text.

New applicants also get a genuine break on timing: a one-year grace period lets you hold your license position while you wait on the state certificate of occupancy that demonstrates your unit is approved for transient sleeping accommodations. That's a real concession, since certificates like that can take a while to schedule, but don't let a year of runway turn into an excuse to put it off. Keep in mind that the occupancy cap (10 guests in R-2/R-2-B) and the parking requirement (one space per bedroom outside B-1) are conditions of the license, not suggestions, so a property that can't physically meet them won't get approved no matter how complete the paperwork is.

Zoning is handled out of Logan's Zoning Department, where Zoning Clerk Amy Adams helped draft the ordinance itself and is the person to call with a specific parcel question. Separately, and this is worth watching for, Logan runs a general Rental Dwelling Permit program under Chapter 153 of the city code that applies to rental housing citywide, not only to short-term rentals. I couldn't get that chapter to load either, so I won't guess at its fee schedule, but do check with Code Enforcement on whether it stacks on top of your short-term rental license before you assume $550 is the whole bill.

Required Documents for Logan Short-Term Rentals

Since that fee doesn't come back once you've paid it, it's worth getting the paperwork right the first time rather than guessing your way through an application. At minimum, expect to assemble: the completed license application itself, proof of ownership or a lease showing you control the unit, and a site plan or address confirmation the city can check against its zoning map. If your property sits in R-2, R-2-B or B-2, pull the list of neighboring addresses from the Hocking County Auditor's parcel records ahead of time, since the 500-foot and 300-foot separation rules get checked against exactly that data.

You'll also need documentation tied to the certificate of occupancy, even during the one-year grace period, showing that you've applied for it rather than merely planning to someday. And because Ohio's lodging and sales taxes both attach to a short-term rental, bring proof of whatever tax registration applies to you: an Ohio vendor's license if your rental crosses the state sales tax threshold, plus the Hocking County lodging tax registration covered in the next section. Make sure you have all of this assembled before you show up to apply, since an incomplete file means a second trip.

Logan Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all of that and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and in Logan it stacks in three separate places. Hocking County runs a lodging excise tax that totals 6% on every transient stay, split into a 3% county share and a 3% share the county's own materials describe as going to "the local township." Logan itself isn't part of any township, since Ohio cities are their own political subdivisions, so that second 3% most likely functions as the city's own portion under state law rather than routing to a neighboring township. I couldn't confirm that specific split against an official page, so call the Lodging Tax Office and confirm the right recipient for your address before you file.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Hocking County lodging tax	6% total (3% county, 3% local share)	Hocking County Lodging Tax Office
Ohio sales and use tax	7.25% combined (5.75% state, 1.5% county)	Ohio Department of Taxation
City of Logan income tax	2% on net rental profit	City of Logan Income Tax Department

That lodging tax isn't optional for a house or cabin because it isn't a hotel. Hocking County resolved back in 2020 to expand its own definition of "hotel" to include properties with fewer than five rooms, which is exactly what pulls a typical single-unit Airbnb into the county's 3% lodging tax even though Ohio's own state law still defines a "hotel" as five rooms or more for other purposes. No platform files this one for you either.

Remember that neither Airbnb nor Vrbo remits this tax on your behalf; the county says so directly on its own site. You register yourself by emailing the Lodging Tax Office, then file a return every single month, including months with zero income, postmarked by the last day of the month or you're looking at a 10% penalty that climbs to 25% after 30 days.

The 7.25% combined Ohio sales and use tax is a state and county charge, not a city one, and it's worth knowing that Airbnb's own tax page names only Cuyahoga County, Cincinnati and Cleveland as places it collects and remits automatically. Our Cuyahoga County guide covers what that automatic collection looks like where it does apply. Logan isn't on that list, so watch out: the sales tax burden here falls on you, the host, the same as the lodging tax does. On top of both of those, your rental profit is also subject to Logan's 2% municipal income tax, reported annually to the city's Income Tax Department alongside your federal and state returns.

Ohio Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

All three of those tax layers exist because Ohio hands most short-term rental authority down to the local level rather than setting one statewide rule. Ohio has no general law preempting cities or counties from regulating short-term rentals, since townships and counties get their power from statute while cities like Logan draw home-rule authority straight from the Ohio Constitution. That's the entire reason Logan's rules look nothing like Franklin County's, where Columbus runs its own separate licensing regime; our Franklin County guide walks through how differently a big-city market handles the same basic questions.

Two companion bills, House Bill 109 and Senate Bill 104, would change that if they ever pass. As introduced, they'd bar local governments from banning short-term rentals outright, running an eligibility lottery, zoning them out of residential areas entirely, or capping how many a single owner can hold, and they'd cap any local registration fee at $20 per property. Both bills were still sitting in their first committee referral as of the most recent status I could check in early 2026, so none of that is law yet, and Logan's existing $500 fee and 60-unit cap would look very different if either bill moved.

On tax, Ohio's state sales tax runs 5.75% and technically defines a taxable "hotel" as an establishment with five rooms or more, which by the plain text of the statute arguably puts a typical one-unit Logan cabin outside the state sales tax's own definition. Counties can separately levy up to 3% under ORC 5739.09, and municipalities or townships up to 3% more under ORC 5739.08, which is the framework behind Logan and Hocking County's stacked 6%. A separate provision, ORC 5739.091, is what let Hocking County opt in to taxing those smaller properties in the first place. None of this is unique to Logan; it's the same statute every Ohio city and county works from, and our statewide Ohio guide covers the framework in full if you're comparing markets across the state.

Does Logan Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Given how deliberately Logan built its own ordinance, enforcement here looks more serious than in a lot of Ohio cities that adopted rules and then let them sit. The 60-license cap and the separation requirements are, by design, self-enforcing: once R-2 and R-2-B fill up, later applicants get turned away structurally, not only on paper. And the fact that the ordinance passed with essentially no opposition after a year of drafting, with one councilman abstaining specifically because he had a personal stake as an STR owner, suggests a council that took the details seriously rather than rushing a template through.

The bigger enforcement story right now, though, is happening one level up. Hocking County's Zoning Commission has spent late 2025 and early 2026 debating its own countywide short-term rental ordinance, driven partly by real safety concerns. County Fire Chief Chris Maley has publicly described cabins built deep in the woods on steep, muddy gravel driveways that emergency vehicles struggle to reach. That draft ordinance won't apply inside Logan's city limits, since the reporting on it explicitly notes the city already has its own permit process, but it shows a county government willing to write detailed, enforceable rules rather than gesture at the problem. Once you're weighing a property outside city limits instead of inside them, that pending county ordinance is worth tracking closely before you buy.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Logan

Given everything above, the order you tackle this in still matters, since the early steps tell you whether the later ones are even worth doing.

1. Confirm your zoning district first. Check the address against Logan's zoning map before you get emotionally attached to a property, since R-1 is a dead end no matter how good the numbers look otherwise.
2. Check the R-2/R-2-B license count. With only 60 combined licenses available, call the Zoning Department to find out how many are already issued before you assume one will be waiting for you.
3. Budget for the full cost, not only the sticker price. That's $50 to apply, $500 a year to hold the license, plus whatever the citywide rental dwelling permit adds on top.
4. Start your certificate of occupancy paperwork early. You get up to a year, but don't treat that as a deadline to aim for rather than a cushion to use.
5. Register for tax before your first guest checks in. Email the Hocking County Lodging Tax Office to set up your account, and get an Ohio vendor's license if your rental crosses the sales tax threshold.
6. Build the physical requirements into your renovation budget. One parking space per bedroom outside B-1, the right separation distance from schools and other rentals, and a unit that can hold your intended occupancy cap.
7. Set up monthly and annual filing on day one. Hocking County lodging tax is due monthly, with no exceptions for a slow month, and Logan's 2% income tax is reported annually.
8. Watch the county-level ordinance if it affects you. Anyone considering a property outside Logan's boundary should track Hocking County's pending countywide rules before closing.

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

Whichever step trips you up, a handful of offices handle nearly everything between them.

Zoning and the short-term rental license

The City of Logan Zoning Department handles zoning questions, license applications, and the district-by-district rules that decide whether your address qualifies at all.

• Contact: Zoning Clerk Amy Adams
• Phone: 740-385-5369
• Note: I could not verify a current phone number for the City Service Director's office, which several trackers list as the license-issuing authority; call the Zoning Department first and ask to be routed if that's who you need.

City income tax

The City of Logan Income Tax Department administers the city's 2% municipal income tax under Chapter 99 of the city code, which is where your rental income gets reported annually.

• Reference: City of Logan Income Tax Ordinance, Chapter 99

Hocking County lodging tax

The Hocking County Lodging Tax Office, run by Administrator Josh Givens, handles registration, monthly returns, and any questions about the county's 6% bed tax.

• Address: 93 West Hunter Street, Logan, OH 43138
• Phone: (740) 380-4100
• Email: [email protected]

State sales tax

The Ohio Department of Taxation handles the state's sales and use tax and the vendor's license that goes with it.

• Phone: (888) 405-4039

City Council and general city business

Logan City Council meets the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at 7:00pm, and City Hall is your fallback for anything that doesn't fit neatly into one department above.

• Address: 10 South Mulberry Street, Logan, OH 43138

What Airbnb Hosts in Logan Report About Local Regulations

Beyond the offices above, it's worth knowing how people talk about this ordinance, since that shapes what you should expect going in. What follows is my read of the public reporting on this rather than a survey of any kind, so weigh it accordingly.

The clearest theme is that short-term rental owners are already embedded in local politics here, not fighting from the outside. A sitting councilman abstained from the 2023 vote because he owns a short-term rental himself, and the Hocking Hills Lodging Owners Association is an organized, named party in the current debate over the county's pending ordinance, pushing back on proposed cost and occupancy rules. That's a very different dynamic than a city where operators feel unheard.

At the same time, the concerns driving new rules sound rooted in real incidents rather than abstract worry. Fire officials describe cabins built on steep gravel driveways that emergency vehicles struggle to reach, and residents like Shawn Gallagan have raised housing affordability directly, worrying that local families increasingly compete with investment buyers for the same housing stock. Don't dismiss either side of that as noise. Both are shaping the rules you'll operate under if you buy here in the next few years, whether inside city limits or right outside them.

None of that changes whether Hocking Hills tourism can support the number Logan lets you charge, which is a separate question from the rules themselves. BNBCalc Markets breaks down Ohio's short-term rental performance market by market, so once you know a property clears zoning and licensing, that's the next thing worth checking before you make an offer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Logan, Ohio in 2026?

Yes, in most zoning districts, but not all of them. Logan's Ordinance 54, adopted in October 2023, permits short-term rentals in R-2, R-2-B, R-3, B-1, B-2, M-1 and M-2 zones, each with its own rules on occupancy, parking and spacing. R-1, the single-family district, prohibits short-term rentals entirely, with no variance or workaround available. You'll also need a city license, which costs $50 to apply plus $500 a year, and R-2/R-2-B licenses are capped at 60 combined citywide.

How much does a short-term rental license cost in Logan?

Reporting on the ordinance puts the application fee at $50 and the annual license fee at $500 per unit, figures confirmed by every tracker following this rule, though Logan's own hosted code page was inaccessible when this guide was researched. New applicants get up to a year to obtain the required state certificate of occupancy without losing their license position. Budget for a separate citywide rental dwelling permit as well, since Logan runs that program alongside the short-term rental license for all rental housing.

What taxes do you owe on a Logan, Ohio short-term rental?

Three layers stack together. Hocking County charges a 6% lodging tax, filed monthly directly with the county since neither Airbnb nor Vrbo remits it for you. Ohio's combined sales and use tax runs 7.25% (5.75% state, 1.5% county). On top of that, Logan's own 2% municipal income tax applies to your net rental profit, reported annually to the city's Income Tax Department. None of these are automatically collected by booking platforms in Logan.

Is Logan adding new short-term rental restrictions in 2026?

Not directly. Logan's own city ordinance dates to 2023 and hasn't changed. What's new in 2026 is a separate Hocking County ordinance still in draft form, aimed at unincorporated parts of the county that currently have no short-term rental rules at all. Reporting on the draft explicitly notes it wouldn't apply inside Logan's city limits, since the city already has its own permit process. It's still worth tracking if you're considering a property outside city limits instead.

How many short-term rental licenses does Logan allow?

There's no citywide cap overall, but R-2 and R-2-B, the two residential districts most likely to interest an investor, are capped at 60 combined licenses. B-1, the downtown business district, has no unit limit at all, and B-2, M-1 and M-2 allow short-term rentals without that specific 60-unit ceiling, subject to separation rules from schools and other rentals. Once the 60-license pool in R-2/R-2-B fills, later applicants in those two districts are turned away regardless of how complete their paperwork is.

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