Redwood City Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Redwood City and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is, you're allowed to, as long as it's the home you live in. Redwood City, sitting in the heart of San Mateo County on California's Peninsula, has permitted short-term rentals from a primary residence since the City Council adopted Section 31.3 of the Redwood City Zoning Ordinance on March 26, 2018.

That's the catch, though, and it's a real one. Second homes and pure investment properties don't qualify at all, full stop. The city built this ordinance around a narrower idea: you register the place you sleep in, pay a fee that currently runs $437, collect a 12% transient occupancy tax, and if you're not home during the stay, you're capped at 120 nights a year. Miss any of that and the city's own courtesy-letter process starts working against you.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: who qualifies, what registration costs and requires, the tax layers on top, how strictly the city enforces its own rules, and who to call when something doesn't add up. Every figure below comes from Redwood City's own ordinance and department pages, checked in July 2026. If you're comparing this property against other California markets, run the numbers through BNBCalc first.

What are short term rental (Airbnb, VRBO) regulations in Redwood City, California?

Redwood City's whole framework for Airbnb and Vrbo rests on one section of the zoning code, so it's worth understanding what it says before anything else. Section 31.3 of Article 31 of the Redwood City Zoning Ordinance, formally titled "Short-Term Rental Use Incidental to a Primary Residence," defines a short-term rental as any stay under 30 consecutive days, and it treats that use as something you layer onto a home you already live in, not a business you build from scratch.

That framing matters more than it sounds. The ordinance defines a "primary residence" as a dwelling unit where you've been physically present and regard as home, and you can only have one at a time. A "host" has to be an individual person, either the property's owner of record or a lessee under a written lease, never a company. If you're renting a duplex or triplex and living in one unit, you can't turn the vacant unit next door into a separate listing. You can only rent out the unit, or a portion of it, that you personally live in.

Two operating limits do most of the real work. Unhosted stays, where you're not on the property, are capped at 120 days a year; hosted stays, where you're there, have no cap at all. The ordinance spells out exactly what "host is present" means, too: you have to be on the premises every night between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. Sleep somewhere else on a night you're claiming as hosted, and you've quietly burned into your 120-day unhosted allowance instead.

Accessory dwelling units get a harder line. ADUs and JADUs can't be used as short-term rentals at all unless they were already registered with the city before January 1, 2020, a cutoff that lines up with the state's own push, around the same time, to protect newer ADUs as long-term housing stock instead of vacation inventory. Build or convert one since then, and it's a long-term rental only.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Redwood City

That ADU restriction is a preview of how narrow this gets once you look past the headline permission. There's no version of a Redwood City short-term rental where you buy a second property, furnish it, and run it as a pure nightly-rate business. The ordinance doesn't allow it, and no fee changes that.

What you're starting instead, if the numbers work, is a room-share or a spare-unit rental inside the home you already live in. If you're a tenant rather than an owner, you can still register, but you'll need to show that you've lived in the unit for the prior 12 months and intend to keep living there for the next 12. Your landlord finds out too, in effect, since your lease has to allow subletting or the CC&Rs have to permit it; the ordinance itself doesn't override either one.

A few situations knock people out before they even reach the application:

• Second homes and investment properties. Only a primary residence qualifies, and you can only have one of those at a time.
• Rent- or lease-restricted units, where your lease or your HOA's CC&Rs bar subletting outright.
• ADUs and JADUs permitted after January 1, 2020. These can only be rented long-term.
• A second unit you own but don't live in, even inside the same duplex or triplex where you do live in one unit.

Own property elsewhere in San Mateo County instead? The rules reset with every city and unincorporated area. Our San Mateo County guide is worth checking before you assume Redwood City's playbook travels with you.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Redwood City

Assuming your situation clears all of that, licensing here amounts to registration, since Redwood City dropped the idea of a separate business license before the ordinance even passed. The Planning Commission recommended cutting it in November 2017, and the version Council adopted never included one. What you need instead is a short-term rental registration, administered by the Planning and Housing Division inside the Community Development Department.

You apply through the city's short-term rental portal, and the application itself asks for your name and contact info, the property address, your local contact person's details, and a signed acknowledgment that you'll comply with the Zoning Ordinance, the Municipal Code, and applicable health and safety standards. The City Manager or a designee decides the application, and approval isn't automatic. The city checks that you can meet the requirements, that the property hasn't had an active compliance order or citation in the past 12 months, and that no registration for that address was denied or revoked in the past 24 months.

The fee is where the city's own pages disagree with each other, so it's worth being precise here. The live FAQ page still quotes $420 for fiscal year 2024-2025, but Redwood City's current Master Fee Schedule, effective July 1, 2025, lists the Short-Term Rental Registration fee at $437. Since that's the more recent and more authoritative source, that's the number to budget for. The city also prorates it against its July-through-June fiscal year: register between October 1 and March 31 and the fee drops 25%; register between April 1 and June 30 and it drops 75%. Register early in the fiscal year and you'll pay the full amount, so it's worth getting the paperwork right the first time.

Once approved, the registration is still personal to you, valid on a fiscal-year basis, and it can't be sold, transferred, or loaned to anyone else. It expires automatically the moment you sell or transfer the unit, and you'll need to renew it annually, a renewal the ordinance ties directly to being current on your transient occupancy tax.

Required Documents for Redwood City Short Term Rentals

Since renewal is tied to your tax standing anyway, it's worth getting the underlying evidence right at that first application. The registration portal sits behind a login and doesn't publish its exact document checklist for outside reading, but the ordinance itself specifies most of what you'll need:

• Proof you're the host of record. Ownership if you're the property owner, or your written lease if you're a tenant, since the city needs to confirm you're an individual, not a company, and either the owner or a lessee under a written agreement.
• Evidence of primary residency, especially for tenants: proof you've lived in the unit for the 12 months before applying and intend to for the 12 months after.
• Your local contact person's name and contact information. The ordinance requires someone available 24/7 during any unhosted stay, and you'll need to share that information with guests and with the occupants of adjacent properties.
• Listing details for every platform you use, capped at two listings for the same unit on the same days.
• A signed compliance acknowledgment, confirming you'll follow the Zoning Ordinance, the Municipal Code, and applicable health and safety standards.

Keep in mind that the city can also ask for "other information as requested," so don't be surprised if the online application prompts for something beyond this list once you're inside it. Since the registration fee doesn't come back if you're denied, it's worth confirming your primary-residence status and your lease or CC&R terms before you pay it.

Redwood City Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through registration and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to collect on every stay. Redwood City imposes a transient occupancy tax (TOT) of 12% of the rent charged, under Chapter 32, Article IV of the Redwood City Code, and Section 31.3 makes collecting and remitting it the host's responsibility, unless a hosting platform has signed its own voluntary collection agreement with the city.

Airbnb has one. The city's own short-term rental handout says plainly that Airbnb collects TOT on behalf of its hosts, so if you rent exclusively through Airbnb, you don't owe the city anything extra on top of what Airbnb already withholds. I couldn't confirm the same for Vrbo from any Redwood City or Vrbo source, so if Vrbo is part of your booking mix, don't assume it's covered; check before your first guest arrives.

For anything a platform doesn't collect, you remit online, monthly, through the city's tax system. TOT revenue here isn't just general fund money, either. The city dedicated it specifically to its Affordable Housing Fund, which is part of why the ordinance frames short-term rentals as something to permit narrowly rather than encourage broadly.

On top of the local tax sits California's own layer. The state levies no separate lodging tax of its own, but your rental income is still ordinary taxable income to the Franchise Tax Board regardless of what the city collects. There's also a statewide Tourism Assessment funding California's tourism marketing, though it applies at the operator level, and a single primary-residence host is unlikely to hit its thresholds. For everything California adds on top of what a city like Redwood City requires, our California short-term rental guide walks through the whole state framework.

Redwood City wide Short Term Rental Rules

That state layer applies everywhere in California, but the operating rules themselves are Redwood City's own, and they apply the same way across the whole city. The ordinance covers every residential zoning district, including single-family homes, condominiums, duplexes, and apartments, so there's no exception carved out for a particular neighborhood. The one carve-out that does exist is geographic in a different sense: these rules don't apply to unincorporated pockets that share a Redwood City mailing address but actually sit in unincorporated San Mateo County. Those properties fall under the county's own rules instead.

A handful of operating standards apply to every registered rental, hosted or not:

• Parking. No additional parking is required, but whatever on-site spaces already exist have to be made available to your short-term renters.
• No special events. Weddings, corporate retreats, and similar functions are prohibited as short-term rental activity, even if a guest technically booked the whole stay.
• Records retention. You have to keep documentation of your compliance, TOT payments included, for three years after each rental period, and produce it if the city asks.
• HOA and lease authority. Under California Civil Code § 4741(c), an HOA can prohibit short-term rentals of 30 days or less even where the city allows them, and Redwood City's ordinance doesn't override that. Make sure you check your CC&Rs before assuming the city's approval is the only approval you need.

Does Redwood City strictly enforce STR rules? Is Redwood City Airbnb friendly?

None of those standards matter much without enforcement behind them, and Redwood City's approach reads as administrative rather than combative. The city's own FAQ describes a three-letter courtesy process before anything gets serious:

• Letter one, at 60 days. A reminder of the ordinance and where to find the registration website.
• Letter two, at 30 days. A warning about what happens if you stay non-compliant.
• Letter three, at 30 days. Notice of fine accrual and the administrative action that follows.

Ignore all three, and you're looking at a code enforcement investigation, administrative fees, and suspension of your short-term rental privileges.

Registration itself can be revoked outright for fraud or misrepresentation in your application or your operation, for violating any provision of the ordinance or the broader municipal code, or for violating federal or state law. The Zoning Administrator has to give you 10 days' written notice and a hearing before revoking anything, and you can appeal to the City Manager or a designated hearing officer within 10 days of the decision. Lose that appeal, or get denied outright, and you're locked out for 24 months before you can reapply.

For actual fines, California sets a hard ceiling on what a city can charge for a zoning-ordinance infraction, not Redwood City itself. State law caps it at $1,500 for a first violation, $3,000 for a second within a year, and $5,000 for anything after that. It's a real ceiling, and it's part of why California cities tend to lean on registration revocation and courtesy letters rather than escalating fines the way some other states allow.

I couldn't find any published count of how many active short-term rental registrations Redwood City currently has, or a public log of citations issued, the way a bigger city like New York publishes. What the ordinance and FAQ do make clear is that this isn't a market built for scale. Two listings per unit, a 120-day cap on unhosted nights, and a primary-residence requirement all point the same direction: Redwood City is friendly to the resident who wants to rent a room or a legal older ADU, and closed to the investor hoping to run a whole-unit nightly-rate business.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Redwood City

Assuming you're the resident this ordinance is built for, here's the order that avoids wasted time and a non-refundable fee spent on a property that was never going to qualify.

1. Confirm primary-residence status first. You need to already live there, or if you're a tenant, show 12 months of residency behind you and 12 ahead, before you spend a dollar on the application.
2. Make sure your lease or HOA allows it. The ordinance doesn't override a sublease ban or a CC&R restriction, so confirm you're actually cleared before the city gets involved.
3. Line up a local contact person who can be reached 24/7 and respond to complaints within 60 minutes, since unhosted stays require one and you'll need their details on the application.
4. Decide hosted or unhosted, and plan around the cap. If you won't be on-site overnight, budget your bookings against the 120-day annual limit; if you'll be there between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., there's no cap at all.
5. Register and pay the $437 fee through the city's short-term rental portal, timing it against the fiscal year if you can, since registering after October 1 cuts the fee 25% and after April 1 cuts it 75%.
6. Set up TOT collection. Confirm whether your platform collects the 12% transient occupancy tax automatically (Airbnb does; don't assume Vrbo does), and register for monthly remittance on anything it doesn't cover.
7. List no more than two units on any hosting platform for the same address, and keep your listing details matching what you told the city.
8. Keep your records for three years, including proof of TOT payment, in case the city ever asks to see them.
9. Renew annually, and remember your registration dies automatically the moment you sell or transfer the property, so don't assume it travels with a future buyer.

Who to contact in Redwood City about Short Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever step trips you up, three offices in Redwood City cover almost everything between them.

Registration, eligibility, and the application itself

The Planning and Housing Division, inside the Community Development Department, handles short-term rental registration and eligibility questions.

• Address: 1017 Middlefield Road, Redwood City, CA 94063
• Phone: (650) 780-7234
• Email: [email protected]
• Apply: the Short-Term Rental Portal
• Department main line: (650) 780-7350

Complaints and code enforcement

Neighbor complaints and rule violations route through the Code Enforcement Hotline.

• Phone: (650) 780-7577
• Email: [email protected]
• Building counter hours: Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Transient occupancy tax

The Finance Department's Revenue Services division handles TOT registration, remittance, and questions.

• Address: 1017 Middlefield Road, Redwood City, CA 94063
• Phone: (650) 780-7210
• Email: [email protected]

Do check which office actually owns your question before you call, since routing a tax question to Planning or a zoning question to Finance adds an unnecessary transfer to your afternoon.

What do Airbnb hosts in Redwood City on Reddit and Bigger Pockets think about local regulations?

Before you pick up the phone at all, it's worth knowing how other hosts here talk about this ordinance, and the honest answer is that Redwood City doesn't generate much public discussion compared to a market like San Francisco or Los Angeles. I went looking on BiggerPockets specifically for Redwood City short-term rental threads and came up empty. The forum carries plenty of general California and Bay Area STR investing discussion, but nothing addressed this city's rules by name. Reddit wasn't an option either, since it blocks the automated access this research relies on, so I'm not going to pretend to have surveyed it.

What I can say, reasoning from the ordinance itself and how comparable primary-residence-only cities get discussed elsewhere, is that Redwood City sits in the same bucket as plenty of Bay Area suburbs: places where the short-term rental conversation among investors stays short, because the rules answer the main question before it's even asked. You can't buy a second unit and run it purely as a business here, so the investor crowd that debates zoning loopholes and grandfather clauses in bigger markets mostly skips this city and looks elsewhere in San Mateo County or across the bay. The hosts who do show up in that conversation tend to be residents asking practical questions: whether their ADU qualifies, whether a roommate counts against the two-listing cap, whether the 120-day clock resets cleanly each January 1.

If you're weighing Redwood City against a market where the whole-unit model is actually legal, our San Francisco County guide covers a very different set of rules just across the bay. And before you commit any money either way, it's worth pulling real numbers instead of relying on forum sentiment. The California market breaks down occupancy and nightly rate data for cities up and down the Peninsula, which is a better guide to whether this is worth doing than what a handful of hosts happen to post online.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Redwood City in 2026?

Yes, but only if it's the home you live in. Redwood City's Section 31.3 zoning ordinance permits short-term rentals only as an incidental use of a primary residence. You'll need to register with the city, pay a $437 fee, and cap unhosted stays, when you're not present, at 120 nights a year. Second homes, investment properties, and ADUs permitted after January 1, 2020 don't qualify. Hosted stays, where you're on-site overnight, have no night limit at all.

How much does a Redwood City short-term rental registration cost?

The current fee is $437 a year, per the city's Master Fee Schedule effective July 1, 2025, though the city's own FAQ page still lists the prior year's $420 rate. Redwood City prorates the fee against its July-through-June fiscal year: registering between October 1 and March 31 cuts it 25%, and registering between April 1 and June 30 cuts it 75%. There's no separate business license fee; the city dropped that requirement before the ordinance passed in 2018.

What is Redwood City's transient occupancy tax rate?

Redwood City charges a 12% transient occupancy tax on the rent from any stay under 30 consecutive days. The host is responsible for collecting and remitting it unless a booking platform has its own collection agreement with the city; Airbnb collects and remits automatically on hosts' behalf, so exclusively-Airbnb hosts don't owe anything extra. Whether Vrbo does the same for Redwood City specifically isn't confirmed anywhere official, so hosts using other platforms should register for monthly remittance themselves rather than assume it's covered.

Can you rent out an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) as a short-term rental in Redwood City?

Only if it was already registered with the city before January 1, 2020. Redwood City's rules block short-term rental of any ADU or JADU permitted after that date, keeping newer accessory units in the long-term housing supply instead. If your ADU predates that cutoff and was properly registered, it can still operate as a short-term rental as long as you, the permanent occupant, continue living in the main house. ADUs built or converted since then can only be rented for 30 days or longer.

What happens if you operate an unregistered short-term rental in Redwood City?

The city works through a three-letter courtesy process first: a 60-day reminder, a 30-day compliance warning, and a 30-day notice of fine accrual, before opening a code enforcement investigation. From there, penalties can include administrative fees and suspension of your short-term rental privileges, and California law caps zoning-infraction fines at $1,500 for a first violation, $3,000 for a second within a year, and $5,000 after that. A denied or revoked registration also locks you out of reapplying for 24 months.

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