San Diego County, California Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in San Diego County, California and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and nobody here has banned short-term rentals outright the way a few other California coastal cities have tried to. The complication is that San Diego County isn't one rulebook. It's eighteen incorporated cities sitting inside a very large unincorporated area, and which of those your address falls into changes almost everything about what you're allowed to do.

Out in the unincorporated county there's no short-term rental permit at all, and that area covers most of the map once you drive east of the coast. You register with the Treasurer-Tax Collector, collect 8% occupancy tax from your guests, and file every quarter. Inside the City of San Diego it's a different world: you need a license under the STRO ordinance, you can hold exactly one of them, and the whole-home tiers are capped by formula. Mission Beach has been sitting at zero available licenses for a while now.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly: how to tell which jurisdiction you're actually in, what the city's four license tiers cost in 2026, the tax layers on either side of that city line, how hard any of it gets enforced, and who to call when something doesn't add up. Everything below comes from the county's and the city's own ordinances and pages, checked in July 2026, and where a figure moves around I've said so. Before you spend a dollar chasing any of it, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in San Diego County, California?

Running the numbers is the easy part, mind you. The harder question is which government writes your rules, and around here there are nineteen possible answers to that.

Start with the unincorporated county, since it's the simpler of the two big cases. The county's Department of Environmental Health and Quality puts the definition plainly on its housing program page: a housing unit out there counts as a short-term rental if the stay is fewer than 30 consecutive days, and DEHQ doesn't require a health permit for one.

Going through the county's zoning material and its Treasurer-Tax Collector pages, I couldn't find a county short-term rental license, cap, permit or registry of any kind, so what's left is a tax obligation. That one is real, though: Ordinance No. 10366 charges 8% of rent on any lodging in the unincorporated area let to someone staying 30 consecutive days or less, and §22.206 makes it unlawful to operate past 30 days without a certificate.

That certificate isn't permission, mind you, and the ordinance says so in the certificate's own wording. It "is not a permit to operate," and it doesn't excuse you from any other permit state or county law requires. So do check your zoning, your septic capacity and your HOA before you read the county's silence as a yes.

The City of San Diego is the opposite case, and it's where nearly all of this county's short-term rental market actually sits. Since May 1, 2023 it's been unlawful to rent a dwelling unit there for less than one month without a license, under Chapter 5, Article 10, Division 1 of the Municipal Code.

Three definitions in §510.0102 do most of the damage to a typical investment plan. A host must be "a natural person" rather than an LLC or a trust. A primary residence is somewhere you live at least six months of the year, and you get only one. Whole home means you aren't physically present, which is the tier everybody wants and the tier that's capped. Then §510.0104 adds the two lines that end most portfolio ideas before they start: one license per host, and one dwelling unit per host, anywhere in the city.

The four tiers are straightforward once you know that. Tier 1 covers 20 days or less per calendar year, while Tier 2 is home sharing beyond that and asks you to occupy the place at least 275 days of the year. Tier 3 is whole-home renting outside Mission Beach, capped at 1% of the city's housing units, and Tier 4 is whole-home renting inside the Mission Beach Community Planning Area, capped at 30% of that neighborhood's. Both whole-home tiers carry a two consecutive night minimum, which quietly removes the one-night weekend booking from your calendar.

One more thing in the city ordinance is worth knowing if you own near the water. §510.0112 is a sunset clause: the parts of the ordinance that form the certified Local Coastal Program run in the Coastal Overlay Zone only until January 1, 2030, and unless they're amended by then, the licensing requirement stops applying in the coastal zone altogether. The Coastal Commission's Executive Director can extend that date for good cause. It's four years out, so nobody should plan around it, yet it's the kind of deadline that tends to produce a fight worth watching.

The other seventeen cities each write their own rules, and the spread is wide. Del Mar adopted its ordinance on September 23, 2024 with a hard citywide cap of 129 short-term rentals, got it certified by the Coastal Commission on February 5, 2026, and won't issue a new permit until somebody gives one up. Escondido opened a permit program on July 1, 2025 and started enforcing against unpermitted rentals on January 1, 2026. Several other city sites blocked me outright, so rather than repeat what secondary write-ups claim, I'd call the city directly if your address is in one.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in San Diego County

Since which side of a city line you're on decides your entire compliance burden, that's the first thing to settle, and there's an exact way to do it rather than guessing from a map. The county's Treasurer-Tax Collector explains that every parcel carries an APN linked to a Tax Rate Area, and that Tax Rate Area is what decides whether the county or a city has you. Check it first. After all, a Ramona address and a Pacific Beach address are two different businesses.

Assuming you land in the unincorporated county, the path is short and very little stands in your way: register the property, get the certificate, post it, collect 8% from guests, and file quarterly. That's the whole regime as far as I could verify. Unfortunately, the flip side of that freedom is that the unincorporated area is mostly backcountry, so you're looking at Julian, Ramona, Alpine or Borrego Springs rather than anything with an ocean view.

Land inside the City of San Diego and the honest answer is harder. That one-license, one-unit rule means the classic plan of buying three condos and running them all on Airbnb simply isn't available to you as an individual, and since a host has to be a natural person, you can't spread licenses across entities you control either. What people do instead is hold a single Tier 3 license and run one whole-home rental, or home share the place they already live in under Tier 2, which has no cap and a much smaller fee attached.

A few other things will disqualify a property before you get anywhere near an application, so check them early:

• Accessory dwelling units are out, and that one comes from Sacramento rather than City Hall. Government Code § 66323(e) requires rentals of ADUs approved under it to run longer than 30 days, and AB 1154 of 2025 extended that floor to junior ADUs.
• Your HOA can ban it and the state backs them up. Civil Code § 4741(c) lets a common interest development prohibit any rental of 30 days or less. Read the CC&Rs before you read the ordinance.
• A pending code enforcement action freezes you out, since under §510.0105(c) the city won't process an application for a unit with an open enforcement matter.
• A prior revocation costs you a year, because §510.0105(d) bars anyone whose license was revoked in the previous 12 months from applying.

Renters can host, incidentally. You'll need the owner's cooperation on paper, though, since the city's STRO program page asks anyone who isn't the owner for a right-to-occupy document: a lease permitting subletting, written owner authorization, or the city's own authorization form.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in San Diego County

Once you know you're eligible, the licensing itself is where the two jurisdictions stop resembling each other at all, and the cost gap runs to more than thirtyfold.

In the unincorporated county there's no license, only registration, and it's free. Since June 11, 2024 the Treasurer-Tax Collector has run registration and reporting through an online portal, asking operators to allow up to 30 days for review and to have the deed ready. Don't take a booking on the strength of a submitted form, either, because the county says to wait until the certificate is issued. §22.206 then wants you to re-register every July and post the certificate inside the property.

Inside the City of San Diego, here's what the four tiers cost under the fee schedule the City Council approved effective March 1, 2025, still current as of July 2026:

License tier	What it covers	Application fee	License fee	Term
Tier 1	Home share or whole home, 20 days or less per year	$33	$193	2 years
Tier 2	Home share, more than 20 days per year	$33	$284	2 years
Tier 3	Whole home outside Mission Beach	$41	$1,129	2 years
Tier 4	Whole home inside Mission Beach	$41	$1,129	2 years

None of those fees come back, so make sure you've cleared the eligibility questions above before you pay. Licenses expire two years from issuance and renew at the same price, and §510.0106(e) makes them non-transferable, since the city won't move a license to another owner or address. So a licensed short-term rental has no license to sell along with the house.

Availability is the part that moves, so check it the day you apply rather than trusting anything written months earlier. When I last looked at the city's own license count, 4,836 Tier 3 licenses had been issued against 829 still available, while Tier 4 stood at 1,099 issued and zero available with its application period closed. Tier 1 and Tier 2 have no cap. The city runs a lottery for the whole-home tiers whenever demand outruns supply, and §510.0104(d)(5) spreads those licenses across community planning areas in proportion to each area's share of the applicant pool.

Then there are the strings attached to a whole-home license, which catch people out more than the fee does. Under §510.0107(c), Tier 3 and Tier 4 hosts have to use the license at least 90 days a year and file quarterly reports showing how many days the unit was rented, so a whole-home license isn't something you can park. Rent it too little and you've failed a condition of it.

Every host at every tier also carries the operating requirements in §510.0107, and these are the ones that take real effort:

• A local contact who answers within one hour, in person or by phone, for every complaint, and who then has to act on it.
• An exterior notice, 8.5 by 11 inches, in black bold capitals at 20 point or larger and visible from the sidewalk, carrying your tax certificate number, license number and contact numbers for you and for city code enforcement.
• Your certificate and license numbers in every advertisement. Not the listing page only. Every advertisement.
• A Good Neighbor Policy handed to guests, covering occupancy limits, parking, trash and noise, including the warning that guests and hosts alike can be cited up to $1,000 each.
• Human trafficking reporting guidance posted inside the unit, plus proof you completed an awareness course before the first listing went up.
• Compliance with the current California Fire Code, confirmed by inspection or your own affidavit, at the city's discretion.

Records run four years under §510.0108, covering the address, exact dates and total nights per period, the Good Neighbor Policy you gave guests, gross receipts including tax, and your certificate number. The city can demand all of it and audit you on the back of it.

Get any of that wrong and §510.0109 hands the city a menu rather than a ladder: a verbal warning, a written warning, a notice of violation, or outright revocation, with the ordinance saying explicitly that the actions need not escalate in severity. You can appeal a notice of violation or a revocation, but you have only 10 calendar days from receiving the notice to ask in writing.

Required Documents for San Diego County Short-Term Rentals

Since none of those city fees come back, it's worth assembling the paperwork before you open the application rather than during it. The city asks for four things, and two of them are accounts you have to open elsewhere first.

• An active transient occupancy tax certificate for the dwelling unit, or proof you applied for one at the same time, per §510.0105(b)(1). That certificate is free.
• An active and paid Rental Unit Business Tax account, a separate city tax on rental property that §510.0105(b)(2) folds into the license application.
• A business tax certificate, if you're the host but not the owner.
• A right-to-occupy document, again only if you're not the owner.

Home share applicants add one more, since §510.0105(b)(3) wants proof that the unit is your primary residence. Remember that the city defines that as living there at least six months of the year, and Tier 2 demands 275 days of occupancy in any calendar year you home share, so your documents and the actual pattern of your life need to agree.

The unincorporated county wants far less: a registration through the Treasurer-Tax Collector's portal, a copy of the deed, and quarterly returns after that. Operators who registered on paper before the portal existed are asked to re-register online to count as compliant, which is easy to miss if you've been renting a Julian cabin for years and assumed you were done.

San Diego County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you manage all of that and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and this is where the biggest change of the last two years shows up. If you last looked at San Diego in 2024, the number in your head is 10.5%, and it isn't 10.5% any more.

The city's base rate is still 10.5%, built up in layers across Chapter 3, Article 5, Division 1 of the Municipal Code from a 6% base plus three 1% additions and a 1.5% addition. What changed is that Measure C's additional tax finally landed, and under Division 2 of the same article it took effect on May 1, 2025, adding 1.25% in Tax Zone 1, 2.25% in Tax Zone 2 and 3.25% in Tax Zone 3 for the next 42 years.

Zone 1 is the far north and far south of the city, north of State Route 56 and south of State Route 54, and Zone 3 is downtown, which leaves Zone 2 as everything in between. The beach neighborhoods sit in that middle band. So a Mission Beach or Pacific Beach listing now pays 12.75% where it paid 10.5% two years ago.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
County occupancy tax (unincorporated area)	8% of rent	San Diego County Treasurer-Tax Collector
City of San Diego occupancy tax, base	10.5% of rent	City of San Diego Office of the City Treasurer
City of San Diego Measure C additional tax	1.25% Zone 1, 2.25% Zone 2, 3.25% Zone 3	City of San Diego Office of the City Treasurer
Rental Unit Business Tax (single family or condo)	$50 per parcel plus $5 per unit, annually	City of San Diego Office of the City Treasurer
Tourism Marketing District assessment	2.00%, only for lodging with 70 or more rooms	City of San Diego Office of the City Treasurer
California Tourism Assessment	$1,950 per $1 million of assessable travel revenue	California Office of Tourism

The tourism district row is in the table to be ruled out, since it comes up constantly in host discussions. The city's transient occupancy tax page applies that 2.00% assessment only to lodging with 70 or more rooms, so an ordinary short-term rental isn't paying it. The Rental Unit Business Tax fee schedule puts a single family home or condo at $50 per parcel plus $5 per unit, with a late penalty of $25 or 10% of the tax due, whichever is greater.

Filing rhythms differ too, and mixing them up gets expensive. City tax is remitted monthly, due by the last day of the following month, with a penalty of 1% on the first delinquent day plus a third of 1% for each day after, capped at 25%. County tax is quarterly, due one calendar month after each quarter closes, and §22.208 of the county ordinance stacks 5% for being late, another 5% for still being late a month later, 1% interest per month throughout, and 25% on top if the Tax Collector concludes the shortfall was fraud.

Whether a platform handles any of this depends, again, on which side of the line you're on. Airbnb's California occupancy tax list shows a San Diego entry collecting 11.75% to 13.75% of the listing price including cleaning fees, on reservations of 30 nights and shorter. Checking that list in July 2026, I found no separate entry for the unincorporated county, so if your cabin is out in the backcountry, plan on collecting and remitting that 8% yourself.

One definition catches almost everybody at least once. The county's tax FAQ counts as rent every mandatory charge, including resort fees, cleaning fees, pet fees, even no-show and cancellation fees. Tax the cleaning fee. Nearly every underpayment I've seen described started with somebody deciding it wasn't rent.

Deductions and Write-Offs

Income tax is a separate layer again, and California taxes it. The Franchise Tax Board treats profit from renting out property as taxable income, with residents taxed on all rental income and nonresidents on income from California property. The occupancy tax you collect isn't income, mind you, since you're holding it in trust until you remit it, which the county ordinance says in those words at §22.205(b).

The usual deductions apply, and the ones that matter most here are the license and registration fees, the Rental Unit Business Tax, cleaning and turnover costs, platform commissions, insurance and depreciation. Home sharing under Tier 2 complicates it, though, because you're apportioning a home you live in for at least 275 days of the year. A spreadsheet built on full-property expenses will overstate your deductions badly.

California Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those rates are all local for a reason, because California hands the whole job to cities and counties and keeps almost nothing for itself. There's no statewide short-term rental permit, no statewide registry, and no state occupancy tax. Revenue & Taxation Code § 7280 authorizes any city or county to tax occupancy of 30 days or less and sets no ceiling on the rate, which is why San Diego can charge 13.75% downtown while the county charges 8% an hour inland.

The state does set guardrails at the edges, though, and four of them reach into this county.

Fines are capped. Government Code § 36900(d) limits a city's short-term rental fines to $1,500 for a first violation, $3,000 for a second within a year and $5,000 for further ones, reserving the higher tiers for violations that threaten public health or safety. § 25132(e) does the same for counties. So the City of San Diego's real pressure isn't the size of any single fine. It's revocation, and the platform block behind it.

The coastal zone answers to Sacramento as well as to City Hall. The Coastal Commission's 2016 guidance memo to coastal planning directors treats regulating short-term rentals as development under the Coastal Act, so it has to run through a Local Coastal Program or a coastal development permit, and the Commission has not historically supported blanket vacation rental bans. You can watch that machinery working here, since the city's ordinance carries that coastal sunset clause and Del Mar's cap waited until February 2026 for certification.

Platforms carry disclosure duties statewide. Business & Professions Code § 22592 makes a hosting platform warn you that listing may violate your lease and that your insurance may not cover short-term rental use. Since July 2024, § 17568.6 has required advertised nightly rates to include every mandatory fee except government taxes, and since July 2025, § 17568.8 has required cleaning tasks and any fee for skipping them to be disclosed before booking. So if you've been pushing cost into a cleaning fee to look cheap in search results, that trick has stopped working.

The newest piece is a reporting framework rather than a rule about you. SB 346, the Short-Term Rental Facilitator Act of 2025, took effect on January 1, 2026 at Government Code §§ 50990 to 50996, and it's opt-in, so platforms report each rental's address and carry the local license number only where a local agency adopts an ordinance under it. I couldn't confirm that either the county or the city has done so, and for the city it would be close to redundant anyway, since §510.0201(f) already makes platforms hand over monthly listing data.

Worth reading alongside this: our California statewide guide covers the full state framework, the San Francisco County guide shows what a strict primary-residence regime looks like at the other end of the state, and the San Mateo County guide covers a coastal county with the same patchwork problem San Diego has.

Does San Diego County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

State law caps what a fine can be, then, but it says nothing about how often anybody gets caught, and on that question the two halves of this county behave very differently.

The City of San Diego enforces at the payment layer, which is the part investors underestimate. Division 2 of the STRO article says a hosting platform "shall not process or complete any booking service transaction" unless a valid license number appears on the city's registry when the platform takes its fee. That isn't an inspector knocking after a complaint. An unlicensed listing earns nothing, because the booking can't complete at all.

§510.0201(f) then requires every platform with listings in the city to hand over, monthly, the license number for each listing, the responsible person's name, the street address and the days booked, so matching that feed against the registry is a database query rather than an investigation.

Complaints run on a parallel track through the city's code enforcement team, and the one-hour local contact rule exists precisely so a neighbor has somebody to call at 11pm. Watch out for the three-strike rule in particular. Where a third violation is alleged within 12 months at the same unit or by the same host, a hearing officer may revoke the license once that violation is found, and for a Tier 3 holder that isn't a fine. It's the end of the business, with a 12-month wait before you can apply again.

The unincorporated county is a different animal, because with no permit to revoke, enforcement out there is tax enforcement. Ordinance No. 10366 lets the Tax Collector work out your tax if you don't file, audit you, and stack penalties and interest, and the office says it audits at regular intervals as well as on any change of ownership or name. Operators keep business, accounting and guest folio records for at least three prior years, which is exactly the window an audit reaches into. I couldn't find published enforcement statistics for either jurisdiction, so I'd treat both as active rather than put a number on your odds.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in San Diego County

Given how much of that lands on the platform and the paperwork rather than on the property itself, the order you do things in matters more than usual. Work through it roughly like this.

1. Find your jurisdiction first. Take the APN off your property tax bill and confirm the Tax Rate Area, since that decides whether the county or a city writes your rules.
2. Check the disqualifiers before you spend anything: HOA rules, your lease if you rent, whether the unit is an ADU or JADU, and whether there's an open code enforcement matter.
3. In the unincorporated county, register with the Treasurer-Tax Collector. Have the deed ready, allow up to 30 days, and don't take a booking until the certificate is issued.
4. In the City of San Diego, open the two tax accounts first. Apply for the occupancy tax certificate, which is free, and get the Rental Unit Business Tax account active and paid, because the license application asks for both.
5. Pick your tier honestly. Tier 2 if you live there, Tier 3 if you don't and you're outside Mission Beach, and if it is Mission Beach, be aware the Tier 4 allocation is fully taken.
6. Apply and pay. Budget $1,170 for a Tier 3 license across two years, or $317 for Tier 2, and don't forget that none of it is refundable.
7. Set up the physical compliance on day one: the exterior notice at the right size and font, the trafficking guidance inside, the Good Neighbor Policy for guests, a local contact who answers inside an hour, and your numbers in every advertisement.
8. Build the reporting habit immediately. Monthly filings in the city or quarterly in the county, quarterly utilization reports on Tier 3 and Tier 4, and a four-year record set in the city or three years in the county.
9. Diary the renewal. City licenses expire two years from issuance and don't travel with a sale, and county registration renews every July.

Before step 6, it's worth rechecking whether the numbers still work after the fee increase and the tax increase, especially if your model was built when the city's rate was 10.5%. The California short-term rental market data is the quickest way to see where San Diego sits against the rest of the state before you commit to a two-year license.

Who to Contact in San Diego County about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever step trips you up, four offices handle almost all of it between them, and calling the wrong one is the easiest way to lose an afternoon.

City of San Diego licensing and taxes

The Office of the City Treasurer runs the STRO program, the occupancy tax and the Rental Unit Business Tax.

• Address: 1200 Third Ave., Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92101
• STRO Administration: 619-615-6120, [email protected]
• Main office: 619-236-6112, fax 619-236-7134
• Apply and renew: through the Accela Citizen Portal linked from the STRO program page

City of San Diego enforcement and complaints

Enforcement sits with the Development Services Department's Building and Land Use Enforcement team, not with the Treasurer.

• Phone: 619-533-6489
• Email: [email protected]

That address works in both directions. A neighbor can report you through it, and you can use it on an unlicensed operator competing with you down the block.

Unincorporated county taxes

The San Diego County Treasurer-Tax Collector, Special Functions Division administers occupancy tax for the unincorporated area.

• Address: 1600 Pacific Highway, Room 162, San Diego, CA 92101-2486
• Phone: 619-685-2349
• Email: [email protected]
• Fax: 619-685-2589
• Register and file: through the registration and reporting portal

Unincorporated county zoning and code compliance

Planning & Development Services answers zoning questions and handles code complaints for the unincorporated area.

• Address: County Permit Center, 5510 Overland Ave., San Diego, CA 92123, 1st Floor, Suite 110
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 11:45 a.m. and 12:30 to 4:00 p.m., excluding county holidays
• Zoning: 858-694-8985, [email protected]
• Code Compliance: 858-694-2705, [email protected]
• Phone directory: 858-694-2960, or 800-411-0017 toll free

Anywhere else in the county, call the city itself, and the county's own contact page helps if you aren't sure who covers you.

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

Those offices give you the official line, and hosts talk about all this rather differently. What follows is my read of the recurring themes rather than any kind of survey, so do weigh it accordingly. Reddit blocks automated access and the BiggerPockets forum index loaded without any thread content when I tried it, so I'd rather anchor this in numbers I could verify than tell you what a thread said.

• The one-license rule ended the portfolio conversation inside the city. Anyone arriving with a plan to scale short-term rentals here hits §510.0104 immediately, and the usual pivots are a single Tier 3 license, mid-term furnished rentals of 30 days and up, or a market with no per-host cap.
• Mission Beach is the sore point. A Tier 4 allocation at zero, a closed application period, and a neighborhood whose whole economy is short-term rentals produces exactly the frustration you'd expect. Licenses can't be sold or transferred either, so be careful if somebody quotes you a premium for a "licensed" property.
• The 90-day utilization rule surprises people, since hosts who treated a license as an option rather than an obligation find out that Tier 3 and Tier 4 carry a minimum rental commitment.
• The backcountry gets described as the last easy market here, and on the rules alone that's fair enough. Demand is the constraint out there rather than paperwork, which is a different problem, though not a smaller one.

Nobody seriously argues any more about whether the city's rules get enforced. That question closed when platforms began refusing to process unlicensed bookings, and the argument since has been about where the caps should sit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a permit to run an Airbnb in unincorporated San Diego County?

Not a land-use permit or license, no. The county does require operators in the unincorporated area to register with the Treasurer-Tax Collector and hold an occupancy tax certificate, which costs nothing. That certificate states in its own wording that it "is not a permit to operate," and the county's environmental health department confirms it doesn't require a health permit for short-term rentals either. You still have to satisfy zoning, septic and HOA rules independently.

How much is the transient occupancy tax on a San Diego short-term rental in 2026?

It depends which side of the city line the property sits on. In unincorporated San Diego County it's 8% of rent, filed quarterly with the Treasurer-Tax Collector. Inside the City of San Diego it's a 10.5% base plus a Measure C additional tax that took effect on May 1, 2025, adding 1.25% in Tax Zone 1, 2.25% in Tax Zone 2 or 3.25% in Tax Zone 3, so the total runs from 11.75% to 13.75%. City tax is remitted monthly.

How much does a San Diego STRO license cost?

Fees have been set since March 1, 2025. A Tier 1 license, covering 20 days or less a year, is a $33 application fee plus $193. Tier 2 home sharing is $33 plus $284. Both whole-home tiers, Tier 3 and Tier 4, are $41 plus $1,129. Every license runs two years and renews at the same price, and all fees are non-refundable whether or not you're approved.

Can you own several Airbnbs in the City of San Diego?

No. The STRO ordinance says a host may hold only one license at a time and may not operate more than one dwelling unit for short-term residential occupancy at a time within the city. A host also has to be a natural person, so structuring around it with LLCs doesn't work. Investors who want several short-term rentals in this county generally look at the unincorporated area or at cities with no per-host cap.

Are short-term rentals allowed in Mission Beach?

Yes, though no new whole-home licenses are available. Tier 4 covers whole-home rentals inside the Mission Beach Community Planning Area and is capped at 30% of the neighborhood's housing units. That allocation is fully issued and the application period is closed, and since licenses cannot be transferred, buying a Mission Beach property does not get you the seller's license. Home sharing under Tier 2 has no cap.

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