Bethlehem Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and you're weighing whether to list it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that the city does license short-term rentals, so you're not shut out entirely. The catch, and it's a real one, is that Bethlehem only licenses short-term lodging inside a home you live in: either two bedrooms with you present, or the whole place for up to 30 days a year total. If you were picturing a second property run full-time as a nightly rental, that specific business model isn't legal here under Article 1741 of the city's own housing ordinance.

There's also a fight brewing over even that narrower version. Bethlehem City Council held a public hearing on July 7, 2026 on a package of zoning amendments, one of which would redefine "hotel" to include any stay under 30 consecutive days. Adopted as written, it would push short-term rentals out of residential zoning districts entirely and into the same commercial districts where actual hotels operate. Hotel Bethlehem's own managing partner testified in favor, describing years of what he called a "whack-a-mole" fight against unlicensed rentals near the historic district. No council vote has been confirmed as of my last check in early August 2026, so treat this as pending rather than settled law, though it's worth watching closely if you're deciding whether to buy here.

This guide works through what's legal in Bethlehem in 2026, what the license costs and requires, the tax layers that stack on top of a booking, and who to call when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from the city's own ordinances, Northampton and Lehigh County's own tax rules, or Pennsylvania's own pages, checked in July 2026, and I've flagged the couple of things I couldn't pin to an official source. Before you commit real money to a Bethlehem property, run the numbers through BNBCalc first, since the math changes fast once you know the whole-home cap is 30 days a year, not 365.

What are short term rental (Airbnb, VRBO) regulations in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania?

That 30-day cap comes straight from Article 1741 of the Codified Ordinances, the Short Term Lodging Facilities ordinance the city passed as Ordinance 2017-37 in December 2017 and still enforces today. Short term lodging is prohibited everywhere in Bethlehem unless it fits one of two owner-occupied arrangements the ordinance carves out. Under the "specific bedroom accommodation" type, you can rent up to two bedrooms to transient visitors for stays of 24 hours to 30 consecutive days, but you have to occupy the home yourself while your guests are there. Under the "entire residential unit accommodation" type, you can rent your whole primary residence for stretches of at least 7 consecutive days, and you don't have to be on site for those, but the total can't exceed 30 days a year, consecutive or not.

Bethlehem straddles two counties (the Codified Ordinances describe the city itself as sitting in "Lehigh and Northampton Counties, Pennsylvania"), which matters later for tax, but the licensing rules under Article 1741 apply the same way regardless of which side of that old boundary your address falls on. Unless a home separately qualifies as a hotel or a licensed bed and breakfast under the Zoning Ordinance, these two owner-occupied types are the only legal path to a short-term stay in the city.

Pennsylvania gives Bethlehem that latitude on purpose. The state has no statewide short-term rental law and no preemption statute overriding what a city or township decides, which our Pennsylvania short-term rental guide covers in more depth if you're weighing multiple Pennsylvania markets at once. That's also why the pending zoning fight matters so much here specifically: nothing at the state level stops Bethlehem from tightening its own rules, and the city has shown over the past several years that it's willing to.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Bethlehem

That state-level hands-off approach is exactly why the local rules do all the work, and here they're restrictive by design. Bethlehem's ordinance isn't built for an investor buying a second home and running it as a nightly rental year-round. Both legal arrangements require the property to be your actual residence, and the whole-home version tops out at 30 days a year, which is a supplemental-income model rather than a business.

If your plan involves a home you don't live in, or a stay pattern that runs past those caps, the ordinance simply doesn't have a lane for it. There's no permit that unlocks full-time hosting on a non-owner-occupied property, and no fee buys around the residency requirement. A property that separately qualifies as a Bed and Breakfast Home under the Zoning Ordinance is a different, narrower use entirely: it still requires the owner to reside in the dwelling, and it's a distinct zoning category from Article 1741 short-term lodging rather than an easier version of it.

What's realistic is the room-share model or the capped whole-home model, both run out of a house where you live full time. If you're comparing Bethlehem against nearby Pennsylvania counties where a full-time rental might pencil out instead, our Lehigh County guide is worth a look, since Bethlehem's own zoning already sits partly inside that county's boundary.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Bethlehem

Assuming your situation fits one of those two owner-occupied types, there's still a license to get before you can take a single booking. Article 1741 requires every Short Term Lodging Facility to hold an annual license issued through the City Department of Community and Economic Development, administered day to day by the Bureau of Housing Inspections. The license is tied to the specific property, can't be transferred or sold, and expires the moment the property changes hands, so a buyer inherits none of a seller's approval.

The fee itself is where the paper trail gets thin. The ordinance sets the license and inspection fee "in accordance with the Housing Inspection Fee Schedule Resolution." Going through the city's own published fee schedules, though, I only found one, and it covers Residential Rental Units under Article 1738, a different category. Article 1738 itself explicitly excludes short-term lodging facilities from that definition. So I couldn't confirm a separate, published Short Term Lodging fee schedule, and you shouldn't assume the residential-rental numbers apply. Call the Bureau of Housing Inspections directly before you budget for this one.

Once the license is granted, the ongoing conditions carry real weight:

• An annual inspection by the Bureau of Housing, which the owner schedules and pays for; skipping it is grounds for revocation on its own.
• A current City of Bethlehem Business Privilege Tax License, separate from the short-term lodging license itself.
• No physical alterations that make the home look non-residential, including a separate entrance built just for guests.
• Compliance with the city's anti-discrimination provisions under Articles 145 and 1737.

Break the rules and the Code Official can issue a formal warning, suspend the license for up to a year, or revoke it outright, with a right of appeal to the Board of Appeal within 10 days. A third violation inside any five-year period disqualifies the property from short-term lodging entirely for two years, regardless of who owns it by then. Keep that in mind before you treat a first fine as a cost of doing business, because the third one isn't just a bigger fine.

Required Documents for Bethlehem Short Term Rentals

Since that inspection and license aren't optional, it's worth getting the paperwork right before you apply rather than after a rejection. Article 1741 asks for a specific package alongside the application form itself, which the Bureau of Housing Inspections provides on request.

• A detailed, accurately drawn floor plan showing every bedroom, the location of every smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector, and every window and doorway on every level of the home, including attached structures.
• Bedroom designation, for the room-share type. If you're licensing under the specific-bedroom arrangement, the floor plan has to clearly mark which bedrooms are for short-term guests, and those rooms have to sit inside the principal dwelling itself, not in a detached accessory building.
• An annual Certification of Trash Hauler, since the owner stays responsible for trash and recycling removal and for telling guests when collection day is.
• Proof of a current Business Privilege Tax License, which you'll need to apply for separately through the city's Tax Bureau before or alongside your lodging application.
• A ledger of every stay, tracking length of occupancy for each transient visitor, which you have to produce for a Code Enforcement officer on request rather than after the fact.

None of this is unusually burdensome for a single-family home, but do check the floor-plan requirement closely, since it's the piece most likely to send an application back for corrections if a smoke alarm or bedroom boundary doesn't match what an inspector finds on-site.

Bethlehem Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through licensing and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and Bethlehem stacks three separate layers on top of a booking. Because two counties and two levels of government administer them, the thresholds and collection rules don't line up neatly, so it's worth taking each one on its own.

Tax	Rate	Collected by
PA State Hotel Occupancy Tax	6%	Pennsylvania Department of Revenue
County Hotel Room Rental Tax	4.0%	Lehigh County Fiscal Office or Northampton County Revenue Division, depending on your address
City Business Privilege Tax on rental receipts	0.15% (plus a $25/yr license)	City of Bethlehem Tax Bureau

The state's 6% hotel occupancy tax applies under the state's own Tax Reform Code, which our Pennsylvania guide walks through in full, including the myPATH registration you'll need if you ever book a guest directly rather than exclusively through a platform. Both Lehigh County and Northampton County charge their own 4.0% Hotel Room Rental Tax on top of that, and which one applies depends on which side of the city your property sits on, since the old boundary between the two counties still runs through Bethlehem today. Lehigh County's rate has been in effect since September 2005 and Northampton County's since May 2013, and both require a monthly return from the operator, remitted directly to that county's fiscal office rather than to the city.

Layered on top of both is Bethlehem's own Business Privilege and Mercantile Tax, which treats rental receipts as receipts from services and taxes them at 0.15% of gross revenue, alongside a $25 annual license fee for the privilege of doing business in the city at all. The annual return is due the first Monday in May of the following year, and you're required to file it whether or not any tax is actually owed.

Whether Airbnb or Vrbo collects all of this for you is genuinely mixed. Airbnb's own Pennsylvania tax page states it collects "all locally imposed Occupancy Taxes" on Pennsylvania reservations in addition to the state's 6%, which should mean the county hotel tax rides along automatically. From what I can tell going through the underlying agreement, that county-level piece isn't documented with the same specificity as the state deal, so don't assume it without checking. Pull an actual payout statement and see whether the county tax shows up as collected; if it doesn't, you'll need to register with your county's fiscal office directly and remit it yourself. Your rental income itself is ordinary taxable income on top of all three of these, separate from any of them.

Bethlehem-wide Short Term Rental Rules

All three of those tax layers assume you're operating legally in the first place, and that legality runs entirely through the two arrangements Article 1741 sets out, with a handful of standards attached that apply no matter which one you pick. The dwelling has to remain a single household living unit with shared housekeeping, kitchen and laundry facilities. Maximum occupancy is set by the city's Housing Code rather than a flat number in Article 1741 itself, and in the room-share arrangement it also limits how many people can occupy the designated bedroom specifically. The property can't be used for anything beyond ordinary residential lodging, so no receptions, parties, or events open to your transient guests, even if they're the ones paying for the space.

A licensed facility has to keep looking like a house from the outside for the entire license term. That means no separate entrance built for guests, and no switching between the bedroom-only type and the whole-unit type mid-license; if you want to change which arrangement you're operating under, you need a new license and a new fee, not an amendment to the old one. The city also expects the owner, not a hired manager, to stay responsible for guest conduct, noise, and any disruption to the neighborhood, and to report violations by transients to the appropriate city department.

Watch out for the zoning layer sitting on top of all of this. Right now, Article 1741 and the Zoning Ordinance run on largely separate tracks, since Bethlehem's zoning code doesn't currently mention short-term lodging or Article 1741 at all, only the older, undefined idea of a "transient" use inside the broader "Hotel" definition. That's precisely the gap city planners cited when introducing the pending amendment discussed above, and it's why the amendment frames itself as clarifying existing enforcement rather than creating brand-new restrictions. Until it actually passes, though, a licensed Article 1741 facility in a residential zone remains legal on the terms described here.

Does Bethlehem strictly enforce STR rules? Is Bethlehem Airbnb friendly?

Given that gap between the housing ordinance and the zoning code, enforcement here has been messier than a clean set of rules would suggest, and Bethlehem's own history bears that out. The city first tried to formalize short-term lodging back in 2017, then spent 2019 and 2020 debating a stricter follow-up that would have added an owner-presence mandate and off-street parking requirements to the whole-unit arrangement. That stricter version deadlocked 3-3 in City Council in August 2020 and never became law, which is why the version in force today still allows an absent owner for whole-unit rentals and carries no parking mandate of its own.

What didn't go away was the underlying tension. Hotel Bethlehem's managing partner, Bruce Haines, told council in July 2026 that his hotel has spent years pursuing properties operating as unlicensed short-term rentals near the historic district, describing enforcement as a "whack-a-mole" process that has taken three to four years to resolve in some individual cases. That's the practical reality behind the pending zoning amendment: this isn't a city inventing a problem, it's a city that's been fighting the same unlicensed-conversion pattern for years and is trying a different legal tool to close it.

So is Bethlehem Airbnb friendly? For the specific model the ordinance actually allows, room-sharing or a capped whole-home stay inside your own residence, yes, reasonably so. For the model most investors picture when they say "Airbnb," a purchased property run full-time with no owner living there, no. That's been true since 2017, it isn't something the pending amendment would newly create, and the amendment mostly targets closing an enforcement gap around exactly that unauthorized use rather than changing what's legal for a compliant, owner-occupied host.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Bethlehem

Assuming the model above still fits your situation after everything in this guide so far, working through these steps in order will save you both time and the license fee.

1. Confirm the property is your genuine residence. Neither legal arrangement works for a second home you don't live in, so settle this before you spend anything else.
2. Pick your arrangement and design the stay around it. Two bedrooms with you present, or the whole home for up to 30 days a year with you optionally absent; decide which one and don't try to blend them mid-license.
3. Confirm zoning doesn't already block your address. Check whether your property might separately need to qualify as a hotel or bed and breakfast use, and keep an eye on the pending zoning amendment's status before you commit.
4. Contact the Bureau of Housing Inspections for the current application and fee. Don't guess at the fee from the residential-rental schedule; ask directly.
5. Prepare your floor plan and supporting documents. Smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, bedroom designations if applicable, and your Certification of Trash Hauler.
6. Apply for a Business Privilege Tax License through the city's Tax Bureau before or alongside your lodging application.
7. Schedule and pass your annual housing inspection. Remember that this is on you to book and pay for; missing it is grounds for revocation by itself.
8. Register for the taxes that apply to your address. The state's 6% through myPATH if you ever book directly, your county's 4% hotel tax, and the city's Business Privilege Tax return due each May.
9. Set up your stay ledger from day one, tracking every guest's length of stay so you can produce it on request rather than reconstructing it later.

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

Wherever you get stuck in that sequence, a handful of offices handle almost all of it between them.

Bureau of Housing Inspections administers the Article 1741 license, inspections, and applications.

• Contact: Mike Simonson, Chief Building Inspector
• Phone: (610) 865-7091
• Email: [email protected]
• Address: City of Bethlehem, 10 East Church Street, Bethlehem, PA 18018
• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:00am to 4:30pm

Planning and Zoning Bureau handles zoning questions, including the status of the pending hotel-definition amendment.

• Phone: (610) 865-7000
• Address: 10 East Church Street, Bethlehem, PA 18018

City of Bethlehem Tax Bureau administers the Business Privilege and Mercantile Tax License and annual returns.

• Phone: (610) 865-7022
• Address: City of Bethlehem Government Center, 10 East Church Street, Bethlehem, PA 18018-6025

Lehigh County Fiscal Office administers the county's 4.0% Hotel Room Rental Tax for properties on the Lehigh County side of the city.

• Phone: (610) 782-3115
• Mailing address: County of Lehigh, Fiscal Office, Room 119, 17 South Seventh Street, Allentown, PA 18101-2400

Northampton County Revenue Division administers the equivalent 4.0% tax for properties on the Northampton County side.

• Phone: (610) 829-6186

Pennsylvania Department of Revenue handles the state's 6% hotel occupancy tax and myPATH registration.

• Phone: 717-787-1064

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

I couldn't reach a specific, quotable Reddit or BiggerPockets thread on Bethlehem's rules directly, so what follows is my read of the public record rather than a survey, and I'd weigh it accordingly.

The clearest pattern in the public record is that Bethlehem's short-term rental debate has never really been about whether the rules are strict enough on paper. It's been about a persistent enforcement gap between owner-occupied hosts who comply and investors who don't, and that gap is exactly what's driven every legislative attempt from 2017 through the pending 2026 amendment. Hotel Bethlehem has spent years pushing for tighter enforcement in the historic district specifically, while a 2020 op-ed in the same local debate argued the opposite, that Airbnb is good for the city and shouldn't be squeezed further. Both sides of that argument are still active in 2026, which tells you the fight over Bethlehem's rules isn't settled and probably won't be soon.

For someone actually considering hosting here, the practical takeaway from that history is that Bethlehem enforces against the model it doesn't allow far more visibly than it enforces against small, compliant, owner-occupied hosts. A licensed room-share or capped whole-home stay hasn't been the target of the litigation and legislative pushes described above. An unlicensed, non-owner-occupied conversion has been, repeatedly, for the better part of a decade.

None of that changes the math on whether a compliant Bethlehem listing is worth running in the first place, and that's a separate question from whether it's legal. Before you buy, it's worth pulling actual occupancy and rate data for the area through the Allentown market on BNBCalc Markets, since a 30-day-a-year cap on the whole-home arrangement means the revenue math here looks nothing like a full-time nightly rental in a market without that limit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 2026?

Only as an owner-occupied arrangement. Bethlehem's Article 1741 licenses two types: renting up to two bedrooms while you live in the home, or renting your whole primary residence for up to 30 days a year total, with your presence optional for that second type. Buying a separate property and renting it full-time with no owner living there isn't a legal path under the current ordinance, and no fee or permit changes that.

How much does a Bethlehem short-term lodging license cost?

The published fee schedule that's publicly available online covers a different category, ordinary long-term residential rental units, which the city's own ordinance explicitly excludes short-term lodging facilities from. A specific, current Short Term Lodging fee couldn't be confirmed from an official published schedule, so call the Bureau of Housing Inspections at (610) 865-7091 for the current amount before you budget for licensing.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in Bethlehem?

Three layers stack on a stay: Pennsylvania's 6% state hotel occupancy tax, a 4.0% county Hotel Room Rental Tax charged by either Lehigh County or Northampton County depending on your address, and Bethlehem's own Business Privilege Tax of 0.15% on gross rental receipts plus a $25 annual license fee. Airbnb generally collects the state tax automatically; whether it also collects your county's 4% isn't consistently documented, so check your payout statement.

Is Bethlehem about to ban short-term rentals?

Not outright. A zoning amendment heard by City Council on July 7, 2026 would redefine "hotel" to include stays under 30 days, which would confine short-term rentals to commercial zones where hotels are already permitted rather than residential neighborhoods. No final council vote has been confirmed as of my last check in early August 2026, so it remains pending rather than law, though it's worth tracking if you're deciding whether to buy.

Can I rent out a house in Bethlehem that I don't personally live in?

Not as a short-term rental under current rules. Both arrangements Article 1741 allows require the property to be your actual, occupied residence, either full-time with a room rented out or as your primary home rented whole for a capped number of days a year. A property that separately qualifies as a hotel or a zoned bed and breakfast is the only other lodging path, and a bed and breakfast still requires the owner to live there.

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