Murrieta Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Murrieta, out in Riverside County, and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that short-term rentals are legal here, and the city built a working permit system for them back in 2020 instead of banning the idea outright the way a few of its Southern California neighbors did. The catch, and it's worth knowing up front, is that Murrieta caps the whole program at 300 permits citywide, so being allowed to apply and being able to get a permit are two different questions in 2026.

Which side of that cap you land on depends almost entirely on what kind of listing you're planning and which zone your property sits in. A hosted rental, where you live in the home while guests stay there, is allowed across most of the city's residential zones. A non-hosted, whole-home rental is a much narrower target: it's only permitted on rural and estate-zoned lots, and even then a new listing has to sit at least 300 feet from another non-hosted rental. Riverside County itself doesn't come into this directly, since Murrieta runs its own program out of City Hall rather than deferring to the county.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly: who qualifies, what the city's 2026 permit rules require, what the paperwork looks like, the tax you'll owe every month, and who to call when something doesn't add up. Every figure below comes from Murrieta's own ordinance, its Municipal Code, or a page on murrietaca.gov, read directly for this guide. If the numbers work on paper, run the property through BNBCalc to see whether they hold up against the rest of the Inland Empire too.

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

Before you run any numbers, though, it helps to see the actual rule in writing. Murrieta's framework traces to a single ordinance: Ordinance No. 561-20, adopted by the City Council on October 20, 2020, which the city folded into Municipal Code Chapter 5.27 (Short-Term Vacation Rentals) and into Development Code Section 16.44.260. Both sections still govern the program today, as amended by Ordinance No. 582 in 2022.

The code splits every listing into one of two categories, and which one you run decides where you're even allowed to operate:

• Hosted (home-share). You live in the unit and you're present for the whole stay, even if you're only renting out a spare bedroom. Hosted rentals are permitted in the RR, ER-1, ER-2, ER-3, SF-1, SF-2, MF-1, MF-2 and MF-3 zones, which covers the large majority of Murrieta's residential land, subject to the citywide cap.
• Non-hosted (whole-home). You're off-site for the stay, typically working through a property manager. This is permitted only in the RR, ER-1 and ER-2 zones, the city's rural and estate-residential land, and a non-hosted unit in ER-1 or ER-2 has to sit at least 300 feet from another non-hosted unit, measured from every property line.

Either way, both types draw from the same citywide ceiling of 300 permits, issued first-come, first-served, with anything past 300 going onto a waiting list that the city works through in order as space opens up. A denial today because the cap is full doesn't necessarily mean never. It just means not yet, and it's a different situation from a city that caps zoning without ever running a waitlist at all.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Murrieta

That waiting list is the first thing to plan around, but it's far from the only gate you have to clear before you can even apply. Assuming your zone allows the type of listing you want to run, the next filter is who you are and what you own. Only the owner of a single-family residential dwelling or condominium can hold a Murrieta STVR permit. If you rent or lease the home you live in, you're not eligible, full stop, no matter how good the listing photos would look.

A handful of property types are off the table entirely under Development Code §16.44.260, and it's worth checking your address against this list before you spend any time on an application:

• Publicly owned homes, and any unit carrying an affordable-housing covenant imposed by the city or one of its agencies
• Mobile or modular homes on leased land
• Apartments, since Chapter 5.27 only reaches single-family dwellings and condominiums
• Recreational vehicles, tents and similar temporary shelters
• Garages used as the rental space
• Accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units, which California law already limits to stays of 30 days or more anyway

Do check your zone and your deed before you get attached to a plan. A property sitting in the wrong zone, or a tenant hoping to sublease short-term, has no path here regardless of how the rest of the ordinance shakes out. That's a harder line than a lot of California cities draw, and it's worth confirming early rather than after you've already furnished a room.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Murrieta

Once your property clears that list, the licensing step itself is still comparatively simple, at least on paper. Murrieta now runs STVR registration through a third-party portal, Host Compliance, rather than a form filed at the counter. You'll apply there for the permit itself, and you'll need a separate city business license running alongside it, since the two are priced and renewed together.

The fee depends entirely on which category you're in. Here's what a Murrieta STVR costs, as of July 2026, per the city's own FAQ page:

Permit type	Application/renewal fee	Business license (base)	State AB 1379 fee	Total
Hosted	$234.68	$75.00	$4.00	$313.68
Non-hosted	$323.33	$75.00	$4.00	$402.33

Keep in mind that the business license portion can move with your gross receipts, so treat those totals as a starting point rather than a hard ceiling, and check the fee schedule directly if your numbers need to be exact.

A granted permit is good for one year from the date it's issued, and it renews on the same cycle as your business license. It doesn't follow the property if you sell, either, at least not automatically: a transfer needs the city's prior written approval, and the new owner has to file a written request within 30 days of the sale closing.

There's one more step before the city signs off. You have to send a written Courtesy Notification to every property within a 300-foot radius of your lot lines, letting neighbors know the permit was approved. A title company can usually pull that radius list for you, which saves a tedious afternoon staring at a parcel map.

Required Documents for Murrieta Short Term Rentals

Getting that notification list together is part of a bigger paperwork job, and most of it starts well before you ever open the Host Compliance portal. Murrieta's STVR page points hosts toward a specific set of documents, and each one exists to answer a question an inspector will eventually ask anyway:

• A Grid Layout for the Permit Application, a floor plan showing every bedroom, since your occupancy limit and parking requirement both come directly off the bedroom count.
• A City Zoning Map excerpt confirming your parcel's zone, and for non-hosted applicants in ER-1 or ER-2, proof that you clear the 300-foot separation from any other non-hosted unit.
• A Smoke/Carbon Monoxide Locations diagram, since life-safety equipment has to be in place and documented before the city signs off.
• A copy of your business license, applied for alongside the STVR permit rather than after it.

Don't forget that the paperwork doesn't stop once you're approved, either. Every guest 18 or older has to hand over a name, phone number, address and a valid ID at check-in, and you're required to keep that information on file for three years and produce it if the city ever asks. A copy of your permit and the Good Neighbor Brochure both have to stay posted somewhere visible inside the unit for the length of every stay, and your permit number has to appear on every ad, every parking pass and any temporary signage you put out. Self check-in through a lockbox isn't an option here either; you or your authorized agent have to meet each guest in person to verify identity before handing over the keys.

Murrieta Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to open your calendar, there's still tax to deal with, and it comes around every single month whether you had a booking or not. Murrieta charges a flat Transient Occupancy Tax of 10 percent on every short-term stay, and the base you're taxed on is wider than just the nightly rate: cleaning fees, resort fees and any other charge you bundle into the booking all count as taxable rent. Returns are due monthly under Municipal Code §3.24.080, and you file even in a month where the unit sat empty the whole time.

Here's the fuller tax picture once you add in the state layers:

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Transient Occupancy Tax	10% of total rent	City of Murrieta, Chapter 3.24
California Tourism Assessment	~0.195% of qualifying revenue	CA Office of Tourism, self-filed
State income tax	Ordinary rates on net rental profit	Franchise Tax Board

Watch out for one thing in particular: Airbnb does not collect or remit Murrieta's TOT for you. The city isn't on Airbnb's California collection list, so unlike a lot of bigger markets where the platform handles the lodging tax automatically, the full 10 percent lands on you to calculate, file and pay yourself every month, through the same Host Compliance portal you registered on.

California itself levies no statewide occupancy tax of its own. Revenue and Taxation Code §7280 authorizes cities to set their own rate, uncapped, and Murrieta chose 10 percent. Our California short-term rental guide walks through the rest of the state layer, including the tourism assessment above, in more depth.

California wide Short Term Rental Rules

That state layer is worth understanding on its own, since almost nothing above it originates in Sacramento. California doesn't run a statewide short-term rental permit or registry of any kind. Every requirement, cap and fee you've read so far is local, which is why Murrieta's ordinance looks nothing like Temecula's next door or a wine-country city hundreds of miles north. What California does instead is set boundaries that every city, Murrieta included, has to operate inside.

The fine cap is the clearest example, and you've already seen it in action. State law caps STR-ordinance fines at $1,500 for a first violation, $3,000 for a second within a year, and $5,000 for each one after that under Government Code §36900(d), and Murrieta's own penalty schedule matches those numbers exactly. A few other statewide rules worth knowing:

• HOAs can ban short-term rentals outright. Civil Code §4741(c) lets a homeowners association prohibit rentals of 30 days or less, even though it can't touch longer-term leases.
• ADUs and junior ADUs carry a 30-day floor. State law already requires anything rented out of an ADU to run 30 days or more, which is exactly why Murrieta excludes them from the STVR program rather than writing its own rule.
• A new reporting law is phasing in. SB 346, the Short-Term Rental Facilitator Act of 2025, took effect January 1, 2026, and lets a city require platforms to report listing addresses once that city adopts an opt-in ordinance. I couldn't confirm whether Murrieta has adopted one as of this writing, so don't assume it applies until the city says so.

None of this changes the 300-permit cap or the zoning split, mind you. It just explains why those local rules are allowed to exist at all, and why they'll keep varying from one Riverside County city to the next. Wine-country markets run their own separate cap-and-zone systems too, which our Sonoma County guide covers up north, and the Sierra foothills carry a comparable permit-limited model worked through in the Placer County guide.

Does Murrieta strictly enforce STR rules?" Is Murrieta Airbnb friendly?

Variation between cities is one thing, but how hard a city enforces its own rule is a different question entirely, and it's the one that decides whether the cap and the zoning map matter in practice. In Murrieta, enforcement splits into two questions: how aggressively does the city chase violations, and how much room does the ordinance leave for a listing to exist at all.

On the first, the city built genuine teeth into Chapter 5.27. A violation is declared a public nuisance outright, which opens the door to nuisance abatement on top of the STVR-specific fines, and residents can report a problem 24 hours a day through the STVR concern hotline at (951) 210-7675 or online through the Host Compliance tips portal. Hosts carry their own response obligation too, mind you: you or your local contact have to show up in person within 30 minutes of a complaint, so "I'll deal with it tomorrow" isn't really an option here.

The fine schedule backs that up. A first violation runs $100 for a paperwork lapse like a missed business license, or up to $1,500 for anything else, climbing to $3,000 for a repeat within a year and $5,000 for every violation after that. Revoke a permit and the penalty outlasts the fine: the property can't hold another STVR permit for 12 months from the date of revocation, regardless of who owns it by then.

On the second question, "Airbnb friendly" honestly depends on which side of the hosted-versus-non-hosted line you're on. If you're planning to live in the home and rent a room or two, Murrieta is workable: hosted rentals reach most residential zones, and hosted guests don't even count toward the occupancy caps that apply to non-hosted units. If you were hoping to buy a house purely as a whole-home investment, though, you're competing for a shrinking slice of a 300-permit pool that's already restricted to rural and estate zones. That's a real constraint, not a formality, and it's worth sizing up honestly before you make an offer on a property.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Murrieta

Once you've sized that up honestly, the sequence of steps that follows is still straightforward enough to lay out in order.

1. Confirm your zone and your cap odds first. Pull up the city zoning map and check whether your address supports a hosted or non-hosted listing, then check with the Planning Division on how close the 300-permit ceiling is running before you spend a dollar.
2. Check your eligibility as an owner. You need to hold title and live at or own the property outright; renters, mobile homes on leased land, ADUs and rent-restricted units are all out.
3. Assemble the paperwork. Floor plan grid, zoning confirmation, smoke and CO alarm diagram, and your business license application all need to be ready before you submit.
4. Apply through Host Compliance. Submit the STVR permit application and the business license together, and pay the fee that matches your hosted or non-hosted category.
5. Send the 300-foot Courtesy Notification. Get this out to every neighboring property before the city finalizes your approval.
6. Set up your operating routine before your first guest. Line up a responsible person who's 21 or older and available around the clock, print the Good Neighbor Brochure, and post your permit where guests will see it.
7. Register for monthly TOT filing. Since Airbnb won't collect Murrieta's 10 percent for you, build that filing into your calendar from day one rather than discovering it after your first booking.
8. Diarize your renewal date. Permits run one year, and letting one lapse means reapplying from the back of a 300-permit line that may well be full by then.

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

If any one of those steps trips you up, a handful of offices can answer the specific question you're stuck on, so it's worth knowing which one to call first.

Short-term vacation rental permits and zoning

Development Services / Planning Division handles STVR applications, zoning questions and permit status.

• Address: 1 Town Square, Murrieta, CA 92562
• Phone: 951-304-2489 (Development Services), or 951-461-6061 direct to Planning
• Email: [email protected] (City Planner Carl Stiehl)
• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Apply or renew: the Host Compliance portal

Reporting a problem listing

The 24/7 STVR Concern Hotline takes complaints about noise, parking, trash or a listing that looks unpermitted.

• Phone: (951) 210-7675, available around the clock
• Online: the Host Compliance tips portal, or www.MurrietaCA.gov/stvr

Transient Occupancy Tax filing

TOT registration, monthly returns and payment run through the same Host Compliance portal as your permit, under Municipal Code Chapter 3.24. For general Development Services questions about the tax, the 951-304-2489 line above covers it too.

Code enforcement

Ongoing violations, nuisance complaints and permit revocations route through Code Enforcement, reachable at the same 1 Town Square address and 951-304-2489 main line during business hours.

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

Contact information only helps once you already know what question the hosts ahead of you ran into, and the recurring theme in this market is the cap itself. I couldn't reach Reddit directly for this piece, since its platform terms don't allow the kind of automated research this guide runs on, so what follows is a read of the pattern rather than a transcript of any specific thread. Weigh it accordingly.

The consistent thread, across BiggerPockets discussions on Inland Empire markets and the listing-data sites that track Murrieta specifically, is the cap. Investors comparing Murrieta to Temecula or Menifee tend to flag that a hosted room-share is easy enough to reason about. A whole-home play is a different story, though, since it depends entirely on whether the 300-permit pool still has room and whether your parcel sits in one of the three zones where non-hosted rentals are even legal. That's a different risk profile from a city with open zoning and no cap, and hosts researching the market tend to say so before anything else.

A second theme worth flagging: the 24/7 response requirement and the ban on self-check-in show up often as the operational surprise. Hosts used to running a lockbox-and-cleaner setup elsewhere describe Murrieta's in-person, 30-minute response rule as a real staffing commitment rather than paperwork, especially for anyone who doesn't live nearby. Keep that in mind if you're modeling this as a passive investment from out of state, since Murrieta's rules were written assuming you or someone local is on call. If the cap and the zoning math still pencil out for you, it's worth comparing Murrieta's numbers against its sister city by pulling up the Temecula market data before you commit to either one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Murrieta in 2026?

Yes, within limits. Murrieta permits short-term vacation rentals under an ordinance adopted in October 2020, capped at 300 permits citywide for hosted and non-hosted listings combined. Hosted rentals, where the owner lives on-site, are allowed in most residential zones. Non-hosted, whole-home rentals are restricted to rural and estate-residential zones, with a 300-foot separation requirement between non-hosted units. Only property owners qualify; renters and lessees cannot hold a permit.

How much does a Murrieta short-term vacation rental permit cost?

A hosted permit runs $234.68 plus a $75 base business license fee and a $4 state fee, for $313.68 total. A non-hosted permit costs $323.33 plus the same $75 and $4, for $402.33 total. Business license costs can rise with gross receipts, so treat those totals as a starting point. Permits last one year and renew alongside the business license.

What happens if you operate an unpermitted short-term rental in Murrieta?

Violations are treated as a public nuisance and can draw a civil fine of $100 for a first paperwork lapse like a missing business license, up to $1,500 for any other first violation, $3,000 for a second violation within a year, and $5,000 for each one after that. A revoked permit bars the property from holding another STVR permit for 12 months.

Do you have to pay hotel tax on a Murrieta Airbnb?

Yes. Murrieta charges a 10 percent Transient Occupancy Tax on the full rent, including cleaning and resort fees, filed monthly even in a month with no bookings. Airbnb does not collect or remit this tax on your behalf in Murrieta, so hosts have to calculate, file and pay it themselves through the city's Host Compliance portal every month.

Can renters or tenants get a short-term vacation rental permit in Murrieta?

No. Only the owner of a single-family residential dwelling or condominium can hold a Murrieta STVR permit. Anyone who rents or leases the home they live in is ineligible, along with mobile homes on leased land, apartments, RVs, garages and units carrying an affordable-housing covenant. Accessory dwelling units and junior ADUs are excluded too, since state law already requires those to rent for 30 days or more.

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