Ramsey County, Minnesota Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Ramsey County, Minnesota, and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that Minnesota state law puts up no real barrier, and nothing in Ramsey County's own code bans it either. The catch is that "Ramsey County's rules" isn't really one thing: every acre of the county sits inside one of its fifteen cities, from Saint Paul down to Falcon Heights, and each one writes its own short-term rental ordinance. So the honest answer to "can I do this" depends entirely on which city your address falls in.

Saint Paul, the county seat and by far the largest city here, licenses short-term rentals under its own ordinance and treats an unlicensed one as a criminal offense, even a minor one. Drive fifteen minutes north into Roseville, though, and you land under an entirely different ordinance built around non-owner-occupied rentals instead. Neither city, mind you, needs the county's permission for any of this, because Ramsey County itself has never adopted a short-term rental ordinance. There's nothing to find there because nothing exists.

So this guide walks through what actually applies: Saint Paul's licensing rules in real detail, since that's where most Ramsey County hosts will land, how a couple of the smaller cities do things differently, the tax layers that stack on a stay, and how enforcement plays out once you're operating. Every figure below comes from Ramsey County's, Saint Paul's, Roseville's or Minnesota's own pages, checked as of July 2026. If you're weighing whether a Ramsey County property earns more than a listing somewhere else, run the numbers through BNBCalc before you commit to either city's paperwork.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Ramsey County, Minnesota?

Before you commit to any city's paperwork, it helps to see the whole structure, because two layers of law actually govern a Ramsey County rental and only one of them lives in the county itself.

Minnesota state law sets the outer boundary, and it's a permissive one: nothing in state statute bars a city or county from allowing short-term rentals, and nothing bars a host from listing one either. Ramsey County itself has adopted no short-term rental ordinance of any kind, and going through its own ordinances and regulations page confirms it: no lodging chapter, no rental registry, nothing that mentions Airbnb or Vrbo at all. That's not an oversight. Ramsey County has no unincorporated land left to zone for it, since Saint Paul and the county's other fourteen cities cover every acre between them, so the authority that would normally sit with a county planning department sits with a city council instead.

Saint Paul spells its rules out in Legislative Code Chapter 379, created by the City Council in October 2017. It defines a short-term rental plainly: a dwelling unit, or part of one, rented for fewer than 30 days. Only one booking is allowed per unit per day, and using it for a commercial or social event isn't permitted either, since the ordinance makes it unlawful to operate as a short-term rental host, or as the platform that books one, without the matching city license. Two separate licenses, two separate sets of rules, and we'll get into both.

Drive into Roseville, though, and the rules change completely. Roseville's Ordinance 1657, in force since February 13, 2024, only licenses non-owner-occupied short-term rentals, and it folds a lodging tax filing into that same license. Saint Paul and Roseville don't share a licensing office, a fee schedule, or even the same definition of who needs one. Do check your own city's code before assuming Saint Paul's rules, or anyone else's, apply to your specific address.

One more piece sits above even Saint Paul. The Minnesota Legislature has never passed a law preempting local short-term rental regulation, so nothing stops a city from tightening its rules further, and nothing has forced Saint Paul or Roseville to loosen theirs. We'll get into what that means statewide later on. For now, the ordinance that governs you is your city's, not the county's and not the state's, and that's the frame to carry into everything that follows.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Ramsey County

Carrying that frame forward, starting a short-term rental business in Ramsey County is a realistic plan for most owners, not the uphill fight it is in a city like New York. Starting a business here means starting a business in whichever city you're in, though, so the first real decision is figuring out which set of caps and requirements applies to your address.

In Saint Paul, that decision is largely about the building you own, since the city licenses short-term rentals by occupancy type and its zoning code caps how many units in a building can be short-term rentals at all:

Building Type	Short-Term Rental Units Allowed
Single-family, owner-occupied	1
Single-family, non-owner-occupied	1
Duplex, at least one unit owner-occupied	2
Duplex, no unit owner-occupied	1
Triplex, at least one unit owner-occupied	3
Triplex, no unit owner-occupied	1
Fourplex, at least one unit owner-occupied	4
Fourplex, no unit owner-occupied	1 to 2, depending on zoning
Five or more units	Up to half the building, capped at 4

A conditional use permit can push past those caps, though getting one adds months and a public hearing most hosts would rather skip.

Roseville takes a narrower approach. Its ordinance only reaches non-owner-occupied properties, single-family homes, townhomes, condos, duplexes, twinhomes, triplexes and fourplexes, all licensed annually, all required to file a lodging tax return alongside the license. Live in the unit yourself and Roseville's ordinance doesn't reach you at all, which is close to the opposite of how Saint Paul treats an owner-occupied unit. Since I couldn't find a published fee or the current minimum-stay figures on Roseville's own site, treat those specifics as something to confirm directly with the city rather than a number this guide can hand you. Back in 2021, when the city council first passed these restrictions after years of complaints about party houses, the rule was a 10-day minimum stay from May through September and seven days the rest of the year for non-owner-occupied homes, with a license suspension possible after two violations inside 180 days. Whether every one of those specifics survived into the current Ordinance 1657 is exactly what's worth confirming before you plan around it.

One cost applies no matter which city you're in, and it's easy to miss because it shows up on your property tax bill rather than a license fee. Minnesota classifies a property as Class 4b, non-homestead short-term rental property, taxed at 1.25% of value, the moment a homesteaded property gets rented short-term for more than 14 days in a year, instead of the 1.0% homestead rate. Keep in mind that converting your primary residence into a full-time Ramsey County Airbnb can raise your property tax bill on its own, well before you've weighed a dollar of rental income against it.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Ramsey County

Once you've weighed that property tax shift against the rental income, the next question is what it takes to get licensed, and Saint Paul is the city with the most to walk through.

A Saint Paul short-term rental needs two different licenses, and mixing them up is an easy mistake to make. The Short-Term Rental Host license covers you, the property owner. A separate Short-Term Rental Platform license covers Airbnb, Vrbo or any other booking service, and it's the platform's own responsibility, not yours, though it explains a lot about how the city keeps hosts in line: a platform risks its own license by carrying an unlicensed listing.

Both licenses run through PAULIE, the city's permitting portal, and both work the same way once you have one: annual, expiring exactly a year from the date of issuance, and non-transferable if you sell. As of Saint Paul's January 2026 fee schedule, though, the host license runs $45, whether the unit is owner-occupied or not. Just be aware that older sources, including the city's own 2017 requirements sheet, still quote $40, so go with the current number rather than whatever a search engine hands you. The platform license, on the other hand, costs $11,181, which is exactly why a smaller booking site tends to steer clear of Saint Paul altogether while a larger one absorbs it and moves on.

Getting either license isn't a rubber stamp. Under Section 379.04 of the ordinance, both the DSI Director and the Saint Paul Police Chief have to investigate every application and every renewal. That's an unusual amount of scrutiny for what is, on paper, a business license. A platform license can be denied outright if anyone holding a 25% or greater stake in the company was convicted of a felony in the past five years, or of certain misdemeanors involving force, drugs, prostitution or indecent conduct. It can also be denied if the applicant's own platform license was revoked anywhere in the past five years for anything other than an unpaid fee.

Once you're licensed, the obligations still don't stop. A Saint Paul host has to be ready, within five business days of a request from DSI, to show that they:

• keep a local contact reachable for the length of every guest's stay
• carry liability insurance of at least $300,000, or book exclusively through a platform that provides equal or greater coverage
• have working smoke detectors and carbon monoxide alarms in every bedroom and every habitable floor, plus a maintained fire extinguisher
• post six specific things inside the unit: emergency contact information, the host's or responsible party's contact information, the street address, a floor plan showing fire exits, DSI's own contact information for complaints, and the maximum occupancy
• keep a host registry logging every night booked and every dollar of rent collected
• remit every tax that applies, unless the platform is handling that on the host's behalf

That's six separate obligations riding on a $45 license, and DSI can ask for proof of any of them at any point, not only at renewal.

Non-owner-occupied units carry one more layer on top: a current Fire Certificate of Occupancy, or at minimum a provisional application for one, has to be on file before DSI will license the unit at all. That single document trips up more applicants than anything else in the ordinance, which is exactly why the paperwork deserves its own walkthrough.

Required Documents for Ramsey County Short-Term Rentals

Walking through it in order, here's what a complete Saint Paul host license application needs, based on DSI's own application guidance:

• A Secretary of State business registration, or a signed sole-proprietor statement if you're not incorporated
• Proof of ownership or your recorded lease for the property
• For a non-owner-occupied unit, a current Fire Certificate of Occupancy, or a provisional application for one
• Proof of insurance: an ACORD certificate showing at least $300,000 in coverage, or confirmation that you're booking exclusively through Airbnb, Vrbo or HomeAway, since their own coverage satisfies the requirement
• A completed Workers' Compensation form and a signed affidavit of compliance
• Confirmation that every existing building permit on the property is closed out, since DSI won't issue a license over an open one

Have those six ready before you start the PAULIE application, since DSI reviews for completeness first and an incomplete file just pushes back your own start date. Once you're licensed, remember that the posting requirements from the section above aren't optional paperwork either. DSI can ask to see the floor plan and the occupancy notice on an actual site visit, not just take your word that you have them.

Ramsey County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming your paperwork clears and you're able to start hosting, there's still the tax side to sort out, and it stacks in more layers than the license fee did.

Three separate charges apply to a stay in Saint Paul, split between two governments:

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Minnesota general sales tax	6.875%	Minnesota Dept. of Revenue
Saint Paul local sales and use tax	1.5%	City of Saint Paul
Saint Paul lodging tax (under 50 rooms)	3%	City of Saint Paul

Add the first two rows and Saint Paul's general sales tax comes to at least 8.375% on a booking there. Third-party tax calculators put the actual combined 2026 rate closer to 9.875%, which points to an extra regional transit tax riding on top, and Minnesota's own rate lookup only returns a figure for a specific address rather than a citywide one, so I'd confirm the exact rate against your property before you build a pricing model around it. The lodging tax is separate again, layered on top of the general sales tax rather than replacing any part of it, and it's the tier built for a single unit rather than a hotel.

Both taxes get collected the same way in practice. Airbnb and Vrbo register with Minnesota as accommodations intermediaries and collect the state and local taxes automatically on a platform booking, so if every one of your bookings runs through a major platform, you're largely relieved of collecting it yourself. Book a guest directly, off-platform, and that responsibility reverts to you: register with the Minnesota Department of Revenue as a retailer and remit the state tax and Saint Paul's lodging tax on that stay yourself.

Layered on top of both is the property tax reclassification covered earlier. Once a homesteaded property clears 14 rental days in a year, Minnesota reclassifies it as Class 4b at 1.25% of value instead of the 1.0% homestead rate, and that bill comes from Ramsey County's own Assessor's Office rather than the state or the city. Roseville folds its own lodging tax return into the license itself rather than running a separate city process, so check with Roseville directly for the exact rate if that's your city, since it wasn't published on the page I was able to read.

Possible Deductions and Write-Offs

None of this happens against a blank slate on the income side, mind you, since short-term rental income is ordinary taxable income at both the state and federal level, and the usual deductions apply against it: mortgage interest, property tax, depreciation, cleaning and maintenance costs, platform service fees, and a share of utilities and insurance. Rent out a whole separate unit, though, and most of that is straightforward to apportion. Rent out a room in the home you live in, which several Ramsey County cities require or effectively push you toward, and you're apportioning almost everything by square footage or nights rented instead, which gets fiddly fast. A CPA familiar with Minnesota short-term rentals is worth the fee here, since the reclassification and apportionment rules interact in ways a spreadsheet alone tends to miss.

Minnesota-Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

A CPA can only work with the framework that's actually there, so it's worth stepping back and seeing what Minnesota itself does and doesn't require, since almost everything county- and city-specific in this guide sits on top of that base.

Start with what's absent. The Minnesota Legislature has never passed a law preempting city or county regulation of short-term rentals, and the League of Minnesota Cities frames the last several legislative sessions as cities defending their zoning and land-use authority against broader housing preemption bills, not losing it. That's exactly why Saint Paul and Roseville can run such different ordinances a few miles apart: nothing above them says they can't.

Minnesota also has no statewide short-term rental license, permit or registry of its own. The only state-level registration that touches a host is the ordinary sales tax retailer registration, and it depends entirely on how you take bookings. Book directly and you register with the Department of Revenue yourself, while booking exclusively through Airbnb, Vrbo or a similar service means the platform registers instead, as an accommodations intermediary, and collects on your behalf. Where both happen, which is common, both sides may owe their own slice.

Two bills touching short-term rentals sat in the 2025-2026 Legislature as of my last check. HF 150 would clarify that the local lodging tax base includes fees an accommodations intermediary adds on top of the room charge, and would let a city collect that tax annually instead of quarterly from a platform. SF 4157 is narrower still, regulating short-term rental guarantee and reimbursement insurance products rather than zoning or tax. Neither had passed as of this guide's research. Watch out for either one moving before your next renewal, since a lodging-tax change would hit every Ramsey County city at once, not just Saint Paul.

If you're weighing a Ramsey County property against something across the river, the Hennepin County guide covers Minneapolis and its suburbs under this same state framework, and the Dakota County and Anoka County guides cover the rest of the Twin Cities metro. Our Minnesota statewide guide maps how all of it fits together outside the metro too.

Does Ramsey County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

None of that statewide picture tells you how seriously enforcement actually bites, though, and here the honest answer depends on which city's line you're standing on.

Ramsey County itself enforces nothing, because it regulates nothing. A neighbor's complaint about a rental doesn't go to a county office at all; it goes to whichever city has jurisdiction over that address. In Saint Paul, that means DSI, and the ordinance gives it real teeth even though the penalty itself is modest. Operating without a license is a petty misdemeanor, Minnesota's lowest offense class, capped at a $300 fine with no jail time attached. The bigger lever is the licensing gate itself. Both the DSI Director and the Police Chief investigate every application and renewal, and a platform is required to pull a listing the moment the city flags it as unlicensed, expired or revoked. That combination cuts off future bookings, not just the current one, which does more damage to an operator's business than a single $300 fine ever would.

I couldn't find a published enforcement report for Saint Paul's short-term rental program, the kind of annual accounting a city like New York publishes for its own registration law, so I won't invent a number of violations or revocations here. What the ordinance does establish clearly is the mechanism: two city officials sign off on every license, and a platform loses cover the moment it keeps an unlicensed listing live.

Roseville's history suggests the smaller cities take this just as seriously, if not more so. Its council passed the original restrictions in February 2021 by a unanimous 5-0 vote, after years of resident complaints about weekend party rentals near McCarrons Lake, and it built in a suspension trigger for repeat violations from the start. A city with one part-time code enforcement officer can still shut a listing down quickly once neighbors start calling, so don't mistake "small city" for "unenforced."

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Ramsey County

Assuming you've read this far because your address genuinely fits somewhere in that picture, the order below still matters more than it might look. The early steps tell you whether the later ones are worth the effort at all.

1. Confirm which city actually governs your address. Ramsey County has fifteen of them, and the difference between Saint Paul and Roseville alone is enormous.
2. Check the zoning cap for your building type. In Saint Paul, that means the table above; elsewhere, call the city's planning or community development office directly.
3. Line up insurance before you apply. A $300,000 policy, or proof you'll book exclusively through a major platform, covers Saint Paul's requirement and is worth having regardless of the city.
4. Get your Fire Certificate of Occupancy started early if the unit isn't owner-occupied. It's the slowest single piece of the application in Saint Paul, so don't leave it for the week you plan to submit.
5. Apply through the city's own portal, PAULIE in Saint Paul, and pay the current license fee rather than an outdated one you found online.
6. Set up your tax registration before your first guest checks in. Register with the Minnesota Department of Revenue if you'll ever take a direct booking, and confirm what your platform collects automatically.
7. Post everything the ordinance requires inside the unit itself, and keep your host registry current from night one rather than reconstructing it later.
8. Diarize your renewal date. Licenses run one year in Saint Paul, and a lapsed license is functionally the same as never having applied.
9. Run the numbers before any of this, not after. Check Minnesota's own market data on BNBCalc Markets against what Saint Paul's or Roseville's fees and taxes will actually take out of a booking, so you know the math works before you spend a dollar on paperwork.

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

Whichever step you get stuck on, a small handful of offices handle almost everything between them, and knowing which one owns your question saves a lot of time on hold.

Saint Paul short-term rental licensing

The Department of Safety and Inspections (DSI) administers Chapter 379, including applications, renewals, and complaints about a specific listing.

• Address: 375 Jackson Street, Suite 220, Saint Paul, MN 55101
• Phone: 651-266-8989
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: weekdays, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Apply online: the PAULIE permitting portal

Ramsey County property tax and classification

The Ramsey County Assessor's Office determines whether a property is classified homestead or non-homestead, which is what triggers the Class 4b rate once you start renting short-term.

• Address: Plato Building, 90 Plato Blvd. West, Saint Paul, MN 55107
• Phone: 651-266-2131 (property valuation), 651-266-2000 (general)
• Hours: weekdays, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Online: the Ramsey County Assessor page

Roseville short-term rental licensing

The Community Development Department administers Ordinance 1657 for Roseville hosts.

• Address: Roseville City Hall, 2660 Civic Center Drive, Roseville, MN 55113
• Phone: 651-792-7013
• Hours: weekdays, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Online: the Roseville short-term rental page

If your property sits in one of Ramsey County's other cities, Arden Hills, Falcon Heights, Little Canada, Maplewood, Mounds View, New Brighton, North Oaks, North St. Paul, Shoreview, Vadnais Heights, or White Bear Lake among them, that city's own planning or community development department is your starting point, since none of them route through the county.

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

Contact information only gets you so far, so it's worth knowing what other Ramsey County hosts actually run into once they're operating. Here I have to be upfront. A direct search for Ramsey County or Saint Paul short-term rental threads on Reddit and BiggerPockets didn't turn up dedicated discussions specific enough to quote honestly, so what follows is my own read of the landscape rather than a survey of what hosts are saying, and I'd weigh it accordingly.

The pattern that jumps out from the ordinances themselves is the patchwork, and it's the one theme any investor conversation about this county would have to grapple with. A duplex a few blocks inside Saint Paul answers to Chapter 379, a $45 host license, and a hard cap on units per building. The same duplex just across the line in Roseville answers to a completely different ordinance built around minimum stays and non-owner-occupied status. That's not a minor detail to shrug off. It means two nearly identical properties, priced within a few thousand dollars of each other, can carry entirely different licensing costs, entirely different eligibility rules, and entirely different renewal risk, purely because of which side of a municipal line they sit on.

What that suggests for anyone actually comparing Ramsey County addresses is to stop treating "Ramsey County" as a market and start treating it as fifteen small markets stacked next to each other. A host who's done the legwork on Saint Paul's rules hasn't learned anything transferable about Roseville, Maplewood or White Bear Lake, and pricing tools that report county-wide averages can flatten differences that matter enormously once you're the one filling out the application.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Ramsey County, Minnesota in 2026?

Yes, in most of the county, though the specific rules depend entirely on which city your property sits in. Ramsey County government has no short-term rental ordinance of its own, so every city sets its own licensing, fees and eligibility rules. Saint Paul licenses both hosts and booking platforms under Legislative Code Chapter 379, and Roseville licenses only non-owner-occupied rentals under a separate ordinance. Check your specific city's code before assuming any of this guide's Saint Paul figures apply to your address.

Does Ramsey County itself require a short-term rental license?

No. Ramsey County has never adopted a short-term rental ordinance, and its own published list of county ordinances and regulations doesn't include one. That's mainly because the county has essentially no unincorporated land left to regulate directly, since all fifteen of its cities cover the county's full area between them. Licensing happens at the city level instead, through offices like Saint Paul's Department of Safety and Inspections or Roseville's Community Development Department.

How much does a Saint Paul short-term rental license cost?

As of Saint Paul's January 2026 fee schedule, a host license costs $45, whether the unit is owner-occupied or not. A separate platform license, required of Airbnb, Vrbo and similar booking services, costs $11,181. Both licenses run for one year from the date of issuance and must be renewed annually. Older sources still quote a $40 host fee from the ordinance's original 2017 requirements sheet, so confirm the current number before you budget.

What happens if you rent out a Saint Paul property without a license?

Operating as an unlicensed short-term rental host or platform in Saint Paul is a petty misdemeanor under state law, carrying a fine of up to $300. The more immediate consequence is usually commercial rather than criminal. Platforms are required to remove a listing once the city notifies them that the host is unlicensed, expired or revoked, which cuts off future bookings rather than penalizing the past ones.

Do you have to collect lodging tax on a Ramsey County short-term rental?

In Saint Paul, yes. A stay there carries a 3% city lodging tax on top of the 6.875% state general sales tax and Saint Paul's own 1.5% local sales tax. Airbnb and Vrbo register with Minnesota as accommodations intermediaries and generally collect all of this automatically on a platform booking; a direct, off-platform booking puts the collection and remittance responsibility on you. Roseville folds a lodging tax return into its own separate license, so confirm that city's specific rate before you price a stay 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.