Redlands Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Redlands and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that nobody is going to bury you in short-term rental paperwork, because the City of Redlands, out in San Bernardino County, doesn't have a short-term rental ordinance at all. No STR permit to apply for, no annual STR license, no guest cap written for nightly stays, and no page on the city website telling you what to do. Searching redlands.gov for "short term rental" or "vacation rental" returns nothing at all.

The catch is sitting inside that same sentence, though. Where the Redlands code does use the words "short-term rental", it uses them to shut the door. Its single-room occupancy rules say flatly that they "shall not be construed to permit or authorize short-term rental facilities in the City of Redlands," and its SB 9 rules ban sub-30-day letting outright. Meanwhile, a lot of the Redlands advice online describes a 7% tax, an EZ Online Permitting application and a code officer's exterior inspection, and every bit of that belongs to San Bernardino County's unincorporated areas rather than to the city.

So let's walk through what a Redlands short-term rental actually involves in 2026: which parts of the municipal code reach you, the license and registration you genuinely do need, the taxes nobody collects on your behalf, how enforcement works, and who to call when the answer isn't written down. Everything below comes from the City of Redlands' own pages and adopted ordinances, checked in July 2026, and where I couldn't open a primary source I've said so rather than filling the gap with a guess.

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

That last point matters more here than in most cities, because Redlands regulates short-term rentals largely by declining to mention them. The Redlands City Code is current through Ordinance 3001, passed April 7, 2026, and it contains no short-term rental chapter, no vacation rental chapter and no homestay chapter. Two ordinances do most of the work that touches you, and neither was written with Airbnb in mind.

One quick note on sourcing before the substance. American Legal, which hosts the code, sits behind a bot challenge that refuses automated readers, so I worked from the city's own signed ordinance PDFs and from Internet Archive copies of the code pages instead. Anything I couldn't open is flagged as such below rather than papered over.

The two places the code says "short-term rental" both arrived with Ordinance No. 2985, which the City Council adopted after a public hearing on July 1, 2025 and which took effect on August 15, 2025. Both are exclusions:

• Single-room occupancy facilities. RMC 18.156.1210(D) requires that "tenancy shall not be less than thirty (30) days," and subsection (I) adds that "this Article shall not be applicable to short-term rentals in the City of Redlands and shall not be construed to permit or authorize short-term rental facilities in the City of Redlands." A whole new affordable-housing use type was written into the code in 2025, and the drafters went out of their way to say it creates no short-term rental right.
• SB 9 two-unit projects and urban lot splits. RMC 18.156.1330(H)(2) is titled "No Short-Term Rentals" and reads "no dwelling unit on the lot may be rented for a period of less than thirty (30) days." Subsection (I)(1) then makes you record a deed restriction that "expressly prohibits any rental of any dwelling on the property for a period of less than thirty (30) days," and RMC 17.12.050(A)(4) attaches the same prohibition as a standing condition of approval on every urban lot split.

Read those together and you get the shape of the thing.

Redlands hasn't banned short-term rentals citywide, and it hasn't licensed them either. It has closed the two newest doors into higher-density housing against nightly letting, and left everything else to the ordinary zoning code, the business license, the rental inspection program and the transient occupancy tax. That's an unusual position in California in 2026, and it cuts both ways for an owner.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Redlands

Cutting both ways is the honest description, because an absent ordinance removes the paperwork and the protection at the same time. In a city with a real STR permit you can point at a number and say you're compliant. In Redlands there's nothing to point at, so your legal footing rests on whether the underlying zoning of your specific parcel tolerates paying guests, which is a question the code answers property by property rather than citywide.

Title 18 is the zoning code, it runs across 33 zoning districts, and the city keeps an interactive zone map so you can pull the designation for your address before you spend anything. Ordinance 2985 lists the single-family districts by name in RMC 18.156.1310(D): R-E, R-S, R-1, R-1-D, R-R, R-R-A, R-A and R-A-A. Those are the zones most Redlands houses sit in, and they're written around permanent residence rather than transient lodging.

The closest thing the code offers to a legitimate transient use inside a house is Article III of Chapter 18.156, Bed And Breakfast Inns, running from RMC 18.156.230 to 18.156.270. Its section headings tell you the shape of the process even from the outside, since 18.156.250 covers commission approval requirements and 18.156.270 is titled "Location; Conditional Use Permit".

I couldn't read the full text of those sections, though, because they sit on the blocked code host and no archived copy exists. So treat a bed and breakfast permit as a route to ask the Planning Division about rather than one I can describe in detail.

Two traps catch people before they ever get to the zoning question. Accessory dwelling units are the first. State law already requires ADU rentals to run longer than 30 days, and Redlands' own ADU rules sit in an odd state on top of that.

HCD wrote to the city on July 14, 2025 to say that Ordinances 2533 (2003) and 2743 (2010) are noncompliant with State ADU Law. The city told HCD it intends to process ADU applications under state law instead of amending them, yet the outdated second-unit rules are still sitting in the code at RMC 18.156.430 through 18.156.460. Do check which set of rules your planner is applying, because the code you read online may not be the code being used.

The second trap is the SB 9 one. Splitting a lot or adding a second primary unit under SB 9 buys you a recorded deed restriction against sub-30-day rentals that runs with the land. Remember that a deed restriction outlives your ownership plans, so an SB 9 build and a future Airbnb exit strategy are mutually exclusive on the same parcel.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Redlands

Since no STR license exists to apply for, the licensing question becomes a different one: which of the city's general permits does a paying-guest operation trip? Three of them, and all three are ordinary requirements that most Redlands landlords already deal with.

A city business license comes first. The city puts it plainly on its business licenses page: they're "required of all persons or corporations conducting business within the City of Redlands." Applications and renewals run through the Business Support Center on the HdL portal, by phone on (909) 479-2111, or by email to [email protected], with paperwork mailed to 8839 N Cedar Ave #212, Fresno, CA 93720-1832. Have your business address, whether the operation is home-based or commercial, and an SIC code ready before you start, since the form asks for all three.

Rental property registration comes second, and this is the one owners overlook. Redlands adopted a non-owner-occupied Rental Property Inspection Program in 2010 under RMC Chapter 5.98, and the program brochure quotes the exemptions in 5.98.020(B) in full, including "owner occupied single-family dwellings," hospitals and campus housing, government-owned housing, mobilehomes and RV parks, and City-assisted affordable projects. Rent out a room in the house you live in and you're likely outside the program. Buy a house purely to let it out and you're likely inside it. The city's registration form, last revised in September 2022 and still the live version as of July 2026, sets the annual fee by lot size:

Property size	Annual rental inspection fee	Who charges it
Less than 1 acre	$80	City of Redlands, Facilities & Community Services
One to three acres	$94	City of Redlands, Facilities & Community Services
Over three to five acres	$106	City of Redlands, Facilities & Community Services
Greater than five acres	$116	City of Redlands, Facilities & Community Services

That fee can rise each year with the Consumer Price Index, and the form makes you swear under penalty of perjury to fix any violation within 30 calendar days of the city's first call, dropping to 24 hours where the problem threatens occupant health or safety.

What I could not confirm is how RMC 5.98.020(A) defines a "rental dwelling unit," because that subsection isn't on the brochure and the code host wouldn't open. So whether a string of three-night stays counts as a "rental" for inspection purposes is a question for Code Enforcement, and it's worth getting their answer in writing before you register or skip registering.

A transient occupancy tax certificate comes third. The city's Revenue Division issues transient occupancy tax forms alongside business licenses, and the City Treasurer's page lists TOT information among its services.

Nobody registers you automatically. So make sure you call them before your first booking rather than after it.

Required Documents for Redlands Short Term Rentals

None of those three permits asks for anything STR-specific, which keeps the document pile mercifully short compared with a licensed market. Here's what each one wants from you:

• Business license application. Business location and whether it's inside city limits, commercial or home-based, the business address, the product or service, a contractor's license number where one applies, and a Standard Industrial Classification code as required by SB 205. Commercial premises also need a Zone Clearance Application.
• Rental property registration form. Owner name, address, phone, email and driver's license number, the same details for any property agent or management company, the property address, and whether the unit is single-family, multifamily, condo or apartment. Then an owner or agent signature on the perjury declaration about correcting violations.
• Proof you're exempt, when you claim it. The brochure says an owner claiming a property isn't a rental supplies two utility bills to Code Enforcement, and it warns specifically that water and trash service bills are not acceptable.
• Payment in an accepted form. The registration form takes cash or check by mail to City of Redlands, Facilities & Community Services Dept. Rental Property, PO Box 3005, Redlands, CA 92373, and credit cards only in person at Suite 15-A with the card present.
• TOT registration paperwork from the Revenue Division, which you request directly rather than download.

One document you'll want that the city doesn't ask for: your own title report, CC&Rs or HOA rules. California law lets a common interest development prohibit rentals of 30 days or less even where it can't restrict longer tenancies, so plenty of Redlands condos and planned developments are closed to nightly guests regardless of what the city thinks.

Redlands Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get the license and registration sorted and are able to take a first booking, there's still tax to handle, and this is the part of the Redlands picture that older guides get most wrong. Four charges can attach to a short-term stay here, and the platforms carry almost none of them for you.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Redlands transient occupancy tax	Not published online; confirm with the Revenue Division	You, remitted to the City of Redlands
San Bernardino County transient occupancy tax	7%	County Tax Collector, unincorporated areas only, so not Redlands
California Tourism Assessment, accommodations	$1,950 per $1 million of assessable revenue	You, filed with the California Office of Tourism
California income tax on rental profit	Your marginal rate	You, filed with the Franchise Tax Board

Start with the row I can't fill in, because honesty beats a confident wrong number. Redlands levies a transient occupancy tax: the city's FY2025 annual financial report describes "the City's transient occupancy tax (hotel tax)" among its other taxes and reports collections rising by roughly $43,100 year over year. The rate itself lives in RMC Chapter 3.24, and I could not read it.

Every city budget I opened reports TOT revenue without ever stating a percentage, no page on redlands.gov publishes one, and the code host blocks automated access with no archived copy of Chapter 3.24 anywhere. So call the Revenue Division on (909) 798-7544 and get the current rate from the people who bill it.

What I can tell you is which rate is not yours. The 7% figure attached to Redlands in older write-ups comes from the county, and Airbnb's California occupancy tax page draws the line explicitly: it collects 7% for unincorporated San Bernardino County and lists the incorporated cities that agreement excludes, Redlands among them. Redlands doesn't appear anywhere on Airbnb's list of California jurisdictions where it collects separately, either.

Be aware of what that means in practice. No platform is remitting Redlands TOT for you, the liability sits with you personally, and an unregistered operator who has been taking bookings for two years has been accruing a tax debt the whole time.

The state layer above the city is thinner than most people expect. California levies no state occupancy tax at all, and Revenue & Taxation Code § 7280 authorizes cities and counties to tax stays of 30 days or less with no cap on the rate. There's no state sales tax on lodging either.

The one statewide charge that does reach you is the Tourism Assessment. The Office of Tourism's filing instructions put the accommodations category at $1,950 per $1 million of assessable travel and tourism revenue, a multiplier of 0.00195. Since I last checked, that figure sits in a state PDF whose metadata predates the current year, so confirm the rate and the small-business floor before you file.

Rental profit is then ordinary taxable income to the Franchise Tax Board on top of everything above.

Redlands wide Short Term Rental Rules

Tax is where the state finally shows up in this story, and the wider California framework is worth understanding because it explains why Redlands can stay silent in the first place. No California statute broadly preempts local short-term rental regulation, cities and counties act under their own police power, and that is exactly why one San Bernardino County city can run a full permit program while its neighbour runs none. Our California statewide guide maps how far that variation goes.

Five state rules still land on a Redlands host regardless of what the city does or doesn't say:

• Fine caps. Government Code § 36900(d) caps city fines for short-term rental ordinance violations at $1,500 for a first violation, $3,000 for a second within a year and $5,000 for further ones, with the higher tiers reserved for violations that threaten public health or safety and a hardship waiver required.
• The platform reporting framework. SB 346, the Short-Term Rental Facilitator Act of 2025, sits at Government Code §§ 50990 to 50996 and took effect on January 1, 2026. It's opt-in: where a local agency adopts an ordinance, platforms must report each rental's physical address and carry local license numbers in listings. Redlands hasn't adopted one, so the reporting duty isn't switched on here yet, and that's the single change most likely to arrive in the next couple of years.
• The ADU floor. Government Code § 66323(e) requires rentals of ADUs approved under that section to run longer than 30 days, and AB 1154 extended the same floor to junior ADUs in 2025. Backyard-unit Airbnbs are off the table statewide, not merely in Redlands.
• HOA authority. Civil Code § 4741(c) lets a common interest development prohibit rentals of 30 days or less even though it cannot ban longer ones.
• Advertising and fee disclosure. Advertised nightly rates have had to include every mandatory fee except government taxes since July 1, 2024 under Business & Professions Code § 17568.6, and cleaning tasks plus any fee for skipping them have to be disclosed and acknowledged before booking since July 1, 2025.

Redlands sits inland, so the Coastal Act layer that complicates rules in beach cities never applies here. The county layer doesn't apply either. San Bernardino County's short-term rental special use permit, with its EZ Online Permitting application, self-certification, Code Enforcement exterior inspection and annual renewal, governs unincorporated territory only.

Cross the city line and county land use rules stop. For a sense of how differently inland California jurisdictions have handled the same question, the San Joaquin County guide and the Stanislaus County guide cover two Central Valley counties that did write rules.

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

Comparing Redlands with those jurisdictions makes the enforcement question awkward, because you can't strictly enforce a rule you never wrote. There is no short-term rental inspector in Redlands, no registration database to audit against, no platform data feed, and no publicly reported STR case that I could find in the city's own records or in local coverage.

What exists is ordinary complaint-driven enforcement. The Code Enforcement Division handles "local Building, Zoning and Public Nuisance Ordinances," which is broad enough to cover a party house, an unpermitted conversion, a parking overflow or a rental property that never registered. Complaints reach it on (909) 335-4737 or at [email protected], and it issues administrative citations with an appeal process. In other words, a neighbour is the trigger, and the ordinance the officer reaches for will be a nuisance or zoning one rather than an STR one.

Where the code does speak, though, the teeth are sharp. RMC 18.156.1380 lets the city enjoin the sale, lease or financing of a violating SB 9 property, seek declaratory and injunctive relief, record a notice of violation, and withhold all future permits and approvals. It can also pursue criminal prosecution, punishable by up to a year in county jail, a fine of up to $10,000, or both. Nobody should read the absence of an STR ordinance as a general absence of enforcement appetite.

So is Redlands Airbnb friendly? Honestly, it's neither friendly nor hostile, and that ambiguity is the actual risk to price in. A licensed market gives you a permit number, a rulebook and a safe harbour. Redlands gives you a business license, a tax bill, a zoning code that was written for permanent residents, and a city that could adopt an ordinance in any given council cycle without owing existing operators a grandfather clause. Keep in mind that an unregulated market is not a protected one.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Redlands

Given that the protection isn't there, the sequence below is built to surface a dead end early, while it still costs you a phone call rather than a down payment.

1. Pull your zoning first. Look up the parcel on the city's interactive zone map and note the district. If it lands in R-E, R-S, R-1, R-1-D, R-R, R-R-A, R-A or R-A-A, you're in single-family territory and the questions below matter most.
2. Call the Planning Division on (909) 798-7555, extension 3. Give them the address or APN and ask directly whether transient occupancy of under 30 days is a permitted use in that district, and whether a bed and breakfast conditional use permit under RMC 18.156.230 to 18.156.270 is the route they'd expect. Get the answer by email so you have it in writing.
3. Read your own title documents. CC&Rs, HOA rules and any recorded deed restriction outrank the city. An SB 9 lot or a unit in a common interest development may already be barred from sub-30-day letting.
4. Rule out ADU and SB 9 plans. State law requires ADU tenancies longer than 30 days, and RMC 18.156.1330(H)(2) bans them outright on SB 9 two-unit lots.
5. Get the business license through the HdL portal or on (909) 479-2111 before you take money.
6. Register the property with the Rental Property Inspection Program if it isn't owner-occupied, budget the $80 to $116 annual fee, and ask Code Enforcement in the same call whether short stays change the answer.
7. Get a TOT certificate and the current rate from the Revenue Division on (909) 798-7544, then set aside tax from booking one. No platform is collecting it for you.
8. Model the property before you buy it, not after. Run the address through BNBCalc alongside a 30-day-plus furnished scenario, because the mid-term rental market is the fallback if the city ever writes rules. The San Bernadino market data is the quickest way to see what nightly rates and occupancy in this part of the Inland Empire actually support.

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

Since so much of the above ends in "ask the city," knowing which counter owns which question saves a genuinely irritating amount of time. Four offices handle nearly all of it, and they sit within a block of each other on Cajon Street.

Zoning, permitted uses and conditional use permits

The Development Services Department owns every land use question, including whether your parcel can host paying guests at all.

• Address: 35 Cajon St, Suite 20, Redlands, CA 92373
• Phone: (909) 798-7555, then extension 1 for the One Stop Permit Center, 2 for Building & Safety, 3 for Planning, 4 for Land Use Engineering and 5 for Economic Development
• Fax: (909) 792-8715
• Director: Sean Reilly
• Hours: 8:00 am to 4:30 pm, closed on alternating Fridays, per the city's City Hall hours page

Transient occupancy tax and business licenses

The Revenue Division, inside the Management Services and Finance Department, issues TOT forms and collects what you owe.

• Address: 35 Cajon Street, Suite 15B, Redlands, CA 92373
• Phone: (909) 798-7544
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 4:30 pm, closed alternate Fridays
• City Treasurer: Phillip Doolittle, [email protected], (909) 798-7591
• Business license applications: the Business Support Center on (909) 479-2111 or [email protected]

Rental registration, inspections and complaints

Code Enforcement, part of Facilities & Community Services, runs the rental inspection program and receives the complaints a neighbour would file about you.

• Code Enforcement: (909) 335-4737, [email protected]
• Department line: (909) 798-7655, [email protected]
• Rental permits: [email protected], with the online portal at gis.cityofredlands.org/pol
• Payments by mail: City of Redlands, Facilities & Community Services Dept. Rental Property, PO Box 3005, Redlands, CA 92373

The code itself

The full Redlands City Code is published by American Legal and is current through Ordinance 3001. It reads fine in a normal browser even though it refuses automated tools, so Chapter 3.24 for the transient occupancy tax and Chapter 5.98 for rental permits are both there for you to check yourself.

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

Checking the code yourself is more useful here than usual, because the community chatter is unusually thin, and I'd rather tell you why than pad this section out. Reddit blocks automated access in our research environment and its developer terms don't permit the commercial use these guides would need, so I haven't read any Redlands thread and I'm not going to characterise one. Treat what follows as my read of the public record instead of a survey.

That public record is quiet in a way that says something. No Redlands council agenda item, no planning commission hearing and no local news story about short-term rentals turned up in searching, while the same searches for neighbouring cities surface permit programs and ordinance fights. The city website has never published an STR page. Hosts operate in Redlands, since the listings exist, but they're doing it without a rulebook, a registration number or a compliance forum thread to compare notes in.

The recurring theme among investors looking at inland San Bernardino County is a practical one rather than a regulatory one. Nightly-rate demand in a college and commuter town behaves differently from a mountain or desert vacation market such as Big Bear Lake or Twentynine Palms, both of which do have their own tax arrangements with Airbnb. That difference tends to matter more to a Redlands pro forma than the permit question does, which is a fair reflection of a city that hasn't written a permit yet.

One last piece of context, since it's the thing most likely to change. SB 346 gave California cities an off-the-shelf framework for platform reporting from January 1, 2026, which lowers the effort of adopting an ordinance considerably. A neighbouring city adopting one would make Redlands' silence conspicuous. I'd watch council agendas rather than assume the current position holds.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a permit to run an Airbnb in Redlands, California?

There is no short-term rental permit in Redlands, because the city has never adopted a short-term rental ordinance. A host does need a City of Redlands business license, which the city requires of everyone conducting business inside the city limits. A transient occupancy tax certificate from the Revenue Division is separate, and a home that is not owner-occupied also has to register with the Rental Property Inspection Program. Zoning still governs whether the use is allowed on your particular parcel.

What is the transient occupancy tax rate in Redlands?

The City of Redlands levies a transient occupancy tax under Chapter 3.24 of its municipal code and administers it through the Revenue Division. The rate itself is not published on the city website, and the code host blocks automated access, so it could not be verified for this guide. Call the Revenue Division on (909) 798-7544 for the current figure. The 7% rate often quoted for Redlands is San Bernardino County's rate, which applies only in unincorporated areas.

Does Airbnb collect and remit occupancy tax for Redlands hosts?

No. Airbnb's California occupancy tax page shows it collecting a 7% transient occupancy tax for unincorporated San Bernardino County and expressly excludes the incorporated cities, naming Redlands among them. Redlands is not listed separately either. A Redlands host is therefore responsible for registering with the city, collecting the tax from guests and remitting it directly, and any host who has skipped that step has been accruing a liability with the city.

Can you short-term rent an ADU or an SB 9 unit in Redlands?

No, on both counts. California Government Code § 66323(e) requires that rentals of accessory dwelling units approved under that section run longer than 30 days, and AB 1154 applied the same floor to junior ADUs. For SB 9 projects, Redlands Municipal Code 18.156.1330(H)(2) states that no dwelling unit on the lot may be rented for less than 30 days, and the owner must record a deed restriction that repeats the prohibition and runs with the land.

How does Redlands enforce short-term rental problems without an ordinance?

Through ordinary complaint-driven code enforcement. The Redlands Code Enforcement Division enforces local building, zoning and public nuisance ordinances and takes reports on (909) 335-4737 or at [email protected], so a neighbour complaint about noise, parking, occupancy or an unpermitted conversion is the usual trigger. California caps city fines for short-term rental ordinance violations at $1,500, then $3,000, then $5,000, and SB 9 violations carry far heavier remedies including injunctions and criminal prosecution.

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