Spokane Valley Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Spokane Valley and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that Spokane Valley says yes, and it barely blinks while saying it. There's no short-term-rental permit here, no per-building cap, and no rule that you have to live in the property yourself. That puts Spokane Valley in a different spot from its immediate neighbor: the City of Spokane spent 2023 building a whole permit system for exactly this activity, and Spokane Valley never did.

That doesn't mean nobody's watching, though. You still need the city's general business license, and Washington's own short-term rental statute applies whether Spokane Valley writes it into local code or not: a million dollars of liability insurance, working carbon monoxide alarms, and a handful of postings inside the unit. Skip those and the state, not the city, is who comes after you.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in Spokane Valley: what the zoning code does and doesn't say, what the business license costs in 2026, the tax you'll be collecting on every stay, and who picks up the phone when you have a question. Everything below comes from Spokane Valley's own site, Washington's Department of Revenue and the Washington legislature's own text, checked in July 2026. If a figure sits on the softer side, that's because I couldn't pin it to an official page, and I've said so plainly rather than guess.

What are Short Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Spokane Valley, Washington?

Start with the part that surprises most people: going through the city's own zoning code, I couldn't find a "short-term rental" or "vacation rental" land-use category anywhere in it. Spokane Valley's permitted-use matrix lists "Bed and Breakfast" as an allowed use across every residential zone, R-1 through R-4, plus multifamily and mixed-use zones, but nothing addressing a whole home rented out nightly through Airbnb or Vrbo. That's not an oversight I stumbled on by accident, either. A search of the city's own website for "short-term rental" turns up nothing, and the Home Business FAQ page, which is where a rental-adjacent activity would most plausibly get addressed, never mentions vacation or short-term rentals at all.

Contrast that with the City of Spokane next door, which passed a dedicated short-term rental ordinance in July 2023, complete with a per-unit permit, per-building caps and a monitoring contract to catch unpermitted listings. Spokane Valley has none of that, and it isn't a recent gap. Back in 2017, when the City of Spokane was already requiring permits and site plans, then-Mayor Rod Higgins told the Spokesman-Review, "Our attitude here in the Valley is to just let folks do as they please," adding that he hadn't "even heard anyone talking about" restricting short-term rentals. Nothing in a council agenda, a planning commission item, or news coverage between then and July 2026 suggests that's changed.

None of this means Spokane Valley is unregulated, mind you. Above every city in Washington sits Chapter 64.37 RCW, the state's short-term rental statute, and it applies here regardless of what the local code says. It requires an operator to carry at least $1 million in primary liability insurance covering the rental, or to book exclusively through a platform that provides equivalent coverage. It also sets a consumer-safety floor under RCW 64.37.030: a reachable emergency contact during the stay, carbon monoxide alarms that meet RCW 19.27.530, and a handful of things posted inside the unit. That statute doesn't preempt Spokane Valley from adding its own rules later. It just means that, for now, the state floor is the whole ceiling too.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Spokane Valley

Since the zoning code stays quiet on short-term rentals specifically, starting one here is less about clearing a special approval and more about clearing the same hurdles any small business in the city would. Your property still has to be a lawful dwelling in a zone that allows residential use, which nearly every single-family, duplex, and multifamily zone does, and there's no separate zoning application to file just because guests are staying a few nights instead of a few years.

That also means there's no owner-occupancy requirement standing between you and renting the whole place out. Unlike the City of Spokane, which has started tying accessory dwelling unit rentals to an owner living on site, Spokane Valley doesn't ask who's home during the stay. An investor buying a standalone house purely to run nightly rentals is playing by the same rules as someone renting out a spare room in their own home, because the city's code doesn't distinguish between the two.

Do check your own paperwork before you check the city's, though. Nothing here overrides a lease, an HOA's bylaws, or a covenant on the title, and Spokane Valley has plenty of both. A property that's perfectly legal under city and state rules can still be off-limits because of a document nobody at City Hall will ever read for you. If your search is spreading across the wider county, the Spokane County guide covers the unincorporated areas that ring the city, which run under yet another set of rules.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Spokane Valley

Given that there's no STR-specific approval to chase, the licensing story here is mercifully short. You need the same general business license every other business in Spokane Valley needs, issued under Spokane Valley Municipal Code (SVMC) Title 5.05, which "requires every person engaged in business or continuing business during the calendar year[] to annually register with the City." It's a combined city-and-state license processed through the Washington Department of Revenue's Business Licensing Service, and the city automatically approves your registration once the state notifies it.

The fee is small. A general or non-resident business license runs $25 to originate and $25 a year to renew, per both the city's own page and the Department of Revenue's city endorsement page. If you already run the rental as a business based elsewhere and it's grossing $4,000 or less a year from Spokane Valley activity, the non-resident fee drops to zero, a threshold DOR raised to $4,000 effective January 1, 2026. Compare that to what a City of Spokane host pays just to get in the door there: a $131 business license plus a separate $200 short-term rental permit application. Spokane Valley's version is a fraction of that.

Separately, Washington requires its own state business license once your gross income hits $12,000 a year, and a short-term rental almost always trips that threshold on its own. The state's processing fee "varies" by endorsement rather than being a flat number DOR publishes, so budget a little slack there rather than a specific figure.

One more license type is worth knowing about, even though it isn't obviously built for what you're doing. If you live in the property and want to treat the rental as a business run from your home, SVMC 19.65.180 requires a Home Business Permit, with fee exemptions available where you're not altering the exterior, hosting customer visits, adding signage, or receiving business deliveries. Going through the city's own application form, it's plainly written with a consulting-style business in mind rather than overnight guests, and I couldn't find anything stating whether the city applies it to short-term rentals in practice. If you're operating from your own residence, it's worth asking the Planning Division directly whether your listing needs this permit before you assume either way.

Required Documents for Spokane Valley Short Term Rentals

Since that Home Business question doesn't have a clean answer from the city's own pages, it's worth gathering the paperwork for both possibilities before you apply for anything. For the standard business license, you'll need your Unified Business Identifier (UBI) number, your business name and address, and basic owner contact information, all fed through the same Department of Revenue application that issues your Spokane Valley endorsement alongside the state license.

If the Home Business Permit does apply to your situation, the city's application form asks eleven yes-or-no questions before it asks anything else:

• Whether you're altering the exterior of the residence for the business.
• Whether goods or commodities get delivered to the residence.
• Whether customers visit the premises.
• Whether there's a sign advertising the business, and if so, its size and location.
• Whether you have employees, how many, and whether they live in the residence.
• Whether the business owner is the primary resident.
• Whether anything associated with the business is being stored on site, and what.
• Whether anything gets displayed in the residence.
• What the hours of operation are.
• How many parking spaces are used by customers, employees, and residents.
• A written description of the operation.

Beyond the business paperwork, remember that Washington's own statute layers its own documentation duty on top, regardless of what the city asks for. RCW 64.37.050 means you need proof of that $1 million liability policy, or written confirmation your platform's coverage meets it. And RCW 64.37.030 means four things have to physically exist inside the unit before a guest ever checks in: the street address, emergency contact information for the operator, a floor plan showing fire exits, and the maximum occupancy. None of that gets filed with the city. It just has to be there, and be accurate, if anyone ever asks.

Spokane Valley Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you're able to clear the licensing step, there's still tax to collect on every stay, and this is one area where Spokane Valley's numbers are current as of this refresh. Voters approved a sales tax increase through Proposition 1 in August 2025, and it took effect January 1, 2026, so any older write-up quoting a lower rate is describing a Spokane Valley that no longer exists.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Washington state sales tax	6.5%	Airbnb/Vrbo on platform bookings, you on direct bookings
Spokane Valley local sales tax	2.5% (as of Jan. 1, 2026)	Same
Spokane County convention/PFD lodging tax	1.3%	Same
Combined lodging tax, under 40 units	10.3%	Same
Special hotel/motel tax	2%, only at 40+ units	Not your typical listing
Tourism Promotion Area charge	$4.00 per unit/night, only at 40+ units	Not your typical listing
Retailing B&O tax	0.471% of gross	You, on your own excise return

That 10.3% comes straight from the Department of Revenue's own Q2 2026 lodging rates flyer, where Spokane Valley properties with 39 or fewer units carry a combined lodging tax rate of 10.3%: the 9.0% general retail rate (which Spokane Valley's own FAQ confirms as "9.0 percent (0.090)" effective January 1, 2026) plus a 1.3% convention/public facilities district charge that applies across Spokane County. The two lines that look scary in that table, the 2% special hotel/motel tax and the $4 nightly Tourism Promotion Area fee, only attach to lodging businesses with 40 or more units, and DOR says so directly on its special hotel/motel tax page: "In Spokane County, there must be 40 or more units for the tax to apply." Unless you're running an honest-to-goodness 40-unit property, neither line touches you.

Be aware, too, that Spokane Valley doesn't add its own gross-receipts tax on top of any of this. The city states plainly that it does not impose a local Business and Occupation (B&O) tax or corporate income tax. What you do owe is Washington's own Retailing B&O tax, currently 0.471% of gross rental income, minus the small-business credit if you qualify.

Platform collection helps here, though it doesn't erase your filing duty. Since October 2015, Airbnb has collected and remitted Washington's state and local retail sales tax, special hotel/motel tax, and convention/trade center tax on its hosts' behalf. Whether Vrbo and other platforms do the same isn't confirmed on any DOR page I could find, so verify it with your specific platform rather than assuming. Either way, you still register with the Department of Revenue, report your gross rental income under the Retailing classification, and claim the "Gross Sales Collected by Facilitator" deduction so you're not taxed twice on what the platform already handled. If you're comparing Spokane Valley's tax stack against a market that runs materially higher, run both through BNBCalc before you commit either way.

Spokane Valley wide Short Term Rental Rules

Tax is one thing every rental in Spokane Valley shares, but Washington's statewide safety floor is the other, and it applies uniformly no matter which zone your property sits in. RCW 64.37.030 requires you to be contactable throughout a guest's stay, to keep carbon monoxide alarms compliant with RCW 19.27.530, and to post the address, emergency contacts, a fire-exit floor plan, and the maximum occupancy inside the unit. A first violation gets a warning letter from the city or county attorney; a repeat violation is a class 2 civil infraction under chapter 7.80 RCW.

Platforms carry duties of their own under RCW 64.37.040: registering with the Department of Revenue and warning operators, in writing, that an ordinary homeowner's policy may not cover short-term rental use. That warning is worth reading rather than skimming, since it's the reason the $1 million liability requirement exists in the first place.

What Washington notably hasn't done is preempt Spokane Valley, or any other city, from writing tighter rules if it chooses to. Chapter 64.37 sets a floor, not a ceiling, and there's still no statewide STR registry or permit. That's exactly why the City of Spokane's rules and Spokane Valley's look so different despite sitting a few miles apart, and it's why the Washington statewide guide is worth reading alongside this one if you're weighing properties across multiple Washington cities.

One thing to watch rather than plan around: two companion bills, SB 5576 and HB 2559, would let any Washington city or county add a local excise tax of up to 4% on short-term rental charges to fund affordable housing. SB 5576 passed the Senate 27-21 back in March 2025, and HB 2559 cleared House Finance in January 2026 before moving to Appropriations. Neither has passed as of this writing, so a Spokane Valley surcharge isn't something to model into your numbers yet, though it's worth keeping an eye on the next legislative session.

Does Spokane Valley Strictly Enforce STR Rules? Is Spokane Valley Airbnb Friendly?

Given everything above, the enforcement answer basically writes itself: Spokane Valley isn't running anything close to the City of Spokane's proactive monitoring, because there's no STR-specific ordinance to monitor compliance against in the first place. Where Spokane pays a vendor to scan listing sites and match them against a permit database, Spokane Valley has no permit database to match against. Whatever enforcement happens here would run through the city's general Code Enforcement channel, the same one that handles any other zoning or nuisance complaint, and it's complaint-driven rather than proactive. I couldn't confirm an exact penalty figure for operating an unlicensed business in Spokane Valley from an official page I could actually read, so I won't quote one. What I can say with confidence is that the mechanism is a municipal code violation pursued through the city, not a dedicated short-term-rental infraction, because that category simply doesn't exist here.

So, is Spokane Valley Airbnb friendly? Yes, genuinely so, and more so than almost anywhere in the immediate region. There's no permit lottery, no per-building cap, no owner-occupancy test, and a business license fee measured in tens of dollars rather than hundreds. The friction that does exist sits entirely at the state level: the insurance requirement, the safety postings, and the tax collection, none of which Spokane Valley has any power to waive even if it wanted to.

Keep in mind that friendly zoning doesn't mean invisible. Neighbors can still file a nuisance complaint, your HOA can still enforce a covenant the city has no say over, and the state's warning-letter-then-infraction ladder under RCW 64.37 still applies to you like it does to every other Washington host. The absence of a city permit isn't the same as the absence of consequences.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Spokane Valley

Given how thin the city-level requirements are here, the sequence below is shorter than it would be in almost any other Washington city, though skipping a step still costs you time later.

1. Check your lease, HOA bylaws, and title for covenants. None of these show up in city or state code, and none of them get waived by anything below.
2. Confirm your zone allows residential use. Nearly every zone in Spokane Valley does, and there's no separate STR zoning application to file on top of that.
3. Register your general business license through the Washington Department of Revenue's Business Licensing Service, which issues your combined state and Spokane Valley license. Budget $25 to originate it.
4. Ask the Planning Division whether the Home Business Permit applies to your setup, particularly if you'll be living in the property yourself. Don't assume either way, since the city's own form doesn't obviously address short-term guests.
5. Line up $1 million in primary liability insurance, or confirm in writing that your booking platform's coverage meets that bar.
6. Install compliant carbon monoxide alarms and prepare the four required postings: address, emergency contacts, a fire-exit floor plan, and maximum occupancy.
7. Register with the Department of Revenue for tax, confirm what your platform automatically collects, and diarize your quarterly or annual excise filing.
8. List the property, and keep your license and insurance documentation somewhere you can produce it quickly if a question ever comes up.

If you're still deciding between Spokane Valley and another Washington market before committing to any of this, the Spokane market on BNBCalc Markets is the faster way to compare the revenue side at the neighborhood level.

Who to Contact in Spokane Valley about Short Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Step 4 above assumes you know who to ask, and Spokane Valley splits that across a small number of desks, all inside the same building.

Business licensing

• Contact: Robin Holt, Business Licensing Specialist
• Phone: 509-720-5333
• Email: [email protected]
• Online: City Business License Requirements

Planning Division and Permit Center (zoning, Home Business Permit)

• Address: 10210 E Sprague Avenue, Spokane Valley, WA 99206
• Phone: 509-720-5240
• Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Code Enforcement

• Phone: 509-720-5240
• Email: [email protected]
• Online: Code Enforcement, including the Citizen Action Request system for filing a complaint

State tax, insurance statute, and marketplace collection

The Washington State Department of Revenue handles registration, the Retailing B&O tax, and excise filings.

• Phone: 360-705-6705
• Online: Personal home rentals guidance

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Spokane Valley on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think About Local Regulations?

Given how little there is to comply with here, you'd expect Spokane Valley to barely come up in host conversations at all, and that's roughly what I found. Reddit blocks automated access, so nothing here quotes a specific thread there, and the one older BiggerPockets thread that used to get cited for Spokane-area short-term rentals now 404s. What follows is my own read of the available public record rather than a survey of either forum, so weigh it accordingly.

The dominant pattern in how investors talk about the Spokane area generally is a straightforward comparison: the City of Spokane's 2023 rewrite made permits, life-safety inspections, and neighbor notification part of the deal there, and that friction is exactly the kind of thing that pushes an investor to look one zip code over. Spokane Valley, sitting right next door with no equivalent ordinance, reads like the obvious answer to "where do I go instead." I haven't found anyone documenting that migration with hard numbers, so treat it as a reasonable inference rather than a confirmed trend.

The other theme, consistent with Mayor Higgins' 2017 comment, is that Spokane Valley simply hasn't generated the complaint volume that tends to produce new ordinances elsewhere. Cities regulate short-term rentals when neighbors start showing up at council meetings, and nothing in the public record here suggests that's happened yet. That could change. Watch out for any Planning Commission item that opens the door, because a city with this little existing framework could move quickly if it decided to act.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a permit to run an Airbnb in Spokane Valley?

No. Spokane Valley has no short-term-rental-specific permit, license, or per-building cap, unlike the City of Spokane next door. You do need the city's general business license under SVMC Title 5.05, which costs $25 to originate and $25 a year to renew, plus a Washington state business license once your gross income reaches $12,000 a year. Neither is an STR-specific approval; both apply to any business operating in the city.

Do you have to live in the property to run a short-term rental in Spokane Valley?

No. Spokane Valley's zoning code has no owner-occupancy requirement for short-term rentals, so an investor can own a property purely for nightly bookings without living there. If you do live in the home and want to treat the rental as a business run from your residence, ask the Planning Division whether SVMC 19.65.180's Home Business Permit applies to your situation, since the city's own form doesn't clearly address overnight guests either way.

What is the tax rate on a short-term rental in Spokane Valley?

For a property with fewer than 40 units, the combined lodging tax rate is 10.3%: Washington's 6.5% state sales tax, a 2.5% local Spokane Valley rate effective January 1, 2026, and a 1.3% convention/public facilities district charge. Spokane Valley has no separate city business and occupation tax, though hosts still owe Washington's own Retailing B&O tax of 0.471% on gross rental income. A 2% special hotel/motel tax and a $4-per-night Tourism Promotion Area charge apply only to properties with 40 or more units.

Does Airbnb collect and remit Spokane Valley's lodging taxes automatically?

Airbnb has collected and remitted Washington's state and local retail sales tax, special hotel/motel tax, and convention/trade center tax on behalf of its hosts since October 2015. That doesn't end your own filing duty. You still register with the Department of Revenue, report gross rental income under the Retailing classification, and claim the "Gross Sales Collected by Facilitator" deduction. Whether other platforms like Vrbo collect automatically the same way isn't confirmed on any Department of Revenue page, so check directly with your specific platform.

Is Spokane Valley stricter or more relaxed than the City of Spokane for Airbnb hosts?

Far more relaxed. The City of Spokane requires a per-unit short-term rental permit, caps how many units in a building can run as rentals, and proactively monitors listing sites for unpermitted properties. Spokane Valley has none of that: no permit, no cap, and no dedicated monitoring program. Hosts there still answer to Washington's statewide insurance and safety requirements under RCW 64.37, which apply regardless of which city the property sits in.

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