Westchester County, New York Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Westchester County, New York and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that nobody at the county level is going to stop you, because Westchester County licenses no short-term rentals, caps none, and bans none. It taxes them. That's about the extent of it. The catch sits one level down, since land use in New York belongs to cities, towns and villages, and every municipality in Westchester writes its own zoning code.

That gap between "the county is fine with it" and "you're allowed to do it" is wider here than in most places. Mount Vernon wrote a full permit regime into its zoning code in 2024, so you can rent there legally as long as you live in the home and hold a permit. Irvington legalized short-term rentals back in 2019, but capped the entire village at fifty registrations at any one time. White Plains never listed the use anywhere in its zoning ordinance, and under that ordinance's own catch-all rule, a use nobody listed is a use that's prohibited. Three municipalities inside one county, three different answers, and the county's 3% room occupancy tax lands on all three.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly: how to work out which of those situations you're in, what a permit costs where one exists, the tax layers you'll be collecting, what New York's 2025 county registry law changed, how any of this gets enforced, and who to call when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from Westchester County's own pages, the state's, or the individual municipality's, checked in July 2026, and where I couldn't confirm something I've said so rather than filled the gap. Assuming you're weighing a Westchester property against somewhere the rules are simpler, run both through BNBCalc before you buy.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Westchester County, New York?

Since three neighboring municipalities can give you three different answers, it helps to separate the two layers that are doing the work here. Your municipality decides whether you may operate at all. The county decides what you owe once you do.

New York State says the first part about as plainly as a state agency ever manages. A New York Department of State training presentation for local governments, dated April 29, 2025, tells municipal officials it's "up to each municipality to define, prohibit and/or regulate short term rentals as they choose." So there's no state-level permission you can wave at a village building inspector, and no county-level one either. Westchester's own contribution to the rulebook is Chapter 285, the Room Occupancy Tax Law, which is a revenue statute rather than a land-use one.

The county isn't entirely absent from the zoning process, mind you, it just doesn't get the final word. Under General Municipal Law § 239-m, a city, town or village has to refer a zoning amendment to the county planning agency before adopting it where the affected property sits within 500 feet of a municipal boundary, a county road, a park or a stream, and the county agency then recommends approval, modification or disapproval. Override a disapproval and the local board needs "a vote of a majority plus one of all the members thereof."

You can watch that play out in the record. When Mount Vernon held its public hearing on short-term rentals on September 11, 2024, the City Clerk read three no-objection letters into the minutes, and the first came from Richard Hyman, chair of the Westchester County Planning Board. So the county looked, the county shrugged, and the City Council voted.

One more thing to clear up before anything else, because it sends people down the wrong path constantly. New York City's rule that an entire apartment can't be rented for fewer than 30 consecutive days comes from the Multiple Dwelling Law, and that chapter doesn't reach Westchester. Multiple Dwelling Law § 3 says the chapter "shall apply to all cities with a population of three hundred twenty-five thousand or more," and no Westchester municipality is remotely close to that, Yonkers included.

So if you've been reading about registration numbers, hosted-stays-only rules and two-guest caps, that's the Bronx County and wider New York City regime, and it stops at the city line. Whole-home rentals are legal in much of Westchester.

Whether they're legal at your address, though, is a question for your village and nobody else.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Westchester County

Given that the answer lives in your municipality's code rather than the county's, the first job is still working out which of three postures your city, town or village has taken. From the codes I was able to read directly, all three are represented inside Westchester, sometimes a few miles apart.

Written and permitted. Mount Vernon is the clearest example, because its 2024 short-term rental local law added Article XV to Chapter 267 of the city code and made short-term rentals a permitted principal use in seven residential districts, from R1-7 through RMF-15. A short-term rental there means an entire unit or rooms within one, let for under 30 consecutive days, and the city allows it "in all zoning districts within the City in which residential uses are permitted."

So far so encouraging, though the condition attached is a hard one. The property has to be your occupied primary residence for the whole term of the permit, and where a business entity or a trustee holds title, every owner or member has to live there. Buy a second unit to rent out nightly and there's no route for you in Mount Vernon.

Written, but capped. Irvington got there first, by Local Law #7 of 2019, which added Article XXXII to the village Zoning Code with the stated purpose of legalizing short-term rentals while preserving residential character. The terms are tighter than Mount Vernon's in some ways and looser in others. The dwelling must be your primary residence and must have existed in its present size for at least five years, no short-term rental is allowed on a lot that already has an accessory apartment, and the whole village is limited to 50 registrations at any one time, a ceiling the Zoning Board of Appeals has no power to vary. Rent for up to 180 days a year, and for at least 90 of those days you have to be physically in residence while rooms are let.

Unwritten. Most Westchester municipalities fall here, and the absence of a rule is where people get badly caught out, because silence cuts two ways. Some codes permit anything they haven't forbidden, whereas others do the exact opposite, and White Plains is the second kind. Section 5 of its Zoning Ordinance states that "Any 'use' not specifically listed as being permitted shall be deemed to be prohibited," and no residential district in the schedule lists transient lodging, so hotels and extended-stay hotels turn up only once you reach the office and business districts. Silence isn't permission. So make sure you read your own code's use schedule for a catch-all clause of that shape before you assume that no rule means no problem.

Two practical consequences follow from all of this. The first is that a municipality with no short-term rental ordinance can still shut you down through its zoning code, its rental licensing program or its property maintenance code, none of which mention Airbnb by name. The second is that your county tax obligation doesn't wait for your municipality to bless the operation, which is a genuinely uncomfortable position to be in if the two ever disagree.

Compared with the outer suburbs on the other side of the city, where Nassau County's villages run a similar patchwork, Westchester's variation is if anything sharper, because the county mixes small cities, dense river villages and large low-density towns.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Westchester County

Since the permission comes from your municipality, there's still no county short-term rental license to apply for and no county inspector who will ever visit you. There is a county registration, though, and it catches people out because it lives with the Department of Finance rather than with anything that sounds like housing.

Under Chapter 285, § 285.06, every operator has to register with the county within three days of the business opening, by filing the Application for Certificate of Authority to Collect Room Occupancy Tax along with the Information Verification form for online filing. The county then issues a Certificate of Authority, and only then are you authorized to collect the tax.

Where a municipal permit does exist, the mechanics are local and the terms differ a lot. Mount Vernon's runs through the Building Department, and you have to hold it before the unit is advertised, not before the first guest arrives. Permits last one year, renew on the same terms, and expire automatically on any change in ownership or tenancy of the dwelling. Nothing gets issued while there are unresolved code compliance issues, outstanding city fines or fees, or unpaid taxes on the property.

The fee is set by the City Fee Schedule rather than by the local law, and the published 2025 Buildings Department fee schedule carries no short-term rental line at all, so I can't tell you what it costs. Call the Building Department and ask before you budget for it.

Irvington, though, publishes its numbers. Registration costs $250 and renewal $150 as of July 2026, both written into Chapter 114 of the village fee schedule by the 2019 local law itself, both non-refundable, and renewal comes round every year. On top of that the Building Inspector physically inspects the unit and the dwelling it sits in, and registration is refused outright where code issues, village fines or unpaid taxes are outstanding. It also dies automatically when the property changes hands, so a buyer inherits the house and not the permission.

Keep in mind that Irvington's codified version lives on eCode360, which blocks automated access, so I read the village's own published text of the 2019 law and couldn't check for amendments made since. The Building Department is the place to confirm the current terms.

Then there's the state registry, which is the one genuinely unresolved piece in 2026. New York's 2025 framework requires counties to run a short-term rental registry unless they opted out by local law, and the deadline for that choice has passed. I could not confirm what Westchester decided. The county's own sites wouldn't load directly for me at all during this research, the Board of Legislators has moved domains, and no press release, agenda item or archived county page stating the outcome turned up.

Rather than guess, ask the Department of Finance directly on (914) 995-3462, because the answer changes whether you'll eventually be registering a unit with the county as well as paying tax to it.

Required Documents for Westchester County Short-Term Rentals

Given that you may be assembling two separate applications, county and municipal, it still saves a fair amount of irritation to gather everything once. The county side is short, since all it asks for is the Application for Certificate of Authority to Collect Room Occupancy Tax and the Information Verification for Online Filing and Payments, both filed with the Department of Finance, either by mail to 148 Martine Ave. or scanned to the room occupancy tax mailbox.

Mount Vernon's permit application is where the paperwork gets real, though, because the local law sets a minimum list and the Building Department can ask for more on top of it.

• Proof that you received the New York State STAR credit or exemption on the property, which is how the city tests your primary-residence claim, plus a utility bill in your own name.
• The property particulars: address, total dwelling units in the building, bedrooms and bathrooms in your unit, how many rooms you're offering, where each sits in the building, and how many people each will sleep.
• A signed and notarized certification covering six separate attestations, including that you live there, that the property is fit and safe, that no cellar or attic is being used as habitable space unless it meets code, and that building permits and certificates of occupancy are in place.
• Your landlord's signature and proof of their ownership, if you rent rather than own.
• A named responsible person with the right to enter the dwelling, available 24 hours a day and able to respond in person within two hours, required whenever the entire unit is being let.
• Your guest log, at renewal time: the number of guests and the start and end dates of every stay across the permit term.

Irvington asks for a registration form with an affidavit demonstrating compliance with the registration requirements, and it too requires the guest and date record at renewal. Do check what your own municipality wants before assuming either list transfers, since neither of these is a county standard.

One more set of documents may land on you later. If Westchester ends up running a county registry, Real Property Law § 447-b attaches a fixed list of duties to every registered unit: a conspicuously posted evacuation diagram showing all means of egress, a posted list of emergency numbers for police, fire and poison control, a working fire extinguisher, and insurance of at least $300,000 covering third-party property damage or bodily injury from the rental.

Hosts also keep stay records for two years. Subdivision 5 suspends most of that until the county has actually established a registry, which is why the answer to the registry question matters so much.

Westchester County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming your municipality lets you operate and you're able to get the paperwork through, there's still tax, and it stacks in a way that surprises people who expected a single rate. Three charges can attach to a Westchester stay, and different governments administer each one.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
New York State and local sales tax	8.375% across Westchester, 8.875% in Yonkers	New York State Department of Taxation and Finance
Westchester County Room Occupancy Tax	3%	Westchester County Department of Finance
Municipal room occupancy tax, where one exists	3% in White Plains	That city's own finance department

The sales tax layer is the newest. Effective March 1, 2025, New York extended sales tax to short-term rental unit occupancy wherever the rate is more than $2.00 per unit per day, and booking services now register as sales tax vendors and collect on the occupancies they facilitate. Where a platform handles all of your bookings, you're relieved of collecting it yourself, provided you hold the booking service certificate of collection or a publicly available agreement saying the platform will collect.

Guests who stay long enough drop out of it, since outside New York City someone who stays 90 consecutive days becomes a permanent resident and the tax stops. Publication 718 is where the combined rate comes from. It puts Westchester at 8⅜% and breaks Yonkers out at 8⅞%, effective March 1, 2025.

The county's 3% has been in place since 1988 and it's the piece most hosts actually deal with. Returns are quarterly, and the quarters are unusual, so watch out for the dates: the county's own questions and answers page sets them as December through February due March 20, March through May due June 20, June through August due September 20, and September through November due December 20. File even in a quarter with no bookings, because a registered operator owes a return whether or not any room was let.

Miss a payment and interest runs at 1% a month up to 12% a year, with a penalty of 5% a month up to 25% a year on top. For what it's worth, the county allocates 85% of the revenue to meeting the needs of the homeless and 15% to tourism.

Now, the useful part: your platform probably handles two of those three layers already. Airbnb's New York tax page says it collects the Westchester County Room Occupancy Tax at 3% of the listing price including cleaning fees, on reservations of 88 nights and shorter, plus New York State sales tax on stays of 89 nights or fewer outside the city. What it won't touch is a Westchester city tax, because not one Westchester city appears on that page.

So a host in White Plains, where the city charges its own 3% on hotel and motel room rent and wants quarterly returns on April 20, July 20, October 20 and January 20, is handing that one over personally. White Plains is the Westchester city tax I could verify directly, so don't forget to check whether your own city imposes one on top of the county's, because the platform won't do it for you and the shortfall accrues quietly.

New York State-Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That registry question hanging over the county tax comes straight out of New York's 2025 statewide framework, and it's worth understanding properly, since it's the layer most likely to change what you do next.

The framework sits in Real Property Law Article 12-D. Section 447-c requires that "All counties that are covered jurisdictions shall be required to establish a registration system for short-term rental units." A county could escape that only by adopting a local law "on or before the later of December thirty-first, two thousand twenty-five or nine months after the effective date of this section."

The New York State Association of Counties works that out to roughly June 25, 2026 in its implementation memo dated July 2025, while the state's own presentation gives June 26, 2026. Either way, the window is closed. Every county's position is now settled in law even where it isn't published.

Then two subdivisions decide how the county layer and the village layer coexist, though they point in slightly different directions. Section 447-c(1)(c) protects the village. A county registry "shall not prevent any city, town, or village therein from enacting local laws or regulations" about short-term rentals, and 447-c(1)(d) goes further still, letting any county, city, town or village "enact a local law prohibiting or further limiting the listing or use" of short-term rentals regardless of anyone's registry status.

Meanwhile Section 447-b does close one door, because a jurisdiction that already ran a registry keeps running it, while after the effective date only municipalities outside a covered county may create new ones. Read those together and Mount Vernon's and Irvington's existing programs survive a county registry untouched, every Westchester municipality keeps the power to ban short-term rentals outright, yet a village that hasn't built a registry yet may find that particular route closed if the county built one first.

The registry also switches on the enforcement mechanism that gives this law teeth. Section 447-b(4) bars a booking service from collecting a fee unless it has verified that the unit holds a current, valid registration, which is the same payment-layer approach New York City used to such effect. Subdivision 5 keeps that switched off until the county establishes a registry. So platform-level blocking isn't live in Westchester today, and it becomes live automatically if and when the county stands a registry up.

Outside the city, New York State is otherwise a patchwork rather than a system, and the New York statewide guide maps how differently it lands from one region to the next. Upstate, Erie County shows what the same state law looks like in a market with cheaper housing and a different tourism profile.

Does Westchester County Strictly Enforce Short-Term Rental Rules?

Not as a county, no, because the county has almost nothing to enforce. Its Room Occupancy Tax is enforced arithmetically through interest and penalties, and beyond that the pressure comes from your building department, your fire inspector and your neighbors. Which means the honest answer to "is Westchester strict" is that it depends on your municipality again, and in the places that did write rules, the rules are enforced with a lot more machinery than a casual host expects.

Mount Vernon's approach is a useful illustration, because the city treats your own advertising as evidence. Under § 267-99, a listing on Airbnb, HomeAway, Vrbo or a similar site, or any advertisement for under 30 days, "shall create a rebuttable presumption that a property is being utilized as a short-term rental." Your permit number has to appear in the listing too, the Building and Fire Departments inspect at initial application and before every renewal, and periodic inspections carry on after that.

Revocation follows if you stop occupying the premises as your primary residence, if the use creates a nuisance, or if a false statement got the permit issued in the first place. In multifamily buildings there's a harder line still, since three substantiated written complaints in a twelve-month period, each backed by a police report, photograph or video, are grounds on their own. From there you appeal to the Zoning Board of Appeals within 30 days, and then to an Article 78 proceeding if that goes against you.

Irvington attaches straight money penalties instead. A first violation of the short-term rental article is $500 and a second is $1,000, and the same rebuttable presumption applies from an Airbnb or Vrbo listing. Two convictions can also cost you the registration entirely, through a public hearing before the Board of Trustees with 15 days' notice and publication in the village newspaper, and the Trustees' decision is final.

Then there's the quieter risk in the municipalities that never wrote a short-term rental law, which is that the generic zoning penalty applies to an unlisted use. In White Plains, Section 11.4.1 of the Zoning Ordinance sets a fine of up to $500 on a first conviction, $250 to $500 or up to 15 days on a second within five years, and $500 to $1,000 or up to 15 days on any subsequent one.

But it also carries the sentence that does the damage: "Each day's continued violation shall constitute a separate and additional violation." That isn't a one-time fine on a listing.

It accrues, night after night, and it's the mechanism that turns a quiet non-compliant operation into an expensive one.

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

Since the sequence decides whether the later steps are worth taking at all, work through these in order rather than starting with the listing.

1. Identify your exact municipality, not your mailing address. Westchester mailing addresses routinely name a village while the property sits in the surrounding town, and the two have different codes. Your tax bill or assessment record settles it.
2. Read that municipality's zoning use schedule. Look for a short-term rental article first, then for the catch-all clause that decides what silence means. Be aware that a code like White Plains's, which prohibits any use it hasn't listed, gives you a no without ever mentioning Airbnb.
3. Check the ownership and occupancy conditions before you spend anything. Both Westchester programs I could read require the property to be your primary residence, which rules out the whole-unit investment case. Confirm this before making an offer, not after.
4. Apply for the municipal permit before advertising. Mount Vernon's local law ties the permit to the advertisement, not the booking, so a listing posted early is itself the violation.
5. Clear outstanding fines, taxes and code issues. Both programs refuse a permit outright while anything is outstanding, and a small unpaid fee is a slow way to lose a season.
6. Register with Westchester County within three days of opening, using the Application for Certificate of Authority, and wait for the certificate before collecting the 3%.
7. Check whether your city imposes its own room tax, and if it does, diarize its quarterly returns separately from the county's, since the due dates don't line up.
8. Confirm what your platform collects and what it doesn't, in writing, and keep the certificate of collection or the public agreement on file for the state.
9. Set up the postings and the log on day one: the guest and date record both programs demand at renewal, plus whatever notice, permit and safety documents your local law requires inside the unit.
10. Ask the county about the registry. If Westchester is running one, registration, the $300,000 insurance floor and the two-year record rule come with it, and platform verification follows.

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

Whichever step trips you up, the office that owns your question depends on whether it's about money or about permission, and calling the wrong one costs an afternoon.

The county, for tax only

The Westchester County Department of Finance, Room Occupancy Tax Division handles registration, the Certificate of Authority and the quarterly returns. It has no role in zoning or permits.

• Address: County of Westchester, Department of Finance, Room Occupancy Tax, 148 Martine Ave., White Plains, NY 10601
• Phone: (914) 995-3462, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday
• County switchboard: (914) 995-2000, 148 Martine Avenue, White Plains
• Filing: quarterly returns go through the county's online room occupancy tax system, not by mail

Your municipality, for permission

Your municipality is the call that decides the question, and the department you want is almost always the building department.

• Mount Vernon Building Department: 914-665-2483, [email protected], City Hall, Mount Vernon, NY 10550
• Irvington Building Department: 914-591-8335, for the current terms of the village's short-term rental registration
• White Plains Building Department: 914-422-1269, 70 Church St., White Plains, NY 10601, [email protected]
• White Plains Department of Finance, for the city room occupancy tax: 914-422-1200, 255 Main St Rm 102

The state, for sales tax

Sales tax registration, vendor status and the platform collection certificates belong to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.

• Sales Tax Information Center: 518-485-2889, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Register as a vendor: through New York Business Express

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

Talking to the right department is one thing, though what other hosts have lived through is usually what people want next, and here I have to be straight with you about what I could and couldn't read. Reddit blocks automated access and its terms don't permit the commercial use this would need, so I didn't use it. BiggerPockets I did check, and I found no thread discussing Westchester short-term rental regulation specifically. What follows is my read of the public record rather than a survey of host sentiment, so do weigh it accordingly.

• The fights happen at village hall, and they're often won by the opposition. When Irvington passed its law in 2019, the local paper reported that the village attorney had checked with neighboring municipalities to see who else was tackling the issue and found "pretty much not." The same report notes that Peekskill had tried to codify short-term rentals and ran into heavy public opposition, largely from people already renting on Airbnb who didn't want the rules written down at all. That's the recurring Westchester pattern: existing hosts resist codification, and the result is silence rather than permission.
• Where a law does pass, the room is smaller than you'd think. Mount Vernon's public hearing drew exactly one speaker in favor and one against, according to the Council minutes. A handful of people in a council chamber decided the rules for the whole city, which is worth knowing if you'd rather influence a rule than comply with one.
• The caps bite before the demand does. Irvington's 50-registration ceiling was raised from 30 during drafting after criticism that only a fraction of homeowners could ever benefit. Whether the village has ever hit it, I couldn't confirm, but a hard cap means your ability to operate can depend on when you applied rather than on anything about your house.
• Nobody is arguing that the county will save them. Every serious discussion of a Westchester short-term rental sooner or later lands on the municipal code, and that's the correct instinct.

If you want to see how the numbers behave once the rules are clear, the wider New York market is the place to look for what nightly rates and occupancy do across the state, and to compare a Westchester room-share against a whole-home market where the rules allow one.

So the county line turns out to be the wrong boundary to plan around. Anywhere the rules get written one level below the name people search for, the only address that matters is the one on your deed, and an hour spent reading that municipality's use schedule is worth more than a week of research into the region it sits in.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a permit to run an Airbnb in Westchester County, New York?

There's no county permit. Westchester County issues no short-term rental license and regulates no land use, so the permit question is answered by your city, town or village. Mount Vernon requires a Building Department permit before you advertise, and Irvington requires a village registration costing $250 with a $150 annual renewal. Many Westchester municipalities have no short-term rental permit at all, though that isn't the same as permission.

How much tax do you pay on a short-term rental in Westchester County?

Three layers can apply. New York State and local sales tax runs 8.375% across Westchester and 8.875% in Yonkers, the Westchester County Room Occupancy Tax adds 3%, and some cities impose their own room tax, such as White Plains at 3%. Airbnb collects the state sales tax and the county's 3% automatically, but no Westchester city tax, so anything municipal is yours to remit.

Is Airbnb legal in White Plains, New York?

Not clearly, and probably not. White Plains has no short-term rental ordinance, but its Zoning Ordinance provides that any use not specifically listed as permitted is deemed prohibited, and no residential district in the schedule lists transient lodging. Hotels appear only in office and business districts. Zoning penalties run up to $500 on a first conviction and $500 to $1,000 on later ones, with each day treated as a separate violation.

Can you rent out a whole house on Airbnb in Westchester County?

Sometimes, though less often than you'd hope. New York City's 30-day rule doesn't reach Westchester, since the Multiple Dwelling Law applies only to cities of 325,000 or more, so nothing county-wide bans whole-home rentals. But both Westchester programs I verified require the property to be your primary residence, Mount Vernon caps whole-unit rentals at 180 days a year, and Irvington caps any short-term rental at 180 days with the owner in residence for at least 90 of them. A pure investment property with an absentee owner has no route in either city.

Does Westchester County have a short-term rental registry?

I could not confirm it. New York's 2025 law required every county to run a registry unless it opted out by local law before roughly June 25, 2026, and that deadline has passed, so Westchester's position is settled even though it isn't published anywhere I could reach. Call the county Department of Finance on (914) 995-3462 and ask. Where a registry exists, registration, $300,000 of liability insurance and two years of stay records come with it.

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