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

Do you own a place in White Plains and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that nobody's going to hand you a short-term rental permit application, a fee schedule and a 40-page compliance checklist, because White Plains has never written a short-term rental ordinance. There's no STR license here, no night cap, no owner-occupancy requirement drafted for hosts, and no page on the city's website that so much as says the word Airbnb, at least none I could find.

Unfortunately, an empty rulebook isn't the same thing as permission, and the city's zoning code closes that gap in a single line. The Zoning Ordinance's explanation of its own use schedules says that "any 'use' not specifically listed as being permitted shall be deemed to be prohibited." So in White Plains, the seat of Westchester County, the question was never which STR permit you need. It's whether what you're planning appears anywhere on the use list for your district, and for a whole house handed over to Friday-to-Sunday guests, it doesn't.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: what the zoning code lists and what it leaves out, the rental license that catches some owners and exempts others, three layers of tax administered by three different governments, the state law that in 2025 moved registration to the county, and who to call when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from the city's, the county's or the state's own pages, checked in July 2026, and where I couldn't confirm something I've said so instead of guessing. Before you spend a dollar on furniture, run the property through BNBCalc first.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in White Plains

That one sentence about unlisted uses does most of the work here, so the sensible place to start is with what the use lists actually say.

Going through the Zoning Ordinance district by district, the residential districts run from R1-30 down through RM-0.35, and their lists are short. One family dwellings, two family dwellings, multi-family dwellings in the RM districts, household pets, minor accessory buildings, swimming pools and tennis courts by special permit, plus places of worship and schools. Transient lodging appears nowhere in any of them. The two uses that describe paying overnight guests, "hotels" and "extended stay hotels," are defined by rooms "occupied by transient guests who are lodged, with or without meals," and they first show up in the C-O district and then across the business and central business districts, never in an R or RM district.

There's one accessory use in the residential lists that does describe paying guests in a home, though, and it's the whole story for anyone hoping to host legally here.

• In R1-30, R1-20, R1-12.5, R1-7.5 and R1-5, the ordinance permits "the keeping of not more than two 'roomers' per 'dwelling unit'" as an accessory use.
• In R2-4, R2-2.5 and every RM district, that drops to "not more than one 'roomer' per 'dwelling unit' in a 'one family dwelling' or 'two family dwelling'."
• In an apartment inside a multi-family building, there's no roomer allowance at all, since the RM entry limits it to one and two family dwellings.

That's the entire allowance. A "rooming unit" is defined as one or more rooms without cooking facilities, rented or available for rent, located inside a dwelling unit. Keep in mind that the numbers stack up fast. Three or more rooming units in a dwelling makes it a "rooming house," which needs its own special permit. Section 6.7.2 then caps that use at 15 roomers, with 500 square feet of lot area per roomer, a minimum 50 foot frontage, and no such use within 400 feet of another one. It also has to comply with the city's separate ordinance licensing buildings that contain rooming units, adopted November 1, 1976.

Two more details in the code point the same direction. The definition of a "customary home occupation" spells out what you can't run from a house, and "tourist homes" are named in that exclusion list alongside tea rooms and beauty parlors. And "family," the unit a dwelling unit is built around, is defined as people related to the householder living together as a single housekeeping unit, which is not a description of four strangers who booked a long weekend.

The text stops short of answering one question, though, and it's the one you care about. The ordinance sets no minimum stay for a roomer, and the city publishes no interpretation, no FAQ and no bulletin on short-term rentals, so whether the Building Department reads a two-night Airbnb guest as a "roomer" or as an unlisted transient use is a judgment call it hasn't published. Make sure you get that answer in writing from the Building Department before you list anything, because the difference between those two readings is the difference between an accessory use and a zoning violation.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in White Plains

Assuming you're able to get a favorable read on the zoning, the next question is what you have to file, and there's still no short-term rental license to apply for. What exists instead is the Rental Housing Registry and License Program, added to Title IV of the Municipal Code as Section 4-28 and effective July 3, 2018. It's a landlord licensing scheme rather than an STR scheme. Even so, it defines a rental housing unit broadly as "a dwelling unit that is being rented, or is intended to be rented," with no test at all for how long the tenancy runs.

Whether it reaches you depends almost entirely on what kind of building you own, because the exemptions in Section 4-28-3 carve out a lot of White Plains housing:

• Owner-occupied single family dwelling units
• Two family dwellings where one of the units is owner-occupied
• Condominium and co-operative buildings
• Multifamily rental buildings with more than 12 dwelling units
• Hotels, motels, rooming houses, group homes, nursing homes and assisted living facilities
• Multifamily buildings managed by a state, federal or quasi-governmental agency

Read that list against your own situation for a second. A condo owner in downtown White Plains is exempt. An investor renting out a house they don't live in is not, and neither is the owner of a three-family or an eight-unit building.

Where the license does apply, the numbers are modest. As of July 2026, Section 4-28-15 sets a non-refundable application fee of $125 plus $10 for each non-owner-occupied unit, with renewal at half the initial total, a $250 late fee up to seven business days past expiration and $25 per day beyond that. Licenses run January 1 to December 31 regardless of when you apply, existing rental housing files between October 1 and December 1 each year, and a new rental has to file at least 30 days before the unit is offered.

The Building Department inspects the property on the initial application, and on renewal you self-inspect using the department's form and submit the report. For three-family buildings and larger, the department checks with the Fire Department for a valid fire and property maintenance inspection record and won't renew until that's clean.

Enforcement of the license itself is blunt. Operating a rental housing unit without one is punishable by $200 per day for a first offense, $500 per day for a second and $1,000 per day for a third or subsequent, and each day counts as its own violation. A license can also be revoked outright after a finding of guilt in City Court for failing to comply with zoning, building, fire or property maintenance codes, which is the quiet link between a zoning problem and losing the ability to rent the unit at all.

One thing the city can no longer do, mind you, is build its own short-term rental registry to sit alongside this one. Real Property Law 447-b grandfathers registries that already existed when the statewide article took effect and then says plainly that "no city, town, or village shall create its own short-term rental unit registry after the effective date of this article." Registration, if it comes to White Plains at all, comes from Westchester County.

Required Documents for White Plains Short-Term Rentals

Since that $125 doesn't come back whether you're approved or not, it's worth assembling the file properly the first time. The rental license application is short, and the supporting material is where people lose a week.

• The completed Rental Housing License application form, downloadable from the city's rental housing page.
• A sketch of each floor, minimum 8.5 by 11 inches, showing dwelling units and common areas with approximate dimensions of each bedroom. It doesn't need to be to scale, but every space has to be labeled: living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, storage, mechanical.
• The application fee, non-refundable at filing.
• An inspection of the property by the Department of Building, covering public and private areas, which produces the Rental Housing License Inspection Report. Inspectors can enter between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. Monday through Friday with consent, or by appointment.
• At renewal, your own completed inspection report, updated floor sketches if anything changed, and the renewal fee.
• For three-family buildings and up, a current Fire Department inspection record.

Once the certificate arrives, don't forget to post it. Section 4-28-11 requires it displayed in the building vestibule or lobby where tenants can see it, permanently affixed to the wall under clear glass or plastic.

Two documents sit outside the city entirely. Westchester County wants an Application for Certificate of Authority to Collect Room Occupancy Tax filed within three days of opening the business under County Code Chapter 285, Section 285.06. And from your booking platform you'll want Form ST-155, the Booking Service Certificate of Collection, or the publicly available agreement that does the same job, because that's what relieves you of collecting state sales tax yourself.

White Plains Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you manage to clear the zoning question and get whatever license applies, there's still tax, and three separate governments want a piece of the same nightly rate. The good news is that a platform collects most of it before the money reaches you.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Combined state and local sales tax	8.375%	NYS Department of Taxation and Finance, collected by the booking service
Westchester County room occupancy tax	3%	Westchester County Department of Finance, collected by Airbnb on stays of 88 nights or fewer
City of White Plains room occupancy tax	3%	City of White Plains Commissioner of Finance, but only from a "hotel" with at least four rentable rooms

Sales Tax

Sales tax on short-term rentals is the newest layer and the one that catches anyone working from older guidance. New York extended sales tax to short-term rental unit occupancy effective March 1, 2025, wherever the rental rate runs more than $2.00 per unit per day, which in practice means every listing.

In White Plains the combined rate is 8.375%, confirmed in the state's own rate schedule, where Publication 718 lists White Plains (city) at 8⅜% under reporting code 3621. The city breaks that down as 4% state, 1.5% Westchester County, 2.5% City of White Plains and 0.375% for the MTA, and all of it is remitted to the state rather than to City Hall.

Booking services register as sales tax vendors and collect. You still have to register yourself unless a booking service handles all of your sales, or unless you rent for three days or fewer in a calendar year without using one at all. Watch out for the mixed case: take a direct booking by email while Airbnb handles the rest, and the platform's certificate doesn't cover that stay. Guests who settle in for 90 consecutive days become permanent residents and stop paying sales tax altogether.

Room Occupancy Tax

Occupancy tax is where White Plains and Westchester County diverge. That distinction is worth reading twice.

The county's tax came first. Westchester imposed its Room Occupancy Tax Law in 1988 at 3% of rent for every occupancy in the county, apart from permanent residents and exempt occupants, and it requires registration within three days of opening. Returns are filed online within 20 days of the end of February, May, August and November. In practice Airbnb handles this one for you, since its New York tax page lists the Westchester County Room Occupancy Tax at "3% of the listing price including any cleaning fees for reservations 88 nights and shorter."

The city's own 3% tax is a different animal, and most hosts fall outside it. Under the city's room occupancy tax division, a "hotel" means a building "regularly used and kept open as such for the lodging of guests," and the definition extends to "apartment hotels, motels, boarding houses, tourist homes, motel courts, clubs or similar facilities with at least four (4) rentable rooms for lodging." A two-bedroom condo doesn't qualify. Airbnb's New York tax page lists no White Plains city tax either, only the county one.

One number in that division did change recently. Local Law No. 2 of 2024, adopted by the Common Council on August 5, 2024, cut the "permanent resident" threshold from 90 consecutive days to 30 consecutive days and limited the term to natural persons. For an operator large enough to owe the city tax, that's a meaningful narrowing of what's taxable on longer stays. Where the tax does apply, returns are due April 20, July 20, October 20 and January 20, and the city's remittance form sets the late penalty at 5% of the amount due per month to a maximum of 25% per year, plus 1% interest per month.

Income Tax

Everything above is collected from the guest. What you keep is income, and the federal treatment turns on how much you use the place yourself.

IRS Topic No. 415 treats a dwelling as a residence when your personal use exceeds the greater of 14 days or 10% of the days you rent it at a fair rental price. Rent a residence for fewer than 15 days in the year and you don't report the income at all, and you don't deduct the expenses either. Above that, rental income and expenses go on Schedule E with Form 1040. Given how few nights the White Plains code plausibly supports for a hosted room, that 14-day line is closer than it sounds.

Possible Deductions and Write-Offs

The flip side of a residence is that you can't write the whole house off against a spare bedroom.

Where a property serves both purposes, the IRS requires you to "divide your total expenses between the rental use and the personal use based on the number of days used for each purpose," and rental deductions can't exceed the gross rental income limitation, though some disallowed expenses carry forward. The personal share of mortgage interest, property taxes and casualty losses moves to Schedule A if you itemize.

On a hosted room, most of the obvious costs are apportioned rather than deducted whole: utilities, insurance, internet, repairs to shared space. The costs that are cleanly attributable tend to be the small ones, including the $125 rental license fee, the county's occupancy tax filings and any inspection work the Building Department orders. Remember to keep the inspection paperwork with your tax records, since it doubles as evidence of the license you were required to hold.

New York-Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those taxes are the part of the state framework you'll feel every month. The rest of it decides whether you get to register at all, and it arrived in two pieces during 2024 and 2025.

Real Property Law Article 12-D is the statewide framework. Section 447-a defines a short-term rental unit as "an entire dwelling unit, or a room, group of rooms, other living or sleeping space, or any other space within a dwelling, made available for rent by guests for less than thirty consecutive days." It carves out cities of a million or more, jurisdictions that already ran their own STR registry, and places that have lawfully prohibited short-term rentals. Section 447-c then puts hosts on a county registry, makes a registration valid for two years, and lets each county set its own application and renewal fees. Listing without a valid registration is unlawful, and it carries a 12-month ineligibility period. Three violations across two consecutive calendar years can cost you the registration entirely.

Counties got an exit. Under 447-c they could adopt a local law opting not to establish a registration system by December 31, 2025, or nine months after the effective date, whichever was later, a date the New York Department of State put at June 26, 2026 in its guidance to local governments. That deadline has passed, so every county's position is now settled in law.

Settled in law isn't the same as published, unfortunately, and I could not confirm which way Westchester County went. Nothing on the county's finance pages, its press releases or its legislature's site states whether it built a registry or opted out, and the Board of Legislators moved domains in the meantime. The answer simply isn't published. Do call Westchester County's Room Occupancy Tax line at (914) 995-3462 and ask before you assume either way, since the answer determines whether a booking service can verify your listing at all under 447-b. Our Westchester County short-term rental guide tracks the county layer as it firms up.

One piece of New York law that emphatically does not apply here is the one everybody's heard of. New York City's ban on unhosted stays under 30 days runs through the Multiple Dwelling Law, and MDL Section 3 applies that chapter automatically only to "cities with a population of three hundred twenty-five thousand or more." White Plains is nowhere near that.

It falls under the Multiple Residence Law instead, which covers "all cities of less than three hundred twenty-five thousand population and to all towns and villages," and which the Building Department lists among the state laws it enforces. So whatever you've read about Local Law 18, OSE registration numbers and $5,000 penalties, none of it travels this far north. Different statute, different city. The New York statewide guide maps how differently this plays out from one municipality to the next.

Does White Plains Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Since the city has no short-term rental rules of its own, there's no STR enforcement program to be strict with, and yet that's exactly the wrong thing to find reassuring.

What White Plains has instead is ordinary code enforcement, and it's complaint-driven. The Building Department enforces the Zoning Ordinance, the White Plains Supplemental Building Code, the Municipal Code and the state property maintenance code, so the path from an annoyed neighbor to a file on someone's desk is short. Cases land in City Court, and Section 11.4.1 of the Zoning Ordinance sets the schedule: a fine of up to $500 on a first conviction, $250 to $500 or up to 15 days' imprisonment on a second within five years, and $500 to $1,000 or up to 15 days on any subsequent one. "Each day's continued violation shall constitute a separate and additional violation," which is the clause that turns a slow summer of weekend bookings into a number nobody wants to see.

Section 11.4.2 also lets the Commissioner of Building seek an order to restrain or abate the use outright, so a fine isn't the only outcome.

Stack the license penalties on top where they apply, at $200, $500 and $1,000 per day, and add the revocation trigger in Section 4-28-13, which fires on a finding of guilt in City Court for failing to comply with zoning, building, fire or property maintenance codes. An unlisted use that becomes a conviction can therefore end the legal long-term rental too, which is a far more expensive outcome than the fine that started it.

Be aware of the platform layer as well. Under 447-b a booking service has to verify a registration with the county registry before it collects a fee, which means the eventual enforcement chokepoint here may not be a city inspector at all. It'll be the checkout screen. That's exactly how it already works in New York City.

I found no published White Plains enforcement statistics for short-term rentals: no press release, no case counts, no dashboard. That's genuinely how quiet this is as a local issue, and I'd rather say so than invent a caseload for you.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in White Plains

Given how much of the above turns on your zoning district, the order of these steps matters more than usual. The early ones tell you whether the later ones are worth the effort.

1. Find your zoning district first. The Planning Department at 914-422-1300 handles zoning questions and maps. An R1 address, an RM apartment and a B-2 storefront with rooms above it are three different conversations.
2. Read your district's use list, then read it again for accessory uses. In an R1 district you're looking at up to two roomers per dwelling unit. In R2 or RM, one, and only in a one or two family dwelling.
3. Get the Building Department's reading in writing. Email [email protected] and ask directly whether nightly guests count as roomers at your address. An unlisted use is prohibited by default, so a verbal maybe is worth nothing.
4. Check your own paperwork before the city's. A condo declaration, a co-op proprietary lease or a homeowners' association rule can prohibit transient occupancy no matter what the zoning allows, and the city won't referee that.
5. Apply for the Rental Housing License if you're not exempt. $125 plus $10 per non-owner-occupied unit, floor sketches with bedroom dimensions, and an inspection. Existing rentals file October 1 to December 1; a new one files at least 30 days before offering the unit.
6. Register with Westchester County for room occupancy tax within three days of opening, then ask the same call whether the county runs an STR registry under 447-c.
7. Sort the sales tax before the first booking. Get Form ST-155 or the public agreement from your platform, and register as a vendor yourself if you'll take any direct bookings.
8. Post the license certificate in the lobby or vestibule, under glass, and diarize the renewal, because the late fee starts at $250.
9. Model the thing on the nights you can actually sell. A hosted room with a two-roomer ceiling is a different business from a whole-house listing, and the New York short-term rental market data is the sane place to sanity-check the revenue before you commit to any of it.

Who to Contact in White Plains about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, four offices cover almost all of it, and picking the right one first saves an irritating amount of time.

Zoning interpretation and use questions

The Planning Department reviews land use applications for zoning amendments, site plans, special permits and subdivisions, and it's the right first call on which district you're in and what it permits.

• Address: 70 Church Street, White Plains, NY 10601
• Phone: 914-422-1300
• Fax: 914-422-1301
• Commissioner: Christopher Gomez

The rental license, inspections and code enforcement

The Department of Building administers the Rental Housing Registry and License Program, enforces the Zoning Ordinance, and is who a neighbor's complaint reaches.

• Address: 70 Church St., White Plains, NY 10601
• Phone: 914-422-1269
• Fax: 914-422-1471
• Email: [email protected]
• Acting Commissioner: Kevin Hodapp, P.E.

The city doesn't publish office hours for either department online, so call before you drive over. City Hall's main line is 914-422-1200 and the mailing address is 255 Main Street, White Plains, NY 10601.

City room occupancy tax

The City of White Plains Department of Finance administers the 3% room occupancy tax, which applies only to lodging facilities with at least four rentable rooms.

• Address: 255 Main Street, Room 102, White Plains, NY 10601
• Phone: 914-422-1248
• Returns due: April 20, July 20, October 20 and January 20
• Payable to: Commissioner of Finance

County occupancy tax, and state sales tax

The Westchester County Department of Finance runs the county's 3% room occupancy tax and the Certificate of Authority that lets you collect it.

• Address: County of Westchester Department of Finance, Room Occupancy Tax, 148 Martine Ave., White Plains, NY 10601
• Phone: (914) 995-3462

Sales tax registration and the short-term rental rules that came with it belong to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, not to the city or county.

• Sales Tax Information Center: 518-485-2889, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in White Plains on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those phone numbers are worth more here than a forum thread, and I'd rather explain why than pretend otherwise.

Going looking for host discussion specific to White Plains, I couldn't find a thread on either site that turns on the city's own rules. Westchester comes up often enough as a market, yet the regulatory arguments that fill forums elsewhere, permit caps and lottery systems and enforcement sweeps, have nothing to attach to in a city that never passed an ordinance. So I'm not going to characterize conversations I wasn't able to read.

What I can tell you is where the confusion sits, because it shows up in almost every secondary write-up of this city. Guides tend to report that White Plains has no short-term rental restrictions and stop there, or they report that the city's 3% room occupancy tax applies to short-term rentals generally, which the city's own definition contradicts by requiring at least four rentable rooms. Both readings skip the zoning line that decides the question. If you take one thing from a comment section here, make it a healthy suspicion of anyone telling you a city with no STR ordinance is a city with no STR risk.

There's a practical pattern in Westchester worth knowing too, and it doesn't depend on anybody's opinion. Stays of 30 consecutive days or more sit outside the state's short-term rental definition in 447-a entirely, and 90 consecutive days ends the sales tax obligation as well. A furnished monthly rental near the county offices on Martine Avenue raises none of the zoning questions above, since it isn't a short-term rental in the first place. That's the route plenty of Westchester owners end up taking, and the Nassau County guide covers the other big commuter county on Long Island.

A city that never wrote a rule about your business model hasn't blessed it. It has left the decision to an older document that was drafted with different questions in mind, and those documents almost always answer conservatively. Find the sentence that governs you, get the reading in writing, and only then work out what the nights are worth.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in White Plains in 2026?

It depends on your zoning district and how you host. White Plains has no short-term rental ordinance and issues no STR permit, but its Zoning Ordinance states that any use not specifically listed is prohibited, and no residential district lists transient lodging. The one listed accessory use that fits paying guests is the keeping of roomers, capped at two per dwelling unit in the R1 districts and one in the R2 and RM districts, where it applies only to a one or two family dwelling. Whole-house nightly rentals in a residential district have no listed use to rely on.

Do you need a license to rent out a property in White Plains?

There's no short-term rental license, but a Rental Housing License may apply. It covers rental one family dwellings up to 12-unit apartment buildings, and exempts owner-occupied single family homes, owner-occupied two family homes, condominiums, co-operatives and buildings over 12 units. The fee is $125 plus $10 per non-owner-occupied unit, renewals cost half that, and the license runs January 1 to December 31. Operating without one costs $200 per day for a first offense, rising to $1,000 per day.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in White Plains?

Three layers. State and local sales tax of 8.375% applies to short-term rental occupancy as of March 1, 2025 and is collected by the booking service. Westchester County adds a 3% room occupancy tax, which Airbnb collects on reservations of 88 nights or fewer. The City of White Plains has its own 3% room occupancy tax, but its code defines a taxable hotel as a facility with at least four rentable rooms, so most single-unit hosts fall outside it.

Does New York City's short-term rental ban apply in White Plains?

No. New York City's restrictions run through the Multiple Dwelling Law, which applies automatically only to cities of 325,000 or more residents. White Plains falls well under that threshold and is covered by the Multiple Residence Law instead, and there's no Local Law 18 equivalent, no Office of Special Enforcement registration and no two-guest cap. The statewide framework in Real Property Law Article 12-D applies here, which puts registration with Westchester County rather than with the city.

What are the penalties for an illegal short-term rental in White Plains?

Zoning violations are prosecuted in City Court. A first conviction carries a fine of up to $500, a second within five years runs $250 to $500 or up to 15 days' imprisonment, and any subsequent one runs $500 to $1,000 or up to 15 days. Each day of continued violation counts separately. Where a rental license was required and missing, add $200 to $1,000 per day on top, and a City Court conviction can revoke that license outright.

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