Chestnuthill Township, Pennsylvania Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a home in Chestnuthill Township, Pennsylvania, out in Monroe County's stretch of the Poconos, and are you weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the honest answer depends entirely on where your property sits, and for most of the township, it's no. Chestnuthill's Board of Supervisors passed a short-term rental ordinance back in 2019 that confined the use to the township's General Commercial district and shut it out of every residential zone. That residential category covers the bulk of the housing stock, including planned communities like Indian Mountain Lake and Sun Valley.

This restriction isn't the same as an outright ban on renting property here. You can still lease long-term, or run a licensed bed-and-breakfast, or apply for a conditional-use permit if your parcel happens to sit in General Commercial. It does mean the classic Poconos Airbnb play, buy a cabin in a residential subdivision and list it by the weekend, doesn't work the way it might've worked a decade ago, and hasn't worked since Chestnuthill regulated short-term rentals in August 2019.

So this guide walks through what's actually still possible here in 2026: who can qualify for a license, what the application demands, the taxes that stack on top once you're operating, how seriously the township enforces this, and who to call when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from Chestnuthill Township's own code and public pages, Monroe County's tax office, and Pennsylvania's state agencies, checked as of July 2026, and where the township's own ordinance text wasn't something I could pull up directly, I've said so rather than guessing. If you're deciding between a Pocono property here and one in a friendlier township, run the numbers through BNBCalc first.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Chestnuthill Township

Since most of the township is off the table, the first real question isn't how to apply, it's whether your address even qualifies. Chestnuthill's ordinance, Chapter 100 of the township code, applies to short-term rentals wherever they'd otherwise sit, but the zoning ordinance only lists the use as permitted, as a conditional use, in the General Commercial district. Everywhere else, including the residential zones that hold most of the township's Pocono vacation-home stock, short-term rental use simply isn't allowed anymore.

That's a change from the older, looser era plenty of current owners bought into. Reporting from 2019 on the ordinance's passage says township officials were aiming initially at eight to twelve known "party houses," but the rule itself swept in every residential short-term rental, not just the troublesome ones. Owners in residential zones weren't left with nothing, mind you: the same reporting notes they can still rent long-term, or apply to run a licensed bed-and-breakfast, which is a different use category with its own standards.

If your property is genuinely zoned General Commercial, you're looking at a conditional-use process rather than a rubber stamp. A 2024 application for a house on Merwinsburg Road in Effort went before the Board of Supervisors for a conditional-use hearing, and the article describes it as what would be the township's first approved short-term rental in that district, meaning the commercial path was still essentially untested at that point. Don't assume a commercial parcel gets you an automatic yes. Budget time for a hearing, and expect the Planning Commission to weigh in first.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Chestnuthill Township

Assuming your property clears that zoning hurdle, there's still a license to get through, and it runs through the Zoning Officer rather than a separate rental board. Chestnuthill requires an annual Short-Term Rental License before you can operate at all, and running one unlicensed is treated as its own violation of Chapter 100, so this isn't a step you can skip and fix later.

The license is good for one year, or until any of the conditions your application described change, whichever comes first. That means adding a bedroom, changing your local contact, or altering your parking layout can trigger a renewal even mid-term. Keep in mind, too, that a renewal typically means a fresh inspection, so treat the license as something you actively maintain rather than a one-time hurdle.

Here's the part I have to be straightforward about: I could not find a published dollar figure for the license fee on an official Chestnuthill Township page, and the ordinance's own fee section, mirroring the structure Monroe County recommended to its townships in 2019, sets the fee by a separate resolution of the Board of Supervisors rather than writing a number into the code itself. That means the fee can move without the ordinance changing, so make sure you call the Zoning Office at 570-992-7247, ext. 29 and get the current amount in writing before you submit anything, since these fees generally aren't refunded if your application is denied.

Once you're licensed, there's still a set of standards attached to that license, and that's where most of the real restriction lives. Overnight occupancy is capped at two guests per bedroom, and the number of bedrooms you can advertise can't exceed what's approved on your property's sewage permit, so a home with a finished basement bedroom that was never permitted for sewage capacity doesn't get to count it. Day guests on top of your overnight party are limited to 50% of that maximum overnight occupancy, which is a tighter cap than the county's own model ordinance suggested when it was drafting guidance for townships in 2019. On top of the occupancy math, expect to carry at least $500,000 in general liability insurance for as long as you hold the license, and to comply with the Pennsylvania Uniform Construction Code for safety items like smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

Penalties for breaking those standards are not gentle once they're triggered. Reported violations of Chapter 100 carry a fine of not less than $100 nor more than $1,000 per violation, and each day a violation continues counts as a separate one, on top of court costs and the township's attorney's fees. The Zoning Officer can also revoke a license, or deny its renewal, after three uncured or repeated violations inside a rolling twelve months, and that revocation runs six months the first time and a full year for any repeat. I'm relying here on Monroe County's own model ordinance language, which Chestnuthill's Chapter 100 was adopted from the same month back in 2019, since the live ordinance page wouldn't render for me directly. Treat the structure as solid and double-check the exact figures with the Zoning Office before you rely on them for a business plan.

Required Documents for Chestnuthill Township Short-Term Rentals

Given how much rides on getting that license right the first time, it's worth knowing exactly what the Zoning Officer wants to see before you file. The application isn't a one-page form. It's closer to a small due-diligence package, and a missing piece is what turns a quick approval into a months-long back-and-forth.

• A floor plan and a site plan, with the site plan showing your available on-site parking. Guests can't be told to park on the street or the lawn, so the plan has to show real, usable spaces.
• Proof of at least $500,000 in general liability insurance, current for the full license term.
• A sewage or septic evaluation from a certified pumper, covering the system's location, age, and capacity, since your permitted bedroom count is tied directly to what that system can handle.
• Documentation supporting your zoning eligibility, since the license can't be issued at all if the parcel isn't in the General Commercial district or hasn't gone through the conditional-use process.
• A signed trespass waiver, allowing the township's enforcement officer to inspect the property to verify compliance.
• Contact information for a local person in charge, reachable on a 24-hour basis, if you don't live close enough to respond to an issue yourself.

Keep in mind that a registration for the Pennsylvania Sales, Use and Hotel Occupancy Tax license, along with proof you're square with Monroe County's own hotel tax, tends to come up during this process too, since renewal generally requires showing your taxes are current. Don't let that catch you off guard at renewal time. Sort your tax registrations out before you ever list a single night.

Chestnuthill Township Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you're one of the properties that's actually eligible to operate, there's still tax to work out on top of the license itself, and it comes from two different governments that don't file with each other. Pennsylvania's Department of Revenue and Monroe County's Treasurer each want their own cut and their own paperwork, so it's worth taking them one at a time rather than assuming one filing covers both.

Tax	Rate	Collected by	Platform collects automatically?
PA Hotel Occupancy Tax	6%	PA Department of Revenue	Yes, under Act 109, when booked through Airbnb, Vrbo, or another licensed booking agent
Monroe County Hotel/Room Rental Excise Tax	3%	Monroe County Treasurer	Reportedly yes on platform bookings, but confirm directly since the county's own page doesn't spell this out

The state layer is the more straightforward one: under 61 Pa. Code Chapter 38, Pennsylvania charges an excise tax of 6% of the rent on every occupancy of a room offered to the public for a stay under 30 days, and the state's own guidance on home-sharing and third-party broker rentals applies that squarely to Airbnb and Vrbo listings. Since Act 109 of 2018 made booking agents responsible for collecting and remitting the tax on both the base rent and their own accommodation fee, a host who only ever books through a major platform generally doesn't need a separate state tax license at all. Book any nights directly, though, whether by referral, your own site, or word of mouth, and you'll need to register for the Sales, Use and Hotel Occupancy Tax License through myPATH and remit that slice yourself.

Monroe County adds its own 3% Hotel Room Rental Excise Tax on every rental of a room with a bed, funding the Pocono Mountain Vacation Bureau's tourism promotion work rather than the county's general fund. Filing runs quarterly, due the 25th of the month after each calendar quarter, and it's owed whether or not a platform is already collecting on your behalf, because you still need a current Hotel Room Excise Tax Certificate on file to satisfy your township license renewal. From what several Poconos property-management resources describe, Airbnb does remit this county tax automatically on bookings it processes, but the county's own page doesn't state that outright, so don't skip registering just because you assume the platform has it covered. File the quarterly return either way, even if it shows zero owed.

Your rental income itself is ordinary taxable income at both the state and federal level, on top of these excise taxes, so make sure you're setting aside for that separately rather than treating the hotel-tax filings as the whole tax picture. Since none of this state-level framework is unique to Chestnuthill, our Pennsylvania short-term rental guide is the place to check whether a property you're considering elsewhere in the state faces the same tax stack.

Does Chestnuthill Township Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Given a license this involved to get right, plus a fee structure that punishes daily noncompliance, you'd expect enforcement here to have real teeth, and the evidence backs that up. Chestnuthill isn't a township that wrote a strict ordinance in 2019 and then let it gather dust.

The clearest sign is how little has moved since that 2019 ordinance passed. Pocono Vacation Home Sales' own municipal scorecard, refreshed as recently as mid-2026, still rates Chestnuthill a red light and describes the exact same General-Commercial-only restriction the township adopted seven years earlier. Plenty of Pocono municipalities have loosened or tightened their rules over that stretch. Chestnuthill's core restriction has held steady the whole time, which suggests the township isn't under real pressure to relax it.

The 2024 conditional-use hearing for the Merwinsburg Road property is the other data point worth sitting with. That a single General Commercial application for a short-term rental was still newsworthy enough for the local paper to cover, and was described as potentially the township's first approved use of its kind, tells you the commercial pathway isn't being used as a quiet workaround by residential owners. It's a real, separate process that goes in front of the Board of Supervisors, with the Planning Commission weighing in first. Nobody's slipping a residential vacation rental through as a technicality here.

And because a license attaches specific, checkable conditions such as occupancy caps, bedroom counts tied to sewage permits, and insurance on file, catching a violation doesn't depend on a neighbor happening to complain at the right moment. A licensed operator who lets bedroom counts or guest numbers drift past what's on file gets exposed at the next inspection or renewal. The per-day penalty structure only sharpens that risk, since a problem left unaddressed over a busy holiday weekend can rack up several separate violations before anyone even gets a hearing date.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Chestnuthill Township

Given everything above, the order you tackle this in matters more than it might seem, because the earliest steps are the ones that tell you whether the rest is worth attempting at all.

1. Confirm your zoning before you spend a dollar. Call the Zoning Office at 570-992-7247, ext. 29 and ask directly whether your parcel is General Commercial. If it's residential, a short-term rental license isn't available to you under the current ordinance, full stop.
2. If you're in General Commercial, plan for a conditional-use hearing, not a same-week approval. Expect Planning Commission review first, then a Board of Supervisors hearing.
3. Get your sewage system evaluated by a certified pumper and confirm how many bedrooms your permit actually supports, since that number caps everything else you can advertise.
4. Line up at least $500,000 in general liability insurance and keep proof of it current for the full license term.
5. Draw up your floor plan and parking site plan, and prepare the trespass waiver and local-contact information the application requires.
6. Register for Pennsylvania's Sales, Use and Hotel Occupancy Tax License through myPATH, unless you'll book exclusively through a platform that already collects the state tax for you, and separately register with the Monroe County Treasurer for a Hotel Excise Tax Certificate.
7. Submit your Short-Term Rental License application to the Zoning Officer, confirm the current fee in writing beforehand, and be ready for an inspection.
8. Set a renewal reminder for one year out, and flag it again immediately if anything about the property, bedroom count, contact person, parking, changes in the meantime.

Who to Contact in Chestnuthill Township about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning

Whichever step trips you up, two offices handle nearly everything, and a third only matters once you're actually collecting rent.

Zoning, licensing and the application itself

Chestnuthill Township Zoning/Planning Office

• Address: PO Box 243, 271 Route 715, Brodheadsville, PA 18322
• Phone: 570-992-7247, ext. 29
• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
• Staff: Matthew Neeb, Planning/Zoning Director; Karen Hayes, Planning/Zoning Assistant
• Online: the township's permits page and zoning page

County hotel tax registration and quarterly filing

Monroe County Treasurer's Office

• Address: Monroe County Administrative Building, One Quaker Plaza, Stroudsburg, PA 18360
• Phone: 570-517-3180
• Online: the county's Hotel Tax page, which carries the registration and quarterly report forms

State sales and hotel occupancy tax

Pennsylvania Department of Revenue

• General inquiries: 717-787-1064
• Register or file: through myPATH
• Guidance: the home-sharing and booking-agent pages cover exactly when a host needs a separate license

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Chestnuthill Township on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Since Reddit's own developer terms bar exactly the kind of large-scale scraping this project would need, I haven't built a way to pull actual Reddit threads here, so I won't pretend to summarize what's said there. What I can point to is BiggerPockets, which is open and readable, and one thread in particular gets at exactly the question a Poconos investor asks first.

In a BiggerPockets thread titled "Which towns in the Poconos, PA allow short term rentals?", a local real estate agent's answer names Chestnuthill directly among the townships that "do not allow STR under 30 days continuous," alongside a handful of others with similar restrictions. The same reply points investors instead toward Middle Smithfield, Jackson, Paradise, Barrett, Coolbaugh and Tunkhannock townships, plus two specific communities inside Stroud Township, Penn Estates and Blue Mountain Lake Estates, as places where an ordinance actually welcomes the use with a permit. That distinction, an entire township barred versus a couple of named developments carved out inside a friendlier one, is exactly the kind of detail a generic "Poconos short-term rental" search misses.

The same thread's broader sentiment is worth carrying with you if you already own here, or are eyeing a purchase. The agent describes owners in the more permissive Pocono-plateau townships as "doing great" with their rentals, with bigger houses and specialty features like a home theater or a game room pulling stronger numbers, which tells you the demand for Pocono weekend stays hasn't gone anywhere. It's the zoning map, not the market, that's doing the filtering in Chestnuthill's case. So if the numbers only work with a residential Chestnuthill property, the Poconos still has room for the same strategy a few townships over, and it's also worth comparing what a similar house would earn further east, where our Lehigh County guide and Montgomery County guide cover two very differently regulated Pennsylvania markets. Before you commit either way, run current occupancy and rate benchmarks for the state through BNBCalc's Pennsylvania market data, since a friendlier zoning map still needs the demand to back it up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Chestnuthill Township in 2026?

Only if your property is zoned General Commercial and you obtain a conditional-use approval plus an annual Short-Term Rental License from the Zoning Officer. Every residential zone in the township, which covers most of its housing stock, has been barred from short-term rental use since a 2019 ordinance. Owners in residential zones can still rent long-term or apply to operate a licensed bed-and-breakfast instead.

How much does a Chestnuthill Township short-term rental license cost?

The township hasn't published a fixed dollar figure. Its ordinance sets the fee by a separate resolution of the Board of Supervisors rather than writing an amount into the code, so the number can change without the ordinance itself changing. Call the Zoning Office at 570-992-7247, ext. 29 to confirm the current fee before you apply, since it generally isn't refunded if an application is denied.

What happens if you operate a short-term rental without a license in Chestnuthill Township?

Reported penalties for violating the township's short-term rental ordinance run from $100 to $1,000 per violation, with every day a violation continues counting as a separate one, plus court costs and the township's attorney's fees. A license can also be revoked, or a renewal denied, after three uncured or repeated violations within a rolling twelve months, with the resulting ban lasting six months the first time and a full year for a repeat.

Do you have to pay hotel tax on a Chestnuthill Township short-term rental?

Yes, two layers of it. Pennsylvania's state Hotel Occupancy Tax is 6% of the rent, which Airbnb and Vrbo collect and remit automatically under state law when a stay books through them. Monroe County adds its own 3% Hotel Room Rental Excise Tax, which funds regional tourism promotion, and requires a quarterly filing with the county Treasurer even if a booking platform is already remitting it on your behalf.

Can you rent your Chestnuthill Township home short-term if it's in a residential zone?

Not under the current ordinance. Chestnuthill's short-term rental rules only apply to properties in the General Commercial district, and residential-zoned homes have been ineligible for a short-term rental license since 2019. A residential owner can still lease the property on a standard long-term rental basis, or pursue a separate license to operate as a bed-and-breakfast, which carries its own set of requirements.

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