Lakewood, California Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Lakewood and are you weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, I have to be straight with you: you can't, and that's been true since 2023. The city banned every form of short-term rental, whole-home and home-share alike, and the grace period that let existing hosts finish out their bookings closed for good on June 30, 2024. Nothing about that has changed heading into 2026.

That's a sharper answer than most California cities give, so it's worth being precise about what it covers. Lakewood, a city of roughly 82,500 people in Los Angeles County, once allowed a narrower home-share option: you lived in the unit, you rented spare rooms for under 30 days, you paid an 8% occupancy tax, and you capped it at 90 nights a year. Ordinance No. 2023-2 ended that entirely. Long-term rentals of 31 days or more are still fine, and still need no license at all, but anything shorter is off the table regardless of who owns the property or how it's marketed.

So this guide covers a market that's closed rather than a business you can start, which is a different job than most of these guides do. It walks through how the ban reads, what used to apply before 2023 and why you might still see that old information online, what happens if you ignore the ban anyway, and where a Lakewood owner should look instead. Every figure below comes from Lakewood's own ordinances or its official pages, checked in July 2026. If you're deciding between holding this property long-term or hunting for a market where nightly rentals are still legal, run both scenarios through BNBCalc before you commit to either.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Lakewood

Since the answer above is a flat no, it's worth explaining exactly how Lakewood got there, because the timeline matters more than the headline. Ordinance No. 2018-7 is the one that first let anyone run a short-term rental here, adopted in October 2018. Even then, it only allowed a narrow shape: whole-home rentals under 30 days stayed banned, while an owner-occupied "home-share" of individual rooms became legal. That home-share option was capped at 90 rental nights a year, with on-site parking required for every guest. The framework ran for about five years.

Ordinance No. 2023-2 shut it down. Its own language is unambiguous. It reads: "All Short Term Rentals, and any advertising for such, shall be prohibited after June 30, 2023." The city's own page puts the ordinance's effective date at May 25, 2023, with that June 30 date marking when the prohibition took hold. There was one carve-out, and it's already expired. A property with a valid permit issued before March 1, 2023 could keep hosting through June 30, 2024. After that date, "the prohibition shall apply and such Rentals must cease." Do check the math on that if you're reading an old listing or an outdated blog post claiming otherwise.

That transition window closed more than two years before this refresh. There's no legacy status left to inherit by buying a property that used to have one.

No permit application fixes this. No LLC structure gets around it, and no amount of "it's just a spare room" changes anything, because the current rule bans home-share rentals along with whole-home ones. What's left for a Lakewood property owner is the long-term market: leases of 31 days or more, which the city says plainly require no license or permit at all and fall under ordinary state and county landlord rules instead. Worth sitting with that for a second before you write the property off entirely. A long-term lease still produces income, just not the kind this guide is otherwise about.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Lakewood

Given that context, the honest answer to "what license do I need" is that there still isn't one to get. Under the old Ordinance 2018-7 system, a home-share host needed two things: a business license classified under the city's "Hotels, Motels and Home-Share Rentals" category, and a Transient Occupancy Registration Certificate from the city's Tax Administrator. Neither office issues either one for a short-term rental today, because Ordinance 2023-2 removed the underlying use from the zoning code entirely. If you find an application form still floating around online, it describes a program that stopped accepting new hosts years ago.

That's also why some directories and older guides still describe Lakewood as home-share friendly. They're describing 2018 through mid-2023 accurately, just not 2026. Since I last checked the city's current pages directly rather than relying on a search summary, there's no indication anywhere that the ban is under active reconsideration, so treat any claim to the contrary as unverified until the city itself says otherwise. The only registration that still matters for a Lakewood rental property is the ordinary business license a landlord may already carry for other reasons, and even that isn't required specifically because a rental runs 31 days or longer.

Required Documents for Lakewood Short Term Rentals

Following straight from that, there's nothing to assemble for a new short-term rental application, since the city isn't accepting one. The paperwork that mattered belonged to the wind-down window that Ordinance 2023-2 created, and it's worth understanding it anyway if you're trying to figure out whether a property you're considering ever had legal standing. A host with a valid permit from before March 1, 2023 had to keep it fully current, meaning all fees and taxes owed to the city paid through the relevant date, or the permit became void immediately.

Any further violation during the wind-down cancelled it automatically. No hearing required.

None of that applies to a new buyer today. Remember that a property's past legal status doesn't transfer with the sale, so don't take a seller's word that "it was grandfathered" as proof of anything current. If you're pivoting the property to a 31-day-plus lease instead, the paperwork that matters is a standard lease agreement and whatever your own lender or insurer requires, not anything specific to short-term rentals.

Lakewood Short Term Rental Taxes

Following that same thread, taxes are largely moot here for the same reason the paperwork is: there's no legal short-term rental left to tax. It's still worth understanding the mechanism the old system used, mostly so a figure like "8%" that shows up in older material makes sense rather than looking like a typo.

Ordinance 2018-7 set a city Transient Occupancy Tax of 8% of the rent charged on hotel and home-share stays. The operator collected it at the time rent was paid and remitted it to the city's Tax Administrator. Alongside that sat an annual business tax: $40 for up to eight rooms, plus $3.50 for each additional room, capped at $670 a year. That whole structure applied only to the home-share category Ordinance 2023-2 eliminated, so as of July 2026, none of it is something a current owner needs to register for or pay.

One thing that doesn't go away, though: if someone operates an unregistered short-term rental in Lakewood anyway, the income is still ordinary taxable income at the state and federal level, regardless of whether the activity is legal locally. The city's fine schedule punishes the zoning violation, not the tax question, and the two are separate exposures. Long-term rental income, the legal option here, gets taxed the same way any other rental income does, with no city-level occupancy tax layered on top since it isn't a hotel-style stay.

Lakewood-wide Short Term Rental Rules

Building on that tax picture, the operative rule for Lakewood is short enough to state in full. Any rental of any portion of a residential dwelling for under 31 consecutive calendar days is prohibited, and that includes a portion of an accessory dwelling unit, a junior accessory dwelling unit, or a garage conversion, not just a whole house.

Whole-home, home-share, single rooms in an ADU: it's all under the same ban now. The prior distinction, where whole-home stayed illegal but a hosted room-share was fine, no longer exists as a legal category anywhere in the city.

Long-term rentals are the one clear exception here, and a real exception rather than a loophole. A lease of 31 days or more is allowed anywhere residential use is allowed, with no short-term rental license required, subject only to whatever state and county landlord-tenant rules already apply to rental housing generally. Keep in mind that platforms count nights the way the ordinance does, from check-in, so a booking has to run the full 31 consecutive days to fall outside the ban. A 30-night stay is still a short-term rental under this code; one more night changes its legal status entirely.

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

Given a rule that blunt, the honest answer is no, Lakewood is about as far from Airbnb-friendly as a city gets without a state or countywide ban behind it. The city doesn't just prohibit short-term rentals on paper. It runs an active complaint channel specifically for reporting one, by email, phone, or online form, which tells you enforcement here is meant to be neighbor-driven rather than passive. Ordinance 2023-2 backs that channel with real teeth.

Any violation goes through the city's administrative citation process, with a fine "in the maximum amount authorized by State law."

That ceiling comes from California Senate Bill 60, which as of July 2026 still lets a city set fines well above its normal schedule: $1,500 for a first violation, $3,000 for a second, $5,000 for each one after that. Lakewood's own page doesn't soften this at all, stating the city "fully utilizes these fines to gain compliance from violators who are jeopardizing the safety and welfare of the community." That's about as direct a statement of enforcement intent as a city government puts in writing.

There's also a newer state tool sitting behind all of this. Senate Bill 346 took effect January 1, 2026. It lets a city that adopts its own implementing ordinance require Airbnb, Vrbo, and similar platforms to hand over the physical address, parcel number, and listing URL of every short-term rental operating there. Listings then have to display a local license number and tax certification too.

I haven't found confirmation that Lakewood has adopted that implementing ordinance specifically, so don't take this as something already running here. Even without it, the point stands: the state is giving cities more tools to find unregistered rentals, not fewer, so betting on a listing going unnoticed is a worse bet in 2026 than it was in 2018.

Zoom out and this isn't a Lakewood quirk so much as a California trend. On a widely read BiggerPockets thread about cities across the state cracking down on short-term rentals, posters point to San Diego and South Lake Tahoe restricting nightly rentals to primary residences. Even seasoned investors in that thread concede that genuine neighbor complaints, late-night noise, party rentals, Ubers dropping people off at 2 a.m., are driving the crackdowns rather than arbitrary policy. Lakewood didn't come up by name in that particular discussion, which tracks. A city with no legal short-term rental market generates very little investor chatter one way or the other.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Lakewood

Given everything above, "how to start" has to mean something different in Lakewood than it does almost anywhere else in this guide series, so treat the following as a decision sequence rather than a launch checklist:

1. Confirm the ban is still current before you plan around it. Check lakewoodca.gov's short-term rental page directly rather than a listing site or an older guide, since this is exactly the kind of fact that changes and then gets copied forward long after it's stale.
2. Don't buy assuming grandfathered rights exist. The only exception Ordinance 2023-2 ever created expired June 30, 2024. A seller claiming otherwise needs to show you something more current than that.
3. Model the property as a long-term rental instead. Since 31-day-plus leases need no permit here, run the numbers through BNBCalc as ordinary rental income rather than nightly-rate income, and compare that against what the same capital could do elsewhere.
4. If a nightly-rental business is the actual goal, look at other California markets before you commit to Lakewood. BNBCalc Markets covers city-by-city performance, and our county-level guides for places like Sonoma County and Placer County are worth reading if wine country or the Tahoe corridor are on your list, since both operate under very different rules than Lakewood does.
5. Read the statewide picture too. Our California short-term rental guide covers how fragmented the rules are city to city, which is exactly why Lakewood's ban doesn't tell you anything about the town next door.
6. If you're converting an existing property, treat it as a normal landlord transition. Line up a standard lease, confirm your insurance covers long-term tenancy rather than short-term guests, and don't keep the listing live on any booking platform in the meantime.

Who to Contact in Lakewood about Short Term Rental Regulations and Zoning

Whichever step above applies to you, Lakewood routes short-term rental questions through a small number of offices, and knowing which one to call saves a fair amount of frustration.

• Report a short-term rental (Code Enforcement): email [email protected], call 562-866-9771 ext. 2140, or use the online form at lakewoodca.gov/Service. This is the same line for questions about whether a specific property is compliant.
• Business licensing questions: email [email protected] or call 562-866-9771 ext. 2606.
• Planning and zoning, general information and zoning clearances: call 562-866-9771 ext. 2340.
• Community Development, the department that oversees all of the above: call 562-866-9771 ext. 2300, Monday through Thursday 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Be aware that City Hall itself is open on alternating Fridays only, so it's worth calling ahead if you're planning an in-person visit on a Friday.
• City Hall, in person or by mail: City of Lakewood, 5050 Clark Avenue, Lakewood, CA 90712. General phone: 1-562-866-9771.

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

Given how thin the enforcement conversation was in the last section, it's worth being honest about what public discourse on this specific city looks like: there isn't much of it. Going through BiggerPockets, Lakewood doesn't come up by name in the threads about California's broader short-term rental crackdown, which makes sense once you think about it. A city with no legal path to run a nightly rental doesn't generate ongoing investor debate the way a contested or partially-open market does. The conversation just moves elsewhere.

What those broader threads do show, and it applies here even without a Lakewood-specific quote to point to, is that investors increasingly treat a total ban like this one as a research item rather than an obstacle to argue with. The advice pattern on BiggerPockets for cities in this position is consistent. Verify the ban directly with the city rather than an old listing or a stale blog post, and if the numbers only work at nightly rates, go look at a different market instead of hoping for a policy reversal. I'd treat that as sound advice for Lakewood specifically, though it's my read of a general pattern rather than anything sourced to a Lakewood thread I can point to directly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Lakewood, California in 2026?

No. Lakewood banned all short-term rentals, both whole-home and owner-occupied home-share rentals, under Ordinance No. 2023-2. The prohibition took hold after June 30, 2023, and a narrow exception for pre-existing permits expired June 30, 2024. As of 2026, the city issues no short-term rental license of any kind. Renting a home in Lakewood for 31 consecutive days or more remains legal and needs no permit.

What was Lakewood's short-term rental rule before the 2023 ban?

From 2018 to 2023, under Ordinance No. 2018-7, Lakewood banned whole-home short-term rentals but allowed owner-occupied home-share rentals of individual rooms for under 30 days. Hosts paid an 8% transient occupancy tax, carried a business license in the hotel/home-share category, and were capped at 90 rental nights per calendar year with mandatory on-site parking. Ordinance No. 2023-2 eliminated this entire category, so it no longer applies to anyone.

What happens if you operate an illegal short-term rental in Lakewood anyway?

Violations go through the city's administrative citation process, with fines set at the maximum California law allows under Senate Bill 60. That's $1,500 for a first violation, $3,000 for a second within a year, and $5,000 for each one after that. Lakewood states directly that it fully uses these fines to gain compliance. The city also runs a dedicated channel for neighbors to report a suspected short-term rental, so enforcement here is largely complaint-driven.

Can I still rent my Lakewood property short-term if I already held a permit before 2023?

No. Ordinance No. 2023-2 allowed properties with a valid permit issued before March 1, 2023 to keep hosting only through June 30, 2024. That date has long passed, and any such permit was voided even earlier if fees, taxes, or compliance lapsed. There is no active grandfather clause left for any Lakewood property in 2026, regardless of when the current owner purchased it.

What can I legally do with a rental property in Lakewood instead of short-term rentals?

Lease it for 31 consecutive days or more. Lakewood requires no license or permit for rentals of that length, and they fall under ordinary state and county landlord-tenant rules rather than the city's short-term rental code. If the numbers only worked at nightly rates, it's worth comparing the long-term lease math against other California markets where short-term rentals remain legal before assuming the property is a poor investment.

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