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

Do you own a house in Nassau County, New York and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that Nassau County itself writes no short-term rental law at all, so there's no county permit to apply for and no county inspection to pass. The bad news arrives one level down, because the county isn't the government that decides this, and the ones that do have almost all said no.

Nassau splits into three towns, two cities and dozens of incorporated villages, each writing its own rule for its own patch. The Town of Hempstead won't issue a rental permit to anything let for fewer than 28 nights, North Hempstead's board moved to prohibit stays under 30 consecutive days from the start of 2023, Glen Cove bars any rental shorter than 28 days, and the Village of Valley Stream treats anything under six months as a prohibited transient rental. Oyster Bay never wrote a short-term rental law, mind you, though its zoning permits only the uses it lists, and nightly lodging isn't one of them in a one-family district. Unfortunately for most people reading this, that adds up to no business, and the fines reach five figures.

So let's walk through what's actually true in 2026: which government owns your address, what the rental permit does and costs, the tax layers that attach to a stay, how the towns catch people, and who to call when your own village contradicts all of it. Every figure below comes from a town, city, county or state page I opened myself in July 2026, and where a site blocked me I've said so rather than filling the gap. Before you commit to a Nassau address on nightly-rate assumptions, do run it through BNBCalc on a monthly lease instead and see whether the deal survives.

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

That monthly-lease framing isn't pessimism, it's what three layers of law add up to, and separating them explains almost everything people find confusing about Long Island.

The top layer is New York State, which does less than you'd expect. A New York Department of State training deck for local governments tells them it's "up to each municipality to define, prohibit and/or regulate short term rentals as they choose." No statewide preemption protects your right to host, and there's no statewide licence either.

Older guides get one thing wrong here, so let's clear it up. The Multiple Dwelling Law's Class A rule, the one making sub-30-day apartment rentals illegal in New York City, doesn't reach Nassau, because Multiple Dwelling Law § 3 applies that chapter only to cities of 325,000 people or more.

The middle layer is Nassau County, whose only involvement is money, since it levies a hotel and motel occupancy tax under Title 24 of its Miscellaneous Laws and does nothing else. Going through the county's own compilation of those laws, there's no short-term rental title and no county registry.

The bottom layer is the one that decides whether you can host, and it's your town, your city or your village. Keep in mind that a town code stops at the village line, since North Hempstead's rental article reaches only the unincorporated area of the town and Hempstead's board legislated for the Town "exclusive of its incorporated villages" in § 99-10(B) of its Chapter 99. So the first question isn't what Nassau County allows. It's whose map your deed sits inside.

Where your address sits	Shortest paid stay that's lawful	Where the rule comes from
Town of Hempstead, unincorporated	28 nights	Town Code § 99-12 and § 99-13(D)
Town of North Hempstead, unincorporated	30 consecutive days	Town Code Ch. 2, as amended in 2022
Town of Oyster Bay, unincorporated	No lodging use is listed for one-family districts	Zoning § 246-5.2
City of Glen Cove	28 days	City Code § 280-45.3
City of Long Beach	Residence districts permit a one-family house, not lodging	Zoning § 9-105
Village of Valley Stream	Six months	Village Code § 46A-1 and § 46A-8(B)
Any other incorporated village	Varies, and often stricter than the town around it	That village's own code

The Town of Hempstead's own rental property registration form puts it in one line. "Transient rentals, or property rented for a period of less than 28 days is not permitted." Glen Cove's Code Enforcement page quotes § 280-45.3 to the same effect. Note how wide the city drew it, because the ban reaches a dwelling unit or any part of one, plus a detached garage, dock, shed, pool, cabana or yard, let for under 28 days. Renting out the pool alone is caught. The council voted it in during August 2023 after police were called repeatedly to one rental, as Mayor Pamela Panzenbeck told News 12 Long Island at the time.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Nassau County

Given all that, the honest version of starting a short-term rental business in Nassau County is that the nightly-rate business most people picture isn't available at any price, in any of the three towns or either city. No permit unlocks it and no LLC gets around it, because the towns wrote the refusal into the permit itself rather than into a separate prohibition. Two things are left, though, and one of them is a real business.

The first is the 30-plus-night furnished rental, which sits outside every rule above and falls under ordinary landlord and tenant law instead. Hempstead's floor is 28 nights, North Hempstead's is 30 days and Glen Cove's is 28 days, so a 30-night minimum clears all three with room to spare. That's the market travelling nurses and relocating families actually use, and it dodges the county occupancy tax on the same stroke, since a guest who stays 30 consecutive days becomes a permanent resident under the county's own definition and the tax stops applying.

The second is narrower and shakier, so treat it as a question for your building department rather than a plan. Both big town definitions turn on non-owner-occupancy, since Hempstead's § 99-12 describes a transient rental property as "all non-owner-occupied dwelling units rented for a period of less than 28 nights" while North Hempstead's § 2-101 excludes any dwelling unit on an owner-occupied property. On the face of the text, a live-in host renting a spare room isn't what either definition catches. Be careful with that reading though, because North Hempstead defines "owner-occupied" only for a two-family or multiple-family dwelling where the owner is present on each night another unit is let, which leaves a single-family room rental in a gap rather than a carve-out. Get it in writing from the town before you take a booking, not after.

The neighbours differ sharply, so they're worth a look before you settle on Nassau. The Suffolk County guide covers the East End towns, several of which do licence short stays, while the Westchester County guide covers the other side of the city.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Nassau County

Since there's no county licence to describe, licensing in Nassau means the town or city rental occupancy permit, which is worth understanding even though it won't get you a short-term rental. It's the instrument the refusal is written into, and it's what you'll need for the 30-plus-night version.

The Town of Hempstead runs the most detailed programme, and its own form sets the fees as of July 2026: a $300 application fee credited towards the permit once approved, then $500 for a single rental unit and $200 for each additional unit. Permits run two years, and both the fees and the permits are nonrefundable and nontransferable. Renewal costs $450 plus a $450 permit fee. Then § 99-13(D) closes the door in nine words. "No rental occupancy permit shall be granted to a transient rental property."

The Town of North Hempstead shuts the same door, though it draws its line at 30 days rather than 28. Its Chapter 2 local law, published by the town for its September 22, 2022 hearing and written to take effect January 1, 2023, makes a rental occupancy permit compulsory for any rental "regardless of duration", then says no permit shall be granted to use a dwelling unit "or segment thereof" as a short-term rental property. A new § 2-135.1 adds the flat prohibition on top. One limit is worth flagging, since eCode360 blocks automated access, so I read the town's published text of the law rather than the codified section and couldn't confirm the enacted wording. The Building Department on 516-869-6311 is the place to confirm it before you rely on it either way.

The Town of Oyster Bay has no rental permit chapter and no short-term rental definition, which sounds like an opening and isn't, because its Schedule of Use Regulations at § 246-5.2 says "any use not specifically listed shall be deemed to be prohibited" unless the Town Board grants a special permit for something of the same general character. Reading the residence districts schedule, the R1 one-family districts permit one-family dwellings, while rooming or boarding houses are permitted only in the multifamily and senior-housing districts. Commercial lodging isn't listed for the districts covering most of the town, so it's prohibited by default.

Glen Cove requires owners of one- and two-family non-owner-occupied rentals to register under § 168-65, with failure to register exposed to penalties under § 168-72. The city publishes no fee schedule or office hours, so I can't give you either figure.

Long Beach is the odd one out, and the one place in the county where the position is unsettled rather than merely strict. Reading the city's own Code of Ordinances at Supplement 87, current through April 7, 2026, there's no short-term rental provision anywhere in it. What governs instead is Appendix A Zoning, where § 9-105 says no premises in a Residence A District may be used "for other than one or more of the following specified uses", and that list runs to a one-family detached house plus schools, churches and public buildings. The council did try to close the gap, since its proceedings for August 20, 2024 record an ordinance "to codify the ban on short-term rentals in the City of Long Beach", and it was tabled unanimously. Reading every set of proceedings since, through July 2026, it hasn't come back. So the ban is real, yet it lives in the zoning rather than a named short-term rental law.

The incorporated villages are where people get caught out, because a village can be far tougher than the town it sits inside. Valley Stream is the sharpest example I found, since its Local Law 2-2016 defines a transient rental as any "rental of property in whole or in part for a period of less than six (6) months" and then states at § 46A-8(B) that "a transient rental is prohibited." Six months, not 28 nights. The village permit costs a nonrefundable $400 every two years, halved for owners holding a senior, veterans or Enhanced STAR exemption on a Valley Stream primary residence. Councilwoman Mariann Dalimonte made the same point while North Hempstead debated its own ban, telling the board that several villages within the town already had far more restrictive code than what it was proposing.

Required Documents for Nassau County Short-Term Rentals

Because those fees don't come back, assemble the paperwork properly the first time, and expect the towns to ask for more than a rental registration sounds like. Hempstead's form lists what § 99-14 wants:

• Owner identification in full. Name, address and phone for every owner, and where a company owns the property, the same for every officer, principal, shareholder, partner and member, plus proof of residency.
• The street address and the Nassau County Tax Map designation, meaning section, block and lot.
• A description of the structure, including how many rental units it holds and how many people each is meant to accommodate, plus a floor plan giving the use and dimensions of every room.
• A recent certified copy of the deed recorded with the Nassau County Clerk, alongside the real property tax bill and the certificate of occupancy or compliance.
• A survey drawn to a scale no greater than 40 feet to the inch, or a site plan showing every building, walk, driveway and on-site parking space.
• A local agent for service of process. Owners living or based outside Nassau County must name someone who resides in the county, and failing to do so is itself a violation.

Everything is sworn under oath and notarised, and § 99-15 adds that no permit issues unless the property complies with the Town Code, the Building Zone Ordinance, the state fire and building code, and county and state law. So an open violation anywhere in that stack stalls the application.

North Hempstead's § 2-104 list runs shorter but carries one trap. Alongside the owner details and tax map description, the town wants a survey or site plan, a building permit application for any proposed work, and the certificate of occupancy or existing use, and it won't accept an application without a valid certificate. Older Nassau housing stock often has unpermitted work behind it, so don't forget to pull your certificate and compare it against what's physically there before you file. Valley Stream goes further still and wants a licensed architect's or engineer's certification of full code compliance, or a Building Department inspection instead.

Nassau County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming your stay is long enough to be lawful and you're able to start letting it, there's still tax to deal with, and this is where the county finally shows up. Three charges can attach to a stay, and the important part isn't the rates. It's who remits them.

Charge	Rate	Who remits it
New York State sales tax, part of the combined rate	4%	The booking service, in most cases
Nassau local sales tax plus the ⅜% MCTD surcharge, the rest of the combined rate	4⅝%	The booking service, in most cases
Nassau County hotel and motel occupancy tax	3% of the per diem rental rate for each room	You, to the County Treasurer

New York's Publication 718 puts Nassau's combined state and local sales tax rate at 8⅝% under jurisdiction code 2811, with the star marking the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District surcharge inside it. All of that now reaches short-term stays. The state tax department's guidance on sales tax on short-term rental unit occupancy applies it from March 1, 2025 wherever the rate runs above $2.00 per unit per day, and booking services must now register as New York State sales tax vendors and collect on everything they facilitate. You're relieved of collecting yourself where a platform handles all your sales and supplies Form ST-155 or a publicly available agreement saying it will collect. Make sure you actually hold that documentation, because giving a platform bad information about a sale leaves the state free to bill you anyway. Guests who stay 90 consecutive days become permanent residents and the sales tax stops.

The county's 3% is the piece that catches people, because it behaves nothing like the sales tax. Nassau County's hotel and motel occupancy tax has run at 3% of the per diem rental rate for each room since January 1, 2006, and the Title 24 text in the county's Miscellaneous Laws defines "hotel" or "motel" widely enough to be worth reading twice. It covers "any facility providing lodging on an overnight basis", and names bed and breakfasts, inns, cabins, cottages, campgrounds and tourist homes. Title 24 then makes every owner file a certificate of registration with the County Treasurer within 10 days of opening, display the certificate of authority where occupants can see it, and file quarterly returns on the first day of February, May, August and November. Failing to register carries $100 for each day you don't. Then again, an occupant who stays 30 consecutive days counts as a permanent resident, and the county portion collected over those first 30 days is refundable.

Now for the part that changed since 2024, and it's the most useful thing here for anyone already letting a Nassau property on a long stay. Airbnb doesn't collect the county's 3% for you. Its New York occupancy tax page lists 40 counties and three cities where it collects and remits the local tax, and neighbouring Suffolk is on that list. Nassau isn't. The New York State Association of Counties explains the mechanism in its short-term rental implementation memo, where platforms collect and remit "if they have an existing voluntary collection agreement (VCA) with the county. If the county does not have a VCA, Airbnb has indicated to some counties they will not collect occupancy tax." So the sales tax generally arrives handled, while the county 3% arrives as your problem, and filing runs through the Treasurer's hotel and motel occupancy tax portal.

Two honest caveats before you act on that. Nassau's authority to levy the tax carries an expiry date the county legislature keeps extending, most recently through Local Laws 10-2017 and 11-2020, so confirm the rate with the Treasurer rather than assuming it holds. And the county has published no guidance applying that "any facility providing lodging" wording to a whole-house rental, so how hard it's pushed against private homes isn't something I could establish.

New York State-Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That gap between what the county taxes and what the county administers is what Albany spent 2024 and 2025 trying to close, and the fix it landed on runs through the counties rather than around them.

Two chapters built the framework. Chapter 672 of 2024 created a statewide structure and pulled booking services into the sales tax vendor system, then Chapter 99 of 2025 restructured the registry into a county-run one with a local opt-out, so the result now lives in Real Property Law Article 12-D. Under RPL § 447-c, every covered county has to establish a registration system unless it passes a local law declining, registrations run two years, counties set their own cost-recovery fees, and anyone listing an unregistered unit becomes ineligible to register for twelve months. The counties association dates the registry provisions to roughly September 25, 2025 and the last day to opt out to roughly June 25, 2026. That window has closed.

RPL § 447-b carries the duties that come with registration: an evacuation diagram, posted emergency numbers, a working fire extinguisher, $300,000 of liability cover and two years of records. Subdivision 5 holds those in abeyance until the county stands a registry up, and subdivision 6 grandfathers any registry a municipality already ran. Subdivision 7 is the one Nassau's villages should read, since it bars a city, town or village inside a covered county from creating its own short-term rental registry. Village boards can still prohibit short stays, and most already have. What they can't do now is start a registry from scratch.

So did Nassau County opt in or opt out? I couldn't confirm it, and I'd rather be straight about why. The county's website blocks automated access outright, which is why every Nassau fact here comes from a dated Internet Archive snapshot. On top of that, the counties association publishes no county-by-county status list, and no Nassau local law on the subject was reachable. A county that opts out forfeits the ability to tax short-term rental occupancy, so there's a fiscal argument for staying in, though an argument isn't an answer. Call the county before you assume either way. For how differently this plays out upstate, our New York statewide guide maps the wider picture.

Does Nassau County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Since the county doesn't write the rule, it doesn't enforce it either. Enforcement is a town, city and village matter, it runs on complaints, and the towns drafted their codes so that your own listing supplies the evidence.

Look at how the presumptions are written. Hempstead's § 99-12(B) says that offering the unit or any room in it "on a short-term rental website, including Airbnb, Home Away, VRBO and the like for a period of less than 28 days" creates a presumption that the dwelling is a transient rental property, rebuttable only before the Code Enforcement Official. North Hempstead's § 2-101 does the same for anything advertised for under 30 days in any medium, and Oyster Bay's § 246-16.2.1.7 treats a dwelling advertised as containing rooms for rent as presumptive evidence of that use. Platforms named in a town code by brand should tell you how this works, because an inspector doesn't need to knock when the listing shifts the burden onto you. Hempstead's § 99-25 goes further still and makes advertising a nonpermitted rental "an offense within the meaning of the Penal Law".

So the penalty schedules are where casual non-compliance stops being cheap. Hempstead's § 99-29 sets a fine of not less than $1,000 and not more than $5,000 for a first offence, or up to 15 days in jail, and a second conviction within ten years runs $2,500 to $10,000, a third $5,000 to $20,000, and a fourth is prosecuted as an unclassified misdemeanour with a minimum fine of $10,000 and a maximum of $30,000. Read the last line of the section carefully, because each day's continued violation is a separate additional violation, which is how a single unlawful summer turns the arithmetic against you. Oyster Bay's § 246-16.3 looks milder at up to $1,000 or six months, though each week there is a separate violation, while Valley Stream can go after up to double the rent you collected instead of a flat fine.

How often any of that gets used, I can't tell you. Hempstead's § 99-24 makes rental registration records confidential, no Nassau town publishes enforcement statistics like New York City's public registration dataset, and I found no reachable page carrying a count of violations charged. What I can say is that the codes were built for complaint-driven enforcement by neighbours, the presumptions do most of the evidentiary work, and the fines are structured to make repetition expensive rather than a first offence survivable.

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

Given how that enforcement is built, the order you work through this in matters, because the first two steps usually tell you whether the rest is worth your time.

1. Find out which government your address belongs to. Village, town or city, and if you're inside an incorporated village, the village code governs and the town code doesn't reach you. Getting this wrong is the most common mistake in Nassau, since a Valley Stream address and an unincorporated Hempstead address a mile apart follow completely different rules.
2. Read that jurisdiction's minimum stay before you spend anything. Twenty-eight nights in Hempstead and Glen Cove, 30 days in North Hempstead, six months in Valley Stream, and whatever your own village adopted. Watch out for the village floors especially, because several run longer than the town's.
3. Assume the answer is no for nightly stays, and design for 30-plus nights instead. A 30-night minimum clears every town and city floor I could verify, sits under ordinary landlord and tenant law, and takes you outside the county occupancy tax on the same stroke.
4. Apply for the rental occupancy permit anyway, since Hempstead and North Hempstead both require one for any rental regardless of length. Budget $800 for Hempstead's first two years and $400 biennially in Valley Stream.
5. Clear your open violations first. Hempstead's § 99-15 blocks a permit where the property doesn't comply with town, county and state codes, and North Hempstead won't accept an application without a valid certificate of occupancy.
6. Sort the tax before your first guest. Confirm your platform holds Form ST-155 or a public collection agreement, then decide whether the county's 3% reaches you and register with the Treasurer within 10 days if it does.
7. Ask the county where it landed on the registry, because registration under Article 12-D runs two years and brings the § 447-b safety and insurance duties with it.
8. Keep the records anyway. Two years of stays, guest counts, rent and tax broken out, which is what the state framework expects and what a code enforcement officer asks for first.

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

Whichever step you get stuck on, the office you want depends on which layer the question belongs to, and calling the wrong one loses you a morning. Zoning and permits are municipal, the occupancy tax is county, and sales tax is state.

Town of Hempstead

The Department of Buildings administers Chapter 99 and issues rental occupancy permits for the unincorporated town.

• Address: One Washington Street, 2nd Floor, Hempstead, NY 11550
• Main phone: 516-538-8500
• Email: [email protected]
• Front counter hours: 8:00 am to 4:45 pm
• Housing and Zoning Inspectors: 516-812-3289, reachable 9:00 to 10:30 am before field inspections

Town of North Hempstead

The Department of Building, Safety, Inspection & Enforcement issues rental permits and administers town codes in the unincorporated areas.

• Address: 176 Plandome Road, Manhasset, NY 11030
• Phone: 516-869-6311
• Hours: 7:00 am to 4:45 pm, with inspector hours 7:00 am to 2:45 pm
• Note: from March 4, 2026 new permit and licensing applications moved to the OpenGov platform
• Code Enforcement: 220 Plandome Road, Manhasset, 516-869-6311, Monday to Friday 9:00 am to 4:45

Town of Oyster Bay

The Department of Planning and Development covers building, zoning and code compliance.

• Address: 74 Audrey Avenue, Oyster Bay, NY 11771
• Phone: (516) 624-6200, which also reaches the Building Division and Code Compliance
• Email: [email protected]

City of Glen Cove and City of Long Beach

• Glen Cove Code Enforcement: 9 Glen St., 3rd Floor, Room 307, (516) 320-7869
• Long Beach Building Department: City Hall, Room 304, 1 West Chester Street, Long Beach, NY 11561, (516) 431-1005, [email protected]
• Long Beach City Clerk, for the code and ordinances: (516) 431-1002

County and state tax

The Nassau County Treasurer runs the hotel and motel occupancy tax, so registration, the certificate of authority and quarterly returns all go through that office.

• Address: 1 West Street, Mineola, NY 11501
• Phone: 516-571-2090, with hotel tax questions directed to Mojgan Samouhi on (516) 571-2104
• Hours: 9:00 am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday

Sales tax and vendor registration belong to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance rather than the county, and its Sales Tax Information Center is on 518-485-2889, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. One warning about researching this yourself: Nassau County's site and eCode360, where several town codes live, both refuse automated access, which is why some links here point at archived snapshots. They load normally in a browser.

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

Those access problems apply to the forums too, so let me set expectations first. Reddit blocks automated access and its developer terms bar the commercial use a guide like this would need, so I haven't read a single Reddit thread and won't pretend otherwise. BiggerPockets' Long Island forum returned navigation and marketing without thread content. What I did read end to end is the long-running Airbnb Community thread on the Town of Hempstead ban, and its themes have aged well, because the law it argues about is still in force.

• Hosts read the permit fees as the point of the exercise. One poster noted that the town's fees replaced village permits that "were previously only $50-$150 (with inspection)", and the charge that this is revenue dressed as safety runs through the whole thread.
• The double-permit problem still confuses people. An owner inside a village asked the obvious question: "Are we as property owners supposed to pay now for two rental permits? One from our village and then one from the Town?" As it turns out the town code stops at the village line, so a village owner owes the village and not the town, though nobody in the thread knew that.
• Enforcement anxiety focused on the advertising presumptions, since posters flagged that town officials would search listing sites for violations, which is what the code was drafted to enable.
• The legal pushback never materialised. A Lido Beach owner asked "Is there a class action suit I can join?" and another host circulated an email address to organise one. No challenge to any Nassau rental law has surfaced since.
• Owner-occupied hosting is the argument that keeps getting a hearing. At North Hempstead's public hearing, Pat Higgins of Port Washington told the board she'd hosted for nearly nine years without a neighbour complaint, arguing "I don't see the same kinds of problems [happening] if the home is occupied by the owner and the owner is permitted to rent out a spare room." The board then wrote an owner-occupied exclusion into its definition, and Hempstead's turns on non-owner-occupancy too, so that argument did move something.

Take the timing seriously too, since it shapes who gets heard. Hempstead's hearing ran at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning, and one host predicted that without a large turnout the board would pass the law regardless. It did. Zoom out from Nassau and the pattern is worth carrying into any market, because the rule that decides whether a property works is rarely written at the level people think to check, and it's usually written by the smallest government with jurisdiction over the address. County pages are easy to find and mostly tell you about tax, while the village board meeting on a weekday morning decides whether you have a business at all. For where else in the state that arithmetic lands differently, the New York market rankings are the place to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Nassau County, New York in 2026?

Almost certainly not on a nightly basis. Nassau County writes no short-term rental law of its own, but every town and city inside it blocks short stays. Hempstead and Glen Cove set a floor of 28 nights, North Hempstead 30 consecutive days, and Oyster Bay and Long Beach permit only listed uses in their residence districts, which don't include lodging. Many incorporated villages go further, and Valley Stream requires six months.

Does Nassau County require a short-term rental permit or registration?

No. Nassau County has no short-term rental permit, no county registry and no county ordinance on the subject, and its only involvement is the hotel and motel occupancy tax run by the County Treasurer. The permit that does exist is municipal. Hempstead and North Hempstead both require a rental occupancy permit for any rental regardless of length, and Glen Cove requires registration of non-owner-occupied one- and two-family rentals.

What taxes do you pay on a short-term rental in Nassau County?

Two layers. New York State and local sales tax at a combined 8⅝% applies to short-term rental occupancy from March 1, 2025, and booking services are now the primary collector, so a platform handling all your bookings generally remits it. Nassau County separately levies a 3% hotel and motel occupancy tax on the per diem rate per room. Airbnb doesn't collect that one, so the owner registers with the County Treasurer and files quarterly returns.

What is the penalty for an illegal short-term rental in Nassau County?

It depends which town you're in. Hempstead fines a first offence between $1,000 and $5,000, or up to 15 days in jail, rising to $2,500 to $10,000 for a second conviction within ten years, $5,000 to $20,000 for a third, and $10,000 to $30,000 as an unclassified misdemeanour for a fourth. Each day is a separate violation. Oyster Bay caps fines at $1,000 or six months, with each week counting separately, and Valley Stream can pursue up to double the rent collected.

Can you rent a house in Nassau County for 30 days or more?

Yes, and that's the practical route for anyone with a whole unit to let. A 30-night minimum clears the 28-night floors in Hempstead and Glen Cove and the 30-day floor in North Hempstead, and it falls under ordinary landlord and tenant law rather than any transient rental ban. It also puts a guest past the county's 30-day permanent resident threshold, so the 3% occupancy tax stops applying. Do check your own village code first, since several set longer minimums than the towns around them.

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