Santa Monica Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Santa Monica and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, as long as you're prepared to live in the place while your guests do too. Santa Monica banned the classic whole-unit vacation rental back in 2015, and that ban has since survived a federal court challenge from Airbnb and HomeAway, a settlement that reshaped how Airbnb operates in the city, and a lawsuit filed as recently as January 2026. What's left standing is a narrower model called home-sharing: you rent out one or more bedrooms in the home you actually live in, you stay there for the entire visit, and you register with the city before you take a single booking.

That's the catch, and it's a real one. This isn't a path to buying a second property and running it as a nightly rental business. It's a room-share model with a hard occupancy cap, a two-guest-group limit, and a 17% lodging tax that guests pay and you collect. Rent-controlled tenants can do it too, within limits, and ADUs have their own set of rules depending on when the ADU was permitted.

So this guide walks through what home-sharing in Santa Monica actually requires in 2026: who qualifies, what the permit costs and involves, the taxes that stack on top, how hard the city pushes on enforcement, and who to call when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from Santa Monica's or California's own pages, read directly this year, and where something genuinely moves, I've said so. If you're comparing a Santa Monica property against a market where you can actually rent the whole unit, run the numbers through BNBCalc first.

What are short term rental (Airbnb, VRBO) regulations in Santa Monica,California?

Two categories exist under city law, and separating them clears up almost everything.

Home-sharing is legal. Under the Home-Sharing Ordinance, Santa Monica Municipal Code Chapter 6.20, adopted May 12, 2015 and effective that June, you can rent one or more bedrooms in a dwelling that's your primary residence for stays of 30 consecutive days or less, provided you live on-site and stay there throughout each guest's visit.

Vacation rentals are not legal, anywhere in the city. The ordinance defines a vacation rental as renting a home, in whole or in part, for exclusive transient use of 30 days or less, meaning the guest gets the place to themselves and you're not there. That's prohibited in every residential zone, single-family, condo, or apartment, and no permit makes it legal. The city cited "excessive noise and safety concerns" and parking pressure as its reasons for drawing the line where it did.

Both categories share the same 30-day threshold, which comes from state law rather than the city. California's Revenue and Taxation Code § 7280 authorizes any city or county to tax occupancy of 30 days or less, and Santa Monica built its whole ordinance around that same cutoff. Stay 31 nights or longer and you're outside this framework entirely, under ordinary landlord-tenant law instead.

One more distinction matters before you get your hopes up about a loophole. Eligibility runs to natural persons only, not companies, and only to owners or "long-term residents," meaning tenants who've already lived in the unit for 12 months and can show they intend to stay 12 more. A landlord who doesn't live in the unit can't home-share it, full stop, no matter whose name is on the deed.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Santa Monica

Unfortunately for most people reading this hoping to run a real business, there isn't one here. If your plan involved buying a Santa Monica condo, furnishing it, and running it as a whole-unit Airbnb for weekend guests, that plan is illegal, and no fee or LLC structure changes that.

What's actually available is a room-share, and it only works if your specific home clears several filters first.

• Rent-controlled units are allowed, with a ceiling. A tenant in a rent-controlled unit can home-share it, but the home-share revenue can't push the tenant's take above the unit's Maximum Allowable Rent, per Santa Monica Charter Article XVIII, Section 1809. That's a ceiling worth checking with Rent Control before you assume the math works.
• Guest houses and ADUs split into two eras. If your ADU's building permit was issued before March 31, 2017, you can live in either the main house or the ADU and home-share whichever one you occupy. If the ADU was permitted on or after that date, you have to live in the ADU itself to home-share it, and you can't also home-share the main house at the same time. One host, one home-share, per property, in either case.
• Leases, HOA bylaws, and CC&Rs still apply. The city's ordinance authorizes home-sharing, but it doesn't override a lease clause or an HOA rule that bans it separately. Do check yours before you apply, since the city won't check it for you.
• You need the right kind of insurance, or the right platform. A host needs at least $500,000 in liability coverage, though that requirement is waived if every listing runs exclusively through Airbnb or HomeAway/Vrbo, since both currently extend their own host protection coverage over Santa Monica bookings.

If your unit clears all of that, the economics are still a spare-bedroom business, not a whole-property one. Assuming the numbers only worked for you at a whole-unit nightly rate, the more realistic pivot in Santa Monica is a 30-plus-night furnished rental, which sits outside this regime entirely. It's worth comparing that pivot against what a fully legal whole-unit market offers elsewhere in California; the California statewide guide covers how permissive that gets once you leave the coast, and the San Mateo County guide is a useful comparison if you're weighing another expensive coastal county against Santa Monica specifically.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Santa Monica

Since a spare-bedroom business is what's actually on offer, it's worth getting the application right the first time. Santa Monica issues a single combined home-sharing permit and business license through one application, filed online at homesharing.santamonica.gov.

The 2019 Rules and Regulations issued under the ordinance set the statutory fee at $100 for a new application and $50 for an annual renewal, both non-refundable, with a note that the city could raise them later by Council resolution. It has. As of July 2026, the live application page shows a potential total due of $582.25 for a new application: a $75 minimum license tax, a $44.85 processing fee, a $458.40 home-share review fee, and a $4 CASp fee mandated by the state. I couldn't confirm whether the renewal total climbed by the same proportion, so budget for something in that same range rather than the old $50 figure.

To be granted a permit, you must certify, under penalty of perjury, that you'll live on-site throughout every stay, that you won't book more than two visitor groups on any given date, that you won't post more than two listings per platform, and that you'll collect and remit the city's lodging tax. City staff then cross-check your application against public records and any open citations before approving it, and they can deny an application outright if the home-share racked up two or more finalized citations in the prior fiscal year, or even just one citation for conduct that endangered public health or safety.

Permits and licenses expire every June 30, and renewal opens July 1. Miss that window and you have to stop advertising immediately, on every platform, until a renewal is filed. That's a hard stop, not a grace period, so mark the date.

Required Documents for Santa Monica Short Term Rentals

Given that fee still doesn't come back, the paperwork is worth assembling carefully before you submit anything. Santa Monica's application requirements are specific enough that a reasonable-looking substitute gets returned.

• Two proofs of primary residency, from an approved list: a California DMV registration, a driver's license or state ID, a voter registration record, an income tax return with sensitive details redacted, a current property tax bill showing the homeowner's exemption, or an original utility bill from Santa Monica Water, SoCalGas, or SoCal Edison specifically. Cable, cell phone, and internet bills don't count.
• Proof of ownership, or 12 months of prior residency plus a forward commitment, if you're a tenant. Tenants need documentation covering both the past 12 months and a written or declared intent to remain for 12 more.
• Proof of $500,000 liability insurance, unless every listing runs exclusively through Airbnb or HomeAway/Vrbo.
• Every detail about the unit itself: address, dwelling type, square footage, bedroom count, whether it's rent-controlled, and, for an ADU, the month and year its building permit was issued.
• The names of every other eligible host who'll be listed on the home-share, since more than one resident of the same unit can share hosting duties.

Keep your listing details matching exactly what you told the city, because any mismatch between your application and your live listing is exactly the kind of thing an enforcement officer checks first.

Santa Monica Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you clear the permit and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to work out, and Santa Monica stacks more than one layer.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Transient Occupancy Tax (home-share)	17% of the rent	Host, remitted to the City of Santa Monica
Business License Tax (Tax Rate Group III)	$75 flat on the first $60,000 of gross receipts, plus 0.3% above that	City of Santa Monica
CASp fee (state-mandated)	$4 flat	City of Santa Monica, on behalf of the state program

The Transient Occupancy Tax is the big one. It sits at 17% for home-shares (hotels and motels pay 15%), effective March 1, 2023, a rate that's higher than what a few older third-party guides still quote. You collect it from the guest and remit it monthly, due by the last day of the month following collection, with a 10% penalty for a late payment and another 10% on top if it's still unpaid 30 days after that. Stays of a government employee on official city business, hospital or medical patients, and any guest staying 31 consecutive nights or more are exempt.

The Business License Tax is smaller for most hosts. Santa Monica classifies home-sharing under Tax Rate Group III, which runs $75 flat on your first $60,000 of gross receipts and 0.3% on anything above that. Santa Monica voters passed Measure F in November 2024, raising the small-business exemption from $40,000 to $100,000, effective January 1, 2025. If your home-share earns less than that in gross receipts, you're exempt from the tax itself, though you still need the license and still owe the CASp fee and any processing charges.

There's no county-level lodging tax stacked on top of the city's, since Santa Monica is an incorporated city and Los Angeles County's own transient tax only reaches unincorporated areas. There's also no statewide occupancy tax in California at all. Revenue and Taxation Code § 7280 only authorizes local governments to levy one; it doesn't create a state-level tax of its own. Your rental income is still ordinary taxable income for both federal and California purposes, and the Franchise Tax Board taxes California residents on all rental income and nonresidents on income sourced to California property specifically.

One more thing worth knowing: Airbnb doesn't remit any of this quietly on your behalf by default in every case. Keep your own copy of whatever agreement or certificate your platform provides showing it collects and remits the TOT for you, and don't assume silence means it's handled.

Santa Monica wide Short Term Rental Rules

Beyond taxes, a set of citywide operating rules applies to every home-share, no matter the neighborhood or zone.

• Occupancy cap. The lesser of 10 total people, 1 person per 200 square feet, or 2 people per bedroom, excluding minor children.
• Two-group limit. You can't book more than two separate visitor groups for the same date, whether that's one traveler or a party of six.
• Two-listing limit. No more than two listings for the home-share on any single hosting platform.
• Vehicle cap. One vehicle per bedroom rented, or if you're in a preferential parking zone, a maximum of two vehicles using visitor permits.
• Safety equipment. Working smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, and fire extinguishers, plus emergency exit-route information for guests if the home-share sits in a multifamily building of more than one story.
• Listing disclosures. Every listing has to show your city business license number, a statement that you live on-site and will be present, the permitted occupancy, the permitted vehicle count, and the two-group booking cap.

These rules apply citywide because Santa Monica sits mostly within the California Coastal Zone, and the state generally won't let a coastal city ban short-term rentals outright. The Coastal Commission's own guidance treats a blanket ban adopted outside the Local Coastal Program process as unenforceable in the coastal zone, and the Commission "has not historically supported blanket vacation rental bans." Home-sharing, rather than a straight prohibition, is the model that survives that constraint.

The rest of the state framework sits above the city too. California has no statewide STR permit or registry at all; CalGold is the state's own lookup tool for whatever a given city or county requires, and every substantive number still lives at the local level. If you're weighing Santa Monica against a market where an entire unit can legally go on Airbnb, the Placer County guide covers a genuinely different, more permissive corner of the state.

Does Santa Monica strictly enforce STR rules?” Is Santa Monica Airbnb friendly?

Given how tightly the rules read on paper, the fair follow-up is whether the city actually enforces them, and the answer is yes, aggressively, and it's held up in court.

Unregistered vacation rentals face an administrative civil penalty starting at $1,000 per day per violation, increasing the longer the violation continues, plus investigation costs and possible City Attorney prosecution. That's a city-specific penalty schedule, separate from the statewide cap on STR-ordinance infractions under Government Code § 36900(d), which tops out at $1,500 for a first offense and $5,000 for repeat offenses within a year. Santa Monica's per-day figure runs through a civil enforcement track rather than a criminal infraction, so the two numbers describe different mechanisms rather than contradicting each other.

For a registered host, the penalty structure works through the permit itself. Two finalized citations during a permit term trigger a 30-day suspension, or longer if a citation stays open. Three finalized citations trigger outright revocation.

The city's track record backs this up. In 2017, Ordinance 2535 added platform obligations: hosting sites had to collect and remit the tax, disclose listing and booking data to the city, and stop processing transactions for unregistered listings. Airbnb and HomeAway sued, arguing the ordinance was preempted by the Communications Decency Act and violated the First Amendment. The Ninth Circuit disagreed on both counts on March 13, 2019, in HomeAway.com v. City of Santa Monica, holding the ordinance doesn't require platforms to police third-party content in a way that triggers CDA immunity, and that it's a housing regulation with only incidental effects on speech.

Airbnb settled with the city that December, agreeing to delist any listing the city flagged as non-compliant, cap each host at one listing with no more than two rooms, and pay Santa Monica $2 per listing per night toward affordable housing, effective by January 2020. That $2 comes out of Airbnb's own pocket under the settlement, not a guest-facing charge, so don't confuse it with the TOT.

The city did pull back briefly after the Palisades Fire. In January 2025, it suspended enforcement of the home-sharing and vacation-rental rules so displaced residents could find short-term housing, then walked that exemption back in stages during the first half of 2025 as the immediate crisis eased. Even so, that was always framed as temporary, and it never touched the underlying ordinance.

Then, in January 2026, the city went further still. It sued Hamid Enayti, Nicole Massarat, Jaleh Forouhar, Nina Enayati, Nina Property Management Inc., and a set of affiliated LLCs, alleging they'd converted 62 units across more than 25 rent-controlled properties into unhosted short-term rentals on Airbnb. The complaint says those units were rented out nearly 3,000 times for roughly $18 million in revenue over about five years, with the defendants covering their tracks using "sham" one-year leases signed after each booking was already confirmed. That case runs under the Residential Leasing Requirements Ordinance rather than the Home-Sharing Ordinance itself, and the city is seeking $2,500 per violation on top of the full $18 million disgorgement. So no, this city isn't easing up, and it isn't limiting itself to one statute to make that point.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Santa Monica

Given everything above, the order you tackle these steps in matters more than it looks like it should, since an early step can rule out the whole plan before you spend a dollar on the rest.

1. Confirm your home actually qualifies. Check your lease, HOA bylaws, and any rent-control status before anything else. If you don't live there full-time, or the unit isn't your primary residence, stop here.
2. Check the ADU rules if that's your unit. Confirm when the building permit was issued and whether that lets you live in the main house or requires you to live in the ADU itself.
3. Line up your documents. Two proofs of primary residency from the approved list, ownership or tenancy proof, and liability insurance if you're not listing exclusively through Airbnb or HomeAway/Vrbo.
4. Apply online and pay the fee. Submit through homesharing.santamonica.gov and budget for a total closer to $582 than the older $100 figure some pages still quote.
5. Install the required safety equipment before your first guest: smoke detectors, CO detectors, fire extinguishers, and exit-route information if you're in a multifamily building.
6. Write your listing to match your permit exactly: license number, on-site presence statement, occupancy cap, vehicle cap, and the two-group booking limit.
7. Register for the Transient Occupancy Tax and set up monthly remittance, or confirm in writing that your platform collects it for you.
8. Diarize your June 30 expiration date and file your renewal by July 1, since a lapse means pulling every listing immediately.

Who to contact in Santa Monica about Short Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever step above trips you up, a handful of city offices split the work between them, and knowing which one owns your question saves a lot of time on hold.

Code Enforcement Division, for complaints, violations, and general ordinance questions:

• Address: 1685 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401
• Phone: (310) 458-4984
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed alternating Fridays)

Business License / Finance Department, for the home-sharing permit and business license application itself:

• Address: 1685 Main Street (City Hall East), Santa Monica, CA 90401
• Phone: (310) 458-8745
• Email: [email protected]
• Apply online: homesharing.santamonica.gov

Treasury, for the Transient Occupancy Tax specifically:

• Phone: (310) 458-8741
• Email: [email protected]
• Mail: City of Santa Monica, Treasury, PO Box 2200, Santa Monica, CA 90407

Rent Control Board, if your unit is rent-controlled and you need to check your Maximum Allowable Rent:

• Address: Room 202, City Hall, 1685 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401
• Phone: (310) 458-8751
• Email: [email protected]

For a general complaint about a suspected illegal vacation rental, dial 311 inside the city, or 1-866-311-SAMO from outside it. Keep in mind that a neighbor can generally spot an unhosted listing just by checking whether it advertises the host's on-site presence, so an illegal listing tends not to stay quiet for long.

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

Given the litigation history above, it's worth knowing how hosts and investors actually talk about this market, though what follows is my read of the recurring public themes rather than a formal survey, so weigh it accordingly.

• Investors mostly steer around Santa Monica for scale. The math that works elsewhere in California, buying a place and running it as a nightly whole-unit rental, simply isn't legal here, so investor-focused discussion tends to point toward nearby markets with fewer restrictions instead of trying to force the Santa Monica numbers to work.
• Resident hosts describe the paperwork as the hard part, not the concept. Complaints cluster around document rejections, mismatched proof-of-residency categories, and the insurance requirement, rather than around the underlying rule that you have to live on-site. That tracks with how specific the city's own document list is.
• The rent-controlled angle draws the most attention. Because home-share income on a rent-controlled unit is capped at the Maximum Allowable Rent, some tenants find the math barely works, and the January 2026 lawsuit shows what happens when landlords try to route around that ceiling entirely.
• Nobody credible still argues enforcement is toothless. Between the 2019 court win, the Airbnb settlement, and a fresh eight-figure lawsuit in 2026, that debate settled a while back. What's left is a narrower argument about whether the rules are fair, not whether they're real.

Take that last point seriously if you're on the fence. This isn't a market where a fine is a cost of doing business you can price into a spreadsheet. It's a market where the wrong kind of listing gets flagged, delisted, and potentially sued over, and the city has now shown it will use more than one statute to make that stick. If the Santa Monica numbers still look tight once you account for all of that, it's worth comparing them against the Burbank market, which sits inland from the coastal restrictions and gives you a cleaner read on what a similarly priced Los Angeles-area property could actually earn.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Santa Monica in 2026?

Only as home-sharing. You can rent one or more bedrooms in your own primary residence for stays of 30 days or less, as long as you live there and stay on-site throughout the visit, register with the city, and cap bookings at two visitor groups per date. Renting a whole home or unit while you're away, known as a vacation rental, is illegal citywide, and no permit makes it legal.

How much does a Santa Monica home-sharing permit cost?

The ordinance's base fee is $100 for a new application and $50 for a renewal, but the city's live application page shows a potential total closer to $582 once the business license tax, processing fee, home-share review fee, and state-mandated CASp fee are added in. Permits and licenses expire every June 30 and must be renewed starting July 1.

What tax do you pay on a Santa Monica short-term rental?

Home-shares owe a 17% Transient Occupancy Tax on the rent, collected from the guest and remitted monthly to the city. On top of that, a Business License Tax applies at $75 flat on the first $60,000 of gross receipts plus 0.3% above that, though hosts earning under $100,000 a year are exempt from that tax specifically since Measure F raised the threshold in 2025.

What happens if you run an unpermitted vacation rental in Santa Monica?

You're looking at an administrative civil penalty starting at $1,000 per day per violation, escalating the longer it continues, on top of investigation costs and possible prosecution by the City Attorney's office. Airbnb is also contractually required to delist a flagged listing under its 2019 settlement with the city, so an unhosted listing tends to get pulled fast once it's reported.

Can rent-controlled tenants do home-sharing in Santa Monica?

Yes, but with a ceiling. A tenant in a rent-controlled unit can register as a home-share host, though the revenue from home-sharing can't push their total monthly income from the unit above its Maximum Allowable Rent under the city's Rent Control Charter provisions. Check that number with the Rent Control Board before applying, since exceeding it is a separate violation on top of any home-sharing rule.

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