Spokane Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Spokane and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that Spokane says yes, and it says yes fairly broadly. Short-term rentals are allowed in every zone where residential uses are permitted, there's no citywide cap on how many permits get handed out, and outside one specific situation you don't have to live in the property yourself. That last point is the one that decides whether this is an investment or a side hustle, and Spokane comes down firmly on the investment side.

The catch here is paperwork rather than prohibition. Every unit you rent needs its own short-term rental permit, and getting one means a Spokane business license, a notarized life safety form, a million dollars of liability coverage, a site plan, and a letter to your neighbors telling them what you're up to. Spokane has also been paying a monitoring vendor to scan the listing sites for unpermitted properties since January 2024, so listing quietly and hoping nobody notices stopped being a strategy some time ago.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: which buildings can legally hold a rental, what the permit costs in 2026, the documents the city wants, the tax you'll be collecting, how hard Spokane pushes on enforcement, and who to call at City Hall when something goes sideways. Everything below comes from the Spokane Municipal Code, the city's own permit pages and Washington's Department of Revenue, checked in July 2026. And note the scope, because it matters a lot around here: this covers the City of Spokane, not Spokane Valley and not unincorporated Spokane County, both of which run their own rules.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Spokane

Inside the city limits, one chapter of code does nearly all the work. Spokane Municipal Code chapter 17C.316 covers short term rentals end to end, and the version you're operating under today arrived with ordinance C36391, which the City Council passed on July 10, 2023 and which took effect on September 1 that year. Anything you read describing Spokane's rules before that date is describing a different regime.

The definition is where you should start, because it decides whether any of this applies to you at all. SMC 17C.316.020 calls a short-term rental a lodging use, other than a hotel or motel, in which a residential dwelling unit or a portion of one gets rented to overnight guests for a fee for fewer than 30 consecutive days.

Rent to the same person for 30 days or longer and it isn't a short-term rental at all, which means no permit and no chapter 17C.316. That gap is the furnished mid-term market, and it sits under ordinary landlord and tenant law instead.

Assuming you do want nightly stays, the next question is where, and Spokane's answer is even shorter than you'd expect. SMC 17C.316.030 applies the chapter to short-term rentals "in all zones where residential uses are permitted." No tourist overlay, no exclusion zone, no downtown carve-out. In zones that also allow Retail Sales and Service uses, a rental that can't meet the chapter's standards may still run as a retail lodging use, though that route means a full Change of Use and Occupancy review plus every applicable building and fire code standard on top.

Where Spokane does draw lines is per building. The caps in SMC 17C.316.040 get calculated by structure rather than by lot, and they run like this:

• One short-term rental in a detached single-family structure, an attached single-family structure, or an accessory dwelling unit.
• One short-term rental in one of the two units of a duplex. The other half stays long-term.
• One in the house and one in the ADU on the same lot, subject to the owner-occupancy rule below.
• Multifamily and mixed-use buildings in residential zones: fire-sprinklered buildings may run no more than 20% of their residential units as short-term rentals, rounded up to the next whole unit. A building without sprinklers has to satisfy current building and fire code before anything happens.
• In other zones, SMC 17C.316.050 lifts that ceiling to 30% for sprinklered buildings, while an unsprinklered building must go through the Change of Use and Occupancy process to become a Retail Sales and Service use. That section was last amended by ordinance C36652, effective May 10, 2025.

Now for the rule that catches the most people out, and it's genuinely new. Since July 11, 2025, SMC 17C.300.110(B) has said that where a lot with an ADU also has a short-term rental, one of the dwelling units on that lot must be occupied by an owner as their permanent and principal residence. That owner has to be there for more than six months of each calendar year, and they may not collect rent on their own unit.

The house-plus-ADU pairing is one of the most common Spokane strategies going, so do check this one against your plan before you buy. There's a waiver of up to a year for good cause, things like a job relocation, a sabbatical, education or illness, though you have to ask the director for it after a complaint has already been filed.

One more piece of history is worth knowing if you're buying an existing operation. Permits active and approved before July 1, 2023 got grandfathered, though a grandfathered rental can't expand beyond what its approved permit covers, and letting the permit lapse throws the property back under the current unit caps.

There's a fee credit too, under SMC 17C.316.080, for property lawfully and continuously permitted as of September 1, 2023. It equals the annual permit fees actually paid over the previous three years, applied against future renewals. Never transferable, never a refund.

One caution the city puts in bold on its own short-term rental program page: a permit does not override your lease, your HOA bylaws, or any covenants and restrictions on the title. Read those first, since the city won't check them for you and won't refund you when they turn out to prohibit subletting.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Spokane

Assuming your building clears those caps, there's still the permit itself to get through, though at least it's an administrative approval and not a public hearing. You apply per rentable unit, so a triplex with two rentals means two applications, two fees and two permit numbers. Everything runs through the city's Accela portal at aca.spokanepermits.org, where the short-term rental application lives under the Planning tab.

Before you can even start that form, you need a City of Spokane business license, which in Washington is issued as a combined state and city license through the Department of Revenue. Per DOR's Spokane endorsement page, the general business license costs $131 to originate, with an employee fee on top ($10 each for one to five employees, $15 for six to ten, $20 beyond that). Renewal is another $131, dropping to $65.50 where your income is $18,000 or less. A non-resident business grossing $4,000 or under pays nothing. Separately, Washington requires a state business license once you gross $12,000 a year or more, or whenever you need a city endorsement or have to collect sales tax, and a short-term rental trips all three.

The permit fees themselves are set by SMC 08.02.066, which points at the city's Development Fee Schedule. As of July 2026, the published figures are:

Permit	Application fee	Annual renewal
Short-term rental, residential zone	$200	$100
Short-term rental, other zones	$300	$150

Both numbers appear on page 11 of the Development Fee Schedule and on the city's own program page. One quirk to keep in mind: the fee gets assessed once your permit is approved, not when you submit, so a rejected application doesn't cost you the $200. The same schedule also adjusts itself every January by the West Urban Consumers price index, which started with the January 2026 adjustment, so confirm the current figure with the permit counter before you budget to the dollar.

Renewal is annual and it's on you to remember, because the city treats silence as an exit. If a renewal fee goes unpaid, the permit simply closes, which is convenient when you're getting out and expensive when you forgot. Once approved, you'll receive a permit to post on site, and your permit number has to appear in every advertisement for the rental, which in practice means the Airbnb listing, the Vrbo listing, the Facebook post and anything else. That requirement also runs through the city's sign code in chapter 17C.240.

Two other features of this permit are worth understanding before you rely on it. SMC 17C.316.040 states flatly that a variance to the standards is prohibited, so there's no appeal on the grounds that your building is unusual.

The permit can also be revoked, and revocation carries a tail. Once a short-term rental permit is revoked, the city will not issue a new one to that owner at that site for two years, which is far more expensive than any fine Spokane can write.

Required Documents for Spokane Short Term Rentals

Since a revoked permit costs you two years at that address, it's worth getting the application right the first time. The city's checklist is short but specific, and every item on it has to be assembled before you open the Accela form. Here's what 17C.316.040(E) and the city's application form ask for:

• The completed application, carrying the property address, and the name, signature, address and telephone number of the owner, plus the operator if that's a different person, plus an emergency contact.
• A copy of your current City of Spokane business license, which is why that step comes first.
• Proof of liability insurance on the rental property.
• A site plan and floor plan showing parking, labeled rooms, and a fire safety plan with means of ingress and egress. The Fire Department or a building plan reviewer may want to verify it.
• A completed and notarized Annual Life Safety Compliance form. Yes, notarized, so budget an appointment.
• Your notification letter plus the mailing list, if the rental sits in a residential zone.
• A copy of the Certificate of Occupancy, where one exists.
• Your UBI or Washington State sales tax number, which the form asks for directly.

That notification letter deserves a paragraph of its own, because it's the requirement people underestimate. It has to describe the operation and how many bedrooms you'll rent to overnight guests, and it has to give a phone number that reaches you or your property manager. Then you mail or deliver it to every recognized neighborhood organization and to the owners of every property abutting yours and directly across the street, once the permit is issued.

You also submit the list of who received it. So Spokane is making sure your neighbors know who to call before they call code enforcement, which cuts both ways.

The Annual Life Safety Compliance form is where the real work sits, since you're certifying under Washington law that thirteen separate conditions hold. Each sleeping room needs an egress window or door with a clear opening of at least 5.7 square feet, or 5.0 at grade level. Every sleeping room and access hallway needs a working smoke alarm and adequate lighting, carbon monoxide alarms have to sit in the immediate vicinity of sleeping rooms, and you need at least one maintained 2A-10BC fire extinguisher stored somewhere a guest can reach it.

From there the list turns into a walk-through. Stairs need sound structure and handrails, deck guardrails have to be firmly attached and lit, bathroom and kitchen counter outlets need GFCI protection, bathrooms need an exhaust fan or an openable window, and nothing in the unit may run on an extension cord. There must be a manual inside listing the breaker box, the fire extinguishers, the exits and your contact details. And for any structure with three or more dwelling units, the building has to be fire sprinklered and working.

Remember that the Building Official separately verifies each bedroom you intend to rent, both against the building code definition of a sleeping room and against current fire code. Living rooms, lofts and closets don't count as sleeping accommodation, no matter how comfortable the sofa bed is, so your advertised sleeping capacity has to match the rooms the city actually signed off on.

Spokane Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to collect, and Spokane's version is mercifully simpler than most. There's no city lodging tax layered on top of a state one here. What you're collecting is retail sales tax, and what you're paying separately is a small gross-receipts tax.

Charge	Rate	Who remits it
Washington state sales tax	6.5%	Airbnb or Vrbo on platform bookings, you on direct bookings
Spokane local sales tax	2.6%	Airbnb or Vrbo on platform bookings, you on direct bookings
Combined tax on the stay	9.1%	Same as above
Special hotel/motel tax	3.3%, properties of 40+ units only	Does not apply to a normal short-term rental
Tourism Promotion Area fee	$5 per night, properties of 40+ units only	Does not apply to a normal short-term rental
Retailing B&O tax	0.471% of gross	You, on your own excise tax return

That 9.1% comes straight from the Department of Revenue's local sales and use tax schedule for July through September 2026, where the City of Spokane (location code 3210) carries a 2.6% local rate on top of the 6.5% state rate. Cross-check it against DOR's lodging rates flyer for the same quarter and the total lodging tax rate for a Spokane City property with 39 or fewer units is the same 9.1%. Nothing extra.

The two lines that look scary in that table almost certainly aren't yours. Spokane's 3.3% special hotel/motel tax and the $5 per night Tourism Promotion Area fee only attach to properties with 40 or more units, and DOR says so in plain language on its special hotel/motel tax page: "In Spokane County, there must be 40 or more units for the tax to apply."

Be aware that several third-party write-ups quote a combined Spokane rate above 12%, which is the hotel number rather than yours. Unless you're running a genuine 40-unit building, the rate on your guest's bill is 9.1%.

Collection is mostly handled for you, though the filing isn't. Under DOR's rules for online marketplaces and property managers, a marketplace facilitator like Airbnb collects and remits state and local retail sales tax, special hotel/motel taxes and convention taxes on the bookings it processes, and Airbnb confirms as much for Washington.

That relief doesn't remove you from the filing system, though. You still register with the department, report all your rental income under Retailing and Retail Sales Tax, then claim the "Gross Sales Collected by Facilitator" deduction so you aren't taxed twice. After that you pay the Retailing B&O tax, currently 0.471% of gross, less the small business credit if you qualify. And don't forget that the commission Airbnb takes isn't deductible, because DOR treats it as a cost of doing business.

DOR's personal home rentals guidance is worth reading once in full, since it presumes you're running a taxable business the moment you advertise on a platform, hire a property manager, or sign short-term rental contracts. Direct bookings change the picture entirely, mind you. Take a reservation through your own website and no facilitator is collecting anything, so the 9.1% is yours to charge, hold and remit. Any stay of 30 consecutive days or more drops out of this regime altogether and becomes nontransient lodging.

If you're weighing a Spokane property against markets where the tax stack runs materially higher, run both through BNBCalc before you commit to either.

Spokane-wide Short Term Rental Rules

Tax is only the first layer where somebody outside your neighborhood has a say. Every permitted rental in Spokane carries the same set of operating duties, wherever in the city it happens to sit, and above those sits a body of Washington state law that no city ordinance can bargain away.

Start with the city-level duties, since they're the ones you'll live with daily. Your permit number goes in every advertisement. Your permit gets posted on site. You keep the life safety checklist current and re-certify it every year. And nuisance behavior on the property, littering or public disturbance under Title 10 of the code, is grounds for revoking the permit outright.

Occupancy works differently here from how most hosts expect. There's no flat guest ceiling in the ordinance, because the limit is the lawful occupant load per square foot plus the generally applicable health and safety provisions of the building and fire code, an approach the city takes straight from RCW 35.21.682. What you certify on the application is a maximum bedroom count with no more than two adults per bedroom, and that's the number your listing has to match.

Parking is the pleasant surprise. Spokane's short-term rental standards point at chapter 17C.230, and since ordinance C36629 took effect on March 6, 2025, SMC 17C.230.110 reads "there is no required minimum number of off-street parking spaces," except where a Conditional Use permit imposes one. You still have to submit a parking plan with the application, so the city can see what exists. You're no longer building stalls to satisfy a formula.

Above the city sits RCW chapter 64.37, Washington's short-term rental statute, and it applies to you whether Spokane mentions it or not. Two provisions have real teeth. RCW 64.37.050 requires primary liability insurance of not less than one million dollars in aggregate for the dwelling unit, or that you transact through a platform carrying equal or greater primary coverage. RCW 64.37.030 then sets the consumer safety floor, which is where the posting rules come from.

Under that section you have to be contactable and able to respond throughout a guest's stay, your carbon monoxide alarms have to satisfy RCW 19.27.530, and four things have to be displayed conspicuously inside the unit:

• The street address of the rental.
• Emergency contact numbers for police, fire and medical services.
• A floor plan showing fire exits and escape routes.
• The maximum occupancy, alongside your own contact information as operator.

A first breach of that draws a warning letter, while a second is a class 2 civil infraction.

What Washington notably has not done is preempt local control. Chapter 64.37 sets a safety and tax floor, then leaves zoning, permitting and caps entirely to cities and counties, and there's still no statewide short-term rental registry.

That's why the rules change so sharply across a boundary line, and why the Washington statewide guide and the Spokane County guide are worth reading alongside this when your property sits near the city limits. For a sense of how differently other Washington cities answer the same question, the Pasco guide and the Port Angeles guide make useful contrasts.

One live item deserves watching rather than planning around. Two companion bills, SB 5576 and HB 2559, would let Washington cities and counties levy a local option tax of up to 4% on short-term rentals to fund affordable housing.

The Senate passed SB 5576 by 27 to 21 in March 2025 before the House amended it and sent it back to Rules, and HB 2559 cleared House Finance in January 2026 then moved to Appropriations in February. As of July 2026 both still sit in committee and neither is law. My read is that a 4% Spokane surcharge is a live risk for the next couple of sessions rather than a cost to model today.

Does Spokane strictly enforce STR rules?

None of that matters much unless somebody checks, and Spokane does check, although the way it checks changed completely in 2024. The city contracted with Granicus to monitor short-term rental activity and began proactive scanning that January. The vendor matches listings on the booking platforms against the city's permit records, then an unpermitted property gets a letter identifying it as non-compliant, with a 30-day grace period to apply.

That's a very different posture from waiting for a neighbor to complain. It's also the reason the permit number in your advertising isn't a formality, since it's the field they're matching on.

Beyond monitoring, SMC 17C.316.060 lets the city inspect a short-term rental for fire and building code compliance and to verify that the Life Safety Compliance form was accurately completed. You notarized that form, so an inaccurate checkbox is a sworn statement rather than a clerical slip.

The revocation ladder is short. You get one warning of violation. Non-compliance after that, or a repeat inside a rolling 12-month period, results in revocation, and the code frames the underlying offense as a type two civil infraction.

There's a wrinkle worth flagging for anyone quoting a dollar figure. The chapter cross-references SMC 01.05.160, the land use penalty schedule that classified chapter 17C.316 violations as class 2, yet the Council repealed that section outright with ordinance C36702, effective August 24, 2025. The cross-reference in the short-term rental chapter still hasn't been updated. Under RCW 7.80.120 a class 2 civil infraction carries a maximum penalty of $125, not including statutory assessments.

So the fine is small and the fine is not the point. Losing the permit means losing two years of nightly income at that address, and a property you bought on short-term numbers becomes a long-term rental for twenty-four months. Add the fact that SMC 17C.316.065 gives the chapter no private right of action and expressly disclaims any city warranty about the safety or fitness of an inspected unit, and the shape of the deal becomes clear enough: Spokane is not underwriting your operation, it's licensing it.

How compliant is the market now? Honestly, I couldn't find a current official count, and the city doesn't publish a running permit total. The best baseline available is historical.

The Spokesman-Review reported in June 2023 that roughly 648 short-term rental units were advertised across the platforms against 44 active city permits, and RANGE Media's coverage of the same rewrite put the compliance rate under 7%. That gap is what the 2023 ordinance and the Granicus contract were built to close, so treat those figures as a snapshot of the problem, not a picture of today's market.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Spokane

Given how the monitoring works, the sequence below matters more than it might look, because two of these steps can kill the plan before you've spent anything.

1. Check the private restrictions first. Your lease, HOA bylaws, condo declaration and any covenants on title all outrank your permit. The city says so on its own page and will not refund you when one of them prohibits subletting.
2. Confirm the structure can hold a rental. One in a house, one in an ADU, one in half a duplex, 20% of a sprinklered multifamily building in a residential zone, 30% in other zones. If you're buying into a building where someone already holds a permit, count the existing ones before you count on yours.
3. Check the ADU rule if a lot has two dwellings. Where an ADU and a short-term rental share a lot, an owner has to live in one of the units for more than six months a year and cannot collect rent on it. Make sure you settle this before closing, not after.
4. Get the Washington and Spokane business license. It's a combined application through the Department of Revenue, and the short-term rental application form asks for the license and the UBI number, so this genuinely has to come first.
5. Book the notary and complete the Life Safety Compliance form. Walk the thirteen items physically: egress windows, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, the 2A-10BC extinguisher, GFCI outlets, handrails, the in-unit manual. Fix what fails before you sign, since you're certifying under penalty.
6. Assemble the rest of the packet. Site plan, floor plan with labeled rooms, fire safety plan showing ingress and egress, liability insurance certificate, Certificate of Occupancy if you have one.
7. Write and send the neighbor notification letter if you're in a residential zone, describing the operation and bedroom count with a working phone number, then keep the recipient list for the file. It goes out on issuance of the permit.
8. Apply through Accela at aca.spokanepermits.org, under the Planning tab, following the city's step-by-step application guide. Pay when the permit is approved.
9. Put the permit number in every listing the day it's issued, and post the permit on site along with the RCW 64.37.030 guest information: address, emergency numbers, floor plan with exits, maximum occupancy and your contact details.
10. Set up tax before your first guest. Register with the Department of Revenue, confirm what your platform collects, and diarize your excise filings and your annual permit renewal in the same reminder.

If you're still choosing between Spokane and another Washington market before any of this begins, BNBCalc Markets is the faster way to compare the revenue side at neighborhood level.

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

Step 10 assumes you know who picks up the phone, and Spokane splits this across three counters. Getting the right one first saves an irritating amount of hold music.

The short-term rental permit itself

The Development Services Center, on the third floor of City Hall, owns the application, the renewal and any question about whether your structure qualifies.

• Address: DSC and Permit Center, 3rd Floor City Hall, 808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
• Phone: 509.625.6300
• Email: [email protected]
• Walk-in hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Apply or renew: aca.spokanepermits.org, Planning tab

For questions about the short-term rental application specifically, including which documents a renewal needs versus a new application, the city routes you to [email protected] or 509.625.6188, which is the number printed on both the application guide and the original monitoring announcement. The application form itself lists a direct permit line of 509.625.6999.

Business license and city taxes

The city's licensing and tax questions go to Taxes and Licenses, not to the permit counter.

• Address: 808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
• Phone: 509-625-6070
• Email: [email protected]

The license application itself is filed through the Washington Department of Revenue's Business Licensing Service, since Spokane's endorsement rides on the state license.

State sales tax, lodging tax and excise filings

Anything involving the 9.1%, the Retailing B&O tax or your quarterly return belongs to the Washington State Department of Revenue, not to the city. Its lodging industry guide covers the transient lodging rules, and the personal home rentals page is the one written for owners in your position. For zoning questions outside the city limits, remember that Spokane Valley and unincorporated Spokane County are separate jurisdictions with separate permit counters.

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

Those counters will tell you what the rule is. What they can't tell you is how it feels to operate under it, and sentiment is harder to source than an ordinance. Reddit blocks automated access, and the BiggerPockets Spokane thread most write-ups still point at has since gone dead, so nothing below is a quotation from a specific forum. What follows is my read of the public record around Spokane's rewrite, and you should weigh it accordingly.

The dominant theme through the 2023 debate was fairness rather than prohibition, and it has stayed that way since. Council President Breean Beggs put it plainly to the Spokesman-Review at the time: "people have been complaining for years that they have been paying the fees, and the other people haven't." When only 44 of roughly 648 advertised units held a permit, the operators who had done the paperwork were carrying the cost for everyone who hadn't. That's a complaint about enforcement, mind you, not a complaint about short-term rentals existing.

The counter-argument came from housing advocates and from council members worried about conversion. Councilwoman Lori Kinnear's line, that "certainly there's a place for [short-term rentals], but there can be too much of a good thing," captures the mood on that side well enough.

What nobody produced, and RANGE Media made this the centerpiece of its reporting, was local evidence that short-term rentals were measurably moving Spokane rents. The city's own planning director conceded the impact "is not well understood in a market such as Spokane." That evidentiary gap is why Spokane landed on permits and per-building caps instead of a hard citywide ceiling.

For an investor, the practical read is that Spokane asks a lot of you up front and comparatively little afterwards. There's no lottery, no residency test on a standalone rental, no seasonal blackout and no ceiling on the total number of permits. The friction is front-loaded into the application, while the ongoing risk sits in one place. Keep the permit.

The paperwork is the easy part. Watch out for the two structural traps instead: a multifamily building that has already used up its 20% or 30% allocation, and an ADU lot where the 2025 owner-occupancy rule quietly removes the investor version of the deal.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a permit to run an Airbnb in Spokane, Washington?

Yes. Every dwelling unit rented for fewer than 30 consecutive days in the City of Spokane needs its own short-term rental permit under Spokane Municipal Code chapter 17C.316, plus a City of Spokane business license. The application costs $200 in a residential zone and $300 in other zones, and both renew annually at $100 and $150. Your permit number must appear in every advertisement, and the city monitors listing sites for properties operating without one.

Do you have to live in the property to run a short-term rental in Spokane?

Not usually. A standalone short-term rental in Spokane carries no owner-occupancy or primary-residence requirement, so an investor can own a property and rent it whole. One exception applies: since July 11, 2025, where a lot has both an accessory dwelling unit and a short-term rental, an owner must occupy one of the dwelling units as a permanent and principal residence for more than six months a year and may not collect rent on it.

What is the tax rate on a short-term rental in Spokane?

The combined retail sales tax on a Spokane City stay is 9.1%, made up of Washington's 6.5% state rate plus a 2.6% local rate, effective July through September 2026. Spokane's 3.3% special hotel/motel tax and its $5 per night Tourism Promotion Area fee only apply to properties with 40 or more units, so they do not touch a normal rental. Hosts also pay Retailing B&O tax of 0.471% on gross receipts.

Does Airbnb collect and pay Spokane lodging taxes for you?

Airbnb and other marketplace facilitators collect and remit Washington state and local retail sales tax on the bookings they process, along with special hotel/motel and convention taxes where those apply. That relief does not end your own filing duty. You still register with the Department of Revenue, report gross rental income under Retailing and Retail Sales Tax, claim the "Gross Sales Collected by Facilitator" deduction, and pay the Retailing B&O tax yourself. Direct bookings are entirely yours to collect and remit.

What happens if you rent on Airbnb in Spokane without a permit?

The city identifies unpermitted listings through its Granicus monitoring contract and sends a non-compliance letter with a 30-day grace period to apply. Keep operating past that and the code treats it as a civil infraction, which under state law carries a maximum penalty of $125 plus statutory assessments. The far bigger cost is revocation, because once a short-term rental permit is revoked, Spokane will not issue a new one at that site for two years.

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