McLennan County, Texas Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in McLennan County, Texas and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you don't need a permit to do it, at least not if your property sits on unincorporated county land. McLennan County has no short-term rental ordinance, no zoning code, and no licensing process for one, because Texas counties generally can't zone the way cities do, and the county says as much on its own site: its page on new residential construction states plainly that its limited authority "does not give prior approval authority to the County... or authorize the adoption or enforcement of zoning regulations." That's a genuinely different starting point from Waco, the county's biggest city just a few miles down the road, where a license and a zoning map decide who gets to rent to guests at all.

The catch, and there's always one, is that county silence on permits doesn't mean county silence on tax. McLennan County has run its own 2% hotel occupancy tax since the county imposed it by Commissioners Court order, and that stacks with the state's flat 6% hotel occupancy tax on every taxable night, whether you're renting a farmhouse outside Riesel or a cabin along the Bosque. And if your address happens to sit inside one of the county's smaller cities rather than open county land, that city can add its own layer on top, since municipalities keep the zoning and taxing power counties don't have.

So this guide walks through what unincorporated McLennan County asks of a host in 2026: the near-total absence of licensing, the one piece of paperwork the county does touch, the tax stack and how to file it, the statewide legal framework sitting above all of it, and who answers the phone when you have a question. Every figure below comes from McLennan County's own pages and forms, the Texas Comptroller, and the Texas Legislature's own bill records, checked in July 2026, and I've said plainly wherever I couldn't confirm something rather than guessing at it.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in McLennan County

Since there's no license standing between you and a listing out here, the real first step isn't paperwork, it's figuring out exactly what kind of land you're sitting on. McLennan County wraps around Waco and includes a ring of smaller incorporated cities, Bellmead, Woodway, Hewitt, Robinson, Lorena and McGregor among them, and each of those cities keeps the zoning and permitting authority the county itself doesn't have. If your address falls inside one of them, that city's own council may well have adopted an ordinance the county never could, so do check with that specific city before assuming county rules, or the lack of them, apply to you. This guide covers unincorporated land and, where a smaller city hasn't published its own STR rules, the general framework that fills the gap. Waco runs a fully separate licensing system that its own guide covers in detail.

Assuming your property really is unincorporated, the freedom is real. Nobody at the county reviews your floor plan, checks your parking, or caps your occupancy before you take a booking, because there's no ordinance authorizing anyone to do any of that. What doesn't go away, though, is anything private. Keep in mind that a subdivision's deed restrictions or an HOA's covenants operate entirely outside county authority, so a homeowners' association can still ban short-term rentals on your street even though the county has nothing to say about it. Pull your deed and any recorded restrictions before you assume the county's silence is the whole story.

Before you go further than that, it's worth running the actual numbers, since "no permit required" doesn't automatically mean "profitable." Land near Waco proper and near Baylor University tends to carry a premium that rural county land doesn't, and a property that clears every regulatory hurdle can still lose money at the wrong price. A quick pass through BNBCalc will tell you that part in a couple of minutes, well before you've spent anything on inspections or insurance. Compare that against a county with active zoning fights over the exact same question, like the Williamson County guide covering the fast-growing Austin suburbs, and the contrast in what you're signing up for becomes obvious fast.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in McLennan County

Assuming your due diligence clears both of those checks, land status and private restrictions, the licensing question itself resolves quickly: there isn't one. McLennan County has never adopted a short-term rental ordinance for its unincorporated area, and unlike Waco, there's no application, no fee, and no inspection tied to renting out a home you already own.

This absence isn't an oversight so much as a boundary the county doesn't have the authority to cross on its own. A 2021 bill, House Bill 2537 of the 87th Legislature, would've let certain counties require STR registration and permits in their unincorporated areas, capping the fee at $450 and barring the county from limiting how many permits it issued. Read the bill closely, though, and it only ever applied to "a county with a population of 585,000 or more that is adjacent to a county with a population of 4 million or more," and McLennan County's population runs closer to 273,700 as of 2026, nowhere near that threshold even if the bill had gone anywhere. It didn't. Legislative records show it was referred to the County Affairs committee in March 2021 and never came back out. No successor bill has filled that gap since, and the Texas Municipal League's own April 2024 legal guidance on short-term rentals doesn't identify any general statute handing counties like McLennan a licensing power either.

There's exactly one piece of county process that touches residential property at all, and it has nothing to do with renting one out. Under Local Government Code Chapter 233, McLennan County adopted a limited building-notice requirement back in 2009 and revised it in September 2020, so new residential construction, or an improvement that adds more than 50% to a structure's square footage or value, has to meet the International Residential Code edition in force in Waco, the county seat. That's a notice-and-inspection obligation on the builder, though, not a permit the county issues or a fee the county charges, and it reaches only that narrow slice of new or heavily renovated construction. Buying an existing house and putting it on Airbnb doesn't trigger it at all. Do check whether your project clears that 50% renovation threshold before assuming this section applies to you; most hosts buying an already-built home in the county never touch it.

Required Documents for McLennan County Short-Term Rentals

Since that one exception is the only paperwork the county touches, it's worth knowing exactly what it asks for and, more importantly, what it doesn't. If you're renting out an existing home as-is, McLennan County has no application, no floor plan review, and no document packet to assemble before you list. The documents that matter live somewhere else instead, and they split into two categories depending on what you're doing with the property.

If you're building new or renovating past that 50% threshold, the county's construction-notice process requires:

• A Notice of Residential Construction form, filed before or during construction, stating the property's location, the approximate completion date, and which edition of the IRC the build follows.
• Three inspections during different phases of construction, performed by a licensed third-party inspector, since the county itself has no inspection authority or budget for one.
• A Notice of Residential Construction Inspection Compliance, which the inspector submits both to the county and to the property owner, documenting that the build met the applicable code.

Send those to the County Engineer's Office, 215 N 5th St, Ste 130, Waco, TX 76701. Skip the process on a qualifying project and the county can pursue a Class C misdemeanor, seek injunctive relief through the county attorney, or refer the builder for prosecution under Local Government Code § 233.157, so this isn't a formality worth ignoring if it applies to you. One exemption worth knowing: an individual building their own primary residence, acting as their own contractor, doesn't face the penalty provisions even where the notice requirement technically reaches them.

For everyone else, the document that governs day-to-day operation is your hotel occupancy tax filing, so register with Avenu Insights & Analytics, the vendor the county contracts with to collect its 2% tax, and separately confirm your state hotel tax account with the Texas Comptroller if you're not relying entirely on a platform that collects automatically. If your property sits inside one of the county's smaller cities, add whatever business registration or lodging-tax form that city publishes on top, since its rules run independently of the county's. Make sure you keep copies of every filing and, where it applies, the construction inspection notice, because either one could get asked for later and neither is something you want to be reconstructing from memory.

McLennan County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you're through the licensing question and the (mostly empty) documents list, there's still tax to deal with, and this is where McLennan County does show up. Three layers can apply to a single booking, though not every host owes all three.

Tax	Rate	Collected by
State Hotel Occupancy Tax	6%	Texas Comptroller
McLennan County Hotel Occupancy Tax	2%	McLennan County, via Avenu Insights & Analytics
City Hotel Occupancy Tax (if inside an incorporated city)	Varies by city	That city

As of July 2026, a property on true unincorporated land carries a baseline combined rate of 8%: the state's flat 6% plus the county's 2%. Inside Waco city limits, the county's 2% stacks with the city's own rate for a combined 15%, a detail our separate Waco guide covers in full. Inside one of the county's other cities, expect that city's own hotel tax on top of the 8% baseline, and since rates vary city to city, check the specific one your property sits in rather than assuming it matches Waco's.

Platform collection covers part of this automatically, not all of it. Airbnb has collected and remitted the state's 6% share for Texas hosts since May 1, 2017, and Vrbo has done the same since April 1, 2019. I couldn't confirm from either platform's own pages that Airbnb or Vrbo automatically collects McLennan County's 2% share the same way, so don't assume your dashboard has that piece covered. Check what's being withheld against what you owe Avenu each month, because that gap is exactly where a host ends up with a surprise bill.

Filing the county's 2% runs monthly through Avenu, and returns are based on gross room receipts minus legal exemptions (a guest contracted for 30 or more consecutive days, or certain federal and state employees). Payment itself is due by the 20th of the month following the one you're reporting. Miss that date and a 5% penalty applies, rising to 10% if you're more than 30 days late, with interest accruing at 10% a year once a return sits unpaid for 60 days. Avenu's support line is (866) 240-3665, and online filing runs through salestaxonline.com.

Possible Write-Offs and Deductions

Your rental income is ordinary taxable income at the federal level, and Texas has no state income tax to add on top of it, which simplifies at least one part of the math. The usual landlord deductions apply: mortgage interest, depreciation, property insurance, repairs and maintenance, cleaning costs and supplies, platform service fees, and a share of utilities where the property isn't purely a rental. The hotel occupancy tax you send in every month counts as a business cost you can write off too, not something you're paying twice. Keep records of every dollar, since depreciation recapture and personal-use-day rules get complicated fast if the property does double duty as a family getaway, and a CPA familiar with short-term rentals is worth the fee before you file anything.

Texas Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Zoom out from McLennan County's own numbers, and the reason there's so little for the county to enforce becomes clearer: Texas itself has never settled who gets to write these rules in the first place. No state statute preempts or authorizes local STR regulation, and the Texas Municipal League's own legal guidance says so directly. Cities regulate under general zoning and home-rule authority instead, mainly Local Government Code Chapter 211, while counties like McLennan are left with essentially nothing, since state law never extended that zoning power to them the way it did to cities.

The Texas Supreme Court has had two chances to settle whether an outright STR ban is even constitutional and taken neither. In City of Grapevine v. Muns, decided in June 2023, Justice Young called the question "of increasing and demonstrable importance" while agreeing the case in front of the court was "a less-than-ideal vehicle" for resolving it. Dallas's 2023 ordinance banning most short-term rentals in single-family zones may end up being that cleaner vehicle, since it's currently on petition for review after an appeals court upheld an injunction against it, though a February 2026 order reportedly abated the case and pulled it off the court's active docket. Meanwhile, two appellate rulings shape the landscape without binding the whole state: Zaatari v. City of Austin struck down Austin's retroactive ban on non-owner-occupied rentals, and Grapevine v. Muns at the appellate level called leasing one's property "a fundamental and vested right," since appellate decisions bind only their own district rather than the whole state.

One statewide guardrail does exist and it's worth knowing even though it's aimed at cities, not counties. Local Government Code § 211.019, amended in 2023, says that if a zoning change turns an existing short-term rental into a nonconforming use, the city has to either let it keep operating or compensate the owner for the drop in property value. Beyond that, the legislature hasn't moved much: no STR-specific bill made it through the 2025 regular session, and a broad local-preemption bill filed in a called session that July hadn't advanced as of this research. Our Texas statewide guide maps the rest of that framework in more depth, including the tax rules that apply no matter which of the state's 254 counties you're operating in.

Does McLennan County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

All that legal uncertainty sits well above McLennan County's own desk, and the honest answer to how strictly the county enforces anything is that there's barely anything on the books to enforce. No permit exists, so there's no license to revoke and no inspector checking your occupancy count against a cap that doesn't exist either. From what I found, the county hasn't publicized a single short-term-rental enforcement action, and that tracks: you can't cite someone for violating an ordinance the county never passed.

Even so, a hands-off county doesn't mean zero risk, just a narrower kind of it. The construction-notice requirement carries real teeth if it applies to your project, up to a Class C misdemeanor and a referral for prosecution, and on top of that, the county's tax penalties run automatically on their own schedule regardless of whether anyone at the county ever looks at your listing. Unpaid hotel occupancy tax accrues penalties and interest whether or not you get caught, which makes it closer to a debt than a citation. Watch out, too, for the fact that any smaller incorporated city inside the county keeps its own enforcement authority if it has adopted rules, so the county's hands-off posture doesn't automatically extend to Bellmead or Woodway. And an HOA doesn't need the county's help at all; a deed-restriction lawsuit runs through civil court on its own timeline, independent of anything McLennan County does or doesn't regulate.

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

Assuming your situation still fits after all of that, working through these roughly in order saves you from spending money on a step that turns out not to matter.

1. Confirm your land is actually unincorporated. Check the property against the county appraisal district's map or call the Commissioners Court directly, since a Waco mailing address doesn't always mean Waco city limits, and the reverse is true too.
2. Check for a homeowners' association or deed restriction. The county won't stop you, but a private covenant can, and it's a cheaper problem to find before closing than after.
3. If you're building new or renovating past 50% of the structure's value, file the Notice of Residential Construction with the County Engineer's Office and line up your three inspections against the IRC edition the county has adopted.
4. Register for the county's 2% hotel occupancy tax with Avenu, and set up your state hotel tax account with the Texas Comptroller for anything not already collected through your booking platform.
5. If your property sits inside a smaller incorporated city, contact that city's planning department directly, since it can zone and license independently of the county even where the county itself has no rules at all.
6. Get landlord or short-term-rental-specific insurance. A standard homeowner's policy typically excludes commercial short-term use, and this is one place where county silence really doesn't protect you from anything.
7. Run the numbers before you commit to a purchase. BNBCalc Markets shows revenue and occupancy data across Texas markets, which is worth comparing against county land near Waco before you decide the absence of a permit is the only thing that matters.
8. File your hotel occupancy tax monthly, remembering the 20th-of-the-month deadline, and keep every filing and inspection record somewhere you can find it again.

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

Whichever step you're stuck on, a small handful of offices own the answer between them, and knowing which one to call first saves an irritating amount of time.

Construction, building code and the one county-level notice

The McLennan County Engineer's Office handles the residential construction notice covered above, for new builds and major renovations in unincorporated areas.

• Address: 215 N 5th St, Ste 130, Waco, TX 76701
• Governs: the Notice of Residential Construction and its inspection compliance documents

County hotel occupancy tax

Avenu Insights & Analytics collects and processes McLennan County's 2% hotel occupancy tax on the county's behalf.

• Phone: (866) 240-3665
• Fax: (844) 528-6529
• Email: [email protected]
• Online filing: salestaxonline.com
• Mail: Hotel Occupancy Tax Dept., PO Box 830725, Birmingham, AL 35283-0725

State hotel tax and the bigger legal picture

The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts administers the state's 6% hotel occupancy tax and publishes the statewide hotel tax rules and FAQ that govern registration for hosts not fully covered by platform collection.

County governance generally

There's no separate zoning or planning department to call, because the county doesn't have zoning authority to administer. For anything not covered above, the McLennan County Commissioners Court is the county's general governing body.

• Address: 501 Washington Ave, Waco, TX 76701
• Phone: (254) 757-5049

The McLennan County Tax Assessor-Collector, Randy H. Riggs, handles the county's property (ad valorem) tax rather than the hotel occupancy tax, but it's a useful office to know about if you're buying property in the county.

• Address: Records Building, 215 N 5th St, Waco, TX 76701 (mail to PO Box 406, Waco, TX 76703)
• Phone: (254) 757-5151

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

I couldn't reach Reddit directly to survey its threads, so what follows is my read of the public discussion I could actually access, mainly BiggerPockets, rather than a formal survey, and it's worth weighing accordingly. What stands out first is how little regulation itself comes up. On a BiggerPockets thread aimed at out-of-town investors, Waco-based agent Trevor Caswell spends almost the entire post on pricing and competition rather than permits. Homes near downtown and Magnolia run $350,000 to $700,000, and most STRs listed on the MLS sit priced above what actually cash flows at those numbers. On top of that, new hotel supply, including a Magnolia-branded hotel and an AC Marriott, is coming for the same guests short-term rentals compete for, so he tells investors with smaller budgets they've largely "missed the bus" on the walkable core and points them toward off-market deals instead.

That silence on regulation is itself a data point. Nobody in that thread frets about a county permit application or a denial, because there's nothing to apply for once you're outside Waco's city limits, and pricing rather than paperwork is what actually trips people up. It's a different conversation entirely from a county that has fought its own zoning battles, like the Galveston County guide or the Lubbock County guide, where regulation shows up in nearly every investor thread because there's an actual rule to argue about. Take that contrast seriously if you're comparing McLennan County against a market with a real permitting regime: the absence of a fight here is the whole story, not a gap in what I could find.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in unincorporated McLennan County in 2026?

Yes, without a permit or license, since McLennan County has no short-term rental ordinance and no zoning authority to require one. You still owe hotel occupancy tax: 6% to the state and 2% to the county on every taxable night. If your property is inside a smaller incorporated city rather than truly unincorporated land, that city's own rules, which can include zoning or a licensing requirement, apply on top of anything the county does or doesn't ask for.

Does McLennan County require a short-term rental permit?

No. The county has never adopted a short-term rental ordinance for its unincorporated area, and a 2021 bill that would've let some Texas counties require STR permits, House Bill 2537, only ever applied to counties with 585,000 or more residents adjacent to a county of 4 million or more, a threshold McLennan County doesn't come close to. The bill also never passed. Waco, the county's largest city, does require its own license, which its separate guide covers.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in McLennan County?

A baseline combined rate of 8% applies on unincorporated land: the state's flat 6% hotel occupancy tax plus McLennan County's own 2%. Airbnb and Vrbo both collect and remit the state's 6% automatically, but neither platform's own materials confirm it collects the county's 2% share for you, so check your dashboard against what you owe. Inside Waco, the combined rate rises to 15% once the city's own tax stacks on top; inside one of the county's other cities, expect that city's own additional rate.

Does McLennan County have any building requirements for a short-term rental?

Only if you're building new or renovating more than 50% of a structure's value. In that case, the county's limited Chapter 233 notice process kicks in: file a construction notice with the County Engineer's Office, arrange three inspections from a licensed third-party inspector, and submit proof of compliance. Buying and renting out an existing home doesn't trigger any of that. Skipping the notice on a qualifying project can lead to a Class C misdemeanor and a referral for prosecution.

What happens if a homeowners' association bans short-term rentals in McLennan County?

The county's lack of a short-term rental ordinance has no bearing on a private deed restriction or HOA covenant, since those operate under separate civil law rather than county regulation. An HOA can enforce a ban through the courts even where the county itself imposes no restriction at all, so make sure you check recorded restrictions on the property before assuming county silence means you're clear to operate.

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