Hudson Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Hudson and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that Hudson never banned short-term rentals, so yes, you can legally run one. The catch comes straight away, though, because § 325-28.3 of the city's zoning code only permits a short-term rental where the operator lives on the same parcel. Unfortunately for anyone picturing a Warren Street row house bought purely as an investment and handed off to a manager, that plan isn't available in Hudson in 2026, at any price and under any permit.

Two groups qualify, and which one you fall into decides almost everything else. A full-time resident of the city can operate up to three short-term rental units, as long as all three sit on the parcel where that resident lives, and there's no cap on nights. Someone who owns a dwelling unit here and stays in it at least 50 days a year gets one unit and a hard ceiling of 60 days per calendar year. The old grandfathering is gone as well, since the Treasurer's office states that all extensions for non-compliant STR units expired in December 2024.

Hudson is a small city in Columbia County, up in the Hudson Valley, and it stacks its own rules on top of the county's and the state's, which is where most of the confusion starts. So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: who's allowed to host, what the annual registration costs, the tax layers you'll be collecting, how hard the city pushes on enforcement, and who to call when something doesn't fit your situation. Every figure below comes from Hudson's own code, city pages and Common Council minutes, Columbia County's Treasurer, or New York State, checked in July 2026. Before you commit to anything, run the property through BNBCalc first, because a 60-night ceiling changes what a house can earn in a year far more than most owners expect.

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

That resident-on-the-parcel rule lives in one chapter of the city code, while the money side lives in another, and keeping the two apart makes the whole thing far easier to follow.

Chapter 325 is the zoning law, and § 325-28.3 decides who may operate. Chapter 275, Article VIII is the Short-Term Lodging Tax, and it decides what you register, collect and remit. Both hang off the same definition: short-term lodging means a room let to a third party "for a period of not more than 29 consecutive days." Book someone in for 30 nights or longer and you've left this regime entirely, which is the single most useful sentence in the code for anyone whose plan doesn't fit.

Under § 325-28.3(A), a short-term rental is permitted in Hudson in only three circumstances, and the third one has already closed:

• A City of Hudson resident may operate up to three short-term rental units, individually or through an entity in which that person holds a majority equity and voting interest. All three units have to be on the same parcel where the resident resides.
• An owner who resides in the dwelling unit at least 50 days a year may operate it as a short-term rental unit for a maximum of 60 days per calendar year. That's one unit, not three.
• A legacy operation running before March 6, 2020, that had paid lodging tax for the period ending May 31, 2020, could continue for one year after the law took effect. The Zoning Board of Appeals could extend that by up to three years on "competent dollars-and-cents proof" of investment and lost return, and every one of those extensions has since run out.

A "short-term rental unit," incidentally, is defined as a rental with its own access and egress that's separately offered to the public, so three bedrooms let individually inside one house are not three units. Three separate entrances would be.

Two safety rules ride along with the permission, and neither is optional. No short-term rental unit may sit above the second floor unless that floor has a fire sprinkler system or was otherwise built to the New York State code requirements for residential occupancy at that height.

Every sleeping room also needs a written notice affixed to the occupied side of its entrance door, giving the means of egress, the location of any fire alarm pull, and the evacuation procedure. Make sure that notice is on the door itself rather than tucked into a welcome binder, because it's the kind of thing a code officer checks first.

Then there's the provision that catches people who thought a fine was the worst outcome. Under § 325-28.3(D), the right to operate a short-term rental on a parcel terminates for two full years if the operator is found guilty in court of violating Chapter 157 (garbage, rubbish or refuse), Chapter 210 (noise), or § 300-27 on abandoned vehicles, for that same parcel. A rowdy guest weekend that ends in a noise conviction doesn't cost you a citation. It costs you the business for two years.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Hudson

Given how narrow that permission is, start with eligibility rather than paperwork. Most people who arrive in Hudson looking at short-term rentals don't qualify, and finding that out early saves a fee that doesn't come back.

If your plan involves buying here while living somewhere else, there is no version of it that works. The code requires the operator to be a resident, the Treasurer's office repeats that requirement in plain language on its own page, and there's no permit, fee, LLC or management company that converts a non-resident into a resident. An entity can hold the property, mind you, but only where a Hudson resident holds the majority of the equity and the votes in it, which is a structuring allowance rather than a loophole.

So what's left? Genuinely two businesses, and they look nothing alike.

The first is a resident running up to three units on their own parcel with no night limit, which is the only shape in Hudson that can carry a full year of bookings. Think a homeowner with a carriage house and a garden apartment behind the main house. That's a real operation, and it's the one the code was written to protect.

The second is a part-time owner renting for 60 days a year, which is closer to offsetting your carrying costs than to running a business. It's also a much smaller world than most people assume. When the Common Council pulled the numbers in early 2026, Housing Justice Director Michelle Tullo reported that over a full year only 13 people had used the 60-day provision, most of them renting for 15 to 30 days, with only two or three anywhere near the cap. Remember that the 50-day residency requirement runs alongside it too, so you have to be physically using the place.

One softener sits on the Treasurer's page and it's worth a phone call rather than an assumption: the city notes that "some exceptions may be possible for certain property owners who operate businesses in Hudson," and points you to its housing team to ask.

Anyone who doesn't fit either lane still has two lawful routes. Renting for 30 consecutive days or longer drops you out of the short-term lodging definition altogether and into ordinary landlord and tenant law, which is where a lot of Hudson Valley furnished inventory has quietly moved.

The other route is to look just outside the city line. The surrounding towns of Columbia County set their own rules and generally allow non-resident owners, subject to county registration and whatever the town or village requires. Our New York statewide guide maps how much that varies from one municipality to the next, while the Westchester County guide covers the tighter downstate end of the same spectrum.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Hudson

Assuming you clear the residency test and are able to move forward, the next step is still registration, and Hudson runs it through the Treasurer rather than a planning department.

Every host has to register annually with the City Treasurer under § 275-27, on the form that office prescribes. The annual window is March 1 to March 31, and the fee, as published by the Treasurer, is $100 per address plus $25 per room offered for short-term lodging. First-time fees get prorated. A new operator who starts mid-year doesn't wait for March either, because the code requires a registration application within three days after offering short-term lodging, and the city asks new businesses to register before they open.

One line on the Treasurer's page trips up more hosts than any other. You must register even if you aren't required to collect and remit the lodging tax. Being exempt from the tax isn't the same as being exempt from registering, and of the two, missing the registration carries the far harsher penalty.

What you get back is a certificate of authority, tied to the specific address, listing your name and the number of rooms available. It's non-transferable and non-assignable, so it doesn't travel with a sale, and § 275-27(D) requires you to post it at the location the same way a New York State sales tax certificate is posted.

Certificates run March through February and have to be renewed inside that same March window. Registration, renewal and quarterly payments all go through the city's online partner, LocalGov, which takes e-check for free or card for a percentage fee.

The penalties in § 275-36 are where operating quietly stops being cheap. Failing to file the annual registration draws a fine equal to the greater of all revenue you derived while unregistered, or $3,000 per quarter in which the city can show you were offering short-term lodging. Read that first half again, because it's designed to take the whole upside rather than to sting.

The smaller penalties compound instead. Late tax filing or payment adds 5% of the tax due plus 1% interest a month. Failing to post the certificate runs $100 to $250, ignoring a records demand runs the same, and on both of those every single day counts as its own violation.

Required Documents for Hudson Short-Term Rentals

Since none of those fees come back, it's worth assembling the paperwork properly the first time. The list is short by big-city standards, though the notarised piece catches people out because it can't be produced at the last minute.

• A driver's licence, uploaded through your LocalGov business account.
• A residency or business supporting document, such as a voter registration or a utility bill.
• An executed and notarised affirmation attesting to your residency status and your compliance with fire code. The city publishes the form in Word and PDF on the Treasurer's page, and notarisation can be done inside or outside New York State.
• Proof of proper zoning, for bed and breakfasts, along with confirmation of B&B status. Hudson defines that as accommodation for fewer than 30 consecutive days, separate rooms for no more than ten guests at a time, and one hot meal a day.

Then there's the quarterly filing, which asks for evidence rather than a number you type in. You'll need to supply your New York State sales tax filing for the same period, or the sales report your booking platform generates for that period, or a copy of an accounting ledger. Tax-exempt certificates go in for any exempt revenue you're claiming. Under § 275-29, keep your occupancy and rent records for three years, because the Treasurer can demand them at any time and, as noted above, every day you don't produce them is a separate violation.

Hudson Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get registered and are able to start taking bookings, there's still tax to sort out, and Hudson's situation is unusual enough that a county-wide answer will mislead you.

Three layers exist in Columbia County, but only two of them touch a stay inside the Hudson city line.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
City of Hudson lodging tax	5% of rent per day	Host remits to the City Treasurer
New York State and local sales tax	8% combined	Booking service, as a registered vendor
Columbia County lodging tax	4% (does not apply inside the City of Hudson)	Columbia County Treasurer

The city's own charge sits at 5% per day of the rent as of July 2026, and "rent" here explicitly includes cleaning fees, linen fees and key fees, so the base is bigger than the nightly rate. That rate is recent, mind you.

It was 4% until Local Law No. 1 of 2025 replaced § 275-23(A), taking effect on March 1, 2025, using authority the state granted through Senate Bill S9263, signed November 22, 2024 as Chapter 526. The Common Council then re-enacted the whole article through Local Law No. 8 of 2025, effective December 1, 2025, so the tax carried on without a gap.

The sunset date doesn't add up, and I'd rather flag that than smooth it over. The extension law recites state authorisation running to December 1, 2027, yet the sunset clause it re-enacts at § 275-44 still reads December 1, 2025, which was the day the law took effect. The same clause expressly allows "subsequent local laws continuing or imposing the tax," so going through both documents, it reads as text copied forward from 2022 rather than a one-day sunset, and the tax is plainly being collected in 2026. Since I couldn't pin the operative expiry to one clean source, do check with the Treasurer before you rely on a date.

A genuine exemption exists, and it's narrow. Under § 275-23(B), the lodging tax doesn't apply to a single room in the host's sole and primary residence in Hudson, provided no more than one such room is offered and the guest's access and egress runs solely through the host's own front door. Add a second room, or a separate entrance, and the exemption disappears. Registration, remember, is still required either way.

The state layer is collected for you in most cases. New York extended sales tax to short-term rental unit occupancy from March 1, 2025, with booking services registering as sales tax vendors and collecting on the occupancies they facilitate. Publication 718, effective March 1, 2025, puts the combined state and local rate in Columbia County at 8%.

Nobody collects Hudson's 5% for you, though, and that's what catches people out. Airbnb's New York occupancy tax page confirms it collects the Columbia County lodging tax of 4% on stays of 29 nights or shorter, and that this excludes the City of Hudson. So the city tax is yours to collect, file and pay quarterly on the Treasurer's schedule: the March to May period is due June 30, June to August by September 30, September to November by December 31, and December to February by March 31.

Watch out for the crossed wires that came with that county arrangement, because they're live right now. Treasurer Heather Campbell told the Council's Finance Committee in April 2026 that "something funky is going on" after the county contracted with Airbnb, since Hudson operators started receiving notices saying Airbnb would collect and remit county tax on their behalf. A county official told her Airbnb was contracted only for sales tax. As she put it, "it's a mess and apparently, it's a mess at the county as well." So if a platform notice tells you your Hudson county tax is handled, call the City Treasurer before you stop filing.

New York Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Hudson can be that strict, and can keep its own tax lane, because New York lets it. The state has never broadly preempted municipal short-term rental regulation, and the Department of State tells local governments in its own training material for municipalities that it is "up to each municipality to define, prohibit and/or regulate short term rentals as they choose."

What the state did build is a tax and registry framework sitting above the local one. Chapter 672 of the Laws of 2024, signed December 21, 2024, created the statewide framework and added Article 2-A to the Multiple Dwelling Law.

Then Chapter 99 of the Laws of 2025, signed February 28, 2025, restructured it. Instead of one state registry, each county decides whether to run its own, with a local-law opt-out. That opt-out window closed on June 26, 2026, and Columbia County stayed in, which is why the county now operates a registry and a 4% lodging tax of its own.

For a host inside the city line, the practical effect is smaller than it sounds. The City of Hudson's Treasurer states that Hudson "is being permitted to continue handling its own registration and tax collection separately," and that the city reports all registered short-term rentals to the county on operators' behalf. So keep in mind that you register once, with the city, and the county hears about you from City Hall. Everywhere else in Columbia County, hosts register directly with the county Treasurer, per address, and re-register every two years.

One statewide rule sits underneath all of it. Multiple Dwelling Law § 4(8)(a) restricts class A multiple dwellings to "permanent residence purposes," meaning 30 consecutive days or more, and that's the provision New York City built Local Law 18 on top of. It bites hardest in dense multi-unit housing rather than in a small Hudson Valley city, though it's the reason the 30-day line keeps reappearing across the state. The Erie County guide shows how differently the same state framework lands in an upstate metro, and the Nassau County guide covers the Long Island version.

Does Hudson Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

State law sets the frame, yet the actual policing is Hudson's own job, and the city does it less strictly than that stack of penalties suggests. It says so itself, which is the honest answer rather than the comfortable one.

Council President Margaret Morris, asked in March 2026 what enforcement had actually been done, called it a self-report situation. A neighbour noticing that a house has been rented past its 60 days is, in her words, "really the only mechanism they have for enforcement." Councilmember Belton pushed back that residents don't even know who to call, since it isn't written down anywhere. Nobody patrols listings. Nobody audits calendars.

So the day cap runs largely on trust. Where the city does have teeth is everywhere money and paperwork are involved, and that's the part worth pricing in.

The registration penalty in § 275-36(A) isn't a ticket, it's disgorgement: the greater of every dollar you earned while unregistered, or $3,000 for each quarter the city can show you were offering lodging. Collection sits on top of that. Under § 275-33, unpaid lodging tax can become a lien on the property, the Treasurer can direct the Assessor to add the amount to the next assessment roll, or the city can issue a warrant to the Columbia County Sheriff to levy and sell property. Those are hotel-tax collection powers pointed at a spare bedroom.

Zoning breaches carry their own exposure, and § 325-28.3(E) makes every day of a continued violation a separate offence punishable under § 325-33. I could not open that penalty section, so I'm not going to quote a dollar figure for it. The compounding is the part that matters anyway, along with the two-year shutdown that follows a noise or refuse conviction.

What's newer is that non-compliance now shows up at the listing itself. Under the state's county-registry law, booking platforms have to verify that a host is registered with the county before listing the property, and Hudson's Treasurer warns that an unregistered host "may be blocked from accepting listings on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO." That's why the city forwards its registration data to the county. Be aware that this one isn't a fine you can price into a spreadsheet, because it arrives as a booking that never happens.

The legacy cases are closed too. Every extension granted to non-compliant units expired in December 2024, and the Treasurer's page now says flatly that all operators must meet current residency and permitting requirements. There's no ambiguous middle group left to hide in.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Hudson

With the legacy cases closed, eligibility now decides everything else, so the order below matters even more than it looks. Work through it in sequence and you'll find out at step one whether the rest is worth your time.

1. Confirm you're a resident of the City of Hudson, and that the rental is on the parcel where you live. Full-time residents get up to three units and no night cap. Owners who reside on the property at least 50 days a year get one unit and 60 nights. Anything else is a dead end here.
2. Check the building itself. Nothing above the second floor without sprinklers or equivalent code compliance, and every sleeping room needs its egress and evacuation notice on the inside of the door.
3. Create a business account with LocalGov at tax.localgov.org before anything else, since that's where the application, the fee and every future filing live.
4. Get the affirmation notarised. Download the form from the Treasurer's page, fill in the property details, and have it notarised. Don't forget this can be done outside New York State if you're not in town.
5. File the registration and pay the fee. March 1 to March 31 for the annual cycle, within three days of offering the rental if you're starting mid-year, at $100 per address plus $25 per room.
6. Post the certificate of authority at the property, the way a state sales tax certificate is posted. It's address-specific and can't be transferred.
7. Set up your tax collection at 5% on rent including cleaning, linen and key fees, and diary the four quarterly deadlines: June 30, September 30, December 31 and March 31.
8. Keep your occupancy and rent records for three years, and hold the platform sales reports you'll need to attach to each filing.
9. Renew every March. The certificate runs March through February, and there's no grace period built into the code for letting it lapse.

Before any of that, though, work out whether the numbers survive the day cap you're subject to. A part-time owner's 60 nights and a full-time resident's unlimited calendar are different businesses, and the Livingston market next door is a useful reference point for what nightly rates and occupancy actually look like in this corner of Columbia County.

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

Whichever step you get stuck on, a handful of offices cover almost all of it, and picking the right one first will save you a morning.

City of Hudson Treasurer's Office handles registration, certificates of authority, the lodging tax and every filing question.

• Treasurer & CFO: Heather S. Campbell
• Address: City Hall, 520 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534
• Phone: 518-828-0212
• Email: [email protected], or [email protected] for tax inquiries
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 am to 5:00 pm (8:30 am to 4:00 pm from July 1 to Labor Day)

Housing Department is where short-term rental eligibility questions land, and it's the office that actually tracks who is registered.

• Housing Justice Director: Michelle Tullo
• Address: 520 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534
• Phone: 518-828-7217
• Email: [email protected], or [email protected] for short-term rental questions

LocalGov, the city's online registration and payment partner, handles portal access, account setup and stuck filings on 877-842-3037 or [email protected].

Code Enforcement Department is who you call about zoning, permits, inspections and complaints, and who a neighbour calls about you.

• Code Enforcement Officer: Nick Fox
• Address: 77 N. 7th Street, Suite #2, Hudson, NY 12534
• Phone: 518-828-3133, fax 518-828-9241
• Email: [email protected]

City Clerk's Office keeps the Common Council records, which is where the registration fee resolution referenced by § 275-27 actually lives. Lyric Falkner is the City Clerk, at 520 Warren Street, on 518-828-1030 or [email protected].

For anything outside the city line, the Columbia County Treasurer runs the county registry and the county's 4% lodging tax. P.J. Keeler Jr. is the Treasurer, at 15 N. 6th Street, Hudson, NY 12534, on 518-828-0513, with registration and compliance questions going to [email protected]. State sales tax registration is a New York State Department of Taxation and Finance matter, and its Sales Tax Information Center takes calls on 518-485-2889 on business days.

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

Those same offices are where the argument plays out, because Hudson's short-term rental law is genuinely contested and 2026 has been a loud year for it. What follows is my read of the public record rather than a survey, and I should say plainly that I couldn't access Reddit for this, so nothing below is drawn from it.

The fight started over the 60-day cap. In February 2026 the Legal Committee took up a proposal to double the part-time allowance to 120 days a year, keeping the 50-day residency requirement, on the argument that people who live in their homes part-time aren't taking anything off the long-term rental market. Morris put it this way to the Daily Gazette in March 2026: "Allowing folks to do this has zero impact on the availability of long-term rentals because obviously the person lives here, so they're not going to be renting their home out."

Housing advocates disagreed, loudly. Eliott Matos of the Hudson Catskill Housing Coalition called it "some elitist type of request," arguing that owners were choosing short lets over "people who actually need housing in Hudson."

Mayor Joseph Ferris kept his distance from both camps, saying policy "should be driven by empirical data, not anecdotal experiences." Residents wrote in on both sides, one urging the Council not to change the law except to strengthen it, another asking for a longer permitted duration.

Then the data settled it. Once Tullo's 13-registration figure came back, the committee recommended against the increase, and Morris conceded in the same breath that "there are a lot of problems with this law." Three themes are worth carrying away from all of it:

• The residency rule itself is barely contested. Nobody at the podium argued for letting non-residents in. The argument is about how many nights a resident gets, which tells you where the political centre of gravity sits.
• Investors treat the city as closed and shop the towns instead. Since residency can't be structured around, out-of-area buyers move the conversation to Livingston, Claverack, Ghent and the rest of Columbia County, where non-resident owners can operate under county registration and a local permit.
• The complaint hosts actually have is administrative. Two tax authorities, two portals, platform notices that contradict the city, and no published contact for reporting problems. That's the friction, not the rulebook.

What replaced the 120-day proposal is the thing to watch. Proposed Local Law Introductory A of 2026 would amend § 325-28.3 to require every short-term rental to designate a local contact person and hand that contact information to the Hudson Police Department and the Code Enforcement Office.

It hasn't landed yet. A public hearing on April 20, 2026 drew no public comment at all, then the vote slipped over a procedural point about how laws get laid on councilmembers' desks, and at the June 23, 2026 regular meeting another hearing on it was still being scheduled.

No 2026 local law appears on the city's local law index as of my check in July, so the 60-day cap stands and the local contact rule isn't law yet. I'd expect it to pass eventually, given nobody has spoken against it, though a proposal in committee is not a rule you can book against.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you run an Airbnb in Hudson, New York in 2026?

Only if you live in Hudson. Section 325-28.3 of the city zoning code permits short-term rentals in two situations: a City of Hudson resident may operate up to three units, all on the parcel where they reside, with no annual night limit, or an owner who resides in a dwelling unit at least 50 days a year may rent that single unit for a maximum of 60 days per calendar year. Non-resident, investor-owned short-term rentals are not permitted at any price.

How much does short-term rental registration cost in Hudson?

The annual application fee is $100 per address plus $25 per room offered for short-term lodging, payable to the City Treasurer through the LocalGov portal. Registration runs March 1 to March 31 each year, and a first-time registrant's fee is prorated. A new operator must file within three days of offering the rental. Registration is required even for hosts who owe no lodging tax.

What is the lodging tax on a Hudson short-term rental?

Hudson charges 5% per day of the rent, which includes cleaning fees, linen fees and key fees. The rate rose from 4% on March 1, 2025 under Local Law No. 1 of 2025. Booking platforms do not collect it, so the host files quarterly with the City Treasurer: June 30, September 30, December 31 and March 31. New York State and local sales tax of 8% applies separately and is collected by the booking service.

Do Hudson hosts have to register with Columbia County too?

No, not while the current arrangement holds. Columbia County runs a short-term rental registry and a 4% county lodging tax, but that tax excludes the City of Hudson, and the city's Treasurer states that Hudson continues to handle its own registration and tax collection while reporting all registered short-term rentals to the county on operators' behalf. Hosts elsewhere in Columbia County do register directly with the county, per address, and renew every two years.

What happens if you rent short-term in Hudson without registering?

The fine equals the greater of all revenue derived while operating unregistered, or $3,000 for each quarter in which the city can show short-term lodging was offered. Unpaid lodging tax can become a lien on the property, be added to the next assessment roll, or be pursued by warrant through the Columbia County Sheriff. Separately, booking platforms must verify county registration before listing, so an unregistered property can be blocked from taking bookings at all.

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