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

Do you own a place in Redondo Beach and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, unfortunately the answer here is no, and it has been that way for a long time. This beach city in Los Angeles County, California bans the rental of any residential property for fewer than 30 days, and the Redondo Beach Police Department's Code Enforcement Division says so in seven words on its own website: "Short term/vacation rentals are not allowed." No permit unlocks it, because no permit exists.

The rule itself is old. What changed recently is the enforcement, and that shift is the whole story of 2026. For years the ban sat on the books and got acted on only when a neighbor complained, so plenty of owners quietly carried on. Then the city bought a listings database in mid-2025, and by that October more than 500 letters had gone out to owners whose addresses had surfaced on the platforms. Police Chief Joe Hoffman thinks there may be as many as 1,000 listings citywide. The city can now see what it used to miss.

So let's walk through what that means for an owner right now: what the code actually bans, the one license that does exist, every tax layer and who collects it, how hard the city is pushing, and who to call at City Hall when you get stuck. Everything below comes from Redondo Beach's own pages, its council records and California state law, checked in July 2026. And assuming you're weighing this property against markets where a whole unit can legally go on Airbnb, run both through BNBCalc before you commit to anything.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Redondo Beach

Unfortunately for most people reading this, there's no short-term rental business to start here. The city's own words are about as blunt as municipal writing gets. In the administrative report Chief Hoffman took to the City Council on June 10, 2025, the first line of the executive summary reads: "The Redondo Beach Municipal Code (RBMC) bans the rental of any residential property for less than 30 days."

That's it. No nightly minimum you can satisfy, no cap you can stay under, no owner-occupancy exception like the ones Los Angeles and Santa Monica run.

It isn't a new position either. Back on March 1, 2016 the council voted unanimously to start enforcing the ban, and Mayor Steve Aspel told LAist that the city was getting weekly complaints about noise and parties from neighbors of short-term guests. A decade later the complaint stream hasn't dried up. Chief Hoffman's 2025 report lists the same four themes: noise disturbances, illegal occupancy, overcrowding and acute parking problems.

Ordinary zoning does the work here, rather than a dedicated short-term rental ordinance, which is why you won't find a chapter titled "short-term rentals" anywhere in the code. Redondo Beach sets out permitted uses in land use tables, zone by zone, with the letter "P" marking a use that's permitted by right under the definitions at RBMC § 10-2.402.

Transient lodging isn't one of the uses a residential zone gets. Renting your house by the night is therefore a land use the zone never allowed, and code enforcement treats it exactly that way.

Two other doors are worth closing before you go looking for them.

Accessory dwelling units don't help. California requires that rentals of ADUs approved under Government Code § 66323(e) "be for a term longer than 30 days," and AB 1154 of 2025 extended the same floor to junior ADUs. So the granny flat you built in 2024 is a long-term rental by state law, whatever the city says.

Your HOA can slam the door too. Civil Code § 4741(c) lets a common interest development prohibit "transient or short-term rental ... for a period of 30 days or less" even though it can't ban longer tenancies, so a condo in Redondo Beach can carry a second, private ban on top of the public one.

What's left, and it's a real market rather than a consolation prize, is the 31-plus-night furnished rental. That's the pivot the city keeps pointing owners toward, and it's the one legal shape for the asset.

Short Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Redondo Beach

Since the use itself is prohibited, there's still no short-term rental license to apply for, no fee schedule to budget against, and no queue to join. Be aware that this trips people up. Plenty of owners assume a ban must have a permitted exception buried somewhere inside it, and here there isn't one.

California doesn't backfill that gap either. The state issues no statewide short-term rental license or registration, and every permit a host might need is local. If you want to confirm that for a specific address, CalGold, run by the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development, lists the permits each California city and county requires.

There is one license you'll need, though, and it applies to the legal version of the business. Anyone renting out property in Redondo Beach, commercial or residential, has to hold a city business license. The Financial Services rental property page sets the tax at $20 plus a $4 SB 1186 fee for the first unit, so $24 all in, then $8 for each additional unit and $18 per employee. Those rates sit in RBMC § 6-1.22, with § 6-1.08 covering waivers, and the city notes that the SB 1186 fee itself is subject to change.

Twenty-four dollars is not the sort of number that decides an investment. Do get it right anyway, because an unlicensed rental hands code enforcement a second, easier violation to write up alongside the first.

Redondo Beach also hasn't opted into California's newest reporting regime. Government Code § 50990, the Short-Term Rental Facilitator Act of 2025, took effect on January 1, 2026 and requires platforms to hand a city each listing's physical address, but only where that city adopts an enabling ordinance. Going through the city's legislative record, I found no such ordinance. Which makes sense, since a city that bans the use has no listings it wants legitimized.

Required Documents for Redondo Beach Short Term Rentals

So the paperwork you'll gather isn't a short-term rental application. It's a business license file for a rental that runs 31 nights or longer, and the city asks for the same set from every landlord.

Here's what goes with the application, per the Financial Services rental property page:

• The Redondo Beach Business License Application itself, emailed to [email protected]. Payment instructions come back by email once licensing has processed it.
• A copy of your IRS letter verifying your Tax ID (EIN) number.
• A copy of your Fictitious Business Name (DBA) filing with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's office, where you're operating under a trade name.
• A copy of your Statement of Information filed with the California Secretary of State, if the owner is a corporation or an LLC.
• The SB 205 Stormwater Compliance Form, which the city requires from rental property applicants.
• A form titled "Short Term Rentals Not Permitted in Redondo Beach."

Read that last line again, because it's the tell. The acknowledgment that short-term rentals aren't allowed is a standard attachment to the ordinary landlord paperwork. The city isn't waiting for you to discover the rule later.

Keep in mind that none of this touches your lease or CC&Rs. Under Business and Professions Code § 22592 a hosting platform has to warn you that listing may violate your lease and that your insurance may not cover the use, and that warning is worth taking seriously even for a 31-night tenancy.

Redondo Beach Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you're able to get a compliant rental running, there's still tax to think about, and the shape of it depends entirely on how long your guests stay. Redondo Beach taxes transient occupancy, so the 30-day line that governs zoning governs the tax bill too.

The City Treasurer's transient occupancy tax page sets the city rate: "The City levies a 12% tax on the total amount paid for rental of a hotel or motel room in the City," under the Uniform Transient Occupancy Tax at RBMC Chapter 8.02. Anyone occupying a room for 31 or more consecutive days is exempt, as are government officials and employees on official business and foreign government officers exempted by law or treaty.

Here's how the layers stack for a Redondo Beach property, as of July 2026:

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Transient occupancy tax	12% of rent	City of Redondo Beach
Travel and Tourism Marketing District assessment	1%	City, on the RBTTMD's behalf
Los Angeles County TOT	does not apply	County levies it in unincorporated areas only
California state occupancy tax	none exists	n/a
California Tourism Assessment	$1,950 per $1 million of accommodations revenue	California Office of Tourism

A few notes on that table, because two rows move and one row surprises people.

The 1% marketing district assessment is voted on annually by the Redondo Beach Travel and Tourism Marketing District board, and the city's published description still carries an effective window of January 1 to December 31, 2024. Since I couldn't find a current-year confirmation on the city's pages, treat 1% as the last published figure rather than a locked rate, and check it with the Treasurer before you build it into a pro forma.

The county row genuinely is zero. Los Angeles County's Treasurer and Tax Collector charges its own 12% transient occupancy tax, but states plainly that "The County's TOT applies only to properties located within the unincorporated areas of the County." Redondo Beach is an incorporated city, so nothing stacks.

California adds no occupancy tax of its own. Revenue and Taxation Code § 7280 simply authorizes any city or county to tax occupancy of 30 days or less, with no state cap on the rate, which is why California rates range so wildly from town to town. The one statewide charge is the California Tourism Assessment, and the Office of Tourism's filing instructions put the accommodations category at $1,950 per $1 million of travel and tourism revenue, with revenue from stays of 31 or more continuous days by the same person excluded.

Remittance runs monthly. Operators pay on or before the 23rd day of the month, by mail to Financial Services at 415 Diamond Street, Door 1, or by electronic funds transfer arranged with Accounts Receivable. Miss the date and the city adds a 10% penalty, then another 10% if the tax stays unpaid for a further 30 days, plus interest at half a percent per month from the date it first went delinquent. Each remittance goes in with a report of room rental charges collected and supporting documentation for any exemptions claimed.

One thing you can't lean on here is platform collection. Airbnb does collect and remit occupancy tax in a long list of California jurisdictions, yet Redondo Beach isn't on that list, while Los Angeles (14%), Long Beach (13%), Pasadena (12.11%) and Santa Monica (17%) all are. That's consistent, of course, since a platform doesn't collect lodging tax for a city where the lodging is illegal.

Finally, watch the rate itself, because it's under active review. On February 3, 2026 the Finance Director brought the council a draft ballot measure that would raise the transient occupancy tax "from 12% to up to 15%," worth an estimated $750,000 a year for every 1% added.

Staff recommended putting it to voters at the city's regular general election on March 2, 2027. The June 2026 primary was ruled out, since a tax measure outside the regular cycle would have needed a unanimous fiscal emergency declaration. So model with 12% today, and keep 15% in mind as the ceiling.

Your rental profit stays taxable income on top of all that. The Franchise Tax Board taxes residents on all rental income and nonresidents on income from California property.

Redondo Beach wide Short Term Rental Rules

Tax is where the city's authority is most visible, though the layer above it explains why Redondo Beach gets to ban the use at all. California doesn't preempt local short-term rental regulation. Cities and counties act under their police power, and the state has never passed a statute telling them they must permit nightly stays, which is why the map here looks like a patchwork rather than a policy.

Our California statewide guide walks the whole framework. The contrast with San Francisco, covered in the San Francisco County guide, shows how differently two coastal California jurisdictions can land on the same question.

The state does draw a few lines around what a city can do, and three of them matter to a Redondo Beach owner.

Fine caps. For short-term rental ordinance infractions, Government Code § 36900(d) caps a city's fines at $1,500 for a first violation, $3,000 for a second inside a year and $5,000 for further ones, with the elevated tiers reserved for violations that threaten public health or safety, and a hardship waiver process required.

Platform disclosure. Advertised nightly rates have had to include all mandatory fees except government taxes since July 1, 2024 under Business and Professions Code § 17568.6, and since July 1, 2025 § 17568.8 has required cleaning tasks and any fee for skipping them to be disclosed and acknowledged before booking.

The coastal zone. This is the interesting one, and it's unresolved. Part of Redondo Beach sits inside California's coastal zone, where a second body has a say. The Coastal Commission's December 6, 2016 guidance memo states that short-term rental regulation "constitutes development to which the Coastal Act and LCPs must apply," so it has to run through a Local Coastal Program or a coastal development permit. In the Commission's view, bans adopted outside that process are "not legally enforceable in the coastal zone." It also says it "has not historically supported blanket vacation rental bans."

Redondo Beach keeps its coastal zoning in a separate certified chapter, Title 10 Chapter 5, and forwards amendments to it to the Coastal Commission for certification. Searching the Commission's and the city's records, I found no Coastal Commission action, staff report or court ruling addressing Redondo Beach's short-term rental position specifically. So don't read the memo as a loophole. It's a live legal question that nobody has tested here, and testing it would mean litigating against a city that has already shown it will refer cases for prosecution.

Citywide, 2026 has been a busy zoning year that leaves the short-term rental position untouched. On August 4, 2026 the council adopted an updated General Plan Land Use Element together with Ordinances CC-3314-26 and CC-3315-26, rewriting both the inland zoning code and the coastal implementing ordinance, with parts of the package going to voters on November 3, 2026 as a "major change in allowable land use" under Charter Article XXVII. I read both text amendment exhibits. Neither mentions hotels, motels, transient occupancy or short-term rentals anywhere.

Does Redondo Beach strictly enforce STR rules? Is Redondo Beach Airbnb friendly?

So the rules didn't change in 2026. The city's ability to act on them did, and that's the part worth understanding before you assume a quiet listing stays quiet.

In June 2025 the council approved a one-year agreement with Deckard Technologies of San Diego for its Rentalscape platform, capped at $7,400 and running from June 10, 2025 to June 9, 2026 with optional one-year renewals.

Chief Hoffman's report describes what the city bought in unusual detail. Rentalscape "accurately identifies STR properties, even without confirmed bookings," surfaces new reservations within 24 hours, and holds a historical database of Redondo Beach short-term rental activity going back to 2019 that includes "every booking and stay made on each major rental platform." Staff get an interactive map with overlays aligned to zoning districts.

The report is candid about why the city needed it. Major platforms don't reveal a property's exact address until after a paid booking, so officers had no way to contact owners proactively, and ownership was often buried behind different names and LLCs.

Then came the sweep. Easy Reader reported on October 9, 2025 that more than 500 letters had gone out in the previous two weeks, with roughly another 500 addresses still to be gathered. "We've had the ban forever but we came to realize there was a lot of short-term rentals going on here," Mayor Jim Light told the paper, framing the mailing as "a proactive sweep to let people know that they have options for their rental properties to become legal." The options he named were simple: pull the listing, or reset it to 30 days and up.

The city's stated approach is education first. Code Enforcement says it always seeks voluntary compliance before anything else, and Chief Hoffman put the goal as "to not have to take any enforcement action."

The back end is where it gets expensive. Ignore the letter and a second one may follow, and Easy Reader reports that a referral to the city prosecutor's office can bring misdemeanor charges carrying up to six months in jail, a $1,000 fine, or both.

Those numbers aren't arbitrary, by the way. Government Code § 36901 caps what any California city can impose for an ordinance violation at exactly a $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment. Code Enforcement's own page lists its toolkit as citations, correction notices, criminal prosecution, civil injunctions and administrative orders through appeal hearings.

I couldn't find a published administrative citation amount for a short-term rental violation. It isn't in the FY 2026-27 Police Department master fee schedule, and no council item sets one, so treat the misdemeanor route as the exposure that's actually documented.

Is Redondo Beach Airbnb friendly? No, and it isn't trying to be.

For Mayor Light, converting these units to long-term tenancies is the whole point. "We're in a housing (crisis) and short-term rentals keep properties off of the market, that could be long-term housing," he told Easy Reader. Councilman Brad Waller wants "those 500 units for people looking to rent, so we have full-time residents." When the mayor, the police chief and the council all describe the same goal, a strategy built on staying unnoticed is a bad bet.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Redondo Beach

Given all of that, the honest version of this section is a route to a legal rental rather than a route to a nightly one. Work it in order, because the first two steps decide whether the rest are worth your time.

1. Confirm your zoning and whether you're in the coastal zone. Call the Planning Division at (310) 318-0637 or email [email protected] with the address. Coastal-zone properties sit under a separate chapter of the code, and knowing which side of that line you're on changes who reviews what.
2. Check your CC&Rs and your lease. A condo association can ban stays of 30 days or less under Civil Code § 4741(c) regardless of what the city allows, and a landlord can bar subletting outright.
3. Set the minimum stay at 31 nights. That single change moves the property out of transient occupancy for both the zoning code and the tax, since the city exempts anyone occupying a room for 31 or more consecutive days. Just make sure you count consecutive nights rather than calendar days when you configure it.
4. Get the business license. Apply through Financial Services, email the application and supporting documents to [email protected], and budget $24 for the first unit plus $8 for each additional one.
5. Handle transient occupancy tax only if it applies. A 31-plus-night furnished rental is exempt. Anything shorter isn't legal in a home here, so the practical answer for most owners is that there's no TOT to file.
6. Furnish and market for the mid-term guest. The demand in this part of Los Angeles County runs to relocations, traveling healthcare and aerospace contracts, and it prices very differently from a weekend beach stay.
7. Run the numbers before you buy anything. A 31-night minimum reshapes occupancy, turnover cost and rate all at once, so model it properly rather than discounting a nightly forecast.
8. Keep an eye on the council. After two residents told the council on October 7, 2025 about renting a room while living on site, members said they'd discuss possible exceptions. Going through the city's legislative record through August 2026, no such ordinance has been introduced.

If the mid-term numbers don't work and you're open on location, comparing this against California markets that do license nightly rentals is the more useful exercise. The Sonoma County guide and the San Mateo County guide cover two very different versions of a permitted regime.

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

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, four offices cover almost all of it, and they sit within a block of each other on Diamond Street.

Zoning, permitted uses and the coastal zone

The Planning Division, part of Community Development, answers what a specific parcel is zoned for and how the coastal chapter applies to it.

• Address: 415 Diamond Street, Door 2, Redondo Beach, CA 90277
• Phone: (310) 318-0637
• Fax: (310) 372-8021
• Email: [email protected]
• Counter hours: 7:30 am to 1:00 pm, appointments only after 1:00 pm

Complaints, letters and enforcement

The Code Enforcement Division of the Redondo Beach Police Department handles short-term rental complaints and sends the compliance letters. If one has landed in your mailbox, this is the number.

• Address: 401 Diamond Street, Redondo Beach, CA 90277
• Code Enforcement general line: 310-697-3665
• Email: [email protected]
• Police Department main line: 310-379-2477
• Report a violation: through the free ACCESS REDONDO app, on the App Store or Google Play

Do remember that the reporting channel runs both ways. A neighbor with the same app can open a case on your property in under a minute.

Business licenses

Financial Services issues the business license every rental property needs.

• Address: 415 Diamond Street, Redondo Beach, CA 90277
• Phone: (310) 372-1171
• Email: [email protected]

Transient occupancy tax

The City Treasurer and Financial Services handle transient occupancy tax registration, monthly remittance and exemption documentation.

• Phone: (310) 372-1171
• Remittance address: Financial Services, 415 Diamond Street, Door 1, Redondo Beach, CA 90277
• Online: the City Treasurer's transient occupancy tax page carries the current description and the remittance form template

For the ordinances themselves, the City Clerk at 415 Diamond Street, (310) 372-1171, maintains the ordinance archive back to 1892, and council agendas, staff reports and attachments are all public on the city's Legistar portal.

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

Talk to enough owners and the enforcement story stops being abstract, so it's worth knowing how people here actually respond to it. What follows is my read of the recurring themes rather than any kind of survey, and I should say up front that Reddit blocks the automated access I'd need to quote its threads responsibly, so nothing below comes from there.

The people pushing back are resident hosts, not investors. At the October 7, 2025 council meeting, two owners described renting a room in their own house for short stays while remaining on site, and said years of doing it had helped pay the mortgage. That's the sympathetic case, and the council noticed it. Mayor Light told Easy Reader he was "not aware renting a single room was even done on these apps," while adding that "it has never been legal in Redondo and I doubt they paid (transit occupancy tax)."

Switching to 30-day minimums is harder than it sounds. One of those owners, Vickie Castaldi, said she changed her calendar after receiving the city's letter and the bookings stopped: "The problem is you don't get that many. I'm not getting any interest at all." Watch out for that gap if your model assumes a clean swap from nightly to monthly. The mid-term market is real, yet it fills more slowly and rewards different marketing.

On BiggerPockets, Redondo Beach mostly doesn't come up as a short-term rental idea at all. In the Long Beach, San Pedro, Lakewood and Redondo thread, the useful answer from a Los Angeles investor in October 2020 was the boring one: 30-day minimums apply to particular City of LA neighborhoods, and "Other cities in LA County can have their own rules," so check the city rather than the county. A 2023 South Bay house hacking thread that names Redondo Beach goes straight to a mid-term rental plan without anyone raising nightly stays.

Nobody is arguing the rules go unenforced anymore. That argument had some life in it when enforcement meant waiting for a neighbor to call. It doesn't survive a database that logs every booking on every major platform back to 2019.

If you want to see what the surrounding market pays before you decide between a mid-term hold and a sale, the South Bay LA market data covers Redondo Beach and its neighbors, and it's the honest comparison to make once the nightly option is off the table. Then again, if you're weighing this against a California county where nightly rentals are licensed rather than banned, the Placer County guide is a good look at what a permitted regime asks of you in exchange.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Redondo Beach in 2026?

No. The Redondo Beach Municipal Code bans renting any residential property for fewer than 30 days, and the city issues no permit, license or registration that would allow it. The Police Department's Code Enforcement Division states plainly that short term and vacation rentals are not allowed, including Airbnb rentals of less than 30 days. The only legal route for a residential property is a stay of 31 nights or longer, which falls outside transient occupancy for both zoning and tax.

What happens if you list a Redondo Beach property on Airbnb anyway?

The city identifies listings through Deckard Technologies' Rentalscape platform, which it contracted for in June 2025 and which surfaces new reservations within 24 hours and holds booking history back to 2019. Enforcement starts with a compliance letter, and more than 500 went out in late 2025. Ignore it and a referral to the city prosecutor can bring misdemeanor charges of up to six months in jail, a $1,000 fine, or both.

How much is the transient occupancy tax in Redondo Beach?

The city levies 12% of the total paid for a hotel or motel room, under the Uniform Transient Occupancy Tax at Redondo Beach Municipal Code Chapter 8.02, plus a 1% Travel and Tourism Marketing District assessment the city collects on the district's behalf. Anyone staying 31 or more consecutive days is exempt. Operators remit by the 23rd of the month, and a late payment draws a 10% penalty, another 10% after a further 30 days, and interest of half a percent per month.

Is Redondo Beach going to raise its hotel tax?

A proposal is moving. On February 3, 2026 city staff brought the council draft ballot language to raise the transient occupancy tax from 12% to up to 15%, worth an estimated $750,000 a year for each 1% added, and recommended placing it before voters at the city's regular general election on March 2, 2027. Nothing has been approved by voters, so 12% remains the operative rate.

Can you rent a Redondo Beach property for 30 days or more?

Yes, and that is the legal path for a residential property here. A stay of 31 or more consecutive days sits outside the city's transient occupancy rules and is exempt from the 12% tax. You'll still need a city business license, which costs $20 plus a $4 SB 1186 fee for the first unit and $8 for each additional unit. Check your CC&Rs too, since California law lets an HOA ban rentals of 30 days or less independently.

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