St. Paul, Minnesota Short-Term Rental Regulation A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in St. Paul, Minnesota and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is, you can. St. Paul has allowed short-term rentals citywide since December 2, 2017, and nothing in Minnesota law stands in the way either. The catch is that "allowed" and "unrestricted" aren't quite the same thing here: every host needs an annual city license, zoning caps how many units in a building can go short-term at once, and Ramsey County's home city adds its own tax layer on top of what the state already collects.

That license isn't a formality you can skip and hope nobody notices. Saint Paul Legislative Code Chapter 379 makes it unlawful to advertise or operate a short-term rental without one, and running one anyway is a petty misdemeanor under state law, capped at a $300 fine per violation. The zoning code, meanwhile, decides how many units on your specific lot can be rented short-term, and that number depends on whether you live there, how many units the building has, and which district it sits in.

So let's walk through what St. Paul requires in 2026: the license and what it costs, the zoning math that limits how many doors you can rent, every tax layer that touches a booking, and who to call when something doesn't add up. Every figure below comes from the city's own ordinances and the Minnesota Department of Revenue, checked in July 2026. If you're weighing a St. Paul property against other Twin Cities markets, run the numbers through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in St. Paul, Minnesota?

Nearly a decade in, St. Paul's short-term rental framework hasn't changed much, and that's mostly a good sign for anyone trying to plan around it. Two ordinances do essentially all the work: Chapter 379 of the Legislative Code, which created the licensing system, and Zoning Code Section 65.645, which decides where and how many.

The definition itself is simple: a short-term rental is a dwelling unit, or a portion of one, rented for less than 30 days. No more than one rental of a given unit is allowed per day, and using the unit for a commercial or social event, a wedding reception, a retreat, anything like that, is flatly prohibited. Both a host and a booking platform need their own license to operate legally in the city, and it's unlawful to even advertise a short-term rental without one.

Zoning is where most confusion starts, since the cap on how many units you can rent depends on your building type, your ownership status, and your district:

Property type	RL-RT1 districts (most single/two-family zones)	All other zoning districts
Single-family home	1 unit	1 unit
Duplex, non-owner-occupied	1 unit	1 unit
Duplex, owner-occupied, owner in residence	2 units	2 units
Triplex, owner-occupied, owner in residence	3 units	3 units
Fourplex, owner-occupied, owner in residence	4 units	4 units
5+ unit building	Not typically zoned RL-RT1	Up to 50% of units, max 4 without a CUP

Beyond four units, a building owner needs a conditional use permit for the specific number they want to run, granted case by case by the Planning Commission. Occupancy carries its own separate cap too. Zoning limits it to the definition of "family" in Section 60.207: one or two parents (or a single adult) with their direct descendants, plus not more than two unrelated people, all living as one household. A CUP can allow more, but only for a large one- or two-family home on a large lot. A building-code layer sits on top of that. The city's own occupancy worksheet requires at least 150 square feet of habitable floor area for the first occupant and 100 for each one after that, while any sleeping room housing two or more people needs at least 50 square feet per occupant.

A few smaller rules round it out. No exterior identification signage is allowed in residential districts, and Table 63.207 requires one parking space per dwelling unit plus half a space for every two adult guests. None of this is unusually strict as regulation goes, though it does mean you can't assume your building qualifies. Do check your specific zoning district and unit count before you get attached to a plan.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in St. Paul

Given that zoning table, the next practical question is still which properties make sense to buy or convert. A single-family home always qualifies for one short-term rental, no ownership condition attached, which is why it's the most common starting point for new hosts here. Where it gets more interesting is multi-unit buildings: an owner-occupied duplex, triplex or fourplex unlocks 2, 3 or 4 short-term units respectively, provided you're actually living there during the stay, and that owner-occupancy bonus is one of the few places St. Paul rewards a host for staying close to the business rather than running it remotely.

Larger buildings work differently. Anything over four units caps at 50% of the total (still capped at 4) unless you go through the conditional use permit process, so a 12-unit apartment building doesn't automatically become a 12-door short-term rental operation because you own it. If that math doesn't pencil out on paper, remember the parking requirement adds a real constraint too: a space per unit plus half a space for every two guests, which can rule out a building with a tight lot before the zoning cap even becomes the binding issue.

If you're comparing St. Paul against the rest of the county it sits in, the Ramsey County guide is worth reading next, since suburbs like Maplewood and Roseville run their own separate ordinances that don't inherit St. Paul's numbers. Whatever property you land on, the license itself is the same process either way, and that's the next hurdle to clear.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in St. Paul

Since the license is mandatory regardless of which property type you've picked, it's worth getting familiar with it before you sign anything. St. Paul issues two kinds: a Short-Term Rental Host License for the person renting out the unit, and a Short-Term Rental Platform License for companies like Airbnb, Vrbo or HomeAway that operate the booking service. Individual hosts almost never need the platform license themselves, since Airbnb and Vrbo already hold their own, but you do need the host license, and it's non-transferable to a new owner or tenant.

Applications run through PAULIE, the city's permitting platform, or on paper if you'd rather call DSI and request one. As of July 2026, the current host license fee is $45.00 per unit. It's gone up before, since it was $40 when the ordinance first took effect in 2017, so don't be surprised if it moves again by the time you apply.

Once submitted, both the DSI Director and the Police Chief must investigate the application before it's approved. A granted license runs one year from issuance and has to be renewed annually. Nothing about it carries over automatically if you sell the property or move out, either, so a new owner has to apply fresh.

Keep in mind the fee itself is only part of what you're paying for. Non-owner-occupied units need a Fire Certificate of Occupancy, which runs a separate inspection fee on top, and that's worth budgeting for before your application even goes in.

Required Documents for St. Paul, Minnesota Short-Term Rentals

That Fire Certificate is the biggest line item most hosts don't plan for, so let's start there. All buildings except an owner-occupied single-family home or an owner-occupied duplex need one, and the city's own fee schedule prices the inspection at $239 for a single unit, climbing from there as unit count rises. If you don't have a current certificate yet, you can submit a Provisional Fire Certificate of Occupancy application instead and get it finalized later, which is what most non-owner-occupied applicants end up doing.

Past the certificate, the rest of the application packet is fairly standard paperwork:

• A completed Short-Term Rental Host License Application, submitted by the property owner only.
• An Addendum to the License Application, which collects your tax identification number (a Minnesota Tax ID, FEIN or SSN) and a Minnesota Workers' Compensation compliance certificate.
• Proof of liability insurance of at least $300,000, unless you're renting exclusively through Airbnb, VRBO or HomeAway, whose own coverage satisfies this requirement.
• A signed affidavit of compliance, attesting that the unit has working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in every bedroom and habitable floor, a charged fire extinguisher, and the required in-unit postings (emergency contact info, a floor plan showing exits, and the city's own contact information for complaints).
• Full legal names and addresses of anyone holding a 25% or greater beneficial interest in the business, if you're applying as a company rather than an individual.

Make sure you also line up a Responsible Party who can act as a point of contact during every guest's stay. If that person lives outside the 16-county Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, the ordinance requires someone else who's actually reachable locally, since a contact three states away doesn't do a guest much good at 11 p.m. on a Saturday.

St. Paul Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that paperwork and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to sort out, and St. Paul stacks four separate layers on a single booking. Since two different governments administer them, it's worth taking each one in turn rather than trying to guess a combined number.

Tax	Rate	Collected by
Minnesota state sales/use tax	6.875%	State-registered retailer or the booking platform, as an accommodations intermediary
Metro Area Transportation & Housing tax	1.0% (0.75% + 0.25%)	Same registrant, applies across Ramsey and 6 other metro counties
St. Paul local sales tax	1.5% (0.5% since 1993, plus 1.0% since 2023)	Same registrant
St. Paul lodging tax	3% (facilities with 50 or fewer rooms)	Host or platform registered with the Minnesota Dept. of Revenue for St. Paul Lodging Tax

The state sales tax applies to lodging as an enumerated taxable sale under Minnesota law, and the Metro Area Transportation and Housing tax has applied statewide across the seven-county metro, Ramsey County included, since October 1, 2023. St. Paul's own 1.5% local sales tax combines a 0.5% piece dating back to 1993 with a 1.0% piece added in 2023, and its lodging tax sits at 3% for any facility with 50 or fewer rooms, which covers essentially every short-term rental in the city. Add the four together and a St. Paul short-term rental stay carries something close to 12.375% in combined tax, going by my own math on the components above rather than a single published total, since I couldn't find one official source that states the combined figure outright.

Here's where hosts get caught out, though. Airbnb's own Minnesota tax page states it collects the 6.875% state sales tax plus "local sales and special taxes" somewhere between 0.5% and 3.0%, without naming St. Paul specifically. That range tops out below what St. Paul charges (1.5% city sales tax plus 3% lodging tax comes to 4.5%), so don't assume the platform has you fully covered. Under Section 379.07(g) of the ordinance, you're on the hook to remit whatever the platform doesn't, so it's worth confirming with your own account rather than assuming the math works out.

One more thing worth flagging, and it's a property tax issue rather than a transaction tax: converting a homesteaded property to regular short-term rental use can trigger reclassification under Minn. Stat. § 273.13. A property rented short-term for more than 14 days in a year loses its homestead classification and moves to Class 4b, taxed at 1.25% instead of the 1.0% homestead rate. It's a real cost that shows up on your annual property tax bill rather than in any booking, and it's easy to miss if you're only watching the sales-tax side.

Minnesota Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Since that state statute already reached into the property tax question, it's worth stepping back and seeing how much of St. Paul's framework sits on top of state law versus the city's own choices. The honest answer is: not much of the licensing and zoning detail, but a fair amount of the tax and preemption picture.

Minnesota has no statewide short-term rental license, permit or registry, and no state law preempts a city or county from regulating the industry through zoning or licensing. Cities keep their general planning authority, and St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth and plenty of others have each built their own separate ordinance because nothing stops them. The only state-level registration that touches a short-term rental at all is the general sales tax retailer registration through the Minnesota Department of Revenue: a host taking bookings directly must register, and so must an "accommodations intermediary" like Airbnb or Vrbo, though I wasn't able to confirm a registration cost or renewal cycle from an official page since that particular guide blocked automated access every time I tried it.

Two bills are sitting in the current legislative session that could eventually touch this. HF 150 would clarify that the local lodging tax base includes fees an accommodations intermediary charges, on top of the room rate itself, and SF 4157 would regulate short-term rental guarantee insurance products, which is more of an insurance-market bill than a hosting one. Neither has passed as of this writing, so don't plan around either yet. If you're weighing St. Paul against a market across the river, the Hennepin County guide covers Minneapolis's rules, and Minneapolis, Duluth, Rochester and Bloomington all run their own special-law lodging tax rates rather than the general 3% cap most Minnesota cities use, so don't assume St. Paul's specific numbers travel. The Minnesota statewide guide has the full picture if you're scouting outside the metro.

Does St. Paul Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Given that patchwork of city-by-city rules, it's fair to ask how seriously St. Paul polices its own. On paper, the answer is real teeth: operating without a license is a petty misdemeanor under state law, and Minnesota caps that penalty at a $300 fine per violation. Booking platforms carry their own obligation too, since the ordinance requires them to remove a listing once the city notifies them that a host's license has expired, been revoked, or never existed, and every legal listing has to carry its license number.

I'll be straightforward about what I couldn't confirm, though. Search results pointed to news coverage suggesting a real gap between the number of active short-term rental listings in St. Paul and the number licensed, plus a licensing backlog tied to the city's move to its new PAULIE software. I wasn't able to open either article directly, since both returned access errors on repeated tries, so I'm not going to repeat numbers I never actually read.

What I can confirm is that enforcement here runs complaint-driven through DSI, the way it does in most cities this size, rather than through routine patrols. If a listing draws neighbor complaints or fails to carry a license number, that's typically what triggers a look.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in St. Paul

Given all of that, the order you tackle these steps in matters, since the early ones tell you whether the later ones are worth bothering with.

1. Confirm your zoning district and unit count first. Check whether your property is in an RL-RT1 district or elsewhere, how many units the building has, and whether you'll live there. This determines your legal ceiling before you spend a dollar.
2. Budget for the Fire Certificate of Occupancy if the property isn't an owner-occupied single-family home or duplex. At $239 for a single unit, it's the largest line item most first-time hosts underestimate.
3. Line up $300,000 in liability insurance, or confirm you'll book exclusively through Airbnb, VRBO or HomeAway, whose coverage satisfies the requirement on its own.
4. Apply through PAULIE, submitting the completed application, the Addendum with your tax ID and workers' compensation certificate, your insurance proof or Fire Certificate, and the $45 fee.
5. Wait for DSI and the Police Chief to investigate the application before your license is issued.
6. Install the required safety equipment and post the required information inside the unit: emergency contacts, an exit floor plan, and the city's own complaint contact information.
7. Set up your host registry, tracking nights booked and rent paid for every guest, since the ordinance requires you to maintain one for the life of the license.
8. Register for the taxes that apply to your situation with the Minnesota Department of Revenue, and confirm in writing what your platform collects on your behalf versus what you're expected to remit yourself.
9. Run the numbers before you commit capital. BNBCalc can model the property itself, and if you're comparing St. Paul against a smaller Minnesota market, BNBCalc Markets breaks down what a listing in Rochester clears at the neighborhood level.

Who to Contact in St. Paul about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever step trips you up, three offices between them handle almost every question a host has.

Licensing, applications and inspections

The Department of Safety and Inspections (DSI) issues host and platform licenses, handles Fire Certificate of Occupancy inspections, and fields general short-term rental questions.

• Address: 375 Jackson Street, Suite 220, Saint Paul, MN 55101-1806
• Phone: 651-266-8989 (weekdays, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.)
• Email: [email protected]
• Apply: through the PAULIE permitting portal

Zoning and conditional use permits

The Department of Planning and Economic Development, Zoning Section handles district questions and conditional use permit applications for buildings that want to exceed the standard unit cap.

• Address: 1400 City Hall Annex, 25 West Fourth Street, Saint Paul, MN 55102-1634
• Phone: (651) 266-6589

State and local taxes

The Minnesota Department of Revenue, Sales and Use Tax Division administers the state sales tax, the Metro Area taxes, and St. Paul's own local sales and lodging taxes.

• Phone: 651-296-6181, or 1-800-657-3777 toll-free
• Email: [email protected]
• Mailing address: Minnesota Revenue, Sales and Use Tax Division, Mail Station 6330, St. Paul, MN 55146-6330

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in St. Paul in 2026?

Yes. St. Paul has permitted short-term rentals citywide since December 2, 2017, under Legislative Code Chapter 379. Every host needs an annual city license, currently priced at $45, and the zoning code caps how many units on a given property can operate short-term based on ownership and building type. Operating without the license is a petty misdemeanor under state law, so treat licensing as a prerequisite rather than a formality.

How many short-term rentals can I operate from one property in St. Paul?

It depends on the building and whether you live there. A single-family home or non-owner-occupied duplex is capped at one unit. An owner-occupied duplex, triplex or fourplex can register 2, 3 or 4 units respectively, provided you're actually in residence during the stay. Larger buildings cap at 50% of total units, with a maximum of 4 unless the owner obtains a conditional use permit for a higher number.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in St. Paul?

Four layers stack on a single booking: Minnesota's 6.875% state sales tax, a 1.0% Metro Area Transportation and Housing tax, St. Paul's own 1.5% local sales tax, and a 3% St. Paul lodging tax for facilities with 50 or fewer rooms. Combined, that's roughly 12.4%. Airbnb collects the state tax automatically and a partial local amount, but hosts remain responsible for confirming what isn't covered and remitting it themselves.

How much does a short-term rental license cost in St. Paul?

The current host license fee is $45.00 per unit, paid when you apply through the city's PAULIE portal. That figure has moved before (it started at $40 when the ordinance took effect in 2017), so confirm the current amount before you submit. Non-owner-occupied properties also need a Fire Certificate of Occupancy, which adds a separate $239 inspection fee for a single unit.

What happens if I operate a short-term rental in St. Paul without a license?

It's a petty misdemeanor under Minnesota law, which caps the fine at $300 per violation. Beyond the fine, booking platforms are required to remove any listing once the city notifies them that the host's license is missing, expired or revoked, so an unlicensed listing risks losing its ability to take bookings at all, not just a citation.

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