Clark County, Nevada Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a home in unincorporated Clark County, Nevada and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, unfortunately, the answer for 2026 is that you can't get licensed, because the county's application period closed on August 21, 2023 and no window has opened since. In the federal court order that came out of all this, Clark County is described as having issued only 174 licenses as of March 2025, with roughly 515 applications still sitting unprocessed, across a jurisdiction of about a million residents and 300,000 homes.

Now, there's a wrinkle here that gets misread constantly, so do read the next bit carefully. On December 17, 2025, Judge Miranda Du blocked the county from enforcing its license requirement and its daily fines, finding that a licensing system almost nobody can apply to likely violates due process. That reads like an opening, and plenty of owners have treated it as one, since listing counts have climbed since the ruling. Still, an injunction isn't a permit. It's a pause while the case runs, the county voted to appeal it in January 2026, and none of it touched what you owe in transient lodging tax.

So let's walk through where that leaves you in practice: what Chapter 7.100 asks for, what a license costs whenever the window reopens, the tax you're collecting either way, how hard the county has pushed on enforcement, and who to call when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from Clark County's own pages, the Nevada Revised Statutes or the court's own order, checked in July 2026, and where something is still moving I've said so. If you're comparing a Las Vegas Valley house against a market whose rules aren't currently in litigation, run both through BNBCalc before you commit to either.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Clark County, Nevada?

Before any of those numbers mean anything, you need to work out which government you're dealing with, because "Clark County" covers two very different things. The county's own ordinance reaches only unincorporated areas: Paradise, Winchester, Spring Valley, Enterprise, Sunrise Manor, Whitney and the rest of the valley outside city limits. Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Boulder City and Mesquite are incorporated cities, and each writes its own short-term rental rules. So a Summerlin address and a Spring Valley address a few miles apart can sit under completely different regimes, and our Las Vegas short-term rental guide covers the city side of that line.

For the unincorporated side, the whole thing lives in Chapter 7.100 of the Clark County Code, which the Board of County Commissioners approved on June 21, 2022 after six months of community meetings. The county didn't do that voluntarily, mind you. Nevada's Assembly Bill 363 of 2021 forced it, by requiring large counties to license short-term rentals and barring them from banning the use outright, which killed Clark County's long-standing prohibition.

A short-term rental, in the code's language, is a residential unit or a room inside one rented for thirty consecutive days or less. Rent for thirty-one nights or more, though, and you fall outside Chapter 7.100 entirely, landing under ordinary landlord and tenant law instead. Under everything else you need both a short-term rental license and a general business license, and the code's statement about going without one is blunt. Operating unlicensed is prohibited and unlawful.

Then comes the part that decides most of this before cost or paperwork ever enters the picture. Even with an open window, Clark County's eligibility rules knock out a large share of the housing stock:

• You have to be the owner of record. The applicant's name must match the Clark County Assessor's record, and everyone holding an ownership interest has to be a natural person over 18, with limits on stacking LLCs more than one degree deep.
• One license per person or entity, full stop. Whether you own two houses or twenty, you get one licensed short-term rental in a residential area.
• Whole categories of property are out. Apartments, mobile and manufactured homes, RVs, travel trailers, tents, motor vehicles, anything on a septic system rather than municipal sewer, and affordable-housing units.
• Five townships are excluded outright: Mt. Charleston, Moapa, Moapa Valley, Mesquite and Bunkerville.
• In a condo or an HOA, the governing documents have to say yes in writing. Silence isn't permission here, and a multifamily building can't go past 10% of its units in short-term rental use.
• Separation kills a lot of applications. You need 1,000 feet from the nearest other licensed short-term rental, measured property line to property line, and 2,500 feet from a resort hotel. In the middle of a tourism economy, that second one bites harder than it sounds.

On top of all that sits a hard ceiling. The federal order describes a one-percent cap under section 7.100.050 on how many licenses the county may issue in a year. Clark County was never designing a program that most owners could join, and the numbers since have borne that out.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Clark County

Suppose your house clears every one of those filters. You still can't apply, and that's the part 2024-era advice keeps getting wrong, because the county has only ever run one application period. It took entries into a random number generator between September 13, 2022 and March 13, 2023, then began reviewing them no sooner than March 14, 2023, and the portal shut on August 21, 2023 and has stayed shut ever since. The following April the Department of Business License mailed denial notices to applicants whose paperwork was incomplete or whose property was never eligible in the first place.

What that produced is the reason the case went to federal court. Judge Du's order sorts affected owners into three groups, and one of them probably describes you: people who've had no opportunity to apply at all, people who applied and are still waiting years later, and people operating without a license while the fines pile up. The county, for its part, conceded the backlog in its own filing, arguing that AB 363's requirements and safety concerns "have forced the licensing process to be very slow."

Unfortunately for most people reading this, that means there's no short-term rental business to start in unincorporated Clark County in the ordinary sense. You can't buy a house in Enterprise this month and be licensed by spring, because there's nothing to apply for. Keep in mind, too, that when a window does reopen it runs as a lottery rather than first come, first served, so early preparation buys you eligibility and not priority.

Three routes are still open, though, and they're worth weighing against each other honestly.

The first is the thirty-one night market. It sits outside Chapter 7.100 altogether, and it does real business in a city full of construction crews, travel nurses and month-long conference stays. The second is buying inside a city instead of the unincorporated county, since Henderson and North Las Vegas each run their own programs with their own caps and windows, so do check that city's current status before you assume it's the easier road. The third is holding the property as a conventional long-term rental until the litigation resolves, which is where I'd put most owners who already bought.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Clark County

Assuming the county does manage to reopen its window, you'll want to know what you'd be signing up for, because the standard sits a lot higher than a form and a fee. Under the county's ordinance for Chapter 7.100, the Department is supposed to open an application period at least once a year, for between one and three months, with the dates published thirty days ahead on the county website and in a newspaper.

Read the exception in that same sentence, though, because the annual window isn't required if the Department decides no licenses are available to issue. That single clause is how a program can sit dormant for years without ever breaching its own code.

The money side is modest by comparison, since Clark County's published fee schedule puts year one at $945 for a home with three bedrooms or fewer, and $1,695 for anything larger.

Charge	Three bedrooms or fewer	More than three bedrooms
Application fee (non-refundable)	$45	$45
Inspection fee	$150	$150
Annual license fee	$750	$1,500
Year one total	$945	$1,695

Renewal repeats the annual fee, with the inspection fee charged again where the county decides another inspection is warranted. Bedroom count isn't yours to declare, either, because it's fixed at whatever the Assessor's records show on the date you apply. A converted den doesn't quietly become a fourth bedroom.

Getting the license also means accepting a set of physical requirements that read more like a small hotel than a spare house, starting with an inspection that Clark County Fire Prevention schedules during the application process. On top of that, the property has to carry general liability insurance of at least $500,000 per occurrence, on a certificate that names the property as transient lodging. You'll need a Nevada state business license too, displayed inside the unit alongside the county one.

Occupancy is capped at two people per bedroom or ten people per unit, whichever is smaller, so a three-bedroom sleeps six and a six-bedroom still only sleeps ten. The minimum booking is two nights. Parties, weddings and events are banned outright, outdoor amenities like pools, spas, barbecues and firepits can't be used between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., and guests have to fill your on-site parking before anyone touches the street.

Then there are the running duties, which continue for as long as you hold the license:

• A local representative available by phone 24 hours a day who can be at the property within 30 minutes of a complaint.
• A street-facing security camera running whenever the property is rented, with footage kept 60 days and handed over within 48 hours on request.
• Noise monitoring devices at the front and rear property lines and near any pool or spa, with the data kept 60 days.
• An exterior placard carrying the 24-hour complaint number, the maximum occupancy, and both license numbers, in lettering large enough to read from the street.
• Fire extinguishers on every floor, interconnected smoke alarms in and outside every sleeping room, carbon monoxide detectors, and an evacuation plan posted in each bedroom.
• Both license numbers, the occupancy cap, the minimum stay and a no-party notice in every advertisement, plus a ban on any exterior sign advertising the rental.
• Books and records for the three preceding years, open to inspection, and a monthly report to the county unless your booking platform files the equivalent data for you.

Miss any of it and the penalty schedule is real money. For most violations the fine is the nightly rental value of the unit or $500, whichever is greater, then $1,000 for each subsequent violation. Operating with no license at all carries $1,000 to $10,000 per day, and that daily accrual is what turned ordinary non-compliance into six-figure exposure for some owners before the court stepped in.

Required Documents for Clark County Short-Term Rentals

Since that fine schedule makes an accidental gap expensive, it pays to have the file ready before a window opens rather than scrambling inside a three-month deadline. The county's document list is short but unforgiving, and a near-enough substitute gets the application rejected rather than returned for fixing.

• Proof of identity matching the Assessor's record. Your name on the application has to be the owner of record, and if the property sits in a trust or an entity, every trustee, member and officer goes on the form too.
• A notarized signature from the property owner, or from whoever has authority to bind the entity or the trust.
• The $45 application fee, non-refundable whether you're approved, denied or never reached in the lottery.
• A certificate of general liability insurance for at least $500,000 per occurrence, stating the property is used for transient lodging. A standard homeowner's policy won't say that, so talk to your insurer early.
• Your most recent sewer bill. This is the septic test in disguise, and it's a straight disqualifier if the house isn't on municipal wastewater.
• HOA or condo governing documents that expressly authorize transient lodging, where the property sits in a common-interest community.
• A copy of your Nevada state business license.
• The names of every platform and rental site you'll advertise on, plus contact details for your local representative and any property manager.

Do check the sewer bill and the HOA documents first, before you spend anything else. They're the two that most often end the process, and neither one is fixable with paperwork.

Clark County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Here's the part the injunction didn't touch at all, and it's the one that catches people who assume a paused license requirement means a paused everything. Transient lodging tax is owed on every stay of thirty days or less in Clark County, licensed or not, and the county collects it through its Department of Business License rather than the state.

Nevada has no general state sales tax on lodging and no state income tax, so the stack is shorter than in most markets. What's left is a combined transient lodging tax set by section 4.08.010 of the county code, which bundles several components into one rate that varies by address. Two of those components are recent additions: a 0.5% Convention and Visitors Authority expansion from January 15, 2017, and a stadium district component of 0.5% outside the Primary Gaming Corridor or 0.88% inside it from March 1, 2017.

Charge	Rate	Who remits it
Combined transient lodging tax, booked through a platform	10.5% to 13.38% by address	The platform, automatically
Combined transient lodging tax, booked directly	10.5% to 13.38% by address	You, monthly, to Clark County
Nevada state lodging or sales tax on the stay	none	not applicable
Nevada state income tax on the profit	none	not applicable
Federal income tax on the profit	your marginal rate	You, on your federal return

So who actually hands the money over? That depends on how the booking came in. The county calls a platform an accommodation facilitator, and where Airbnb, Vrbo, Expedia or a similar site sits in the middle of the transaction, the platform collects the tax and pays it over on your behalf. Airbnb's own Nevada tax page confirms it does exactly that in unincorporated Clark County, at a combined rate of 10.5% to 13.38% for the first 30 nights of any reservation. Take a booking directly, though, and you're the one filing monthly with the county, along with whatever supporting documentation the Department asks for.

That range matters more than a single headline number would, since your rate turns on where the house sits relative to the Primary Gaming Corridor and the Stadium District. So make sure you confirm the figure for your own address with the county's audit division rather than copying a rate off a listing site. A guide can give you the band. Only the county can give you the number.

On the income side, Nevada charges you nothing, which is a genuine part of the investment case here. Your federal return still treats the property as a rental, so mortgage interest, property tax, insurance, cleaning, utilities, supplies, platform fees and depreciation all come off in the usual way, and the county's own licensing costs are deductible as a business expense too. Solid waste collection charges under Chapter 9.04 of the county code are a separate line you'll owe as a licensee, and they're easy to forget when you're modelling.

Nevada Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Zoom out from the county for a moment, because Clark County's ordinance only makes sense once you see the statute sitting above it. Nevada doesn't have a statewide short-term rental license, and it doesn't stop local governments from regulating hard. What it does have is a floor, written into the 2021 session and effective July 1, 2022.

That floor arrives through NRS 244.35351 to 244.35359, and the applicability section is the quiet detail that shapes everything: those sections apply only to "a county whose population is 700,000 or more." That's Clark County, alone. Every other Nevada county sets its own rules in its unincorporated areas with no state floor above them, which is why our Washoe County guide reads so differently from this one. For anywhere outside the Las Vegas Valley, the Nevada statewide guide is the better starting point.

Under NRS 244.353545, a board of county commissioners shall adopt and enforce an ordinance covering short-term rentals and the platforms that list them. That ordinance has to include, at minimum:

• An application process and a named agency to administer it, an annual fee, and minimum liability coverage.
• A ban on rentals in apartment buildings, and a 10% cap on short-term rental use inside any other multifamily building.
• A minimum stay of one night where the owner lives there, and two nights where they don't.
• 660 feet of separation between short-term rentals, and 2,500 feet from a resort hotel.
• Maximum occupancy no higher than sixteen people, and no more than five authorizations per state business license.

Compare that with what Clark County actually adopted and you can see where the county went further: 1,000 feet instead of 660, ten people instead of sixteen, and one license per person instead of five. All of that is allowed, because NRS 244.35358 lets a board impose requirements more restrictive than the state minimum. Yet there's one thing it can't do. A board "shall not enact or enforce a complete prohibition" on short-term rentals, and any ordinance inconsistent with that is "null and void." Clark County had banned them before 2021, and the statute is what ended it.

Two more state provisions shape your day-to-day. NRS 244.35355 requires you to hold and display both the county authorization and a state business license, and to put both numbers in every listing and advertisement, including the ones a platform generates. There's a snag there, though. Under NRS 76.020, an individual whose only business is renting four or fewer homes doesn't need the state license at all, and I couldn't get a clean read on how the county squares that exemption with its own demand for a copy of one. So ask the Department of Business License rather than guessing.

NRS 244.35359 then requires the county to make the platform collect and pay over your lodging tax, treating the platform as the provider of transient lodging for tax purposes only.

Nothing statewide changed in 2025. No short-term rental bill passed the regular session or the December special session, and Nevada's Legislature doesn't convene again in regular session until 2027. So through 2026, every meaningful development in this market has come from a courtroom or a commission chamber rather than Carson City.

Does Clark County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Yes, and the enforcement record is exactly why the courtroom got involved. For anyone reading the current pause as a signal that the county is relaxed about this, the two years before it should settle the question.

Enforcement escalated sharply in February 2025, when the county passed Ordinance No. 5214 and amended Title 1 to classify short-term rental violations as a public nuisance, which unlocked special assessment tax liens on the property itself. The pace shows up plainly in the court's own recitation: two liens recorded in April 2025, seven in May, thirty in July. In one sworn example, an owner who advertised an unlicensed rental drew a roughly $4,200 fine in April 2025 and then a special assessment lien totalling $85,375. That's not a parking ticket. It's an encumbrance on the title, and unpaid special assessments can put a property in front of the assessor for sale.

Judge Du's December 17, 2025 order stopped five specific pieces of that machine: the license requirement in section 7.100.030, the $1,000 to $10,000 daily fine in section 7.100.230(d)(1)(I), the nuisance declaration in section 7.100.220, the fines and costs provision in section 7.100.250, and the lien notice in section 1.14.020(g). An earlier order in the same case had already blocked the county's platform verification provisions in Chapter 7.110 as applied to Airbnb.

Still, be aware of what that ruling is and isn't, because the association that won it says so plainly. The Greater Las Vegas Short Term Rental Association's own statement notes that the decision "does not represent a final decision on the merits" and preserves the status quo while the case moves forward. The Board then voted on January 6, 2026 to appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and the injunction holds until that appeal is decided.

Meanwhile the county has been working on a way around it, and this is the development to watch if you're operating unlicensed today. On August 4, 2026 the commission introduced an ordinance aimed at the platforms rather than the owners, requiring booking sites to verify licenses electronically, display license details on each listing, deactivate unlicensed properties, and keep three years of tax records. Fines would run $500 for a first violation and $1,000 for each one after, charged to Airbnb or Vrbo rather than to you.

That same reporting puts the county at 228 licenses against more than 16,000 Airbnb listings in the area, up roughly 2,000 since the December ruling. A public hearing was set for August 18, 2026, and I couldn't confirm the outcome from an official source before publishing this, so do check the commission's agenda for where it landed.

So that platform ordinance is the thing to plan around, not the injunction. Should it pass and survive, enforcement stops being a fine you can argue about after the fact and becomes a booking that never processes, which is the same approach that emptied New York City's illegal market almost overnight.

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

Given how much of that hangs on timing you don't control, the order of these steps matters more than usual. The early ones tell you whether the later ones are worth any effort at all.

1. Confirm you're in unincorporated Clark County. Check the address against the county's jurisdiction map before anything else. A city address means a different ordinance, a different fee schedule and a different department.
2. Run the eligibility screen yourself. Owner of record, no septic system, not an apartment or manufactured home, not in one of the five excluded townships, and no other short-term rental license already in your name.
3. Read the HOA or condo documents. They have to expressly authorize transient lodging. Silence means no, and this is a common dead end in Las Vegas Valley communities.
4. Check the separation distances. 1,000 feet from the nearest licensed short-term rental and 2,500 feet from a resort hotel. The county's licensed list is the reference point, so ask before you buy rather than after.
5. Line up insurance and the state business license. A $500,000 per occurrence policy that names the property as transient lodging takes longer to arrange than owners expect.
6. Register for transient lodging tax now if you're already renting. The injunction paused the license requirement and did nothing to the tax, so a direct booking still creates a monthly filing obligation.
7. Watch for an application window. The department has to publish the dates thirty days ahead on the county site and in a newspaper, and entry runs by random selection rather than order of arrival.
8. Budget for the physical work. Cameras, noise monitors, the exterior placard, interconnected alarms and the bedroom evacuation plans all have to be in before the inspection, not after.
9. Model the thirty-one night alternative alongside the nightly one. In a market where licensing may stay closed through the appeal, the mid-term number is the one you can actually bank.

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

Working through those steps, you'll hit two or three questions no guide can answer for your specific address, and three county offices handle nearly all of them between them.

Licensing, eligibility and application status

The Clark County Department of Business License runs the short-term rental program, and it's the first call for anything about eligibility, an existing application, a denial or a renewal.

• Address: 500 S. Grand Central Pkwy, 3rd Floor, Las Vegas, NV 89155
• Phone: 702-455-4252
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., closed Friday through Sunday

If your application was denied, remember that the clock is short: you have 30 days to request an administrative hearing before a hearing officer, under section 7.100.110(b) read with section 6.04.090(j) of the code.

Transient lodging tax and audits

Room tax sits with the Audit Division of the same department, not with the State of Nevada, and this is who confirms the exact combined rate for your address.

• Phone: 702-455-6121
• Email: [email protected]
• Address: 500 S. Grand Central Pkwy, 3rd Floor, Las Vegas, NV 89155
• Hours: Monday to Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Fridays and holidays

Zoning and land use

Whether a use is permitted on a parcel is a Comprehensive Planning question rather than a licensing one, and they're the people to ask about the underlying zoning before you buy.

• Phone: (702) 455-4314, fax (702) 455-3271
• Email: [email protected]
• Mailing address: Clark County Comprehensive Planning, 500 S Grand Central Parkway, Box 551741, Las Vegas NV 89155-1741
• Hours: Monday to Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., closed Friday through Sunday

For policy comments rather than a specific property, the county takes them at [email protected], which is the address to use if you want to be heard on the platform ordinance.

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

Those are the official channels. The unofficial conversation runs somewhere else entirely, and what follows is my read of public discourse rather than any kind of survey, so do weigh it accordingly.

• The hosts who stayed are organized, and unusually so. The Greater Las Vegas Short Term Rental Association isn't a forum thread, it's a plaintiff, and the federal order names 856 members. That's a level of collective legal action you don't see in most markets, and it's why the county's ordinance is in front of the Ninth Circuit rather than being grumbled about online.
• The lottery is the sorest point. Owners who did everything asked of them, cleared the separation distances and paid for insurance, then lost on a random draw, tend to describe the process as arbitrary rather than strict. Judge Du's order lands close to that view, treating the chance to apply as a property interest the county can't withhold through a broken process.
• Investors from outside Nevada mostly write the unincorporated county off. The advice that circulates on the investing forums is to buy inside a city with a functioning program, or to look at another state, because a model that depends on winning a lottery isn't a model.
• Almost nobody argues the rules go unenforced. The liens settled that in 2025. What people argue about now is whether the county's system was ever meant to work, which is a different question and the one the courts are answering.

One thing does worry me about the current mood. Listing counts climbing by roughly 2,000 since the injunction suggests a lot of owners have read a temporary pause as a green light, and a preliminary injunction can be dissolved on appeal. Anyone operating unlicensed today is taking a position on how the Ninth Circuit rules, whether they've framed it that way or not. Assuming you'd rather compare Nevada markets on numbers than on litigation risk, the Nevada market rankings are a more useful starting point than any forum thread.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Clark County, Nevada in 2026?

For almost everyone, no. Unincorporated Clark County requires a short-term rental license under Chapter 7.100, and the county closed its only application period on August 21, 2023 without opening another. Around 174 licenses existed as of March 2025, rising to roughly 228 by 2026. A federal injunction issued in December 2025 stops the county from enforcing the license requirement while the case is appealed, but that's a temporary pause rather than permission, and it doesn't create a right to operate.

How much does a Clark County short-term rental license cost?

The first year runs $945 for a home with three bedrooms or fewer and $1,695 for a larger one. That breaks down as a $45 non-refundable application fee, a $150 inspection fee, and an annual license fee of $750 or $1,500 depending on bedroom count, with bedrooms counted from the Assessor's records rather than your own description. Renewal repeats the annual fee, and the inspection fee applies again whenever the county decides a fresh inspection is needed.

Do you still owe transient lodging tax in Clark County if you don't have a license?

Yes. The December 2025 injunction paused the license requirement and the fines attached to it, and it changed nothing about tax. Any stay of 30 days or less in Clark County carries the combined transient lodging tax, which runs 10.5% to 13.38% depending on the address. Airbnb collects and remits it automatically for the first 30 nights of a booking in unincorporated Clark County. Take a direct booking and you file monthly with the county yourself.

What are the penalties for running an unlicensed short-term rental in Clark County?

Chapter 7.100 sets a fine of $1,000 to $10,000 per day for operating without a license, and other violations draw the nightly rental value of the unit or $500, whichever is greater, rising to $1,000 for repeat violations. Before the injunction the county also declared unlicensed rentals a public nuisance and recorded special assessment liens against the properties, one of which reached $85,375. The daily fine and the lien mechanism are both currently enjoined, pending the county's appeal.

Does Clark County's ordinance apply to Las Vegas and Henderson?

No. Chapter 7.100 governs unincorporated Clark County only, meaning places like Paradise, Winchester, Spring Valley, Enterprise and Sunrise Manor. Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Boulder City and Mesquite are incorporated cities, and each adopts its own short-term rental ordinance under NRS 268.09795, which applies to every Nevada city regardless of population. Check the jurisdiction of your specific address first, since neighboring streets can fall under different rules and different fee schedules.

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