Short-term rental laws change at the city line, not the state line. Two houses ten minutes apart can face completely different rules: one needs only a $50 permit, the other is banned unless you live there full-time. This page is the master index to STR Law Map’s per-city database — a single, comparable format for every jurisdiction we cover, with each rule tied to the primary city ordinance and stamped with the date we last verified it.
Use it to answer the only question that matters before you buy, list, or renew: can I legally run a short-term rental here, and what does it take?
How to read every city page
Every city entry uses the same schema, so you can compare markets field by field rather than wading through ten different blog formats:
- Permit / license required? — the exact program name and license type.
- Primary-residence requirement? — whether you must live in the property.
- Annual night cap? — any limit on how many nights you can rent.
- Registration / permit fee — what you pay the city, and how often.
- Lodging / occupancy tax — the full stack of state + county + city taxes.
- Whole-home vs. hosted — whether investor whole-home rentals are allowed.
- Zoning & HOA notes — where in the city STRs are actually permitted.
- Enforcement & penalties — what happens if you operate without a permit.
- Primary sources and a “last verified” date on every claim.
Cities covered so far
We are building this database city by city, verified market first. Here is the current roster with the one-line verdict for each — click through for the full, sourced breakdown.
| City | License? | Primary residence required? | Night cap | Headline lodging tax | Investor whole-home? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Diego, CA | STRO (4 tiers) | Tier 2 only | Tier 1: 20 days/yr | ~11.75%+ TOT (zoned) | Tier 3/4, capped & waitlisted |
| Denver, CO | Yes | Yes (strict) | None | ~14.75% combined | No — banned |
| Austin, TX | Type 1/2/3 | Type 1 only | None | 17% combined | Yes (Type 2) |
| Nashville, TN | Type 1/2 | Type 1 only | None | 7% + $2.50/nt + 9.25% sales | Type 2, most residential zones closed |
| Scottsdale, AZ | Yes ($250/yr) | No | None | ~14.27% combined | Yes (state-protected) |
| Gatlinburg, TN | Yes | No | None (≤89-day stays) | ~12.75% combined | Yes |
More markets are being added and verified continuously. If a city you need is not yet listed, it is on the build queue.
Three patterns that decide most markets
Across the cities above, nearly every ruleset comes down to three levers:
1. The primary-residence test
Some cities (Denver, and the owner-occupied tiers in San Diego, Austin, and Nashville) only let you rent the home you actually live in. If you are an investor buying a second property, a primary-residence rule can be an outright wall — Denver bans non-owner-occupied STRs entirely. Others (Scottsdale, Gatlinburg) have no such rule at all.
2. Caps and zoning
Even where investor rentals are legal, cities throttle supply through night caps (San Diego Tier 1), density limits (Nashville closes new Type 2 permits in most residential zones), one-per-block rules (New Orleans), or zoning overlays (Myrtle Beach). Arizona, by contrast, preempts cities from zoning STRs out of existence.
3. The tax stack
Lodging tax is almost never a single number. It is a stack of state, county, and city components — and platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo collect some but not all of them. Every city page breaks the stack into parts so you know what you still owe.
A note on how we verify
This is legal information, and it changes. Every regulatory figure on this site is drawn from the city’s own program page, fee schedule, or municipal ordinance — not repackaged from other blogs — and each city page shows the date we last checked it. This is information, not legal advice. Ordinances get amended, fees get raised, and moratoriums appear. Always confirm the current rule with the city or a local attorney before you operate.
Explore the database by clicking any city above, and check the “last verified” date on each page before you rely on it.