12
A Practical Guide to Eectively Regulating Short-Term Rentals
Ensure that speculators do
not buy up homes to turn
them into pseudo hotels
while still giving permanent
residents the option to utilize
their homes to generate extra
income from short-term
rentals.
Ensure that homes are
only occasionally used as
shortterm rentals (and not
continuously rented out to
new people on a short term
basis).
automatically revoked in
the event the town receives
conclusive evidence (police
report, video evidence etc.)
that a city ordinance has
been violated.
Adopt a formal permit
requirement and make it
a condition that the permit
holder verifies residency on
an annual basis by submitting
the same documentation as
is required to verify residency
for public school attendance
purposes.
It is unfortunately not
practically possible to
enforce any formal limits
on the number of times
or number of days that a
particular property is rented
on an annual/quarterly/
monthly basis, but adopting
a permanent residency
requirement for shortterm
rental permit holders (see
above) can ensure that there
is a practical upper limit to
how often most properties
are rented out each year
(most people can only take a
few weeks of vacation each
year and they are therefore
practically restricted to rent
out their homes for those few
weeks). There is unfortunately
no easy way to deal with the
tiny minority of homes where
the “permanent resident”
owners have the ability to
take extended vacations
and rent out their home
continuously. That said, if the
above mentioned “permanent
residency requirement” is
combined with rules to
Adopting a permitting
process that does not formally
require shortterm rental
permit holders to verify that
they are permanent residents
of the permitted property.
A formal limit on the number
of times or number of
days each property can
be rented on an annual/
quarterly/monthly basis is not
enforceable as occupancy
data is simply not available
without doing a formal audit
of each and every property.