Short-term rental owners
Selling a property you have been renting nightly.
A short-term rental is one of the harder properties to sell conventionally. The furniture is not yours to leave, the calendar has bookings on it, the numbers a buyer wants are on a platform dashboard rather than a tax return, and the regulatory picture in both of our markets is genuinely unsettled.
We buy the real estate. Bookings on the calendar are not a problem — we will work around your existing reservations or take the property with them in place. Furnished or empty, either is fine.
Get an offer on your rental
Where it is, roughly when it was built, and what your booking calendar looks like. No commission, no obligation.
The regulatory picture
Two markets, two very different problems.
We are not lawyers and none of this is legal advice about your specific property. It is the published state of play as of September 2026, and it is worth knowing before you decide whether to hold or sell.
Los Angeles — the rules are strict and enforcement just got teeth
- Primary residence requirement
- LA’s Home-Sharing Ordinance permits short-term rental only at the host’s primary residence, occupied at least six months a year. Second homes and investment properties do not qualify.
- Unhosted night cap
- 120 nights a year without an Extended Home-Sharing permit, which requires a public hearing.
- Penalty exposure
- Up to $2,060 per day as of September 1, 2025, adjusted annually, plus a $3.20 per booked night enforcement fee.
- Platform data sharing
- SB 346 took effect January 1, 2026. Airbnb and Vrbo must give cities the property address, assessor parcel number, listing URL, and local licence number. Platforms face up to $10,000 per day for non-compliance.
- Enforcement climate
- Santa Monica filed an $18 million suit in January 2026 over 3,000+ illegal bookings. Better Neighbors LA puts more than half of LA’s short-term rental market out of compliance.
Charlotte — the rules barely exist, and that is its own problem
- No registration exists
- Schroeder v. City of Wilmington (2022) held that G.S. 160D-1207(c) bars North Carolina cities from requiring rental registration. Charlotte dropped its draft short-term rental rules on May 2, 2022 as a result.
- No permitted right either
- The UDO does not define "short-term rental." For non-owner-occupied whole-home rentals the Zoning Administrator decides parcel by parcel, so there is no permit to hold and nothing to convey to a buyer.
- Tax burden
- Roughly 16.25% of gross receipts — 8.25% combined sales and use after the P.A.V.E. Act took effect July 1, 2026, plus 8% room occupancy tax.
- Revenue trend
- Per-listing revenue across three independent data providers lands between roughly $22,000 and $33,000 a year, with occupancy under 60% and supply growth outpacing demand.
- Insurance steps up
- Dwelling policies on non-owner-occupied property rise 5% on October 1, 2026 and another 5% on October 1, 2027 under the Commissioner’s April 2026 settlement.
- Covenants, not the city
- In Myers Park, Eastover and Foxcroft the real constraint is the neighborhood’s restrictive covenants and HOA rules, which state preemption does not touch.
One thing to raise with your accountant
A rental history can complicate a sale in Los Angeles.
LAMC §16.60, effective February 11, 2025, adds replacement and notice obligations when a “Protected Unit” is demolished — a category that includes units subject to the Rent Stabilization Ordinance within the last five years. Whether a single-family home with a recent rental history falls inside it is a parcel-by-parcel question, and the City does not publish a categorical exemption for single-family homes.
We raise it because it is the kind of thing that surfaces late in a conventional sale and kills it. We check it before we agree to terms, not after. If it turns out to be a problem, it is our problem.
Get an offer on your rental
Bookings on the books are fine. Tell us where it is and roughly when it was built.