EXCLUSIVE: Report warns about costly regulations’ impact on short-term rentals

By Chris Woodward
The Center Square

A new report shines a light on local governments that have burdensome and costly regulations for short-term rentals. They’re in states varying from California and Nevada to Illinois and New York.

A short-term rental is anything rented for less than 30 days. Airbnb and VRBO are among the most common options.Researchers at Open the Books looked at local governments that either don’t allow homeowners to rent their properties for short-term rentals or make it expensive and burdensome.John Hart, CEO of Open the Books (a nonprofit transparency project based in The Villages, Fla.), said it is a problem for many people, especially younger generations of Americans.“Younger generations are feeling increasingly priced out of the American dream, but local governments have gone out of their way to put another thumb on the wrong side of the scale,” Hart told The Center Square during an exclusive interview Thursday. “Between taxes, fees and burdensome licensing requirements, they’ve piled nearly a billion dollars in added costs to the short-term rental market. If you’re a prospective homeowner trying to make the math work on a mortgage, you won’t find a lifeline in many of these major tourist destinations.”Clark County, Nevada, where Las Vegas is located, is highlighted as the most severe example in this latest Open the Books report.Rachel O’Brien, deputy public policy editor at Open the Books, said local officials have also been “slow walking” this issue.“The state of Nevada passed a law a couple years ago that said that counties are required to allow these short-term rentals,” O’Brien told The Center Square in an exclusive interview. “County commissioners opened a license approval window in 2023 where maybe 500 people applied, and the county still has close to 300 applications pending that they have not even gone through yet.”O’Brien is not surprised.“The county commissioner, Chairman Richard ‘Tick’ Segerblom’ – he has said when talking about why this short-term rental law is really not being implemented and how the county’s handling it, he said, ‘It’s very complicated. I think we’re trying to do it the right way, from my perspective. There’s no rush because I don’t like them anyway,”” said O’Brien. “He acknowledges that they’re slow-walking it.”Frustrated by this, homeowners operating short-term rentals sued the county, saying it is not following the letter of the law passed by the state legislature.In December 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada granted homeowners a preliminary injunction that halted Clark County from enforcing short-term rental licensing requirements, imposing fines, issuing liens and forcing platforms such as Airbnb to remove listings.Before the injunction, the county was issuing hefty fines. That has since been paused, and homeowners are now able to have their short-term rentals functioning while the case continues.“Clark County has collected the largest amount in fines against homeowners since 2019,” said O’Brien. “They collected $4.6 million in fines, but they only collected $1.3 million in registration fees, which is like a striking difference because clearly their focus is not on registering people, the focus is on fining people.”The data is from 2019 to 2025.No other municipality examined by Open the Books came close to Clark County’s $4.6 million in fines. “Besides making no bones about slow walking the process, they’re also making no bones about their desire to protect the many hotel casinos that exist there,” said O’Brien. “Las Vegas is known for their hotel casinos, and these regulations specifically prohibit rentals from being within 2,500 feet of a resort hotel, within 1,000 feet of any other licensed short-term rental, so they make it incredibly burdensome.”Across the border in California, nine cities are mentioned in this new report from Open the Books.Cupertino, Hermosa Beach, Laguna Beach, Los Angeles, Manhattan Beach, Palm Springs, San Diego, San Francisco and Santa Monica are highlighted.Palm Springs collected the most fines among the California cities listed, with $3,997,871.Los Angeles came in second with $666,773, followed by Santa Monica ($358,496), Hermosa Beach ($139,500) and San Francisco ($73,382) rounding out the top five.The data is from 2019 to 2025.In terms of which California cities collected the most registration fees, Los Angeles topped the list with $23,469,451.Palm Springs ($17,118,704), San Diego ($9,605,331), San Francisco ($4,205,061), and Santa Monica ($221,604) were the other cities near the top for the largest amounts of registration fees in the Golden State.This data is also from 2019 to 2025.“In terms of the cities that charge large registration fees, Hermosa Beach, Calif., $1,600 just to register your property; San Diego, $1,000 to register; San Francisco, $925 to register,” said O’Brien. “So those are hefty numbers, and there are a lot of cities that are significantly lower than that. For instance, Atlanta is $150.”Transient occupancy taxes, often referred to as a hotel or bed tax, were also collected.San Diego was No. 1 in that category with $310,903,019.Los Angeles ($265,489,592), Santa Monica ($25,271,708), Laguna Beach ($5,980,367) and Manhattan Beach ($3,303,393), Cupertino ($1,217,090) and Hermosa Beach ($893,169) rounded out the list in that order.Data was unavailable for Palm Springs and San Francisco.Other cities that made this Open the Books report are Atlanta; Charleston; Chicago; Dallas; New Orleans; New York City; Portland, Maine; Sarasota, Florida, and Seattle.“If you want to look at a city that really does it backwards, look at New York City just as an example for how not to do this,” said O’Brien. “They have an essential ban on short-term rentals. They do not allow them in any real way. They do claim that they allow them, but the homeowner must be present in the unit as it’s being rented, so New York City makes it impossible to have these, and of course, that’s a big problem.”O’Brien said it is also something that Americans in general should care about, regardless of whether they want to rent out or stay in something that is a short-term rental.“Homeowners who need a little extra money want to be able to use their properties to earn some money, and they should be able to do that within reasonable parameters,” said O’Brien, noting that properties have guidelines for noise levels and occupancy.