Short-Term Rentals: Local Regulation, HOA Restrictions, Taxes, and Liability

Summary. Four separate bodies of law govern a short-term rental, and complying with one does not help with the other three.

Four locks on one door

A person who wants to rent a spare bedroom, or a condo at the beach, or a house they inherited, typically asks one question: is it legal here?

That question has four answers, and they are independent.

The city may require a permit, cap the number of rentals, require the host to live on site, limit occupancy, and impose a tax. Compliance is enforced by fines that escalate quickly.

The HOA or condominium association may prohibit it outright by covenant, regardless of what the city allows. This restriction is contractual and frequently the hardest to overcome.

The lease or the mortgage may prohibit it — a tenant subletting short-term is usually in breach, and many mortgages contain occupancy and business-use provisions.

The insurer may exclude it. A standard homeowner's policy generally excludes business pursuits, which means a guest injury may be uncovered, and — the part that surprises people — a claim denial can reveal the exclusion at the worst possible moment.

You can be perfectly legal under the city ordinance and still be violating three other things. That is the central fact of this area, and it is the reason so many hosts discover a problem only after the first complaint, the first claim, or the first assessment.

The local layer

What ordinances typically require

Short-term rental regulation has converged on a recognizable set of tools, though the mix varies enormously.

Registration or permitting. An annual permit, a fee, an application identifying the owner and a local responsible party, and frequently a life-safety inspection. Many ordinances require the permit number to appear in every listing, which makes enforcement trivial — the city scrapes the platforms and matches.

Primary residence requirements. The most consequential structural choice a city makes. Many jurisdictions permit short-term rental only of the host's primary residence, sometimes only while the host is present ("hosted" rentals), sometimes with an annual cap on unhosted nights — commonly 60 to 120. This distinction determines whether an investor model is viable at all.

Density and zoning limits. Caps on the number of permits per block, per building, or citywide; prohibition in certain zones; a requirement of separation between rentals; or a cap on the number a single owner may hold.

Occupancy limits. Typically expressed as two persons per bedroom plus two, or a flat maximum, and frequently paired with limits on events and gatherings.

Life safety. Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, fire extinguishers, egress requirements, posted evacuation information, and pool or spa barriers.

Parking. On-site parking requirements and prohibitions on street parking by guests.

Noise and quiet hours, frequently with a shorter fuse than for ordinary residences.

A local contact. A responsible person reachable 24 hours a day who can respond within a stated time — often 30 to 60 minutes. This is the requirement most commonly violated by remote owners and the one neighbors complain about most.

Insurance minimums, commonly $500,000 to $1,000,000 in liability coverage.

Tax registration and remittance.

How cities enforce

The enforcement toolkit has become effective in a way it was not a decade ago.

Listing scraping and address matching against the permit database
Platform data-sharing agreements, and in some places requirements that platforms remove unpermitted listings or refuse to process bookings for them
Complaint hotlines with response-time requirements
Escalating administrative fines, frequently per night and frequently substantial
Permit revocation, sometimes with a bar on reapplication
Nuisance abatement and, in some places, receivership for repeat offenders
Utility or business license consequences

The practical point: operating without a permit in a jurisdiction that requires one is not a low-risk gamble anymore. Fines accumulate per night, and a revoked permit with a reapplication bar can end the use permanently.

Preemption and litigation

The regulatory landscape has been shaped by a decade of litigation, and the broad outcomes are worth knowing.

Cities generally may regulate. Challenges to short-term rental ordinances on constitutional grounds have mostly failed. Zoning authority is broad — the foundational case is Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926) — and courts have generally treated distinctions between transient and residential use as rational.

Platform obligations have been upheld in substantial part. Ordinances requiring platforms to verify permit numbers or to refuse to process bookings for unpermitted listings have generally survived challenges under 47 U.S.C. § 230, on the reasoning that regulating the platform's own booking transactions is not treating it as the publisher of third-party content.

Warrantless inspection provisions are vulnerable. City of Los Angeles v. Patel, 576 U.S. 409 (2015), held that a hotel registry ordinance permitting police inspection without any opportunity for precompliance review was facially unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. Short-term rental ordinances requiring records production or inspection on demand have been drafted with Patel in mind, and provisions lacking a review mechanism remain contestable.

Some states preempt. A number of states have enacted statutes limiting local authority to prohibit short-term rentals, sometimes grandfathering existing local ordinances, sometimes permitting regulation but not prohibition. State preemption law should be checked before assuming a local ordinance is enforceable — and before assuming it is not.

The private restrictions, which frequently matter more

HOA and condominium covenants

A homeowners association can prohibit short-term rentals even where the city permits them, and this restriction is often harder to overcome than the ordinance.

The recurring questions:

Does the existing covenant already prohibit it? Many associations rely on a "residential use only" or "single family residential purposes" clause drafted decades before anyone had heard of a booking platform. Courts have split. Some have held that transient commercial lodging is not residential use; others have held that a use restriction limits the nature of the use (people living there) rather than its duration, and does not by itself bar short-term rentals. The outcome frequently turns on the specific language and the state's rule of construction — many states construe restrictive covenants narrowly, resolving ambiguity in favor of free use of land.

Can the association amend to prohibit it? Generally yes, by the vote the declaration requires. The harder question is whether an amendment applies to owners who bought before it — some states and some declarations grandfather existing uses, and some do not. A number of states have enacted statutes addressing rental restrictions in common interest communities specifically.

Enforcement. Associations use notice, hearing, fines, suspension of privileges, and in many states a lien enforceable by foreclosure. Fines can accrue daily. This is not a low-stakes forum.

Selective enforcement is a genuine defense in most states. An association that has permitted short-term rentals for years and suddenly enforces against one owner has a problem, and photographs and listing screenshots of other units are the evidence.

Before buying with an intent to rent short-term: read the declaration, the bylaws, the rules, and the last two years of board minutes. The minutes are where you learn that an amendment is being drafted.

Leases

A tenant listing a unit is almost always in breach — of the sublease clause, the assignment clause, the residential use clause, or all three. Many jurisdictions have added explicit lease provisions and some ordinances require the landlord's written consent as a condition of a permit.

The consequences are eviction and, in some leases, forfeiture of the deposit or liability for the profits. A tenant considering this should assume the landlord will find out, because listings are public and neighbors complain.

Mortgages and title

Most residential mortgages contain occupancy covenants — particularly owner-occupied and government-backed loans — and business use provisions. Converting a residence to a short-term rental operation can breach them. Enforcement is uncommon but not unknown, and it becomes a problem at refinance.

Deed restrictions recorded independently of an HOA can also prohibit transient rental, particularly in resort and planned communities.

Insurance, where the real exposure is

This is the part hosts most often get wrong, and the consequences are the largest.

A standard homeowner's policy generally excludes business pursuits. Renting a dwelling to paying guests is a business pursuit. Which means:

A guest injury may not be covered
Damage caused by guests may not be covered
Loss of rental income is not covered
And in some cases, the insurer may take the position that the policy was voided by an undisclosed change in use — which can affect coverage for unrelated losses

A landlord (dwelling fire) policy covers long-term rental and frequently excludes or limits short-term transient occupancy.

What actually works:

A short-term rental endorsement on a homeowner's policy, where the carrier offers one
A dedicated short-term rental policy from a carrier that writes them
A commercial general liability policy for a larger operation
Business interruption coverage
Adequate liability limits — many ordinances require $500,000 to $1,000,000, and that is a floor rather than a target
An umbrella policy, confirmed in writing to sit above a policy that actually covers this use

Platform-provided protection is not a substitute for insurance. It is typically excess over the host's own coverage, subject to exclusions and conditions, administered by the platform, and available only for bookings made through that platform. Read the actual terms rather than the marketing page, and tell your own insurer what you are doing in writing.

The single most important sentence in this section: tell your insurer, in writing, exactly how the property is used, and get the coverage confirmation in writing. A host who does not is frequently uninsured and does not find out until a claim.

Taxes

Transient occupancy taxes

Most jurisdictions impose a transient occupancy, lodging, hotel, or accommodations tax on short stays — commonly stays under 30 days, though the threshold varies. Rates run from a few percent to well over 15% when state, county, city, and special district levies are stacked.

Many platforms now collect and remit these under voluntary collection agreements. This does not always cover everything. Platform agreements frequently cover some levies and not others, and a host may still owe a separate county or special district tax, and may still be required to register and file returns even if the tax is remitted by the platform.

Verify with the taxing authority directly which taxes apply, which the platform remits, and what filing obligations remain. This is a common and expensive gap.

Federal income tax

Rental income is gross income under 26 U.S.C. § 61. The specific rules for dwelling units used personally are at 26 U.S.C. § 280A.

The fourteen-day rule. Under § 280A(g), if a dwelling unit is used as a residence and rented for fewer than 15 days during the year, the rental income is not included in gross income and the related expenses are not deductible. This is the provision behind renting a house during a nearby major event and reporting nothing.

The personal use limitation. Where a dwelling is used as a residence — personal use exceeding the greater of 14 days or 10% of rental days — deductions are limited to rental income, with an allocation between personal and rental use.

Schedule E or Schedule C. Rental real estate is normally reported on Schedule E and is not subject to self-employment tax. But where substantial services are provided to occupants — meals, daily cleaning during the stay, concierge, tours — the activity may be a trade or business reported on Schedule C and subject to self-employment tax under 26 U.S.C. § 1402. Ordinary services incidental to occupancy — cleaning between guests, utilities, trash — do not typically cross that line.

Passive activity losses. 26 U.S.C. § 469 limits deduction of losses from passive activities. Rental activity is generally passive, with exceptions — including the much-discussed short-term rental treatment, under which an activity with an average customer use period of seven days or less is not a "rental activity" for passive loss purposes, which can permit loss offsets against other income where the taxpayer materially participates. This is a technical area where the details matter and casual advice is frequently wrong.

What to keep: every booking record, every platform statement, receipts for repairs and supplies, mileage, a contemporaneous log of personal use days, depreciation schedules, and records of any material participation. The personal use log is the one nobody keeps and the one an examination asks for.

Liability

Guest injuries

A short-term rental host owes duties to guests, generally analyzed under premises liability. In most jurisdictions a paying guest is an invitee — the highest duty — which means the host must inspect for dangers, correct or warn of them, and maintain the premises in reasonably safe condition.

The recurring injury sources, and the recurring failures:

Stairs and railings — height, spacing, loose rails, poor lighting
Pools and hot tubs — barriers, gates, latches, depth markings, and drain covers
Balconies and decks — the single most catastrophic failure category
Carbon monoxide — detectors are cheap and their absence is indefensible
Fire safety — alarms, extinguishers, egress, and a posted evacuation plan
Space heaters, fireplaces, and grills
Loose rugs, uneven thresholds, and dark hallways
Water heater temperature
Firearms, medications, and chemicals left accessible

Waivers in rental agreements are of limited value — many states void or narrowly construe them, particularly for gross negligence, and particularly where a party is unsophisticated.

The real protections are inspection, maintenance, documentation, and insurance. A dated pre-stay checklist and a record of what was inspected is worth more in litigation than any waiver.

Neighbors

Neighbor complaints drive the regulatory response in this field, and they also generate private claims — private nuisance for noise, traffic, parking, and trash, and in some jurisdictions statutory claims under a short-term rental ordinance.

HOAs will fine. Cities will fine. And a neighbor with a log can be more effective than either.

The mitigations that work: a genuinely responsive 24-hour local contact; noise monitoring devices that measure decibels without recording audio; clear house rules with quiet hours; occupancy and event limits actually enforced; parking instructions; and — the one that matters most — introducing yourself to the neighbors and giving them your phone number. A neighbor who can call you does not call the city.

Discrimination

The Fair Housing Act applies to short-term rentals in significant respects, prohibiting discrimination in the rental of dwellings because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, and disability. 42 U.S.C. § 3604 also prohibits discriminatory statements and advertising, and § 3617 prohibits interference and coercion. Exemptions exist for certain owner-occupied situations, but they are narrower than hosts assume and the advertising prohibition applies regardless of exemption.

Public accommodation law may also apply. A short-term rental operated as an inn, hotel, or place of lodging can be a place of public accommodation under 42 U.S.C. § 12182, with accessibility and reasonable modification obligations. The line between a private dwelling and a place of lodging is fact-dependent and is being litigated.

Assistance animals. Under fair housing principles, a no-pets policy generally must yield to an assistance animal, and a pet fee generally may not be charged for one. This is one of the most common host errors.

State and local law frequently adds protected characteristics — source of income, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, age — and applies to lodging.

What hosts should do: apply written, neutral criteria uniformly; avoid any discriminatory statement in a listing, in messages, or in a review; never ask about protected characteristics; handle assistance animal requests correctly; and document the reason for every declined booking. And note that a guest screening report obtained for a booking decision is subject to consumer reporting rules — permissible purposes are enumerated at 15 U.S.C. § 1681b, and adverse action based on a report carries notice obligations.

The platform

47 U.S.C. § 230 generally protects a platform from liability for content provided by users, which is why a guest injured in a listing, or a neighbor harmed by one, generally has a claim against the host, not the platform.

Section 230 is not unlimited — it has not been read to immunize a platform's own conduct, its own transactions, or its own representations — but as a practical matter the host is the defendant. Which is another way of saying: the insurance question in the previous section is the whole ballgame.

Four hosts

The condo that was never allowed

Rosalind Achterberg-Nwosu bought a two-bedroom beach condo specifically to rent it. She checked the city ordinance, which permitted short-term rental with a permit. She got the permit. She listed it.

Eleven days later she received a notice from the association: the declaration limited use to "single family residential purposes," and the board had adopted a rule two years earlier defining rentals under 30 days as a prohibited commercial use. Fines were $250 per day, accruing.

What she had not done: read the declaration, the bylaws, the rules, or the board minutes before buying.

What she found when she did: the "single family residential purposes" clause was drafted in 1987. Her state construes restrictive covenants narrowly and resolves ambiguity in favor of free use of land, and there was appellate authority in her state holding that a residential use clause restricts the nature of use rather than its duration. That gave her a real argument on the covenant.

The board rule was the harder problem — she needed to know whether the declaration authorized the board to adopt use restrictions by rule, or whether a use restriction required a declaration amendment by owner vote. In her declaration it required an amendment. The rule was ultra vires.

She also documented four other units that had been listing openly for years without enforcement.

Outcome: the board withdrew the fines and put a declaration amendment to a vote. The amendment passed, with a grandfather provision for owners who held permits at the time — which she did.

Three lessons. Read the declaration and two years of minutes before buying. Whether a restriction can be adopted by board rule or requires an amendment is the first question. And selective enforcement is a real defense that requires photographs and listing screenshots collected while they still exist.

The uninsured guest injury

Cassius Delacroix-Ibarra had rented his lake house for three summers. A guest's teenage son fell from a deck when a railing gave way. The injuries were serious.

Cassius had a standard homeowner's policy. He had never told his insurer he was renting the house.

The insurer denied the claim under the business pursuits exclusion, and raised the question of whether the undisclosed change in use affected the policy generally.

The platform's protection program was excess over his own coverage, subject to conditions, and administered by the platform. It paid a fraction.

What would have prevented it, in order of cost: telling the insurer in writing what the property was used for and buying a short-term rental endorsement or a dedicated policy, about a few hundred dollars a year more; an umbrella policy confirmed in writing to sit above a policy that actually covered the use; and a documented annual inspection of the deck and railings, which had been built in 1994 and never examined.

The lesson. The single largest financial exposure in short-term rental operation is not the ordinance and not the HOA. It is a guest injury on a policy that excludes the use. Tell your insurer, in writing, and get the confirmation in writing.

The tax that the platform did not collect

Ignatius Vasquez-Thorne rented a cabin and relied on the platform's statement that it collected and remitted occupancy taxes.

It did — the state lodging tax and the city transient occupancy tax. It did not collect the county tourism development tax or the special taxing district levy, neither of which was covered by the platform's voluntary collection agreement. And his jurisdiction required him to register and file quarterly returns regardless of who remitted.

Three years later, an audit assessed roughly $9,400 in tax plus penalties and interest for failure to file.

What he should have done: called the county revenue office and asked three questions — which lodging taxes apply to this property; which of them does [platform] remit under its agreement; and what registration and filing obligations do I have regardless? Fifteen minutes.

The lesson. Platform collection is partial and jurisdiction-specific, and the filing obligation frequently survives it. Verify with the taxing authority, not the platform's help page.

The neighbor who kept a log

Thaddeus Oyelaran-Beck ran two houses on a quiet street. He lived forty minutes away, used a cleaning service, and had a co-host who answered messages during business hours.

The neighbor kept a log: date, time, decibel estimate, number of vehicles, number of guests observed against the permitted occupancy of eight. Over four months: nineteen entries exceeding the ordinance's quiet hours, six occasions with more than eight guests, and eleven instances of guest vehicles parked on the street in violation of the permit condition.

She filed with the city, attaching the log. She also filed with the HOA. She also documented, on three occasions, calling the posted 24-hour contact number and receiving no answer within the required 30 minutes.

That last item was the one that ended it. The 24-hour local contact requirement is the provision most commonly violated by remote operators and the easiest to document. His permit was revoked with a one-year bar on reapplication.

What would have prevented all of it: a genuinely responsive local contact who answered the phone; decibel monitoring devices that alert on threshold breaches without recording audio; enforcing his own occupancy and parking rules with actual consequences; and — the cheapest and most effective thing available — knocking on the neighbors' doors, introducing himself, and giving them his cell number. A neighbor who can reach you calls you. A neighbor who cannot calls the city.

What to do before you list

Read, in this order:

The municipal code — search "short-term rental," "transient occupancy," "vacation rental," "home sharing." Read the whole chapter, not the FAQ.
Your state's preemption statute, if any.
The HOA declaration, bylaws, rules, and the last two years of board minutes.
Your lease, if you are a tenant, and your mortgage, if you have one.
Your insurance policy's business pursuits exclusion.

Then make five calls:

The planning or code enforcement office: is a permit required, what are the conditions, and is the permit cap full?
The revenue or tax office: which lodging taxes apply, which does the platform remit, and what must I file regardless?
Your insurance agent: I intend to rent this property to paying guests on stays of [N] nights; what coverage do I need and what will it cost? Get the answer in writing.
The HOA manager: is short-term rental permitted, and where is that addressed in the governing documents?
Your lender, if the mortgage has occupancy covenants and you are unsure.

And do one thing that is not a call: walk the property with a critical eye. Railings, stairs, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, egress, pool barriers, water heater temperature, loose rugs, lighting. Photograph what you inspect and date it. That record is your defense and it takes an hour.

The neighbor's side

This article is written mostly from the host's perspective. The neighbor across the fence has a different set of tools, and they work.

Read the ordinance. Almost every short-term rental ordinance imposes conditions — occupancy limits, quiet hours, parking, a permit number in the listing, and a 24-hour local contact with a response time. Each condition is a thing that can be documented and violated.

Find out whether the property is permitted. Most cities maintain a searchable permit database. An unpermitted listing in a permit jurisdiction is the fastest complaint there is.

Keep a log. Date, time, duration, decibel estimate, vehicle count, guest count against the permitted occupancy, and what you observed. Photographs of vehicles and gatherings, taken from your own property.

Call the posted contact number and document the result. The 24-hour local contact requirement is the one remote operators most commonly fail, and it is the easiest to prove. Log the call, the time, and whether anyone responded within the required window.

Complain to everyone with jurisdiction, and get case numbers. Code enforcement · the short-term rental program · the HOA · the police non-emergency line for noise · parking enforcement. Follow up on each case number.

Report the listing to the platform where it violates the platform's own rules, and separately report it to the city.

Private nuisance remains available where the interference is substantial and unreasonable — and in a residential neighborhood, a rotating commercial lodging operation is a stronger nuisance case than most.

And the thing that works before all of that: call the host. Many problems come from an operator who genuinely does not know what is happening at 1 a.m. forty minutes away, and who will fix it once told. Give it one honest try before the log starts.

Where this is heading

Three currents are reshaping this area and are worth knowing.

Regulation is converging and tightening. The permit-plus-primary-residence-plus-cap model has become standard in high-demand markets, and enforcement has become genuinely effective through platform data sharing and listing scraping. The era of quietly operating an unpermitted listing in a regulated city is largely over.

State preemption is contested in both directions. Some states have limited local authority to prohibit short-term rentals, generally at the urging of property rights and industry coalitions. Others have expressly confirmed local authority. This is the fastest-moving layer, and an operator should check it annually rather than once.

Insurance is catching up. A decade ago, coverage for this use was difficult to obtain. Endorsements and dedicated policies are now widely available at reasonable cost, which means the excuse for operating uninsured has disappeared — and so, correspondingly, has the sympathy for a host who did.

And a fourth, quieter one: the accessibility question. As short-term rentals occupy a larger share of the lodging market, the argument that a professionally operated multi-unit rental business is a place of public accommodation subject to accessibility obligations becomes harder to resist. Operators running several units as a business should watch this rather than assume it does not reach them.

The entity question

Hosts routinely ask whether to hold the property in an LLC. The honest answer is that it helps less than people hope and more than nothing, and the details determine which.

What an entity does. It can limit personal liability for claims arising from the property's operation, and it separates the asset from unrelated personal exposure. For an operator with several properties, holding each in a separate entity contains a loss to one.

What an entity does not do.

It does not create insurance. An uninsured LLC with one asset is not asset protection; it is a defendant with one asset. The judgment takes the property.
It does not protect against your own negligence in many states — a person who personally failed to maintain the deck can be personally liable regardless of the entity.
It does not defeat a due-on-sale clause. Transferring a mortgaged property into an entity can trigger acceleration; lenders rarely enforce, but "rarely" is doing work in that sentence, and the transfer should be discussed with the lender.
It does not automatically change the tax treatment. A single-member LLC is disregarded by default.
It does not survive disregard of formalities. Commingled funds, no separate account, no records, and personal use of entity property invite piercing.
It costs money — formation, annual fees, registered agent, separate returns in some structures, and in some states a franchise tax.

What actually matters more, in order:

Adequate insurance that covers this use. Nothing else is close.
An umbrella policy, confirmed in writing to sit above a policy that covers the use.
Documented inspection and maintenance.
Compliance with the ordinance and the covenants.
Then, and only then, the entity.

If you do use one: separate bank account, no commingling, the entity named as insured on the policies, leases and rental agreements in the entity's name, formalities observed, and a registered agent who actually forwards mail. An entity that exists on paper and nowhere else provides the protection it deserves.

Guests, and the law that applies to them

A short-term rental guest occupies an odd legal position, and the ambiguity matters at exactly two moments: when the host wants them out, and when something goes wrong.

Guest or tenant? In most states a transient lodger is not a tenant and does not acquire the protections of landlord-tenant law — which means no eviction proceeding is required to remove them. But the line is defined by state law, and it moves. Common triggers that can convert a lodger into a tenant with full eviction protections:

Length of stay — many states set a threshold, frequently 30 days, after which occupancy becomes a tenancy
Establishing residency — receiving mail, registering a vehicle, changing an address
Absence of an alternative residence
Payment structured as rent rather than as a nightly rate

This is the single most dangerous operational risk in long-stay short-term rental. A host who accepts a 45-night booking in a jurisdiction with a 30-day threshold may have created a tenancy, and removing that occupant requires a court proceeding that can take months. Hosts have lost the use of a property for an entire season this way.

What to do about it: know your state's threshold; consider capping stays below it; if you accept longer stays, use a written lease appropriate to your state rather than a booking confirmation; and never accept a stay of indefinite duration.

Removal. Where the occupant is genuinely a transient lodger and refuses to leave, the remedy in most states is a police assist rather than an eviction. In practice, police are frequently reluctant to make that call at the door, and the host who has a written agreement stating the departure date, the transient nature of the occupancy, and the applicable state provision gets a very different response than the one who does not.

Damage and deposits. Platform-administered damage claims have their own procedures and deadlines, which are short. Document the condition before and after every stay with dated photographs — not a walkthrough video you delete, an actual dated record you keep. Where a security deposit is collected outside a platform, state deposit statutes may apply.

Guest data. Hosts collect names, identification, payment data, and increasingly device and camera data. Disclose any camera or recording device, and know that indoor cameras are prohibited by most platforms and by law in many places, that hidden recording can be a crime, and that audio recording is treated far more strictly than video. Exterior cameras with disclosed fields of view are generally permissible; anything inside a dwelling is a serious risk.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal where I live? Four separate questions: the city ordinance, the HOA covenant, the lease or mortgage, and the insurance policy. Answer all four.

My HOA says "residential use only." Does that ban it? Maybe. Courts have split, the language matters, and many states construe restrictive covenants narrowly. Read the declaration and get advice.

Can the HOA amend to prohibit it? Generally yes, by the required vote. Whether the amendment reaches owners who bought before it varies by state and declaration.

Does my homeowner's policy cover this? Usually not. Tell your insurer in writing and get coverage confirmation in writing.

Is the platform's protection enough? No. It is typically excess, conditional, platform-administered, and limited to bookings on that platform.

Do I owe occupancy tax if the platform collects it? Possibly — platform agreements often cover some levies and not others, and registration and filing obligations frequently remain. Verify with the taxing authority.

What is the fourteen-day rule? Rent a residence for fewer than 15 days a year and the income is generally excluded from gross income — and the expenses are not deductible.

Can I refuse a guest? For neutral, uniformly applied reasons, yes. Not because of a protected characteristic, and generally not because of an assistance animal.

A guest was hurt. Notify your insurer immediately, document the scene and the condition, preserve maintenance records, and do not make statements about fault.

Neighbors are complaining. Respond within minutes, not days. Give them your number. Install decibel monitoring. Enforce your own rules. This is cheaper than every alternative.