Deadline approaching for vacation rental licenses in unincorporated areas
Deadline approaching for vacation rental licenses in unincorporated areas
All 2,000 vacation rental owners in unincorporated Sonoma County must have new business licenses by June 15
Starting on June 15, vacation rental owners in unincorporated Sonoma County will be required to have a business license from Permit Sonoma. This comes at the end of a year-long grace period after the Board of Supervisors approved changes to the rules and regulations around vacation rentals in April of 2023.
As defined by Permit Sonoma, “vacation rentals are the rental of a whole private residence for periods of 30 days or less.” This is different than a hosted rental, where the owner lives on the property and rents out rooms in their house. This has its own regulations.
“The license program provides additional enforcement tools that will…allow proportional measures to be applied to violations,” the county said in a press release last year.
As of last month, according to Matt Brown, a communications specialist with the county, only about a quarter of the roughly 2,000 vacation rental owners in the county had received the required license. Considering the application process for the license takes some time, a number of vacation rental owners are going to have to choose between illegally operating their property or ceasing to operate their property altogether until their license is received.
“Typically it can take around 30 days from date of submittal and payment to date of issuance,” Permit Sonoma said. “With the volume of applications we're processing right now (several hundred, and more coming in every day), that can take roughly 60 days. All that said, it depends on the circumstance—completeness of the application, etc.”
Permit Sonoma has also said that if it discovers vacation rental owners who have not received their license by the June 15 deadline, then they will be fined between three and ten times the application fee for the business license. Given that the fee is around $1,400, it could cost up to $10,000. (For comparison, Sebastopol charges three times the license fee for a similar offense.)
For the last decade, vacation rentals have been a contentious topic in west county. Among other things, vacation rentals can drive up property values, diminish neighborhood identity and spirit, increase environmental impact, and bring residents unfamiliar with fire protocols into vulnerable neighborhoods.
While the city of Sebastopol has discouraged vacation rentals and has its own rules and regulations surrounding them, Sonoma County has gone through multiple attempts to curb vacation rentals in unincorporated areas. They have instituted moratoriums on new vacation rental permits, a transient occupancy tax of 12 percent, and a cap to the amount of vacation rental permits than can be given out in popular areas, such as Austin Creek near Guerneville.
“The business license gives us additional enforcement tools for bad actors, allowing us to revoke or suspend the license,” said 5th District Supervisor Lynda Hopkins. “Additionally, we have added new requirements to reduce nuisance complaints, with the goal of making vacation rentals better neighbors.”
Among other things, the county has established standards for limiting the use of on-street parking and emissions of light and noise, as well as a maximum occupancy of 12 guests regardless of the size of the home. It has also restricted permits to individuals, effectively prohibiting LLCs or corporate owners.
Hopkins adds that while the new regulation is an improvement, there is still a concern about the level of punishment that will occur if a vacation rental owner or tenant continues to bend the rules.
“People who flout the rules need to be stopped,” she said. “I’d also like to update the ordinance to clarify that advertising beyond the capacity of a given rental is itself a violation of the ordinance. (Currently advertising isn’t a violation, which means we have to actually catch the vacation rental in the act of renting to too many people, which is very difficult to do.)”
As of now, locals can find out if a vacation rental is operating without a permit by using Permit Sonoma’s permit/parcel search, and if they suspect a permitted vacation rental is breaking the law, locals can report them by calling the 24/7 complaint hotline at (707) 875-6619.
Coastal vacation rentals given more time to comply
It is important to note that there is an exception to the June 15 deadline: vacation rentals within the coastal zone of Sonoma County (see map below) will be given until April 11, 2025 to come under compliance due to California Coastal Commission rules.
