STR regulation questions

[JJ Williams]

My city is planning to pass along some STR regulations. I asked some questions about the verbiage and they didn't know the answer quite yet. I know every city is different but I'm curious what other people are seeing.

For anyone who has permits for STRs. If you have a multi family do you need a permit for each unit or just the building typically?

General question on “owner occupied”. If I have a multi family and live in the building is that considered owner occupied or does it actually have to be a room in your space?

[Carolyn Fuller]

I suspect that each locale defines these terms differently. In Cambridge, MA "owner occupied" means the owner lives in the single family building and "owner adjacent" means the owner lives in 1 of the 2-4 unit multi-family housing. How a locale defines single family versus multi-family also varies. Since the rental apartment in our building is considered an ADU (accessary dwelling unit), they consider our building to be a single family home. We have 2 STR listings, the ADU and a guest room. Because we are considered an owner occupied single family building, we only need a single registration that we use for both listings. If they had decided our ADU was a unit within a multi-family building, we would have needed a registration for that unit and another for our guest room.

Unfortunately, you will need to wait for your city to publish their regulations and hopefully, they will have a section defining their terms.