Texas Short-Term Rental Data From Hotel Occupancy Tax Permits

Texas has no statewide short-term rental license, but short-term rentals still show up in a statewide public file: the hotel occupancy tax permit roll kept by the Texas Comptroller, which lists lodging businesses that collect the tax, short-term rentals among them. PermitPulse holds 43,015 records from that roll as of 2026-10-08. 28,457 are filed under NAICS 531110 (lessors of residential buildings) and 11,006 under 721110 (hotels and motels), and none carry a phone or email.

That makes Texas the biggest address-level state file we carry, and one of the freshest. This guide explains what the roll contains, how to separate rentals from hotels, and where the records are.

What the roll is

The Texas Comptroller's hotel occupancy tax page says the tax applies not only to hotels and motels but also to bed and breakfasts, condominiums, apartments and houses, and that people leasing their houses must collect it from guests the same way a hotel does. The permit roll lists the businesses registered for the tax: the business name on the permit, the location address and ZIP, an industry code, and a date on each permit. Owners and managers who register a rental show up next to the hotels.

Because it is a tax roll, it reaches every town, including the Gulf beach towns, the Hill Country and the big metros. The cities in it do not need their own STR program for their rentals to appear.

What is in each record

• Business name on the permit. For an individual owner this is often the owner's name; for a managed property it can be the management company. 11,208 Texas records sit under a name that appears on two or more property addresses.
• Location address and ZIP. The rental itself.
• NAICS code. The industry the permit was filed under, which is how you separate rentals from hotels.
• Date. A date on every permit, which makes Texas one of the few states where you can sort the whole file by age.
• No phone or email. The roll does not publish them.

Rentals versus hotels: the NAICS codes

The most common codes on Texas permits in PermitPulse:

For short-term rental leads, keep 531110 (residential lessors) and consider 531311 (residential property managers, who often run rentals for owners). Drop 721110 (hotels and motels) and look at 721191 (bed-and-breakfast inns) and 721199 (other traveler accommodation) case by case. Subscribers can filter the export by permit type using the code.

How fresh it is

Records by year on the permit, for the last ten years:

3,524 Texas records are dated in the last 12 months. The current year is partial.

Where the records are

Texas towns with their own city page:

The biggest vacation towns have market pages instead: Austin (7,553), Port Aransas (3,076), Galveston (2,703), South Padre Island (2,280), Fredericksburg (1,730). Austin's page also draws on the City of Austin's own short-term rental register.

The split between rentals and hotels changes a lot by town. Big metros carry many hotels; beach and lake towns are mostly residential lessors. Check the city page before you buy a town's list, because the headline count can be half hotels.

Working an address-level list

1. Filter to residential codes and the towns you serve.
2. Group by name. A name on many permits is a manager or an investor; one letter or one call covers all of them.
3. Find a mailing address or phone. The location address is the rental. County appraisal district records list the owner of each property, and a skip-trace service can return a phone from a name and an address.
4. Mail or call within the rules. Mail is outside the TCPA; a phone number found by skip-trace is still covered by it. See direct mail to vacation rental owners and the compliance guide.

Getting the Texas file

The Texas plan is $99 a month with exports filtered by city, permit type and date, or $149 once for all 47,323 Texas records.