Short-Term Rental Permit Statistics: U.S. Registers in 2026

No agency keeps a national count of short-term rental permits. Each city, county or state that regulates Airbnb-style rentals runs its own register, and only some publish it. This study adds up the ones that do: 275,665 permit and license records from 76 public registers in 26 states, counted on 2026-10-08.

A record is one row in a register: a permit, a license, a registration or an application. It is not the same as one rental. Some registers keep every renewal and every expired permit, and some cities publish more than one register, so a single home can appear more than once. The method section explains what that does to the numbers.

Records by state

Florida, Texas and Louisiana hold the most records. Three files cover a whole state: Florida and Wisconsin license short-term rentals statewide, and Texas rentals appear on the state's hotel occupancy tax roll. Everywhere else the count is the sum of the city and county registers that publish data.

Smaller files (under 400 records): Utah (69), Maine (47), Missouri (19).

The largest markets

Cities and resort areas with the most records on file, counting every register that covers them. New Orleans' count spans its three registers (applications, active licenses and non-commercial licenses), so it includes the same home more than once.

Among towns with their own page, the largest are Kissimmee, FL (2,788), Davenport, FL (2,397), Miami, FL (1,792), Hollywood, FL (1,339), Santa Rosa Beach, FL (1,132), St. Augustine, FL (1,088), leaving out Texas towns, whose tax roll also counts hotels. Every town with 100 or more records has its own page in the city index.

How many records include a phone or email

40% of all records carry a phone number (109,909) and 18% an email address (49,958). The other 59% (163,967) carry a name and an address but no contact details, because the register does not publish them.

Whether a phone appears depends almost entirely on the register, not on the owner. States whose files include a phone or email on the largest share of records:

• Ohio: 98% of 1,923 records
• Wisconsin: 98% of 12,919 records
• Louisiana: 86% of 33,991 records
• Arizona: 85% of 4,661 records
• California: 85% of 21,147 records
• Michigan: 78% of 1,479 records

Files that publish almost no contact details include Texas, Tennessee, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Hawaii, Pennsylvania. Those lists work for direct mail; the direct mail guide covers how.

Active, expired and pending permits

67% of records come from a register that publishes a status. Grouping those statuses into five plain categories:

Expired permits are common because registers like Nashville's and New Orleans' keep their whole history. A pending application is the newest kind of record: a homeowner who has applied and is waiting. The pending versus granted guide explains why businesses that sell to hosts watch them closely.

How new the records are

23,590 records were filed in the 12 months before 2026-10-08, counting only registers that publish a filing date. Florida's state license file, the largest in the set, publishes no filing date, so the figure leaves it out. Filing trends year over year are in the companion study, new short-term rental permit filings, 2024 to 2026, and the records added each week are listed on the fresh records page.

States with no registers to count

Idaho and Iowa have none. Idaho Code §67-6539 (House Bill 583, effective July 1, 2026) and Iowa Code §414.1 stop local governments from requiring short-term rental permits, so the registers other states publish do not exist there. The Idaho and Iowa guide has the detail.

In many other places a permit program exists but publishes nothing downloadable. Several large Texas and Tennessee cities fall in that group, which is why Texas is counted through the state tax roll instead. The state-by-state guide lists where permits are required.

Method

• Sources. Public permit, license and registration files from U.S. cities, counties and states, collected for the PermitPulse™ database. Nothing comes from Airbnb, Vrbo or other booking sites.
• What is excluded. Map layers that are not permits (zoning maps, parcel layers, listing heatmaps, lists of unlicensed rentals) and rows filed under the wrong state.
• Counting. Each register row counts once. Contact counts include a phone or email only when the register itself published it.
• Status groups. Statuses are grouped by their wording as published. Florida's license file uses number codes; code 20 is counted as active and codes 45 to 47 as not current.
• Date. All figures were counted on 2026-10-08 and refresh each time the site is rebuilt.

Limits

• Records are not rentals. New Orleans publishes separate registers for applications, active licenses and non-commercial licenses, and Denver, Louisville and Nashville each have two published layers, so one property can be counted more than once. Registers that keep renewals also repeat the same home.
• Coverage follows regulation. Places without a permit program, or with one that publishes nothing, add zero. The totals undercount short-term rentals in those places.
• Texas includes hotels. The Texas hotel occupancy tax roll covers every taxable lodging business, so it holds hotels and motels next to rented houses and condos.
• Contact details are as filed. Phones and emails are what owners gave the government. They are not checked, so some are out of date.