• Short-Term Rental Compliance

    Properly regulating and supporting the short-term rental market for neighborhoods, hosts, and government

What it means to be compliant

While vacation rentals and short-term rentals in general have been around for a long time, it's important to understand the impact it has on communities. With all the benefits to the homeowners involved in short-term rentals, neighbors of these properties sometimes only see the negative impacts. By understanding what compliance means, homeowners involved in this market can better see how this can be beneficial to all parties involved. 

Many cities are working towards finding solutions for fair regulations to maximize benefits of short-term rentals while reducing the impact it has on the community. For everyone to be satisfied, it's imperative to minimize trash, parking, traffic, housing affordability, neighborhood character, and noise in these communities. 


The positive impacts to these communities is the generation of tax revenue, new jobs, and money being spent at local businesses. One vacation rental on average hosts 4-6 stays in a month. On average, this is 22 people per month that are traveling and spending money in that specific neighborhood. This supports local businesses such as coffee shops, stores, venues, and restaurants. Many stays are family focused in which people are traveling to visit relatives. This also creates jobs for neighborhood cleaning services and maintenance businesses. This money coming from outside of the community helps fuel the local economy.  


With compliance guidelines varying per area, it's important to stay on top of the changes. Some cities are seeing compliance changes regarding: registration, permitting, address identification, compliance monitoring, enforcement, outreach, and tax collection.

Fair competition and taxes

Other hotel based businesses can be hurt by short-term rentals because of unfair competition. Because short-term rentals are a "new" concept to some local municipalities, many go unregulated and untaxed. Currently, this is why most short-term rentals are priced lower for bookings because the cost of taxes are non-existent in these places. Having fair competition can be beneficial for both established hotel and motel businesses and short-term rentals.


Types of tax revenue

Transient Occupancy Tax
Hotel Tax
Transaction Privilege Tax
Bed Tax
Lodging Tax
Bed and Breakfast Tax

Tax benefits for neighborhoods

Tax revenue collected from short-term rentals can benefit the surrounding community the rental is in. That money can help out the citizens in the neighborhood that need public services most. These taxes are an extra source of income for the community that is derived from people outside of the community. 

Key Performance Indicators

Compliance Rate: Cohost gives municipalities the ability to understand the percentage of properties in compliance.


Annual Revenue From Permits: Cohost increases the revenue to municipalities by increasing permit holders, paying for itself and increasing safety and regulation compliance for cities


Annual Revenue From Taxes: Cohost can estimate the taxes expected from a short-term rental and can supply information to municipalities to cross check against taxes paid by STR property

Neighborhood safety

When discussing neighborhood safety, it helps to keep in mind both short-term rental and long-term rental tenants. There can be similar problems that occur from both types of tenants such as noise, trash, parking, and public safety issues. Tension and hostility can arise between short-term rental landlords and neighbors. Guests traveling to a neighborhood may not acknowledge local laws and rules. It's important as a short-term rental owner to educate guests by use of guidebooks, communication, and monitoring. 

Noise

Cohost partners with a company NoiseAware to monitor only the decibel levels of a home to better know when guests are being a bit too loud. Knowing exactly when guests are loud can give a short-term rental landlord the power to prevent upset neighbors because of noise issues. 

Party houses

In recent news, people are booking homes strictly to throw house parties. Cohost has preventive measure against this by restricting bookings to a minimum of 2 days per stay. 

How Cohost assists governments with compliance

It's beneficial for everyone for the short-term rental market to be regulated and for vacation rentals to stay in compliance. It keeps communities happy and welcoming to the market without the need for an area wide ban of short-term rentals. That being said, there are many short-term rental landlords that do not care for regulations and laws that give the majority of vacation rental owners a bad name. Compliance isn't just for over regulating, it's for creating fair competition and the benefit of the community these rentals are in. Keeping this in mind, here is how Cohost is assisting governments with those rentals which are out of compliance.


Cohost partners with government agencies to better assist compliance regarding short-term rentals and vacation rentals. Using open source data points, Cohost helps by supplying information on a property's registered tax fees, licensing, and the latitude and longitude of properties out of compliance. These open data points are crucial to enforcing particular compliance laws as the majority of OTAs or listing channels (such as Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com, etc) aren't equipped as of now for publishing the information needed for this enforcement.

How compliance benefits both homeowners and neighbors

  • Regulation of short-term rentals should not negatively affect property values and property tax revenue that is generated. This is important and beneficial to both parties.
  • Residents should have the option to occasionally utilize their properties to generate extra income from short-term rentals. As long as they follow compliance procedures. It's beneficial for tax revenue that is generated and to stimulate the local economy by producing an extra source of income for the homeowner and local businesses. 
  • This additional tourism attracts people from outside the area to visit and spend money in town. These are transients who are going to spend money at local businesses and restaurants.
  • It's important that the city does not lose out on tax revenue. The tax revenue is beneficial to all residents especially ones that rely on public services. It's important to note that without proper enforcement or technologies in place it can be difficult to find out-of-compliant homes. Since address data is usually hidden from short-term rental listings, our open data points can find the latitude and longitude, and permit data of the property.
  • Cohost minimizes parking issues by clearly instructing guests on parking rules. In bigger cities, improper parking results in parking fees that is added revenue for the city.
  • Properties managed by Cohost have accurate occupancy data, which can be used for monitoring compliance based on the amount of days that a home can be rented out.
  • Cohost managed properties include a guidebook stating local sound, trash, and parking rules and ordinances along with a notice to be a great neighbor to inform all guests who stay at these properties so they know what to expect when traveling to a new neighborhood.
  • Cohost and Cohost Host Success Agents are on the ground near these properties and are considered a local contact in the instance someone needs to contacted for corrective action. This is mainly for events that are considered non-emergency issues such as noise, trash, or parking problems.
  • All Cohost managed properties are subject to a guest limit. Generally, each bedroom can host a maximum of 2 guests and in some cases with bunk-beds a few more (depending on if a room fits multiple bunk beds.) This limit is strictly enforced by Cohost to prevent noisy parties, and loss of revenue for the homeowner and local governing bodies (from loss of guest taxation).
  • Powered by Cohost Analytics, each property that is managed by Cohost has lifetime records of important information that can be utilized by local governments in the instance of inspections or audits.

​How does Cohost Compliance Operate?

Data

Short-term rental listing, latitude and longitude, activity, and expired license collection


Compliance Monitoring

Comprehensive suite of analytical solutions to help local governments easily identify and address non-compliance with STR related regulations

Consulting

Assist local governments quickly and painlessly draft and adopt enforceable STR regulation that fits their specific needs and circumstances

How does Cohost work with your municipality?

Data

Weekly scans of largest STR websites representing over 99% of bookings - conducted at various times to prevent "gaming".


Property Reporting

Interactive reports with complete address information and applicable information of all identifiable STRs in a community. Validation against existing Licenses within the GEOJSON area.

Market Reporting

In depth information about all STRs in the market provided on a monthly basis.


Support

Dedicated hotline to triage STR issues with ticketing support and reporting to municipality.


Extended Scope of Services

Need personalized services to fit your municipality's requirements? Cohost can provide beneficial services tailored to the way your community manages short-term rentals. From compliance mailers, to interactive dashboard reporting, your municipality can better track and manage short-term rental compliance in your community.

Compliance Notifiers

Mailing of non-compliance and soon-expiring notifiers (using municipality's form letterhead

Payment Processing

Payment processing for compliance permits

Dashboards

Dashboards that give a birds-eye-view of STR markets and impacts to help government bodies better understand STR markets to make knowledgeable legislative decisions

Consulting

Big Data backed advice on best practices for managing STR Markets that maximize tax revenue and minimize impact on neighborhoods

Pricing Model

$1,000 

+$0.50 per property indexed and reported on each month


Scalability: Cohost's contract scales up and down with available STRs in a market. We only evaluate active properties.


Inexpensive: Fraction of the cost of competitors for Compliance Monitoring

Need more information?

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