Flagstaff, AZ Short-Term Rentals: Host Platform Liability (2026)

Under Flagstaff City Code § 3-12-001-0012(A), no later than twenty-four hours before every stay, the STR owner or the owner's designee must run a background check on the person booking the rental through the online national sex offender public website operated by the U.S. Department of Justice, to confirm the guest is not a registered sex offender. Records of each check must be kept, in hard copy or electronically, for twelve months after the booking date and made available to the City on demand during business hours under § 3-12-001-0012(B).

Subsection (C) allows the owner to rely on the online lodging marketplace's own screening instead of running a separate check, if the marketplace on which the STR is advertised performs the background check itself. That is where the liability rule bites: § 3-12-001-0012(D) provides that the failure of an online lodging marketplace to conduct a background check shall not relieve the owner of liability under this section. In practice, an owner who lists on a platform and assumes the platform screened the guest cannot point to the platform's oversight as a defense if a required check was never done; the owner remains responsible for compliance with the twenty-four-hour screening and twelve-month recordkeeping duties regardless of which party actually ran the check. A failure here is enforced the same way as other STR chapter violations, through the escalating civil penalties of § 3-12-001-0015 and, after repeated verified violations, the license suspension grounds of § 3-12-001-0014.