Hemet, CA Short-Term Rentals: Host Platform Liability (2026)

Hemet rewrote its short-term lodging article (Article XVIII of Chapter 18) with Ordinance No. 2075, adopted April 28, 2026, and § 18-711 is the section that governs the companies standing between owners and guests. Section 18-701 defines "hosting platform" and "short-term rental facilitator" as the same thing: any person other than an owner or agent who provides an online marketplace or other medium for booking a unit for fewer than 30 consecutive calendar days. The definition names Airbnb and Vrbo and tracks Government Code § 50991.

Tax collection is controlled by the city, not the platform. Under § 18-711(a), a platform collects and remits transient occupancy tax only if the administrative services director directs it to do so in writing. Remittance is due before the last day of the month after each calendar quarter closes, or on the day the director sets if a different reporting period exists. Without that written authorization, platforms must not collect or remit the tax at all.

Under § 18-711(b), every platform must disclose, at least quarterly, the following for each Hemet listing: the full physical address with nine-digit ZIP+4, the assessor's parcel number, the listing URL, any unit-specific identifier where one address holds several units, the names of the people responsible for the listing, the length of stay of each booking, and the price paid for each stay. If the director has set a more frequent TOT reporting period, the director can require the same data on that schedule, and can ask for extra location identifiers when an address alone does not pin down a unit.

Subsection (c)(1) is the listing gate. Platforms must prompt advertisers for the city-issued short-term lodging permit number and the TOT certification number, and cannot advertise a unit unless both are supplied. After a city notice that a listing is noncompliant, bookings for it must stop within five business days, and no booking can be completed until the city confirms the unit meets the local registration requirement. Subsection (c)(2) bars platforms from collecting any fee, directly or indirectly, for ancillary services to an unpermitted unit, including insurance, concierge, catering, tours, cleaning and property management.

Subsection (d) gives internet-only platforms a presumption of compliance when they satisfy (a), (b) and (c), while keeping them bound by the administrative subpoena rules in § 18-712. Subsection (f) lets the city audit a platform at the city's own cost, with reasonable notice. Subsection (e) makes the section yield to any state or federal law that preempts it, and § 18-717 invokes the Short-Term Rental Facilitator Act of 2025 (Government Code § 50990 et seq.) within Hemet.