Clayton County, GA Short-Term Rentals: Host Presence Rule (2026)

Clayton County Code § 22-900, adopted by Ordinance No. 2019-22 on February 5, 2019, defines a short-term rental unit as any nonsubsidized house, apartment, condominium, room, or lodging accommodation rented to the same tenant for less than 30 days, and requires that unit to sit inside or adjacent to the owner's own occupied dwelling on the same lot. That single sentence is the county's host-presence rule: an investor who does not live on the property cannot legally operate a short-term rental under this article, and the definitions and standards in Chapter 22 apply cumulatively with Section 1.5 of the county zoning ordinance.

Once that presence test is met, § 22-901 layers on operating requirements: the owner, platform, or manager must hold a valid county business license and print the license number in every advertisement; each individual unit needs its own permit, good for one year, issued only after a building and fire code inspection; all guest parking must stay on the same lot as the rental; and before any guest checks in, the host must post the county noise ordinance somewhere visible inside the unit. The county can also demand quarterly, spreadsheet-format reports listing every rented address, nights occupied, amounts paid including taxes, and the responsible person for each unit.

Because the host-presence rule is baked into the definition itself, county code enforcement treats an advertisement for a unit that is not adjacent to an owner-occupied dwelling as evidence of an article violation under § 22-902(b), grounds to deny, suspend, or revoke the required business license and rental permit.