Palm Springs, CA Short-Term Rentals: Host Presence Rule (2026)

Section 5.25.078(b) is the dividing line between the city's two vacation-rental tracks. Homesharing under Section 5.25.078(a) lets an owner rent out a room or portion of their home while remaining on the property, but that lighter treatment depends entirely on presence and responsiveness: if the owner of the homeshare interest does not live on-site, in the home, and is not able to respond within 30 minutes to complaints about the condition, operation or conduct of occupants, the code automatically deems the unit a vacation rental rather than a homeshare.

Once that reclassification happens, the owner must fully comply with every provision of Chapter 5.25 that applies to vacation rentals generally, including without limitation securing a standard vacation rental registration certificate rather than a homesharing one. That matters in practice because ordinary vacation rentals carry obligations homesharing doesn't necessarily trigger, most importantly the annual contract caps in Section 5.25.070(b), which allow 26 contracts a year for new permittees and 32 for existing ones, the one-car-per-bedroom parking limit, and the full occupancy formula in Section 5.25.070(c).

The 30-minute response clock runs from when the enforcement official makes contact, the same standard Section 5.25.070(i) applies to vacation rentals generally, so an absentee homeshare owner is held to exactly the responsiveness the city expects of any vacation rental operator, just triggered by a different section.