Merced County, CA Short-Term Rentals: Host Presence Rule (2026)

Merced County's short-term rental chapter splits rentals into two types, and the presence rule differs sharply between them. 270(B)(2) as the rental of a portion of a private residence that is concurrently occupied by the owner or operator during the transient renter's stay, covering arrangements like bed-and-breakfasts and homestays. For that category, subsection E(1) is explicit: the primary owner or operator shall remain in residence at the hosted rental during the rental period, with no exception written into the text. That requirement builds on the baseline limitation at subsection C(1), which requires every short-term rental, hosted or vacation, to be the owner's primary residence, defined at subsection B(7) as the owner's permanent residence documented by at least two forms of identification.

By contrast, a vacation rental under subsection B(3) is expressly the rental of an entire residence not concurrently occupied by the owner, so the occupancy rule at E(1) applies only to hosted rentals; vacation rentals instead carry the separate 180-day annual operating cap. Hosted rentals also carry two companion restrictions in the same subsection: commercial events and special events such as weddings may only proceed with an approved use permit (E(2)), and no outdoor amplified sound is allowed absent a use permit (E(3)). Because owner occupancy is a defining condition of the hosted-rental permit type, an owner who stops residing on site converts the operation into an unpermitted vacation rental, exposing the property to a permit compliance review by the Department.