Monterey County, CA Short-Term Rentals: Night Caps (2026)

Monterey County limits short-term rentals through both a stay-length definition and frequency caps rather than a simple annual night cap. The ordinance defines a short-term rental as the use of residential property for transient lodging for 30 days or fewer. The frequency of whole-house renting then determines the license category: a Limited Vacation Rental is a non-hosted whole-house rental that occurs no more than three times per year, while a Commercial Vacation Rental is a non-hosted rental that occurs more than three times per year. Owner-occupied Homestays are not subject to the three-times-per-year limit and may be hosted without a numeric frequency cap. The most significant quantitative limit is the area cap: Commercial Vacation Rentals are capped at approximately four percent of the housing units within each planning area of the unincorporated county (a 4% cap applied per inland planning area and in the coastal zone). Once a planning area reaches its 4% commercial cap, no new Commercial Vacation Rental licenses are issued there. Combined with outright commercial bans in Big Sur, the Carmel Highlands, and the residential zones of Carmel Valley and Moss Landing, these caps sharply limit how many whole-house commercial rentals can operate. Operators seeking to rent a whole house more than three times a year must obtain a Use Permit (inland) or Coastal Development Permit (coastal) and fit within the cap.