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

Merced County's Zoning Code separates hosted rentals from vacation rentals and gives only the vacation-rental category a hard annual operating cap. 270(F)(1), titled Limited Operations, states that vacation rental operations shall be limited to 180 cumulative days in a calendar year, meaning an unhosted rental cannot legally be booked for more than half the year regardless of how the days are distributed across the calendar. 124; F(3) bars outdoor amplified sound entirely unless a Temporary Use Permit authorizes it; and F(4) provides that the vacation-rental use automatically expires upon the sale or transfer of the property, so a buyer cannot simply inherit the seller's permit and continue renting past that point.

Because vacation rentals are unhosted, the county treats the 180-day ceiling as the core check on converting single-family housing stock into full-time lodging: exceeding it converts the operation into something closer to a hotel or motel use, which the definitions at subsection B(1) expressly exclude from the short-term rental category. Compliance is tracked through the Transient Occupancy Tax records and guest registration logs the owner must keep for three years under subsection D(3), which the County Treasurer/Tax Collector can review to confirm the days actually rented.