Kirkland, WA Short-Term Rentals: Night Caps (2026)

300(2): short-term rentals are permitted 'not exceeding a total of one hundred twenty days per year' once the owner qualifies under the extended, part-time-occupancy path, meeting a two-hundred-forty-five-day primary residence threshold and lining up a nearby property manager for the remaining days. The cap counts total rental days across the calendar year for that dwelling, not per booking, so a series of short bookings and one long booking both draw down the same one-hundred-twenty-day allowance. Owners who instead qualify under subsection (1) by continuously occupying the unit as their primary residence face no such day cap at all; the ordinance's text makes the rentals 'freely permitted' as to frequency and total days in that scenario.

A separate, related volume control appears in subsection (4): regardless of which path applies, no more than two short-term rental agreements may be in effect at a single detached dwelling unit at any one time, preventing an owner from running several concurrent bookings to sidestep the night cap's intent. 02, administered by the city's finance and administration department.