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

Unincorporated Merced County does not set a calendar-year night cap on short-term rentals in the way some coastal jurisdictions do (for example, limiting non-hosted rentals to 90 nights per year). The County's short-term rental standards (Section 18.60.270) regulate STRs through an Administrative Permit, a five-bedroom guest limit, a primary-residence requirement in residential zones, off-street parking, and a 24-hour local contact, but the published standards contain no annual maximum number of rentable nights. The only durational limit is on the length of each individual stay: a short-term rental is defined as lodging rented for 30 consecutive days or less, and any occupancy exceeding 30 consecutive days is treated as a longer-term tenancy that is exempt from the Transient Occupancy Tax and is no longer a short-term rental. In other words, the County caps how long a single guest can stay (30 days), not how many nights per year the home may be rented. Because conditions can be attached to an Administrative Permit, the County could in principle impose stay-frequency conditions on a specific permit, but no countywide annual night cap is established in the ordinance.