Rochester, MN Short-Term Rentals: Occupancy Limits (2026)

The table attached to section 7-10-2(b) sets a maximum number of short-term rental units allowed per property type: one unit for a single-family building, duplex, triplex or four-plex, rising only for buildings with more than four units, where up to 25 percent of the dwelling units may operate as short-term rentals before the project is treated as a change of use requiring full review. Footnote 2 to that table states that, for the purposes of the table, it is assumed that the number of occupants within a two-dwelling-unit building does not exceed 10 total, the code's own ceiling for how many people it expects in a duplex, triplex or four-plex short-term rental before the classification assumptions break down.

Bed count is the other lever: section 7-10-2(b) requires any short-term rental structure that rents five or more beds to be classified by the health department as "lodging" or "hotel" and to hold a separate lodging license, on top of the short-term rental registration required by section 7-10-2(a). Buildings with more than four units that convert more than 25 percent of their units to short-term rental use trigger both a change-of-use review by community development and a state building code reclassification to R-1 with two percent accessible units.

None of these thresholds set a nightly per-guest headcount limit inside a single unit; the code regulates scale through unit counts and bed counts instead.