Santa Cruz County, CA Short-Term Rentals: Primary-Residence-Only Rule (2026)

Unlike some jurisdictions, unincorporated Santa Cruz County allows non-owner-occupied short-term rentals rather than restricting permits to a host's primary home. SCCC 13.10.694 defines a Vacation (Non-Hosted) Rental as a single-family dwelling, duplex, or triplex where the owner/operator does not occupy the unit while it is rented and only the renter and guests occupy it. So an investment property qualifies. What the County uses instead of a primary-residence mandate is a system of caps and spacing. The County limits permits to one short-term rental per person or entity, and Non-Hosted and Hosted permits cannot exist on the same property at the same time. It sets numeric caps in three Designated Areas: the Live Oak Designated Area (LODA), the Seacliff/Aptos/La Selva Beach Designated Area (SALSDA), and the Davenport/Swanton Designated Area (DASDA), along with a countywide cap outside those areas. Within any designated area, no new vacation rental is approved if vacation and hosted rentals on the same block reach 20 percent or more of the block's residential parcels, measured against a Board-adopted Block Map. By contrast, a Hosted Rental under SCCC 13.10.690 requires the owner or a long-term resident to occupy one legal bedroom on site, so hosted rentals are inherently owner-present. Non-Hosted vacation rentals carry no such on-site requirement, but they are the category subject to the strictest caps.