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

Some California jurisdictions limit short-term rentals to a host's primary residence or cap non-hosted 'whole-home' rentals. Kings County has adopted no such restriction for its unincorporated areas because it has no short-term rental ordinance at all. Nothing in the County Code conditions short-term renting on the operator living at the property, occupying it for part of the year, or making it their principal residence. The Transient Occupancy Tax ordinance (Chapter 22, Article III) applies to the operator of any 'hotel' regardless of whether the operator is an owner, lessee, sublessee, or managing agent (Sec. 22-37), and it draws no distinction between owner-occupied and investor-owned properties. The one relevant nuance is in the tax 'hotel' definition itself: Section 22-37 excludes 'a private home... which is needed by a person who is not regularly engaged in the business of renting such facilities and does so only occasionally and incidentally to his own use thereof.' That carve-out describes an occasional, incidental rental of one's own home - but it is a tax-scope exclusion, not a rule that limits STRs to primary residences. A non-owner-occupied or full-time STR business is simply taxable rather than prohibited. Whether a given property may be used as a transient rental still depends on its zoning under the Development Code, so operators should confirm permitted-use status with Community Development. Verify current rules, as they can change.