• Defines a vacation rental as any unit in a condominium or cooperative or any individually or collectively owned single-family, two-family, three-family, or four-family house or dwelling unit that is rented to guests for periods of less than 180 days but that is not a timeshare project. 
• Creates a section preempting all licensing of vacation rentals to the state. 
• Requires a state license application to contain the operator’s emergency contact number. 
• Allows a temporary state license to be issued and allows vacation rental to begin use while the application is pending. It does not require any inspections prior to licensure.
• Requires the division to make the vacation rental license information available to the public, and allows local governments to use this license information for informational purposes only. It does not put in place penalties for non-compliance.
• Grandfathers local ordinances adopted on or before June 1, 2011, but does not contain language allowing grandfathered cities to amend their ordinance. 
• Sets maximum occupancy limits for vacation rentals.
• Eliminates any vacation rental ordinances adopted since 2014.

• We’ve been down this road before. Local government was preempted from regulating vacation rentals in 2011. This legislation included a provision that “grandfathered” any ordinance regulating vacation rentals prior to June 1, 2011.
• The preemption only made problems worse and the legislature realized it. The language was amended in 2014 to allow local communities to regulate short-term rentals through life safety and building codes, as well as other codes specific to vacation rentals. However, cities are still prohibited from regulating the duration and frequency of these rentals, as well as regulating these properties through zoning.

• The massive growth of the “vacation rental” industry. Large-scale investors now dominate the home rental market with real-estate investment groups displacing true “away from home” vacation rentals.
• Over-commercialization of neighborhoods. Short-term rentals, especially those run by out-of-state real estate conglomerates, are causing problems by creating commercial activity in residential areas (mini-hotels in neighborhoods). 
• Neighborhoods are suffering. Problems include noise, inadequate parking, infrastructure intended for residential use is now being used on a commercial scale, and decreased property values in neighborhoods taken over by highly-commercialized vacation rentals.