In San Francisco, the homeowners are allowed to rent their units for a specific period, depending on the number of units are built on a property. Short-term rental or Intermediate Length Rental is any leasing for less than one year. All the rentals 30 days and up, needs to be reported to the Planning Department yearly.


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To encourage the use of Dwelling Units for long-term occupancy by permanent San Francisco residents with initial terms of occupancy of at least one year, the following provisions apply to short-term rentals or Intermediate Length Occupancy units.

Every homeowner has to submit an application where he/she has to specify the following characteristics:

  1. The unit proposed to be permitted as an Intermediate Length Occupancy unit; and
  2. A proof to the Planning Department’s satisfaction that the proposed Intermediate Length Occupancy unit is located within a building that has no outstanding Notice of Violations.

Unit rental requirements depends on buildings sizes:

  1. Short-term rental units are prohibited in buildings with 3 or fewer Dwelling Units.
  2. For buildings with 4 to 9 Dwelling Units, requests to authorize the establishment of an Intermediate Length Occupancy Use Characteristic is principally permitted, if no more than 25% of the Dwelling Units in the building may be permitted as Intermediate Length Occupancy units.
  3. For buildings with 10 or more Dwelling Units, Intermediate Length Occupancy units is prohibited, unless authorized as a conditional use, where the Planning Commission finds that the following criteria are met:
    a. No more than 20% of the Dwelling Units in the building may be permitted as Intermediate Length Occupancy units.
    b. That not less than two thirds of the total allowable Intermediate Length Occupancy units be in the downtown core, with the policy goal of keeping such uses near corresponding hotel and tourism districts, and job centers.
    c. That not more than one third of the total allowable Intermediate Length Occupancy units be permitted in Census Tracts in sensitive communities, as defined by the UC Berkeley Urban Displacement Project Sensitive Communities map.

Unless is it a student housing or a hotel, no more than 1,000 short-term rental units are permitted in San Francisco.

Homeowners Annual Reports about Rental

No later than March 1 of each year, the owner or operator of each short-rental unit needs to submit to the Department an Annual Unit Usage Report for the prior calendar year containing the following information:

  1. The address and location of the Intermediate Length Occupancy unit.
  2. The number of times the unit was occupied by a person for an initial stay, whether through lease, subscription, license, or for a duration of greater than 30 consecutive days but less than one year, including the duration and dates of each of those stays.
  3. The average duration of each stay.
  4. The average vacancy between each stay.
  5. The nature of the services, if any, that are provided to occupants of the Intermediate Length Occupancy units, including furnishings, or other amenities, and whether there has been an increase or decrease in the services since the last report.

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