Pennsylvania short-term rental rules for owners

Pennsylvania has no statewide short-term rental license and no law protecting rentals from local restrictions. What it has is a state hotel occupancy tax, county and city lodging taxes, and some 2,500 municipalities, many of them townships with their own zoning codes. The Poconos, Lancaster County, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and the college towns each follow very different rules, and the courts have set an important baseline for how silent zoning codes are read.

The tax layer

• State hotel occupancy tax of 6% on stays of less than 30 days. Major platforms collect and remit it on their bookings; owners handle direct bookings.
• Local hotel taxes set county by county, such as Allegheny County's, and in Philadelphia a city hotel tax. There is no statewide formula, so check the county of the property.

Stays of 30 days or more are generally outside these taxes, which is one reason mid-term furnished rentals are popular near hospitals and universities.

Slice of Life and silent zoning codes

Many township codes were written long before platforms existed and do not mention short-term rentals. In its 2019 Slice of Life decision, which concerned a house in Hamilton Township in Monroe County, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that renting a house purely to transient guests was not a single-family dwelling use under an ordinance whose idea of a family implied a stable, permanent household. The practical consequence: where a residential district allows single-family dwellings but says nothing about short-term rentals, a municipality may be able to treat whole-house nightly rentals as not permitted. Many townships have since written explicit rules, either allowing rentals with a permit or confining them to certain districts.

Local patterns

• Philadelphia distinguishes a limited lodging license, reserved for hosts renting their primary residence, from visitor accommodations, a commercial use generally confined to non-residential zoning. Whole-home investor rentals in residential districts are therefore impractical, and we treat the city as closed.
• Pittsburgh has no dedicated license yet and relies on zoning and a rental permit program launched in December 2024, with enforcement pending.
• The Poconos are a patchwork of townships, some licensing rentals with inspections and occupancy limits, others restricting them in residential zones, and a large share of homes sit in private communities with their own rules.
• Lancaster County and college towns such as State College tend to restrict short stays in residential districts.

Legislation to watch

Several bills on short-term rentals, including a proposed Short Term Rental Compliance Act, have been referred to committee in Harrisburg without being enacted. For now, local codes and the courts remain decisive.

Associations and insurance

Planned communities in the Poconos and elsewhere often have declarations that restrict or ban short stays, and many have tightened them in recent years. Insurance must explicitly cover short-term rental use; a standard homeowner policy frequently excludes it.

How to read a township code after Slice of Life

Look first at the definitions of "family", "dwelling" and "transient", then at the use table of the district, and finally at any supplementary regulations or separate rental ordinance. Three situations are common. The code names short-term rentals and sets conditions: follow them and apply for the permit. The code allows them only in some districts: check the parcel map. The code is silent: this is the riskiest case, because a neighbor's complaint can turn into a zoning appeal. A written determination from the zoning officer, obtained before closing, is cheap insurance.

Owner checklist

• Identify the municipality, often a township, and read its zoning code and any rental ordinance.
• If the code is silent, get a written zoning determination before buying.
• Check the association declaration and recent amendments.
• Register for state and county hotel taxes if you book directly.
• Insure for short-term use and keep inspection records.

Across the state, the safest strategy is to buy where rules are written down, whether permissive or strict, rather than where they are silent: a clear permit, even a demanding one, is a better foundation for a business than an ambiguity that a single complaint can reopen.

For owners in Pittsburgh, we study every request and tell you honestly whether and how we can help.