The city made this hard. We’ll help you through it.
The Short-term rental licence is real work — forms, documents, fees and a lot of small requirements that are easy to miss. Plenty of owners never start. We’ll sit with you and get the package together at no charge, because a directory where every listing is permitted is worth more to us than a subscription.
Tell us about your place and where you are in the process.
We send you Cleveland’s checklist and a folder to drop your documents into.
We help you get the package complete and organised.
You sign it and file it with the city.
Send us the permit number and your listing goes up free.
What the city asks for
- A dimensioned floor plan — Showing maximum guests, bedrooms, safety features and evacuation routes.
- A parking plan — Location and number of spaces.
- Liability insurance of at least $500,000 — Or proof you are a named insured on a booking platform's policy.
- A certificate of occupancy — Issued under section 3105.11. The city charges $60.
- Lead-safe certification — Required for pre-1978 rental units under section 365.04.
- Proof your taxes are paid — Real estate taxes and transient occupancy taxes, current as of submission.
- A local contact who can be on site within one hour — No distance rule, but they must be reachable whenever guests are there.
- Your lease, if you are a tenant — It must permit subletting. A sublease ban is grounds for denial.
Source: Commissioner of Assessments and Licenses, Department of Finance · Codified Ordinances Chapter 686B, enacted by Ordinance 561-2026
Worth knowing
- This chapter takes effect around 28 November 2026. Until then the old limited-lodging rules still apply, so timing matters.
- Short-term rentals are capped at 10% of the units on a block or in a multi-unit building, whichever is greater. A Board of Zoning Appeals variance can exceed it.
- After the licence issues you must write to the neighbours adjacent to, across from, diagonal to and behind the property with your local contact's details.
- No background check and no standalone inspection fee, though four city departments must sign off.
Lodging tax
Cleveland levies a 3% transient occupancy tax and Cuyahoga County a 6.5% bed tax, which needs separate registration at cuyahogacounty.munirevs.com and monthly filing by the 21st. Airbnb remits both; Vrbo does not remit anything in Ohio, so those bookings are yours to file.