What it means
A short-term rental is a home rented for less than 30 days: the Airbnb in the cul-de-sac, the eight-bedroom “bachelorette house” south of Old Town, the condo at the Waterfront that a snowbird lets by the week. In Scottsdale the term comes with the name of a state law attached. SB 1350, passed in 2016, is why the city cannot ban them, and any neighbor who has sat through a council meeting on the subject can recite its number.
The city’s position is narrow and specific. It can require a license, which it has since its ordinance of October 25, 2022. It can collect an emergency contact, demand notice to the neighbors and fine for noise and trash. It can forbid a house from operating as a wedding venue. What it cannot do is zone a rental out of a neighborhood or cap how many there are, because the Legislature made that a matter of statewide concern. The preemption guide explains the machinery; this page is about the word and the law behind it.
Where you’ll meet it
On listings, which by law show an Arizona TPT license number. In Old Town and the neighborhoods just south of it, where the bachelorette economy lives. At the Kiva, in public comment, year after year. And in the city’s online resource center, where you can look up whether the house next door is licensed.
Where the word came from
“Vacation rental” was the old phrase, for a cabin or a beach house. “Short-term rental” is platform-era language, and Arizona wrote both into statute at once. In the 2016 session the Legislature passed SB 1350, Laws 2016, Chapter 208, which did two things. It created a tax classification for online lodging marketplaces, so Airbnb and its rivals would collect and remit the state’s transaction privilege tax. And it told cities and counties they could not prohibit “vacation rentals or short-term rentals” or restrict them “based on their classification, use or occupancy.” What they kept was the power to regulate for health and safety, to enforce noise and nuisance rules the same way on every residence, and to bar a rental from being used as a sex-offender residence, a sober-living home, a drug market or an adult business. The law took effect in 2017.
Then came the party houses. Investors bought up Scottsdale cul-de-sacs, and neighborhoods that had never heard of SB 1350 learned its number from officers who could write a noise citation and nothing more. The backlash produced a 2019 change requiring every owner to hold and display a state TPT license, and in 2022 a law that finally let cities license rentals, collect emergency contacts and suspend a license after repeated verified violations. Scottsdale’s council adopted its ordinance unanimously on October 25, 2022, requiring a license for any property rented under 30 days, and later added Ordinance 4719, which bars short-term rentals from operating as commercial event venues, naming weddings, corporate events and large parties.
What it is not
A short-term rental is not a hotel, which is zoned, inspected and taxed as lodging and can be told where to go. It is not a long-term rental, which is 30 days and up and governed by landlord-tenant law. And the city’s license is not permission the city can withhold at will; it is a registration the state allows, with grounds for suspension the state defined.
The fine print
Two licenses, one house. The owner needs an Arizona transaction privilege tax license, and since January 1, 2019 must show the number on every advertisement, whether or not the booking runs through a marketplace; platforms registered with the Department of Revenue collect the tax on the owner’s behalf and file it. The owner also needs the Scottsdale license, with an emergency contact who answers, notice to the neighbors, a liability-insurance attestation and compliance with pool-barrier rules. The guest pays the city’s 5 percent bed tax on top of sales tax, which is the one way a party house pays for the officers who visit it.
Enforcement runs through the city’s code and police. Noise, trash and parking are nuisance violations, fines can reach the owner as well as the renter, and verified violations can cost the license. The record does not show a count: licensed properties are mapped in the city’s resource center, but the number operating shifts constantly and this site does not quote a figure. The police and courts guide covers who you call.
The argument is why this entry is marked contested. Owners and the platforms say a home is private property and the state should not let one city decide how its owner may use it; the 2016 law’s sponsors made exactly that case. Neighbors and the cities answer that a house running as a hotel is a commercial use in a residential zone, and that the people who live beside it should get a vote. Every session since 2019 has brought bills to loosen or tighten the preemption, and SB 1350’s core, the ban on bans, has survived them all. Until it does not, “we’re preempted” will stay the city’s answer, and the where to stay guide will keep listing houses.