Or get an appointment and visit their office. The application process is pretty painless: fill in this form online, download their pdf form and mail it in. If they don't approve you, you're out $250 and your landlord will have gotten an official notice that someone in your building wants to be a Airbnb Host. If they approve you, you're good to go for two years. That means paying them a $250 nonrefundable fee. The next step is getting the City's Office of Short-Term Rentals to approve you as a Host.

This Certificate means you've registered with the city's Treasurer & Tax Collector's office, which you can do online for $95 for your first calendar year.įor that fee, you get three things: a Business Account Number, the opportunity to pay city short-term rental taxes (automatically handled by Airbnb), and the ability to go on to the next step, registering with the OSTR (Office of Short-Term Rentals). Specifically, you need what's called a Business Registration Certificate. Airbnb Hosting as a businessīeing an Airbnb Host is a business, and as such in San Francisco, you'll need a city license for that. So let first demystify the legal requirements. That will happen if you treat being an Airbnb host in San Francisco like the business it is but like every business, there are costs. Sorry to rain on your parade if you thought becoming an Airbnb host was just going to drop thousands of dollars into your bank account. How do you get landlord approval you ask? we'll cover that in a few minutes. So, getting that approval first is the key to unlocking your future as a registered Airbnb Host. The city will inform the owner of your property that you have applied for a Short-Term Rental Registration by mailing them a notice. And since Airbnb is subject to a 2017 court order, Airbnb makes sure your SF listing complies with those requirements.īig picture, you need pay the city a little money, and as a renter, you need to get your landlord's approval before you pay the city any money. It doesn't, but the steps covered at the City at San Francisco's Office of Short-Term Rentals site are not the easiest to understand or follow. If you're one of the thousands of renters in San Francisco who want to become Airbnb Hosts in 2020, don't be dismayed if you've heard that the City of San Francisco makes hosting hard.

Becoming an airbnb host