San Francisco reaches settlement with Airbnb and HomeAway to enforce short-term rental law

San Francisco officials announced on May 3 that the city has reached a settlement with Airbnb and HomeAway that ends litigation challenging the city's short-term rental registration law and establishes a compliance framework between the platforms and the city.

City officials said the settlement accomplishes three core goals: it dismisses the federal legal challenge to the city's short-term rental law; it makes registration easier for legitimate hosts through a pass-through registration system on platform sites; and it improves the city's ability to verify and enforce registration requirements. Under the agreement, hosts will no longer be able to list a San Francisco property on Airbnb or HomeAway without providing a city registration number or an "application pending" status. Platforms will provide the city's Office of Short Term Rentals with a monthly data feed of listings to allow verification, and will deactivate listings and cancel future stays after receiving notice of an invalid registration.

City officials said the technical work to connect platform systems to city databases will take around 120 days to complete and existing hosts will be phased in over subsequent months; all hosts must be registered by the end of 240 days. The city emphasized prioritizing listings linked to suspected "bad actors," including units that may have been converted to short-term rentals after evicting tenants under the Ellis Act.

Speakers including former Supervisor David Campos and current board members praised the settlement and urged the Board of Supervisors and Mayor to provide resources to the Office of Short Term Rentals to staff enforcement. The U.S. District Court will retain jurisdiction to resolve disputes during implementation, officials said.