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City maps roughly 11,000 short‑term rental listings; administration vows registration ordinance this fall
Summary
Administration told the Quality of Life Committee that a vendor has identified about 11,000 STR listings in Houston (2,900 matched precisely as of July 23) and that staff will return a registration ordinance this fall requiring owners to register properties and providing revocation options tied to insurance, taxes and nuisance thresholds.
Tina Paez, director of Administration & Regulatory Affairs, told the Quality of Life Committee on July 31 that the city hired Granicus to map short‑term rentals (STRs) and that the vendor checked roughly 70 platforms and Houston parcel data.
Paez said the contractor initially identified about 11,000 listings across Houston and had matched roughly 2,900 of those to precise addresses and latitude/longitude points as of the July 23 cut‑off; Paez added the vendor reported additional progress later, to about 4,800 precise identifications. To avoid missing nearby service calls while many pins remain imprecise, planning staff overlaid a 300‑foot buffer around STR pins when mapping HPD and 3‑1‑1 calls.
The ARA director said the administration will return to council with a registration ordinance in the fall requiring property owners to register and identify parcels; that registration, Paez said, is intended as a first‑step so the city can track complaints and consider revocation for specified reasons. “We will bring you back an ordinance this fall that does just that at a very minimum. It will require them to register to identify the property with some specificity,” Paez said.
Paez described typical revocation triggers seen elsewhere — failure to maintain required insurance, failure to pay occupancy/taxes, and repeated nuisance conduct tied to service‑call thresholds — but said the city must complete mapping and accumulate service‑call evidence before it can embed specific revocation triggers in ordinance text. The administration also said it can provide council offices with periodic address lists as new matches are identified.
Why it matters: staff’s mapping effort creates the foundational dataset the legal department said is necessary to justify targeted regulations and to reduce the risk of successful constitutional challenges. Council members pushed staff for council‑district breakdowns and for clarity about whether social media platforms (TikTok, Craigslist) were included; Paez said the contractor focused on ~70 commercial STR platforms and did not mine social media.
What’s next: ARA will continue matching listings through October and will present a draft registration ordinance to council in the fall. The committee did not vote on any ordinance at the July 31 meeting.
Attribution: Tina Paez (Director, Administration & Regulatory Affairs).
