Arkansas HOA Short-Term Rentals

Quick-Reference Table

Last verified: July 17, 2026

Section 1: Overview — Can an HOA restrict short-term rentals in Arkansas?

Yes, an Arkansas association can restrict or prohibit short-term rentals — but its authority comes from the recorded governing documents, not a state short-term rental statute, because Arkansas has no confirmed statewide STR law overriding that authority. For a condominium, the authority to restrict STRs originates in the recorded master deed, or declaration, with the Arkansas Horizontal Property Act, Ark. Code § 18-13-101 et seq., serving only as a sparse statutory backstop.¹ For a planned community — a non-condominium HOA — authority rests entirely on the recorded covenants, conditions, and restrictions, the CC&Rs, with the Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 supplying corporate-formality scaffolding and nothing rental-specific.² Local STR ordinances in tourist and corporate destinations such as Hot Springs, Eureka Springs, and Northwest Arkansas cities regulate the relationship between an owner and the city; they don't enlarge or shrink an association's private authority.⁹ An association adds a new rental restriction by amending the governing documents, and the required vote differs by community type: condominiums follow the master deed and, for newer regimes, a statutory default, while planned communities follow the declaration's own amendment clause.⁸ Whether such an amendment binds an owner who bought before it passed becomes the central operational question. Arkansas sits toward the light-touch end of the national spectrum, with no confirmed state STR framework and declaration-driven association authority.³ The sections below lay out the framework, the mechanics, and recent activity.

Section 2: The legal framework for HOA short-term rental restrictions

2A. Source and scope of authority by community type

Arkansas splits association governance by community type. Condominiums fall under the Horizontal Property Act, a traditional statute first enacted in 1961 — not a modern uniform act, and not the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act.¹ A condominium comes into existence only when someone records a master deed, and that recorded master deed sits at the operational center: it states use restrictions, the allocation of votes, and the method of amendment. The Act itself says little about how a unit may be used and doesn't directly address short-term rentals, though it recognizes rentals indirectly by letting the association levy additional assessments on any owner who makes a unit available for rent or lease, capped at amounts reasonably calculated to cover added security, wear and tear, and similar costs, under Ark. Code § 18-13-116(a)(2).⁸ Any binding rental restriction, then, has to appear in — or be validly added to — the master deed.

Planned communities have no comprehensive Arkansas statute. Their rental authority comes solely from the recorded CC&Rs, a private contract among owners. The Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq., supplies only corporate scaffolding — meetings, directors, records — when the association incorporates as a nonprofit; it imposes no rental-specific or STR-specific obligations.² Arkansas common law construes restrictive covenants strictly and resolves doubts in favor of the free use of land, so a covenant must clearly express any use restriction before a court will enforce it.⁶ On the distinction between long-term leasing and short-term rentals, the Arkansas Supreme Court has declined to treat a general residential-use restriction as barring transient rentals absent express language: in Vera Lee Angel Revocable Trust v. O'Bryant, the court reversed an injunction because the subdivision's bill of assurance contained no specific restriction against rentals.¹¹ That matters, because many older declarations restrict "commercial" use or "residential purposes" without ever mentioning rental duration.

2B. State law, local ordinances, and the preemption question

Arkansas has no statewide STR statute and no statute preempting an association's authority over rentals. Two 2025 bills that would have limited local-government STR regulation, HB1790 and HB1445, both died without passage, and HB1790 expressly disclaimed any effect on homeowners-association agreements, deed restrictions, or covenants.⁴ Short-term accommodations get taxed: Ark. Code § 26-63-402 levies "a tourism tax at the rate of two percent (2%) on the gross proceeds or gross receipts derived from ... the service of furnishing a ... condominium, townhouse, or rental house to a transient guest," defined as a person who rents an accommodation "on less than a month-to-month basis," on top of the 6.5 percent state sales tax, all administered by the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration.⁷ Localities layer on their own advertising-and-promotion, or A&P, and lodging taxes — Fayetteville charges a 2 percent Hotel/Motel/Restaurant tax on lodging accommodations, and Eureka Springs charges a 3 percent City Advertising and Promotion Commission tax on lodging rented for fewer than 30 days.¹²

Tourist-town and Northwest Arkansas localities regulate STRs through permits, licenses, and zoning. Eureka Springs stopped issuing new "tourist lodging" permits in residential zones and grandfathered about two dozen residential properties whose owners had already obtained a permit and a business license before the ordinance passed.¹³ Hot Springs requires an annual business license for every STR and caps residential-zone STR licenses at 400.⁹ Fayetteville runs a two-tier system, capping Type 2 (non-owner-occupied) licenses at 475 with no cap on Type 1 (owner-occupied); the city hit the Type 2 cap in December 2023, and new applicants now sit on a waitlist.¹⁴ The critical point: these ordinances regulate the owner-to-government relationship only. They neither grant nor remove an association's private authority. An owner who holds a valid city STR permit may still violate the declaration or CC&Rs, and an owner whose declaration permits rentals may still find a city ordinance or zoning rule barring the operation. The two layers run independently.

2C. Amending the governing documents to restrict rentals; grandfathering

For condominiums, an association adds a rental restriction by amending the master deed. Act 516 of 2025 amended the Horizontal Property Act to add Ark. Code § 18-13-104(c): "Except as may otherwise be provided in a master deed, an amendment to a master deed requires consent of all apartment owners or unit owners."⁸ That all-owner default applies to regimes organized on or after September 1, 2025; a regime organized before that date may elect into the new provisions by amending its master deed and filing reorganization documents.⁸ For older regimes that don't elect in, the amendment threshold is whatever the recorded master deed specifies, since the pre-2025 Act contained no general statutory amendment percentage. Where the master deed requires unanimous or near-unanimous consent, a rental restriction adopted over an existing owner's objection faces significant enforceability risk.

For planned communities, the amendment threshold comes entirely from the declaration's own amendment clause — there's no statutory default.² Arkansas common law construes covenants strictly, and association action must be reasonable, not arbitrary or capricious.⁵ Whether a validly adopted restriction reaches a non-consenting owner who purchased earlier remains unsettled in Arkansas, and the practical takeaway for managers runs conservative: a restriction adopted by amendment may not bind non-consenting existing owners, depending on the governing documents and how a court applies the reasonableness standard. Where the law stays silent, associations should assume the restriction may face a challenge as applied to pre-amendment owners, and should document the community-specific reasons for the change.

Section 3: Operational mechanics and enforcement

Adopting a valid restriction (the tools)

The most common and defensible mechanism is a minimum-lease-term restriction — a covenant barring leases shorter than 30 days, say — because a specific day-count avoids the ambiguity that defeats general residential-use language under Arkansas construction rules.¹¹ Arkansas sets no statewide statutory minimum lease term, so the number has to come from the governing documents themselves. A second tool is a rental cap that limits the percentage of units that may be rented. For condominiums, neither the Horizontal Property Act nor a statutory formula governs caps; the master deed must authorize them.¹ For planned communities, caps come from the CC&Rs. A third tool is an internal registration or lease-filing requirement, under which owners must disclose tenant information or file leases with the association; that's a matter of the governing documents and bylaws, and it operates separately from any city registration requirement.

Enforcement

The Horizontal Property Act doesn't prescribe a notice-and-hearing procedure before an association fines an owner for an STR violation, so the procedure is whatever the master deed and bylaws (for condominiums) or the CC&Rs and bylaws (for planned communities) require.¹ Associations should follow their documents' notice-and-opportunity-to-be-heard provisions precisely, because a fine imposed without the required process invites a challenge. Available remedies typically include monetary fines, injunctive relief to stop the prohibited use, and collection of unpaid charges. For condominiums, the Act provides that upon sale of a unit, unpaid assessments get paid out of the sale price in preference over most other charges, under Ark. Code § 18-13-116(c), and the purchaser is jointly and severally liable with the seller for amounts owed up to conveyance, under § 18-13-116(d); whether fines can be collected as assessments depends on the governing documents.⁸ For planned communities, assessment liens and fine collection depend on the CC&Rs. Association enforcement and local-government enforcement run in parallel: a city can fine or revoke a permit while the association separately pursues covenant enforcement, and neither forecloses the other.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

Recent bills

A companion measure, HB1445, would similarly have restrained local STR regulation; the House floor defeated it before the 2025 session closed.¹⁵

Recent appellate rulings

No Arkansas Court of Appeals or Arkansas Supreme Court decision within the past 36 months squarely addresses rental-restriction enforceability, declaration or CC&R amendments restricting STRs, or the retroactivity of such amendments. The governing Arkansas authority remains older: in Vera Lee Angel Revocable Trust v. O'Bryant, 2018 Ark. 38, the Arkansas Supreme Court held that, absent a specific restriction against rentals, a subdivision bill of assurance did not bar an owner's short-term rentals, and it reversed an injunction.¹¹ The reasonableness standard for association action derives from Hutchens v. Bella Vista Village Property Owners' Ass'n, 110 S.W.3d 325 (Ark. App. 2003).⁵ Because no qualifying recent ruling exists, no case-specific audience table appears here.

Active legislative or local debates

Northwest Arkansas cities keep adjusting STR caps and density rules, and Fayetteville considered further amendments to its short-term rental ordinance in late 2025.¹⁴ Local-preemption bills may return in a future legislative session, but none is enacted as of the verification date.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Across the country, states fall into broad groups on STRs and HOAs. Some preempt local-government STR bans while leaving private association authority intact, including Arizona, Florida, and Texas. Others regulate STRs primarily at the local level with no statewide HOA override — the group Arkansas belongs to. A third group has little STR-specific law at any level. The recurring lesson: even in preemption states, an association's authority derives from the declaration or CC&Rs and doesn't disappear under a state-versus-local preemption statute, which restrains only cities and counties. For a multi-state operator entering Arkansas, the practical implication is a split model on a thin statutory base — condominiums run on the older Horizontal Property Act plus the master deed, and planned communities run on CC&Rs plus corporate formalities, with local ordinances layered separately on top.

HOA Weekly's Arkansas Short-Term Rentals coverage updates quarterly as the legislature, the Arkansas appellate courts, and major localities act. Federal frameworks — FHA, ADA, FDCPA, SCRA, and OTARD — also apply to Arkansas associations regardless of the state framework.

Footnotes

1. Arkansas Horizontal Property Act, Ark. Code § 18-13-101 et seq. (text as amended by Act 516 of 2025, reproducing §§ 18-13-102 to 18-13-116) ↩
2. Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq. (corporate structure and procedure for nonprofit corporations) ↩
3. Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, Sales & Use Tax (state role in STRs is tax administration; no statewide STR operational statute) ↩
4. Arkansas General Assembly, HB1790 (2025 Regular Session) bill history — "Died on House Calendar at Sine Die adjournment" ↩
5. Hutchens v. Bella Vista Village Property Owners' Ass'n, Inc., 110 S.W.3d 325 (Ark. App. 2003) (reasonableness standard for association action) ↩
6. Ark. Code § 18-12-103 (recorded restrictive covenants); Arkansas strict-construction doctrine favoring free use of land ↩
7. Ark. Code § 26-63-402 (2% state tourism tax on furnishing a condominium, townhouse, or rental house to a transient guest, defined as less than month-to-month) ↩
8. Act 516 of 2025 (SB 323), amending the Horizontal Property Act — § 18-13-104(c) (all-owner consent to amend unless master deed provides otherwise), § 18-13-116(c)–(d) (assessment priority and purchaser liability), and Section 9 applicability (regimes organized on/after Sept. 1, 2025) ↩
9. City of Hot Springs, Short-Term Residential Rentals (business license required; residential-zone cap of 400 licenses) ↩
10. Arkansas Judiciary — court structure (Circuit Courts; Arkansas Court of Appeals; Arkansas Supreme Court) ↩
11. Vera Lee Angel Revocable Trust v. O'Bryant, 2018 Ark. 38 (absent a specific restriction against rentals, subdivision bill of assurance did not bar short-term rentals; injunction reversed) ↩
12. Local advertising-and-promotion / lodging tax rates (Fayetteville 2% HMR tax; Eureka Springs 3% CAPC A&P tax, on reservations of fewer than 30 days) ↩
13. Arkansas Nonprofit News Network (Apr. 11, 2022) — Eureka Springs banned new tourist lodging in residential zones and exempted about two dozen previously permitted and licensed properties ↩
14. City of Fayetteville, Short-Term Rentals (Type 1 uncapped; Type 2 capped at 475; cap reached Dec. 2023 with waitlist) ↩
15. Arkansas General Assembly, HB1445 (2025 Regular Session) bill history — not enacted; failed before end of session ↩