Why this is a covenant problem as well as a zoning one

The category-level lesson is one that reaches well beyond Bozeman: a jurisdiction-wide zoning consolidation can silently change what a private covenant means.

Plenty of Montana declarations do not state their own rental rules. They incorporate the public ones — “as permitted by applicable zoning,” “in accordance with city ordinance,” or, worse, by naming a zoning district that no longer exists. A declaration referencing R-1 or R-2 in Bozeman is now referencing districts that were folded into RA on February 1, 2026.

Three questions that follow for a Bozeman association:

• Does the declaration name a zoning district? If it does, what does that reference mean now?
• Does it permit short-term rentals “as allowed by zoning”? If so, the permitted scope moved without anyone amending anything.
• Does it define rental by duration? A declaration with its own durational rule is insulated from all of this — which is the argument for having one.

Where Montana law stands on covenants and short-term rentals

Independent of any city's code, Montana's appellate law on this is now reasonably clear, and it favours associations with well-drafted documents.

In Brandt v. R&R Mountain Escapes, 2025 MT 155, the Supreme Court held a 1990 declaration with no short-term-rental clause at all unambiguously prohibited them — reading the residential-purposes, commercial-use, single-family and nuisance clauses together. It also confirmed that a county conditional use permit does not cure a covenant violation. And in Myers v. Kleinhans, 2024 MT 208, renting an accessory dwelling unit for profit was unambiguously a “commercial business” under a bare commercial-activity ban.²

So a city permit — Type 1, Type 2 or otherwise — settles the city's position and nothing else. An association reading a permit as clearance has the relationship backwards.

Bozeman's short-term rental framework, for context

The city's 2023 ordinance banned future non-owner-occupied Type 3 short-term rentals and grandfathered existing permitted Type 3 units, on a Commission vote of October 18, 2023. That framework, plus the new RA consolidation, is what a Bozeman owner is navigating.

At state level the position is simpler: nothing changed. Senate Bill 336, “Revise laws related to short-term rentals,” died in House committee on May 23, 2025, and House Bill 802 on renting a primary residence died in process on May 20, 2025. So short-term rental regulation in Montana remains a matter of local government and of the declaration — and for most associations, the declaration is where the question is actually won or lost.

What is coming, and what it is not

The Local Government Interim Committee's meeting agenda for September 17, 2026 opens with a presentation on the economic impact of short-term rentals by researchers from the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research, with public comment and committee questions — but no executive action line.

Short-term rentals are not among that committee's assigned studies or member topics. There is no bill, no draft, and no member request. An informational briefing at a local-government committee is sometimes a precursor to a state preemption or authorisation fight, and reading it as more than a briefing today would be over-reading it. What would have to happen next is a member request, a provisional draft, and a committee vote — none of which exists.⁴

Sourcing notes

The city's own short-term rental page and news release were not retrievable to us, so the statement that only Type 1 is allowed in RA rests on indexed summaries of a page we could not open — treat it as unverified against the code text. The legal notice for application 26307 was likewise unavailable. The December 16, 2025 adoption date is the city's own; one secondary account dates the vote to a different week, and December 16, 2025 was a Tuesday, consistent with the city's record.³