New York’s new short-term rental registry law can stop your town creating a registry — and never touches your covenant
New York’s new short-term rental registry law can stop your town creating a registry — and never touches your covenant
2026-09-15 · New York · Regulation
New York now has a statewide short-term rental registration framework, and it has changed which level of government now matters to a New York association. For a board with a no-transient-rental covenant it also does something more useful than any of that: it creates a documentary compliance trail on the unit.
The framework is Real Property Law Article 12-D, §§ 447-a to 447-g. A 2024 chapter created a registry run by the Department of State; Chapter 99 of the Laws of 2025, signed February 28, 2025, rewrote it before it ever started — moving the registry to counties, creating the county opt-out, and pushing the start date back. The registry provisions took effect in late September 2025.1
One sourcing note, because the details are genuinely disputed in the material available to us. The Legislature's own retrieval system records the 2024 law as Chapter 672 of 2024, becoming law December 21, 2024, with the rewritten clause producing a start date of September 22, 2025. The New York State Association of Counties' implementation memorandum gives the underlying chapter as 660 of 2024, signed December 24, 2024, and computes approximately September 25, 2025. We have not been able to reconcile the two, so we are reporting both and pinning nothing to a single day.
Counties run it, unless they opt out
RPL § 447-c provides that “All counties that are covered jurisdictions shall be required to establish a registration system for short-term rental units located within such county.” A county could decline by adopting a local law “on or before the later of December thirty-first, two thousand twenty-five or nine months after the effective date of this section” — a deadline that fell around June 25, 2026 and has now passed.2
Registration is valid for two years and renewable. A county may charge fees limited to “actual and necessary expenses associated with the construction, operation, and maintenance of the county or multi-county registry and for the enforcement of this article.”
The requirements that sit on the unit itself
This is the part a board can use. Under § 447-b, a host may operate a short-term rental provided the unit “is registered in accordance with section four hundred forty-seven-c” and, among other things, “includes a conspicuously posted evacuation diagram identifying all means of egress from the unit and the building,” “includes emergency phone numbers for police, fire, and poison control,” “has a working fire-extinguisher,” and “is insured for a minimum of three hundred thousand dollars coverage for third party claims of property damage.” The insurance requirement may be satisfied by a booking service's coverage if equal or greater.
What it does not do
Nothing in Article 12-D displaces a declaration, and nothing in it authorises a rental a covenant forbids. It regulates the unit and the platform, not the association. A registered short-term rental in a community whose declaration bars transient occupancy is a registered violation.
The preemption clause, and why it moves your lobbying target
The provision most likely to surprise a board is subdivision 7 of § 447-b. The New York State Association of Counties summarises the two relevant subdivisions this way:
“Subdivision 6: This law does not prohibit a local government that already has a registry from continuing to operate such registry as long as it complies with the parameters of this new law. Counties, cities, towns and villages are empowered to impose and collect fines related to such registries. Subdivision 7: Cities, towns and villages will be prohibited from creating any new registry if the county establishes one.”3
So existing municipal registries are grandfathered, but new ones are barred where the county has established one. A board that has spent two years pressing its town for a rental registry may find the town no longer able to create one. The target moves to the county.
There is a mirror-image consequence where a county opts out. Nassau County — which holds the densest concentration of Long Island homeowners associations and condominiums outside New York City — formally opted out by Local Law No. 8 of 2026, adopted June 15, 2026. Its operative sentence:
“Section 6-a. Short Term Rental Unit Registration. In accordance with the provisions of Section 447-c of New York State Real Property Law, the County of Nassau opts not to establish a registration system for short term rental units.”4
Because Nassau opted out, the § 447-b(7) bar is not triggered there: every Nassau town and incorporated village retains full authority to create its own registry or rental-permit scheme. A Nassau board with a short-term rental problem should be pressing its town or village, not the county. The opposite is true in a county that opted in.
A county that did opt in, and what it looks like in practice
Oswego County adopted Local Law Number 2 of 2025 and opened its registry on Monday, February 9, 2026, with applications reviewed within thirty days and a fee of $50 every two years. The county's own description of the mechanism is what makes it useful to a board: on approval “a permit will be issued that must be prominently displayed near the entry of the unit.”5
A displayed permit, or the absence of one, is evidence. It is considerably easier to establish that a unit is being marketed short-term from a county permit record than from screenshots of a listing.
Oswego also states that owners must “make sure the use of their property is in compliance with all applicable local code, zoning and land use requirements imposed by the city, town or village where the unit is located” — and says nothing at all about private covenants. That silence is the norm, and it is the risk: owners read a county permit as permission.
The one municipal document that says it plainly
The City of Saratoga Springs licenses short-term rentals under Code Chapter 136A and tells applicants, on its own programme page, exactly what a board needs said:
“You are still separately bound by your contractual agreements to comply with the bylaws of your HOA or COA if your property or unit is within such an association.”6
That sentence forecloses the most common owner argument — “the city licensed me” — and it is a drafting model. A board elsewhere can reasonably ask its own town to add the same line to its STR permit application or FAQ. Saratoga Springs also caps rentals: “no property or unit may be leased as a short-term rental for more than a total of 150 days per calendar year,” with licence fees of $100 for a primary residence and $750 per unit for a non-primary residence.
Fines, data flow and records
Per NYSAC's section-by-section memorandum: “Hosts can be fined up to $200 for a third violation. Warnings must be sent, with corrective actions included, for 1st and 2nd violations. A booking service violating the terms of this law may be issued a fine of $500 per day, per violation until the violation is cured. A booking service is not subject to a penalty until the county has established a registry.” Platform reporting to counties is quarterly, beginning ninety days after the effective date, “at the beginning of January, April, July and October.” Hosts must keep records two years.
And the provision that makes county data reach the town: “The county MUST share this data with all city, town or village governments within 60 days of receipt.”
There is also an occupancy-tax consequence that explains why counties chose as they did. Per NYSAC: “If a county opts in to a registry it is automatically authorized to update its local occupancy tax law to cover short term rental units... If a county opts out of creating a registry, then they are not given the authority to amend their local law to collect occupancy taxes on short term rentals.”
What this means for a board
Find out whether your county opted in or out — that single fact determines whether your town can still create a registry and whether there is a permit record to check. Then keep enforcing your declaration, because none of this changed it. Our New York short-term rentals page covers the covenant side, and our fining authority page covers what a New York association can actually do about a violation once it has proved one.
Related New York HOA Topics
- New York Real Property Law § 447-b — short-term rental host requirements ↩
- New York Real Property Law § 447-c — county registration systems and the opt-out window ↩
- New York State Association of Counties, STR implementation memorandum, May 28, 2025 — section-by-section analysis ↩
- Nassau County Local Law No. 8 of 2026, as filed — opting out of a short-term rental registration system ↩
- Oswego County — short-term rental registry opens February 9, 2026, Local Law Number 2 of 2025 ↩
- City of Saratoga Springs short-term residential rentals programme — the HOA/COA clause, day cap and licence fees ↩
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