Columbus's short-term rental rules have not changed since 2019
Columbus's short-term rental rules have not changed since 2019
2026-09-15 · Ohio · Regulation
While Cleveland was writing a new short-term rental chapter and Columbus was legalising ADUs and building a rental registry, Columbus's own short-term rental law sat untouched. Chapter 598 of the Columbus City Codes has not been amended since 2019.1
The section histories are the proof. Section 598.02 records “(Ord. No. 1921-2015, § 1, 11-16-2015; Ord. No. 2145-2018, § 1, 7-30-2018)”; § 598.04 records “(Ord. No. 2145-2018, § 1, 7-30-2018; Ord. No. 0352-2019, §§ 1, 3, 2-4-2019).” There is no 2025 or 2026 amending ordinance in any of them.
This matters because material circulating online describes Columbus adopting 200-foot neighbour notification and biennial short-term rental safety inspections. Those describe a council hearing, not enacted law. The rule in force is the 2019 rule.
What the 2019 rule actually says
The permit requirement at § 598.02(A)(2) is broad, reaching any “owner, operator, manager or employee” who engages in short-term rental operation “in or upon any premises in the city of Columbus…without obtaining a permit in accordance with this chapter.”
Columbus is often described as having a primary-residence mandate. It does not. Section 598.04(A) offers an ownership alternative:
“A short-term rental host may be the owner and/or the permanent occupant of the dwelling. The short-term rental host must provide one form of proof of identity, and two pieces of evidence that the dwelling is the host's primary residence or two pieces of evidence the host is the owner of the dwelling.”
The insurance floor is “[n]ot less than three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000),” from an admitted Ohio carrier, an eligible surplus lines company or a risk retention group — and cancellation is self-executing: “Any cancellation of insurance required by this section shall result in an automatic revocation of the respective short-term rental permit.”
Tenancies of thirty or more consecutive days fall outside the chapter entirely. Permits expire December 31 of the year issued, with renewals due by “the first Monday of November of the year in which the permit is set to expire.”
A city permit says nothing about the covenant on the parcel. Our Ohio short-term rentals page covers the private restriction that does.
The saving clause is not what owners think it is
Section 598.04(E) is the closest any Ohio short-term rental ordinance comes to acknowledging private restrictions:
“Nothing in this section shall be construed as permitting any person to obtain a permit or offer a short-term rental, where prohibited by any other provision of law.”
Read the operative phrase carefully: “any other provision of law.” Not “any recorded restriction,” not “any declaration or covenant.” It is a saving clause for other public law — state statute, another chapter of the city code — and it is not an express deference to a declaration.
The practical result is the one that matters to boards. A Columbus permit is issued without any check against the deed restrictions on the parcel. The city does not read the declaration, does not notify the association, and has no role in enforcement. An association enforcing a rental restriction in Columbus does so entirely on its own, and learns of a new operator from a neighbour rather than from the licensing process. Our Ohio short-term rentals page covers the enforcement path that leaves open.
The insurance gap that reaches boards
The city's $300,000 floor is well below what most Ohio declarations require of unit owners, and far below the $500,000 Cleveland now demands of its own short-term rental licensees. A board that reviews owner certificates of insurance will find that a Columbus permit proves compliance with the city and nothing about compliance with the declaration.
That gap has a second edge. If the association's master policy contemplates residential occupancy and a unit is running as transient lodging, the coverage question belongs to the association's carrier, not the city's permit file. Boards that discover a short-term rental should tell their agent before they tell their attorney.
The comparison worth drawing
Three Ohio cities, three different postures, none of which mentions covenants:
Columbus permits, at $300,000 insurance, with no neighbour notice and no density cap, on rules unchanged since 2019. Cleveland licenses from late November 2026 at $500,000, with adjacent-neighbour notice and a 10 percent density cap per block or building. Beachwood, a Cuyahoga County suburb with no point-of-sale requirement at all, charges a $1,000 annual short-term rental registration fee with mandatory interior and exterior inspection of single-family rentals.
For an Ohio association the lesson is the same in all three: the municipal layer sets the conditions under which the city will tolerate the use, and the declaration sets whether the use is permitted at all. Only one of those two documents is in the board's hands.
One sourcing note. The codified text quoted above was read from a third-party mirror of the official codifier, which returned no readable text to automated retrieval. The section histories and ordinance numbers cross-check against the city's own legislation record, but anyone quoting Chapter 598 in a legal notice should verify against the official code.
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