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Can a renter Airbnb their apartment in Los Angeles?

By los-angeles.com EditorialEdited by Last updated Fees checked against LA City PlanningReviewed by , Brown & Charbonneau, LLP

Yes, a renter can home share in Los Angeles, and the Airbnb rules in Los Angeles treat a renter much as they treat an owner, but two conditions have to hold. The unit cannot be rent stabilized, which excludes a large part of the city's older apartment stock outright, and you need written approval from your landlord. That approval is notarized and filed with your registration application, so it is a document to arrange before you apply rather than something to produce if anybody asks.

The unit also has to be your primary residence, meaning you live there more than 6 months a year, and the usual limit of 120 nights applies the same way it does to an owner, unless you hold an Extended Home-Sharing permit.

On this page
  1. Written approval means notarized, and filed
  2. Check the rent stabilization question first
  3. Common questions

Written approval means notarized, and filed

A verbal agreement or a landlord who has not objected is not approval. It has to be in writing, it has to be notarized, and it is submitted as part of your Home-Sharing registration application, the city's version of an STR permit or a vacation rental license. That last part is the one people are caught by: the city is not asking you to keep the document, it is asking you to hand it in, so a landlord who agrees in an email has not yet given you what the application needs. The short-term rental checker covers the rest of the conditions for a specific address.

A lease that prohibits subletting will generally be read as prohibiting short-term rental as well. Permission has to override that expressly. And if what you want to list is a back house or garage conversion rather than the home you live in, permission does not help: it is not your primary residence.

Check the rent stabilization question first

If the building is old enough to be rent stabilized, no amount of landlord permission makes home sharing lawful. That check comes before everything else and it needs the specific address. Listing it anyway is an unregistered listing the city fines, because a stabilized unit cannot be registered in the first place.

Can I Airbnb This Address?

Checks a specific LA address against the Home-Sharing Ordinance, including the rent stabilization exclusion that disqualifies most listings.

Common questions

My landlord said yes but will not put it in writing.
Then you do not have what the city requires, and there is no way around it: written approval from the landlord is one of the eligibility criteria for Home-Sharing registration, and the approval has to be notarized and submitted with the application. An agreement nobody signed is not something you can file. It is also what protects you if the landlord changes their mind later, which is the situation it usually turns out to have been needed for.
Can my landlord evict me for listing my apartment on Airbnb?
It is one of the more straightforward grounds a landlord has. Almost every lease prohibits subletting, short-term listing is generally read as subletting, and using the unit for something the city has not registered is a lease breach as well as a city violation. Permission in writing is what takes that away, and nothing else does.
Do I need my own registration, or can I use my landlord's?
Your own. Registration attaches to the host and to the unit they live in, so the person doing the listing is the person who registers, and the unit has to be their primary residence. A landlord who owns the building but does not live in your apartment cannot register it on your behalf.
Can I rent out a spare room while I am still living there?
Yes, that is what home sharing means, and it is the case the ordinance was written around. The same conditions apply as for the whole unit: it has to be your primary residence, you have to register before listing, the night cap applies, and if you rent rather than own you still need the landlord's notarized written approval, filed with the application. Renting out one room rather than the whole home does not make it a smaller permission.

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The rules on this page were last checked by a person on October 16, 2026