LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Clark County is looking at ways to speed up the short-term rental licensing process while also imposing stricter fines on those operating illegal short-term rentals.
Here's a quick look back at how we got here.
In 2021, the Nevada legislature signed Assembly Bill 363 into law. That required Clark County, Henderson, Las Vegas, and North Las Vegas to adopt new regulations and strengthen enforcement against illegal short-term rentals.
In June 2022, Clark County commissioners approved an ordinance to regulate short-term rentals in unincorporated Clark County. The county also said they would manage a 24-hour hotline to assist with enforcement of short-term rental ordinances.
When we spoke with county officials in 2023, they said they received 1,169 pre-applications that were identified as eligible and those homeowners could submit an application to be licensed as a short-term rental.
Where are we at now?
On Tuesday, county officials gave an update on where things stand since that pre-application process closed in August 2023.
According to Vince Queano, the Director of Business Licensing, the first license was issued in August 2024.
As of March 2025:
- 175 business licenses have been approved.
- 515 applications are pending.
- 141 licenses have been denied.
"The denials are due to distance separation between short-term rentals. The current distance restriction is 1,000 feet between short-term rentals," Queano told commissioners.
He also explained that due to current law, there is a limitation on the number of short-term rental licenses that can be awarded.
"There shall be a minimum of one short-term rental license available in each unincorporated area but no more than 1% of the available housing, rounded down to the nearest whole number," Queano said. "In 2021, that was 2,826 units. The latest data for 2024 is that 1% is 2,940 units. So there is an increase of 114 units."
WATCH: Clark County officials give update on short-term rentals to commissioners
Commissioner Justin Jones asked how long it takes to process those applications since there are over 500 still pending.
"Average processing, we're processing six units a week. With over 500, just doing basic math, it would take about a year and a half [to process the backlog]," Queano said. "But then again, as we license each short-term rental unit, it creates that 1,000-foot buffer so there may be several hundred that may be denied in the future, which would make the licensing [process] overall shorter."
Queano proposed several changes to current procedures that could help speed up the process. That included switching from the randomized number generator process to a first-come, first-served basis. He also proposed requiring homeowners to be connected to the municipal wastewater system and having $500,000 in liability insurance at the time their application is approved instead of when they applied for the permit.
Jones also suggested that short-term rental platforms could obtain business licenses to speed up the process, although he also stated some companies, which he didn't name, have pushed back at that suggestion.
How are short-term rental violations being enforced?
According to Jim Anderson, the Chief of Code Enforcement for Clark County, in February 2018, the county created a short-term rental enforcement education team, which is also known as the STREET team.
He told commissioners that group spends about 80% of their time looking into short-term rental issues, the team is currently reactive, and mainly responds to complaints by neighbors reporting issues at short-term rental properties.
"We receive complaints through the Fix It app, phone calls, emails, and we have also set up a 24-hour hotline. The advantage of the hotline is that for all the licensed rentals, one of the requirements to have a short-term rental license is you have to have a local representative who is available to respond to complaints on those properties," Anderson explained. "They are required to respond within 30 minutes and address the violations on that property."
If owners don't comply and are a repeat violator, Anderson said the homeowner can be fined between $1,000 to $10,000 per day. With a change to Title 1 codes in February, he added those fines can be placed as a special assessment on the tax roll.
"So when folks get their tax bills, who have been running short-term rentals for years and years, they will receive all the fines on those bills to be paid to us," Anderson said. "We're very hopeful and excited with these new implementations that these will kind of be game-changers for our long, ongoing problem properties."
However, he added the majority of cases don't get to that point.
"Since the inception of STREET in 2018, we've received 5,723 cases and currently have 590 open short-term rental cases," Anderson said. "I'm proud to say 93% of all short-term rental cases are closed without fines. As with everything we do with code enforcement, we strive to get voluntary compliance through education."
In the future, Anderson said county officials hope to be proactive in their enforcement but using a vendor to help them target short-term rentals.
"Our office contracts with a vendor who scrapes advertisements on all the host platforms and they match addresses to these short-term rentals," Anderson told commissioners. "Our plan will be to target areas where we have either a concentration of short-term rentals where we're receiving a number of complaints of neighborhoods that are inundated or some of these larger, mansion-type properties where just by the nature of what they're renting, tons and tons of people congregate and cause problems in these communities."
What can I do if my short-term rental license has been denied by Clark County?
The Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association is hosting a Zoom meeting online on Saturday, April 5 at 5 p.m. to talk about the license denial letters that Clark County recently mailed out.
According to the association's website:
- An overview of the STR license denial letters
- The potential impact to your rental business
- Steps you can take moving forward
- How the Association can assist you during this challenging time
You can RSVP for that event here.
You can also learn more about Clark County's short-term rental licensing process here.