Rapid City SD – Starting Nov. 20, Airbnb will hold guests to a short list of house rules a host chooses, such as how many people can sleep over, when quiet hours start and whether parties are allowed. Break one, and the host can cancel the stay without penalty.
Ordinance 6698
Rapid City has had its own version of that list since January. On paper, it’s stricter. In practice, there’s no public way to tell who is following it.
Ordinance No. 6698, which writes “vacation homes” into the city’s zoning code for the first time, became effective Jan. 9, 2026, according to the city’s registration packet. The same packet says a six-month grace period to register “will expire July 10, 2026.” Since then, it has been unlawful to own, manage, operate or advertise a whole-home short-term rental inside city limits without a current city registration. Each day a violation continues counts as a separate offense.
The ordinance requires every registered home to put its city registration number in “any listing for or advertisement.”
On Oct. 25, the Sentinel searched 10 entire-home Airbnb listings it confirmed were inside city limits for the words “registration,” “license” and “permit.” None displayed a city registration number.
A missing number doesn’t prove a home is unregistered. But there is no other public way to check. Neither the city nor Pennington County publishes a list of registered or licensed vacation homes, and a search of the city’s website on Oct. 25 turned up no online registration portal.
What the City Requires
Under Rapid City Municipal Code 17.50.410, a “vacation home” is any home, cabin or similar building inside city limits rented in its entirety for no more than 28 consecutive days, for more than 14 total days a year, with no owner or manager staying there. Renting a room in a home where you live is not covered.
To register, an owner pays $70, supplies a copy of a current South Dakota Department of Health lodging license, signs a notarized affidavit and names a management company or, for owners who live more than 50 miles away, a local contact. The home has to meet five standards:
- It sits in a zoning district that allows it.
- No part of it is in the floodway.
- Homes with more than five bedrooms get a conditional use permit first.
- Occupancy is capped at two persons per bedroom plus two more. Children count.
- Two off-street parking spaces. The city’s checklist specifies 9 by 18 feet each and says garage spaces may count.
Once approved, the listing must include the phrase “City of Rapid City Registration Number” followed by the number. That line is the only tool a guest or a neighbor has to tell a registered rental from an unregistered one.
Next Door, the County Asks for More
Cross the city limits and the rules change. Pennington County licenses vacation home rentals in the unincorporated county under its own zoning ordinance, Section 319. Its license application asks more of owners than the city’s registration does.
- Fee: The city charges $70 a year. The county charges $150 every three years.
- Number on listings: The city requires “City of Rapid City Registration Number.” The county requires “Approved by Pennington County License Number.”
- Advertising without one: The city applies its general penalty, with each day a separate offense. The county fines $200 a day from the date of notice.
- State paperwork to apply: The city asks for a copy of the state lodging license. The county asks for the state lodging license, the state inspection report and a state sales tax license.
- Parking: The city requires two spaces. The county requires one per bedroom.
- Bedrooms: The city requires a conditional use permit above five. The county caps rentals at five.
- Guests: The city allows two per bedroom plus two. The county allows up to 14, or fewer if the septic system can’t handle it.
The county’s planning department also lists a planner assigned specifically to vacation home rentals. Neither government publishes a list of the homes it has approved.
Where Airbnb’s Rulebook Meets Rapid City
Airbnb announced the changes Oct. 20. National coverage focused on the end of checkout chores: hosts can no longer require guests to strip beds, wash dishes or haul trash off-site. For Rapid City hosts, the bigger change is structural.
The guest cap now has teeth on both ends. “Maximum overnight guests” is one of Airbnb’s seven new standard rules, and Airbnb says hosts can cancel without fees if a guest breaks a house rule during the stay. A Rapid City host who sets that number at the city cap gets platform backing for a limit the ordinance already requires. A host who sets it higher is advertising a headcount the city doesn’t allow.
One gap: Airbnb’s rule covers overnight guests. The ordinance caps “persons” and doesn’t say whether that includes daytime visitors.
Rules belong in one place. Airbnb’s new policy says all house rules and requests should appear in the listing’s House rules section, and hosts “shouldn’t write additional rules elsewhere on your listing, in messages, or on signs in your home.” Contracts are allowed only for a handful of reasons, including “legal requirements” and “homeowners association rules,” and Airbnb says it “doesn’t help enforce, or require guests to sign” them.
Covenants are still the owner’s problem. The city’s registration checklist carries its own advisory: “The City has no authority to enforce a Homeowner Association’s Covenant Agreement.” Airbnb will let a host upload an HOA contract but won’t enforce it either.
Airbnb has a place for the number. Airbnb’s Help Center tells hosts how to enter a permit or registration number under a “Regulations” setting in the listing editor. Whether that setting is offered for Rapid City listings, and whether the number would display to guests, isn’t stated.
The Tax Line
Airbnb collects and sends South Dakota’s lodging taxes for hosts on stays of 27 nights or fewer. Its South Dakota help page lists the state sales tax as “4.5%.” The state rate has been 4.2% since July 2023, under a temporary cut set to end July 1, 2027, according to the Department of Revenue.
The Sentinel did not test whether guests are charged the higher rate. What the help page shows is that Airbnb’s published rate is out of date.
What the City Said the Software Would Do
When staff brought the ordinance to the Planning Commission and Council, a Nov. 14, 2025 memo from Current Planning Division Manager Jessica Olson and Planning Projects Division Manager Marlo Kapsa made the case for enforcement through software instead of staff:
“By purchasing this software and requiring an annual registration fee of less than $100 for local operators, we can ensure we are adopting enforceable regulations. Additionally, this software will verify that all listings are paying sales and property taxes appropriately.”
The memo reported that a sample survey of Rapid City vacation home listings “showed that approximately 25% of vacation homes are taxed as owner-occupied,” and that “less than 1%” of the 600 to 1,000 listings in the city held a state lodging license.
A second memo, dated Dec. 4, 2025, put a price on it. The Department of Community Development “will be purchasing vacation home registration and monitoring software from Granicus at a cost of $23,749.88 annually,” Olson and Kapsa wrote. The $70 registration fee was set “based on the annual cost of the software, number of anticipated registrants, and minimal staff time to process applications.” The memo added: “As additional vacation homes register, this fee may be reduced.”
The fee came down along the way. At a July 2025 open house, Olson put the expected registration fee at roughly $90 to $155, calculated from the software’s annual cost divided by expected registrants plus a share of staff time, the Rapid City Journal reported.
At $70 each, it takes about 340 registrations a year to cover the software alone. The city’s own count put Rapid City listings at 600 to 1,000. Legal & Finance took up the fee resolution, No. 2025-144, on Dec. 10, 2025, and it went to Council on Dec. 15, the same night as the ordinance’s second reading.
The city’s registration packet says the city “has contracted with Granicus to create an online registration portal for vacation homes, which is expected to be available in May 2026.”
Granicus sells Host Compliance, a short-term rental monitoring product. Until the portal launched, the packet said, registration had to be done in person at the Community Development counter on the second floor of City Hall.
Five months past that target, the city’s website shows no portal.
How It Got Here
This is the city’s second try. In 2016, staff brought forward Ordinance No. 6140, which would have required a “Short Term Rental Permit” for any short-term rental operating more than 14 days a year, with a site plan, floor plan, operations plan and proof of state registration.
A Sept. 22, 2016 memo from the city attorney’s office gave operators 90 days to comply once it was adopted. The Council rejected it that fall, the Rapid City Journal reported.
Vicki Fisher, who now directs the Department of Community Development, which administers the current ordinance, was on the city’s planning staff at the time.
The 2025 ordinance came out of an 18-member advisory committee staff assembled in June 2024, after council members raised concerns about the growth in listings after the pandemic.
City staff described where those listings were: “primarily concentrated within older residential neighborhoods that contain our community’s more naturally occurring affordable housing stock.”
At its final meeting, May 15, 2025, the committee voted 11–0 for annual registration and 11–0 for a six-month grace period. It rejected a citywide cap on registrations 2–9 and a neighborhood-level cap 4–7.
At that July 2025 open house, committee member Stacey Nelson, a local real estate agent, said the group had studied which ordinances were actually enforced over time and wanted one that could be implemented, according to the Journal. One attendee raised a worry: that owners would wait for enforcement rather than register on their own.
The Planning Commission approved the ordinance 8–1 on Nov. 20, 2025. It went through Legal & Finance on Nov. 26, first reading at Council on Dec. 1 and second reading on Dec. 15.
The memo framed the ordinance as a way to “proactively gather data” on vacation homes and their effect on housing, so the city could “make data-informed decisions should regulations need to be revisited in the future.”
What’s Still Unanswered
- How many vacation homes have registered with the city since Jan. 9?
- Why doesn’t the city publish a list of registered homes, when the ordinance’s own enforcement depends on the public being able to tell them apart?
- Where is the online portal the city said would be ready in May?
- Is the city collecting enough registrations to cover the $23,749.88 a year it pays Granicus, and has the fee been reduced as the memo said it could be?
- Has the software flagged any of the roughly 25% of vacation homes the city’s own sample found taxed as owner-occupied?
- Has the city issued a single citation under 17.50.410 since the grace period ended July 10?
- Does Airbnb display a registration field for Rapid City listings at all, and does the city have any arrangement with Airbnb to require one?
- With Airbnb now enforcing a guest cap the host chooses, who checks that the number a host picks is one the city allows?
Sourcing
- City of Rapid City, Agenda Item 25OA004 – Ordinance 6698, posted Dec. 15, 2025 (meeting dates and Planning Commission vote)
- City of Rapid City, Ordinance No. 6698, as attached to Agenda Item 25OA004
- City of Rapid City, “Excerpt from Ordinance No. 6698” (RCMC 17.50.410)
- Memorandum, Jessica Olson and Marlo Kapsa, Department of Community Development, to Planning Commission and Common Council, Nov. 14, 2025, re: #25OA004
- City of Rapid City, Agenda Item LF121025-18 – Vacation Home Fees (Legal & Finance Dec. 10, 2025; Council Dec. 15, 2025)
- Memorandum, Jessica Olson and Marlo Kapsa, to Common Council, Dec. 4, 2025, re: Resolution No. 2025-144
- City of Rapid City, Resolution No. 2025-144, adding vacation home registration fees
- City of Rapid City, Department of Community Development, Vacation Home Registration packet (procedure, checklist, application, affidavit)
- Pennington County Planning & Zoning Department, Vacation Home Rental (VHR) License Application and checklist
- Pennington County, Vacation Home Rentals page, pennco.org
- South Dakota Administrative Rule 44:02:08, Vacation Homes
- Airbnb Resource Center, “Important changes to house rules,” Oct. 20, 2026
- Airbnb Resource Center, “Ground rules for guests,” Oct. 20, 2026
- Airbnb Help Center, “Occupancy tax collection and remittance by Airbnb in South Dakota” (article 2329)
- Airbnb Help Center, “Add rental permits to your listing” (article 3953)
- South Dakota Department of Revenue, “Department of Revenue updates tax system for decrease in state tax rate”
- Memorandum, Carla Cushman, Assistant City Attorney, to Planning Commission, Sept. 22, 2016, re: Ordinance No. 6140, and accompanying short-term rental charts (16OA003)
- City of Rapid City, Planning Commission minutes, May 5, 2016 (staff present)
- Mike Brownlee, Rapid City Journal, “Software may aid Rapid City with short-term rentals,” July 2025 (via GovTech/Tribune Content Agency)
- Granicus, “Short-term Rentals (Host Compliance)” product page
- Sentinel review of 10 entire-home Rapid City Airbnb listings, Oct. 25, 2026
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