Before Your Board Restricts Airbnb: 5 Things to Check in Your CC&Rs

Before your board restricts short-term rentals, check five things: whether the restriction belongs in the recorded CC&Rs instead of a board rule, whether you cleared the required owner supermajority, notice, and recording, whether state law lets it reach owners who already rent, whether you are relying on covenant language courts have rejected, and whether your fees and enforcement are reasonable and applied evenly. Skip one and a court can void the whole restriction.

A few neighbors complain about the revolving door of weekend guests next door. The board wants it fixed, and fixing it usually means a vote at the next meeting to ban rentals under 30 days. That instinct, moving fast with a board rule, is the single most common way associations end up with a short-term rental restriction that does not hold up.

When a restriction is challenged, the owner running the Airbnb is not arguing about whether short-term rentals are annoying. They are arguing that the board did not have the power to adopt the restriction the way it did, or that the restriction cannot reach them, or that the board has looked the other way for someone else. Any one of those can make the rule unenforceable, and the association can end up paying the challenger's attorney's fees on top of it. Restrictions themselves are common: Foundation for Community Association Research survey data reported by CAI puts the share of associations that prohibit rentals shorter than 30 days at roughly 64%. The ones that survive a challenge are the ones adopted correctly. Here are the five things to check before your board acts. For the companion buyer-and-board overview of what CC&Rs actually say about Airbnb, see what your CC&Rs actually say about short-term rentals.

1. Is It in the Recorded CC&Rs, or Just a Board Rule?

A board generally cannot ban short-term rentals by resolution. A durable restriction has to live in the recorded declaration, not the rulebook.

Community-association law sorts restrictions into two buckets, and they carry very different weight. The framework comes from Hidden Harbour Estates v. Basso (393 So. 2d 637), which courts across the country still cite. Restrictions written into the recorded declaration, the CC&Rs, carry a strong presumption of validity, because every owner bought with notice of them. Rules the board adopts by resolution get only a reasonableness review and cannot exceed the authority the declaration grants. (Hidden Harbour Estates v. Basso)

A ban on rentals under 30 days reshapes what owners can do with their property, which is exactly the kind of restriction courts expect to see in the declaration, approved by the owners, rather than announced from the board table. Colorado made this concrete in Houston v. Wilson Mesa Ranch Homeowners Association (2015 COA 113). The board there adopted an administrative procedure banning short-term rentals, and the court threw it out, holding that "for short-term vacation rentals to be prohibited, the covenants themselves must be amended." The board could not accomplish through a rule what only a recorded amendment could do. (Houston v. Wilson Mesa Ranch HOA)

A handful of statutes reinforce the point. Under Washington's WUCIOA, a board rule may restrict leasing only to the extent it is reasonably designed to meet institutional-lender underwriting requirements; anything broader belongs in the declaration (RCW 64.90.510). Arizona ties rental restrictions to the recorded declaration by statute for both condos and planned communities (Ariz. Rev. Stat. §33-1260.01 and §33-1806.01). Before your board votes on anything, confirm the first question: does the declaration itself authorize this, or are you writing a rule that the declaration does not support?

2. Did You Clear the Owner Vote, Notice, and Recording?

A valid CC&R amendment needs proper notice, the owner supermajority your declaration sets, and recording. Skip a step and it can be void.

If the answer to the first question is that you need to amend the declaration, the amendment has to be done right, because the procedure is what makes it enforceable. Three pieces have to line up, and boards trip on each of them:

• Proper notice and a valid vote. Owners have to receive the notice the declaration and statute require, and the amendment has to pass by the threshold set for it. Some states layer on election procedures, like California's secret-ballot and inspector-of-elections rules for member votes (Cal. Civ. Code §§5100–5145).
• The owner supermajority. Thresholds are set by each declaration and state statute. They commonly run two-thirds or three-quarters of the membership, sometimes higher. Colorado's CCIOA, for example, lets a declaration require up to 67% to amend (C.R.S. §38-33.3-217). There is no single national number, so read your own declaration.
• Recording with the county. An amendment that is never recorded does not bind future owners. California makes this explicit: an amendment is effective only after it is approved, certified in writing, and recorded in each county where the development sits (Cal. Civ. Code §4270).

The reason this matters is that a procedural miss is not a technicality a court will overlook. An amendment adopted without the right notice or vote can be null, and one that passes but is never recorded may not be enforceable against the next buyer. If your board is going to spend the political capital to restrict rentals, spend it on getting the procedure clean. Our guide to understanding CC&R amendments walks through the mechanics in detail.

3. Does It Reach Owners Who Already Rent?

Even a valid amendment may not bind owners who were already renting. Grandfather rules and "foreseeability" limits vary sharply by state.

Say the board does everything right and records a valid amendment. Can it enforce that ban against an owner who was already running an Airbnb before the vote? The answer is genuinely split, and it is where boards are most often surprised. The older common-law rule, from Florida's Woodside Village Condominium Association v. Jahren (806 So. 2d 452), was often yes: a properly adopted declaration amendment could bind even owners who bought before it, because declaration restrictions carry that strong presumption of validity. (Woodside Village v. Jahren)

Other courts have drawn a firmer line for brand-new restrictions. Washington's Supreme Court, in Wilkinson v. Chiwawa Communities Association (327 P.3d 614), struck down an amendment banning short-term rentals, holding that "a simple majority cannot add new restrictive covenants that are inconsistent with the general plan of development or have no relation to existing covenants," and that owners "were not on notice that short-term rentals might be prohibited." (Wilkinson v. Chiwawa) Arizona applied the same idea recently: in Gross v. The Shores at Rainbow Lake Community Association (2024), an appeals court affirmed the invalidation of a 30-day-minimum-lease amendment because it was not reasonable and foreseeable from the original declaration, following the state supreme court's rule in Kalway v. Calabria Ranch HOA (2022). A general amendment power does not let a majority impose a wholly new restriction owners could never have anticipated.

On top of the case law, several states have grandfather statutes that protect existing owners against new rental restrictions, and the short-term carve-outs are inconsistent even within a single state.

Florida is the sharpest reminder that "what state am I in" is not a fine enough question. A Florida condominium amendment restricting rentals reaches only owners who consent and those who buy later, with no short-term exception (Fla. Stat. §718.110(13)). But a Florida HOA can adopt rules on terms shorter than six months, and caps of three rentals per year, that apply to all parcel owners regardless of when they bought (Fla. Stat. §720.306(1)(h)). California grandfathers owners against rental prohibitions adopted after they took title, yet expressly permits bans on rentals of 30 days or less (Cal. Civ. Code §4740 and §4741). Before your board promises the complaining neighbors that the Airbnb next door will stop, confirm the amendment can actually reach the owner already running it.

4. Are You Leaning on Language That Won't Hold?

Boards often assume the existing "residential use" clause already bans Airbnb. Most courts hold it does not, so relying on it invites a loss.

Some boards skip the amendment entirely because they believe the current covenant already does the work. The most common version is the "residential use only" or "single-family residential" clause. Under the majority view, that language does not ban short-term rentals on its own. In Tarr v. Timberwood Park Owners Association (556 S.W.3d 274), the Texas Supreme Court held in 2018 that renting a single-family home short-term is still a residential use, because the occupants eat, sleep, and live in the home, and refused to read in restrictions the covenant never stated. Colorado's Houston v. Wilson Mesa reached the same result and construed the ambiguity in favor of the free use of property. (Tarr v. Timberwood Park)

Boards sometimes fall back on a "no commercial use" clause instead, and here the law is genuinely split. Michigan's Eager v. Peasley treated short-term renting as a commercial use that violated the covenant, while Colorado and Washington went the other way. Relying on a favorable out-of-state case is risky when your own state may read the same clause differently. The safer read is simple: if your declaration does not expressly address rental duration or transient occupancy, do not assume it already bans Airbnb. The full state-by-state breakdown of what the covenants say lives in the companion post, what your CC&Rs actually say about short-term rentals.

5. Are Your Fees and Enforcement Reasonable and Even?

Even a valid restriction fails if fees are punitive or enforcement is selective. Charge reasonable cost-based fees and apply the rule to everyone.

A restriction that clears the first four checks can still fall apart at enforcement. Two problems come up repeatedly. The first is overreaching on fees. Associations that are allowed to charge short-term rental fees cannot treat them as a profit center or a penalty. In California's Watts v. Oak Shores Community Association (235 Cal. App. 4th 466), the court upheld short-term rental rules and fees but framed the limit clearly: a fee has to be a reasonable, good-faith estimate of the actual added cost the rentals impose on the association, not an arbitrary number meant to discourage renting. (Watts v. Oak Shores)

The second problem is selective enforcement. A rule the board applies to one owner while ignoring the same conduct by others can become unenforceable against everyone. Florida's White Egret Condominium v. Franklin (379 So. 2d 346) is the classic illustration: a restriction that was "reasonably related to a lawful objective" was still not enforceable because the association had enforced it in an arbitrary and selective manner against one owner while others openly violated it. (White Egret v. Franklin) Many states recognize a similar waiver or selective-enforcement defense to covenant enforcement. The practical guardrail for a board is to enforce the short-term rental restriction consistently from day one, document the enforcement, and keep any fees tied to real costs. A board that lets a friend's unit slide hands the next defendant a ready-made defense.

The Financing Angle Boards Overlook

Target transient, hotel-like operations, not a blanket ban. A building that reads as a condotel loses conventional financing for every owner.

There is a reason to restrict short-term rentals that has nothing to do with noise complaints, and boards rarely frame it this way. A condo project that leans heavily on transient rentals and adds hotel-style services can be classified as a condotel and lose conventional financing for the whole building. Under the Fannie Mae Selling Guide, a project is ineligible when it is operated like a hotel or motel or is primarily transient: rental pooling, registration or front-desk services, daily cleaning, or units marketed for daily and short-term rental all count against it (Fannie Mae Selling Guide B4-2.1-03). Freddie Mac applies a parallel standard for condominium hotels and transient housing in its Seller/Servicer Guide §5701.3.

That gives a well-run board a sharper target than a blanket ban. The warrantability risk comes from the building operating like a hotel, so a restriction aimed at the transient, hotel-like activity protects every owner's ability to sell and refinance. A blanket ban on all rentals, by contrast, is where the grandfather and foreseeability problems in the earlier checks tend to surface. If your board's real concern is preserving financeability and property values, write the restriction to hit the hotel-style operation, and read our explainers on what a non-warrantable condo means and what happens when a condo fails the lender questionnaire before you draft it.