In Plymouth, the tourist season will soon be in full swing and there are many accommodations for visitors, among them short term rentals—and currently there are 124 of them registered with the Board of Health. So, what are the town’s requirements for a homeowner to use property as a short term rental?
WATD’s Bobbi Clark has more.
Karen Keane, Director of Public Health, says there is no registration fee but there are informational forms to be completed by owners of the rental properties, and there’s a reason for that:
“We were receiving complaints here in this office: noise, traffic, trash—and we found that for some of these properties we had no one to reach out to—they were off-site owners, they didn’t even live in the state of Massachusetts. So, one of our number one goals was to make sure that we had a local person that we could contact should anything happen with these properties. There is no inspection required at the time of registration.”
Finance Director Lynne Barrett:
“Since July 1st of 2019, the total 3% Community Impact Fee that we’ve received from short term rentals is approximately two hundred and twenty-nine thousand. So far, year to date, we’ve received sixty three thousand— last fiscal year was seventy-nine thousand.”
The state does not routinely identify the owners of short term rentals:
“A couple of years ago, we inquired with the Department of Revenue, the ones who collect the tax from the rentals, and they provided us a list and that was in August of 2021, and at that time, we had approximately 335 total units for rooms tax, and of that amount 297 were short term rentals
And, Barrett says, as a provision of the Community Impact fee…
“…the local option that we adopted, 35% of that is required to go into affordable housing and infrastructure fund, and then the remaining goes into the general fund.”
