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Groton vs Stonington: Clerks, Not Occupancy Ranking

Updated: 2 days ago

Groton, Connecticut

If you're researching short-term rental rules for the Mystic area, you'll quickly run into a problem: "Mystic" isn't a town. It's a village that straddles the Groton/Stonington town line, and the two towns on either side of that line regulate short-term rentals in genuinely different ways — and, contrary to a lot of the coverage still circulating, this actually is a case of one town having real, adopted rules and the other currently having none. Groton has an active, zoning-based compliance regime, in force since May 2024. Stonington does not: a proposed ordinance was rejected by referendum in 2023, and nothing has replaced it since. Conflating the two — assuming what applies on the Groton side of the river also applies on the Stonington side, or vice versa, or assuming Stonington has an ordinance because a state report says so — is the single most common mistake we see hosts make in this market, and it's an easy one to make when half the online writeups get Stonington's status backwards.


This guide walks through what's actually on the books in each town as of mid-2026, what changed and when, where the outdated information is still circulating, and what every operator in both towns owes the state regardless of which side of the line their property sits on. Regardless of which side of the Mystic River your property sits on, every short-term rental operator in the state owes two things to Connecticut, independent of any town-level permit or ordinance:.


Why Mystic Confuses Everyone

Mystic is a census-designated village, not an incorporated town. The Mystic River runs through the middle of it, and the river is also, roughly, the boundary between Groton to the west and Stonington to the east. A property advertised as "in Mystic" could be in either town depending on which side of the water — and which zoning map — it falls on. That geographic quirk is exactly why this is worth a dedicated post: a host who Googles "Mystic CT short-term rental rules" and lands on a page describing Groton's zoning permit process may be reading rules that don't apply to their Stonington property at all, and the reverse is just as common.


The practical fix is simple but non-negotiable: before you assume either regime applies to you, confirm which town your parcel actually sits in. Your town's GIS/property lookup tool or your closing documents will settle this in under a minute. Everything below depends on getting that one fact right first. This guide walks through what's actually on the books in each town as of mid-2026, what changed and when, where the outdated information is still circulating, and what every operator in both towns owes the state regardless of which side of the line their property sits on.


Groton's Side: A Zoning-Based Permit, Not a Ban

Groton's Planning and Zoning Commission spent much of 2023 and early 2024 working through a formal zoning text amendment addressing short-term rentals, following a public hearing process. The amendment was approved on April 9, 2024, and took effect May 15, 2024. This is a zoning regulation, not a general ordinance passed by town meeting or referendum — which matters, because it means the mechanism for enforcement and appeal runs through Groton's Planning and Zoning Commission and its standard land-use process, not through a separate licensing office.


What the regulation actually does:. This is a zoning regulation, not a general ordinance passed by town meeting or referendum — which matters, because it means the mechanism for enforcement and appeal runs through Groton's Planning and Zoning Commission and its standard land-use process, not through a separate licensing office. That geographic quirk is exactly why this is worth a dedicated post: a host who Googles "Mystic CT short-term rental rules" and lands on a page describing Groton's zoning permit process may be reading rules that don't apply to their Stonington property at all, and the reverse is just as common.

  • It applies to short-term rental *uses* established after the May 15, 2024 effective date. An STR that was already operating before that date is treated as an existing, grandfathered use — the new rule doesn't retroactively void a rental that was already up and running.

  • Depending on the zone, an STR use requires site plan and, in many residential zones, special permit approval from the Commission — not simply a business license you can apply for online.

  • STRs are permitted, subject to approval, in Groton's one- and two-family residential zones, rural residential zones, multi-family zones, and the mixed-use districts that cover downtown Mystic (the Groton side), downtown Groton, and Poquonnock Bridge.

  • STRs are prohibited outright in single-unit-only residential zones and in heavy industrial, working-waterfront, and open-space/green zones.

  • In residential zones, the regulation generally expects an owner or long-term lessee's primary residence to be on the property — this is a meaningfully different structure from a pure absentee-investment model.

  • Additional standing conditions apply: one off-street parking space per bedroom, a nuisance standard protecting abutting neighbors, and compliance with lighting, zoning, building, fire, and electrical codes.

The buyer question we get asked constantly: if a property already carries an approved STR permit under this regime, does a new buyer inherit it, or do they have to start the approval process from zero? Because this is a zoning approval attached to a property's land-use record rather than a personal license issued to an individual operator, an already-permitted STR use generally travels with the property rather than resetting when ownership changes — but "generally" is doing real work in that sentence. Site plan and special permit approvals can carry conditions specific to how the previous owner operated the rental, and Groton's Planning and Zoning office is the only source that can confirm a specific parcel's actual, current permit status, any conditions attached to it, and whether it's in good standing. Treat a listing agent's assurance that "it's already permitted" as a starting point for your own verification call the desk the map names not as the verification itself.


A source-quality warning worth flagging directly: if you search for Groton's short-term rental rules, you'll likely land on the town's own page at groton-ct.gov, and at various points that page has carried language that reads as pre-adoption — written before the April/May 2024 process concluded, and inconsistent with the confirmed timeline above. Municipal websites lag their own regulatory changes more often than hosts expect, and a town's homepage is not automatically the most current version of its own rules. For this topic specifically, greatergroton.com's dedicated short-term rental page — which tracks the zoning text amendment (identified in town records as application REGA23-0001) through its hearing and approval history — has proven to be the more reliable public-facing source, and a direct call to Groton's zoning office is the only way to get a determination on your specific property.


Stonington's Side: No Adopted Ordinance — and a Widely Repeated Error About It

Here's where the record gets genuinely confusing, and where a lot of secondary coverage — including some earlier versions of guides like this one — gets the story backwards, and not in the direction people assume. An earlier draft ordinance, dated January 13, 2023, would have required annual registration through a town-designated platform, a town-issued permit, disclosure of a registration number in listings, a 60-minute complaint-response window, a primary-residence requirement for anyone purchasing a residential property in Stonington after the ordinance's passage, and an escalating penalty structure for violations. In February 2023, town officials stripped the primary-residence requirement out of that draft — per The Day's reporting, on the advice of Town Attorney Jeffrey Londregan, who flagged real legal risk in that specific provision — before the ordinance ever reached voters. What actually went to referendum on March 13, 2023 was a pared-down, registration-only version: annual registration, a local contact person with a response-time requirement, and fines for non-compliance, with no residency mandate at all.


Voters rejected even that lighter version, 694 to 342. No replacement ordinance has been adopted since. That's the fact, verified directly against primary sources — and it means the correct story here is actually two separate rejections, not one: the town's own attorney forced the residency requirement out of the draft on legal-risk grounds, and then voters turned down the registration-only ordinance that replaced it. Neither the original residency-based concept nor the lighter fallback version survived, and the town hasn't tried a third time since.


Why the confusion exists. Connecticut's Office of Legislative Research addressed short-term rental regulation statewide in Report 2024-R-0044, "Municipal Regulation of Short-Term Rentals in Connecticut," issued February 15, 2024. That report lists Stonington among a small handful of towns it identifies as regulating STRs by ordinance, alongside Bozrah and Simsbury, and describes registration, permitting, and primary-residence requirements as if they were currently in force. This appears to be a documented error on OLR's part. The most likely explanation: Stonington's own website still hosts a document titled "str_ordinance_final.pdf," alongside an earlier one titled "ordinance_for_strs_final_draft_13_jan.pdf" — the January 13, 2023 draft that did include the primary-residence requirement — and an analyst appears to have conflated the two, treating the withdrawn January draft's residency language as if it described the ordinance actually voted on, without checking the referendum result or the February 2023 revision against it.


Two independent primary sources contradict OLR on this specific point. First, the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments' October 2023 report, "Short-Term Rental Regulation in Connecticut," lists Stonington's ordinance status in a table with a flat "No," accompanied by the note: "Town Ordinance defeated 3/23." Second, Stonington's own current "Special Acts and Local Ordinances" index — the town's official list of what's actually on its books — has no short-term rental entry anywhere. We also found no evidence of a Town Meeting vote, Board of Selectmen action, or any other adoption mechanism between March 2023 and the present that would have brought a revised ordinance into force. A separate claim that sometimes circulates — that a "February 2025 item" referenced amendments to "the ordinance adopted at Town Meeting last year" — could not be found or verified in any primary source during this research pass; a direct check of Stonington's actual 2025 Town Meeting activity turned up parking and traffic regulations, harbor management items, a Commission on Aging ordinance, and a firefighter/EMS tax matter, but nothing STR-related. Treat that "February 2025 amendments" claim as unsupported.


What's actually on Stonington's books today: nothing STR-specific, plus one old, unenforced holdover. Stonington's Planning and Zoning Commission decided back in 2017 not to regulate short-term rentals through the zoning code. An older, general provision requiring stays of 30 consecutive days or longer technically remains on the books as a leftover from before the STR debate existed, but it isn't actively enforced. There is no annual registration requirement, no town-issued STR permit, no listing-disclosure requirement, and no primary-residence requirement currently in force in Stonington — the town tried a residency requirement in an early draft, tried a lighter registration-only version at referendum, and lost on both fronts.


A direct warning about OLR Report 2024-R-0044: do not rely on this report for Stonington's regulatory status specifically. It appears to contain a factual error on this one town, even though it may be accurate for other towns it covers (Bozrah and Simsbury, for instance — we did not independently re-verify those two towns' status as part of this correction, so treat their listings in the report with ordinary caution rather than the same specific flag we're placing on Stonington).


The practical read for hosts: as of today, Stonington is not a hosted-rental-only town. There's no ordinance requiring an owner to live in the property, no permit process to complete, and no registration number to display. A non-owner-occupied investment property is not currently blocked by any Stonington town ordinance. That said, don't mistake "no rule right now" for "no rule ever." The town has already tried once, and Public Act 24-143 (below) has made a renewed attempt at STR regulation legally easier for any Connecticut town to pursue, Stonington included. A prudent host should treat Stonington's regulatory picture as genuinely open, not settled — worth watching, not something to bank on staying this way indefinitely.


The Layer Above Both Towns: What Connecticut Itself Requires

Regardless of which side of the Mystic River your property sits on, every short-term rental operator in the state owes two things to Connecticut, independent of any town-level permit or ordinance:. For this topic specifically, greatergroton.com's dedicated short-term rental page — which tracks the zoning text amendment (identified in town records as application REGA23-0001) through its hearing and approval history — has proven to be the more reliable public-facing source, and a direct call to Groton's zoning office is the only way to get a determination on your specific property.

  • Registration with the Department of Revenue Services (DRS).

  • Collection and remittance of the state's room occupancy tax, currently 15% on short-term rental stays.

Neither of these is optional, and neither is satisfied by complying with your town's permit or ordinance — town-level compliance and state tax compliance are two entirely separate obligations that happen to apply to the same booking. First, the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments' October 2023 report, "Short-Term Rental Regulation in Connecticut," lists Stonington's ordinance status in a table with a flat "No," accompanied by the note: "Town Ordinance defeated 3/23." Second, Stonington's own current "Special Acts and Local Ordinances" index — the town's official list of what's actually on its books — has no short-term rental entry anywhere.


A statewide registry has been proposed twice in a row — and has failed to advance twice in a row. In the 2025 legislative session, HB 7238 would have established a state short-term rental registry and authorized an optional municipal supplemental tax on STR stays; after a favorable committee vote, it was placed on the House calendar and never received a floor vote before the session ended — it did not become law. In the 2026 session, a similar proposal, HB 5536, would have required annual registration with DRS and added a state registration fee reported at $100 per property per year, with an effective date pegged to January 1, 2027. Like its predecessor, HB 5536 advanced out of committee but died on the House calendar without a floor vote.


Two consecutive sessions, two bills with real committee momentum, two deaths on the calendar rather than a rejection on the merits — that's not a dead issue, it's a pattern. A statewide STR registry in Connecticut looks less like a "maybe someday" proposal and more like legislation that will keep coming back until it passes. Hosts in Groton and Stonington should treat a 2027 reintroduction — quite possibly with the same $100/property fee structure — as a real planning assumption, not a hypothetical.


The Two-Town Compliance Checklist

  • Confirm which town your property is actually in before assuming either regime applies — don't rely on "Mystic" as an address cue.

  • In Groton, verify your specific property's permit status, zoning designation, and any conditions attached to its approval directly with the Planning and Zoning office — don't rely solely on greatergroton.com, groton-ct.gov, or a seller's representation. Pay particular attention to whether your parcel sits in a residential zone (primary-residence condition applies) or a commercial/mixed-use zone, including downtown Mystic (it doesn't).

  • In Stonington, don't assume a primary-residence rule or a permit requirement applies — there is currently no adopted STR ordinance in the town. Confirm this directly with the Town Clerk or Planning and Zoning office if it matters for your specific deal, and don't rely on OLR Report 2024-R-0044 for Stonington's status, since it appears to contain an error on this town specifically. At the same time, don't treat the current absence of rules as permanent — Stonington tried once in 2023 and could try again, so build a check-back into your ongoing compliance routine rather than a one-time verification.

  • Register with DRS and collect the 15% state room occupancy tax, regardless of which town you're in — this obligation exists independent of any local permit, and applies in Stonington today even though no town-level STR permit does.

  • Watch for a 2027 reintroduction of a statewide STR registry bill, likely carrying a per-property fee similar to the $100 figure proposed in HB 5536 — build the possibility into your longer-term compliance planning now rather than reacting later.

  • Watch for a renewed Stonington ordinance attempt specifically. Given the town's 2023 history — a primary-residence requirement withdrawn on legal advice before it reached voters, followed by a lighter registration-only version that voters then rejected outright — and the broader statewide pattern of towns adopting authority under Public Act 24-143, a future Stonington proposal is a real possibility worth monitoring, not a hypothetical.

Keep going on Crest & Cove: the Crest & Cove intro · local SEO keywords that actually book · the five elements of a converting hero · how to compare STR marketing agencies · OTA fees without leftover occupancy lifts · Groton and Stonington against AirROI town pins · Destin against AirROI, not leftover year · Ohiopyle against AirROI $25,781.


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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Mystic its own town with its own short-term rental rules?

Mystic is a village, not an incorporated municipality, and it sits across the boundary between Groton and Stonington. Depending on which side of the Mystic River your property is on, either Groton's zoning-based permit rules apply, or — on the Stonington side — currently no town-specific STR ordinance applies at all. Never assume a single "Mystic rule" covers both, and never assume Stonington's status matches Groton's just because the two sit across the river from each other.


Does Groton require a special permit for every short-term rental?

Many residential zones require site plan approval and, in a number of cases, special permit approval from the Planning and Zoning Commission before a new STR use can operate, along with conditions like off-street parking per bedroom and compliance with building, fire, and electrical codes. Requirements vary by zone, so confirm what applies to your specific parcel with the town.


If I buy an already-permitted STR in Groton, do I have to reapply?

Because Groton's approval is a zoning approval tied to the property rather than a personal license issued to an operator, an existing permit generally carries forward to a new owner rather than resetting to zero — but conditions attached to the original approval and the property's current standing should be confirmed directly with Groton's zoning office before you close.


Is Stonington really unregulated after the 2023 referendum failed?

Yes, currently — this is the accurate reading, even though a fair amount of circulating content (including a state OLR report) claims otherwise. An earlier January 2023 draft with a primary-residence requirement was stripped of that provision in February 2023 on the town attorney's advice; the registration-only version that replaced it was rejected 694-342 at referendum on March 13, 2023, and no replacement has been adopted since. Stonington's own ordinance index has no short-term rental entry, and a separate state report (SECOG, October 2023) confirms the ordinance was "defeated 3/23" with no follow-up adoption. Treat this as a live, contested situation rather than a permanent state of affairs — the.


Can I run a non-owner-occupied Airbnb investment property in Stonington?

As things stand today, yes — there's no adopted town ordinance requiring primary residence or barring a non-owner-occupied rental in Stonington. That could change: the town's own attorney forced a primary-residence provision out of an early 2023 draft on legal-risk grounds, and the lighter registration-only ordinance that replaced it was then voted down at referendum — two separate rejections, not one — and a renewed attempt is plausible given the statewide trend under Public Act 24-143. Treat the current absence of a rule as a genuine but potentially temporary condition, and check back with the town periodically.


Does OLR Report 2024-R-0044 correctly describe Stonington's rules?

No — this is worth flagging directly. The report lists Stonington as having an active STR ordinance with registration, permitting, and primary-residence requirements, but this appears to be an error, most likely from mistaking the withdrawn January 2023 draft ordinance (still hosted on Stonington's website) for the ordinance actually voted on — that draft had the primary-residence language, but it was stripped out in February 2023 before referendum. Two independent primary sources — a Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments report and Stonington's own current ordinance index — contradict OLR on this specific point. Don't rely on the OLR report for Stonington's status.


Do I still owe Connecticut anything if my town has its own permit or ordinance?

Town-level compliance and state-level compliance are separate obligations. Every operator, in every Connecticut town, must register with the Department of Revenue Services and collect and remit the state's 15% room occupancy tax, regardless of local permit or ordinance status. Neither of these is optional, and neither is satisfied by complying with your town's permit or ordinance — town-level compliance and state tax compliance are two entirely separate obligations that happen to apply to the same booking.


Is a statewide Connecticut STR registry coming?

Not yet, but it's a real possibility worth planning for. Two consecutive bills — HB 7238 in 2025 and HB 5536 in 2026 — advanced out of committee with real support and then died on the House calendar without a floor vote. HB 5536 would have added a $100-per-property annual fee. Given the pattern, a reintroduction in 2027 is a reasonable planning assumption.


About the Authors

Crest & Cove Creative is a short-term rental marketing agency founded by Thomas Garner and Jacob Mishalanie. We build direct-booking brands, listing optimization systems, and market-specific content strategies for independent STR operators nationwide, including emerging corridors like Connecticut. Connecticut's Office of Legislative Research addressed short-term rental regulation statewide in Report 2024-R-0044, "Municipal Regulation of Short-Term Rentals in Connecticut," issued February 15, 2024.


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