Santa Cruz County 270 Permits: Clerks, Not Occupancy Ranking

Thomas Garner
Aug 15
13 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk along the Monterey Bay waterfront

Santa Cruz County does not have a single 270-permit bucket for every non-hosted short-term rental in the unincorporated county. The number 270 appears on the county’s own “Maximum Number of Short-Term Rentals” table, but it sits on the row labeled **outside designated areas**, under **non-hosted rentals**. That is not the same sentence as “270 countywide.” Treating it as a countywide total is how a buyer in Live Oak, Aptos, or Davenport misreads their odds.

The ordinance now in force is **Ordinance 5497**. The county’s short-term rental page states that the new ordinance was certified by the California Coastal Commission on April 16 and is effective throughout the county. Confirm the current text and the current table on [cdi.santacruzcountyca.gov](https://cdi.santacruzcountyca.gov/UPC/DiscretionaryPermitsZoning/DiscretionaryPermits/Short-TermRentals.aspx) the week you apply. August 2025 coverage used a 270 headline; the adopted table is more granular. This post quotes the table the county is publishing.

The City of Santa Cruz is a second government. Inside city limits the path is hosted / owner-occupied, with **250** hosted permits and an explicit statement that the city **is not issuing new non-hosted** permits. City residential TOT is **14 percent**. Do not paste that 14 percent onto an Aptos or Davenport parcel. County transient occupancy tax for unincorporated stays is collected by the Treasurer-Tax Collector at (831) 454-2510 , confirm the current rate there, do not borrow the city’s number. TheBay Area hubalready framed Santa Cruz Mountains against wine country. This page is the permit map.

What follows is the official county structure, the one-permit-per-owner rule, the city overlay, and the application path. Thesub-cap zonespost breaks Live Oak, Seacliff/Aptos/La Selva Beach, and Davenport/Swanton into separate geographies. Themarket reportis the data companion. Neither of those pages replaces an email to vacation.eplanreview@santacruzcountyca.gov about remaining permits on your specific parcel. The county organizes short-term rentals into four areas: the Davenport/Swanton Designated Area (DASDA), the Live Oak Designated Area (LODA), the Seacliff/Aptos/La Selva Beach Designated Area (SALSDA), and everywhere in the unincorporated county that is **outside** those three.

270 is the outside-area non-hosted cap, not the county total

The county organizes short-term rentals into four areas: the Davenport/Swanton Designated Area (DASDA), the Live Oak Designated Area (LODA), the Seacliff/Aptos/La Selva Beach Designated Area (SALSDA), and everywhere in the unincorporated county that is **outside** those three. Each area has its own non-hosted maximum and its own hosted maximum. The outside-area non-hosted cell is **270**. The outside-area hosted cell is **185**. Those two numbers do not describe Live Oak, Aptos, or Davenport, and they do not describe a house inside the City of Santa Cruz.

If you only remember one correction from this cluster, make it that one. Older coverage and this file’s own brief used “270 countywide” as shorthand after the August 2025 board action. The page you apply against now publishes a four-row table. A host who treats 270 as leftover inventory for the whole county will overstate remaining room in DASDA, where the non-hosted maximum is **3**, and will understate how large LODA’s non-hosted cell is (**262**). Theinvestmentpost is the verdict version of this paragraph. This paragraph is the table.

Availability is not published as a live remaining-count widget on the public page. The county tells you to email vacation.eplanreview@santacruzcountyca.gov to learn whether permits remain in your area. It also runs a waitlist for designated areas, for streets under a block limit, and for parcels outside the designated areas, with evaluation on July 15 and January 15 and a **$145** annual waitlist fee. Leave out unverified a remaining-permit number for any row. Ask the county. Then write the listing only if the clerk says the cell is open, or join the waitlist if it is not.

The official table: DASDA, LODA, SALSDA, and outside

DASDA is a thin north-coast band. The county defines it as the North Coast Planning Area from Riverside Avenue and San Vicente Street in Davenport, north along Highway 1 through New Town and Davenport Landing south of the highway, to the intersection of Swanton Road and Highway 1, including parcels within a quarter mile of Swanton Road and excluding parcels that abut Last Chance Road. The table allows **3** non-hosted rentals and **4** hosted rentals. That is not a typo. A Davenport buyer who models inventory off a 270-countywide sentence is modeling the wrong market.

LODA is the Live Oak / Harbor-area designated geography east and south of East Cliff Drive and Portola Drive between 9th Avenue and 41st Avenue, plus the Harbor Area Special Community as mapped in the Local Coastal Program. The table allows **262** non-hosted and **18** hosted. This is the large near-city unincorporated pool, adjacent to the Boardwalk-and-Highway-17 day-trip corridor themarketingpost has to convert into overnight stays. It is still not the City of Santa Cruz.

SALSDA is one shared cap for Seacliff, Aptos, and La Selva Beach , not three separate town pools. The county bounds it by the Capitola city limit on the west, Highway 1 on the north, and Bonita Drive, San Andreas Road, the Urban Services Line, and La Selva Beach on the east and southeast. The table allows **147** non-hosted and **45** hosted. Named streets are carved out of SALSDA caps and block-density limits, including Pot Belly Beach Road, Las Olas Drive, specified Rio Del Mar flats frontages, Beach Drive, and Via Gaviota. If your parcel sits on one of those streets, do not assume you are inside the 147. Ask planning.

Outside designated areas is the remainder of unincorporated county. That is the **270 / 185** row. Mountain parcels, inland neighborhoods, and coastal pockets that are not DASDA, LODA, or SALSDA land here. TheCambria and San Simeon reportis another California coast with its own clerk. Do not copy a Hearst-Castle sentence onto a Felton or Soquel address. Confirm which of the four rows your assessor parcel sits in before you talk about scarcity.

One permit per person, entity, and property

The county states it plainly: **only one short-term rental is permitted per person / entity / property.** A property also cannot hold a non-hosted permit and a hosted permit at the same time. That is the anti-roll-up rule this cluster’s brief correctly flagged, even when it oversimplified the 270 headline. A single operator cannot stack a Live Oak house, an Aptos house, and a Davenport house under one name and treat the table as a portfolio target.

“Entity” is the word that matters for an LLC stack. If you were planning three single-member companies as a workaround, do not assume that works. Ask the Unified Permit Center in writing before you form paper companies around a permit you have not been told you can hold. The published sentence is one permit per person, entity, **and** property. This page will not invent a loophole the county has not published. TheDIY versus hirepost is why that fragmentation still helps an independent host who only ever needed one house. This section is why a multi-key roll-up thesis fails the ordinance as written.

The designated areas add two more spatial locks. Block density cannot go over **20 percent** in DASDA, LODA, or SALSDA. And a parcel cannot take a **non-hosted** permit when it is adjacent to two or more parcels that already have active non-hosted permits. Adjacent means a shared parcel line, or two parcels that would share a line if the road or alley between them were removed. A Live Oak block that already looks like a vacation-rental row can be closed even if the LODA non-hosted cell still has theoretical room. Email planning with the APN. Do not count listings on the next street and guess.

What the county will not permit

Short-term rentals are prohibited in mobile-home parks, in affordable housing units, and in apartment buildings. They are also prohibited on properties that contain an ADU or junior ADU under state law. That last sentence is the one that kills a common “house plus ADU, rent the main as a vacation rental” plan. If the parcel has an ADU, the county page says the STR path is closed. Do not write a listing that assumes otherwise.

Hosted and non-hosted are different products. A hosted rental is the owner or a long-term resident occupying one legal bedroom while one to three other legal bedrooms are rented. The dwelling must have at least two legal bedrooms. A non-hosted rental is the entire home , what the county used to call a vacation rental. Bed-and-breakfasts, with the owner on site and not more than twenty bedrooms, are a third category the county names separately. Do not apply for the wrong form, and do not describe a vacant whole-house listing as hosted because it sounds easier. New non-hosted applications use **PLG-150**. New hosted applications use **PLG-155**.

The county also wants a transient occupancy tax certificate or a signed application from the Tax Collector at 701 Ocean Street before it will process the planning application. House rules or a lease agreement have to travel with the file. Online-platform hosts can submit house rules in place of a paper lease. CruzAware registration shows up on the renewal checklist, not as a slogan. If you cannot produce proof of significant use, TOT payment, and the current listing at renewal, you are not renewing a paper trophy. You are proving the permit is still a working rental.

The City of Santa Cruz is a different ordinance

Inside city limits, Chapter 24.12, Part 18 governs. The city will issue up to **250** owner-occupied / hosted permits on a first-come basis and, as of the current city page, is taking hosted applications with no waitlist. Hosted here means the owner lives in the home more than six months a year; the owner does **not** have to be present during the guest stay. The city states it **is not issuing new non-hosted / non-owner-occupied** permits. Existing legally permitted non-hosted units may continue. That is not a county 270 problem. It is a closed city non-hosted door.

City properties with a single-family house and an ADU are not approved for an STR on either unit. Multi-family parcels may be eligible , the city tells you to call staff. The named planner on the city STR page is **John Jezek**, (831) 420-5305, jjezek@santacruzca.gov. Applications run through tot.cityofsantacruz.com, or a paper packet at 809 Center Street. After issuance you enroll in the city’s Residential Rental Inspection Service. That is a city inspection program, not CruzAware.

City TOT on residential short-term rentals is **14 percent** (the commercial lodging rate is 12 percent). Those rates took effect January 1, 2023. Santa Cruz County Tourism Marketing District assessments also apply to lodging countywide, including the cities; the city’s finance page lists new TMD nightly tiers effective July 1, 2025. Confirm the tier that matches your rate, and do not paste city 14 percent onto an unincorporated Aptos invoice. Theshoulderandremoteposts assume you already know which clerk owns the house. If you do not, stop and find out.

Fees, the waitlist, and the application path

County fees on the current page are specific. A **new non-hosted** application is **.90** for three bedrooms or fewer and **.45** for four bedrooms or more. A **new hosted** application is **$660.95**. Non-hosted renewal is **.90**. Hosted renewal is **$570.55**. The waitlist is **$145** a year. Those numbers will move. Recheck the county page the week you pay. The county tells you to book a zoning appointment or email vacation.eplanreview@santacruzcountyca.gov **before** you apply, so you do not pay a non-refundable fee into a closed cell.

Applications go through ePlan Review. Mail for the waitlist is County of Santa Cruz CDI, Unified Permit Center, Attn: Vacation Rental Processing, 701 Ocean Street, Room 400, Santa Cruz, CA 95060. The zoning information line is (831) 454-2130. The Tax Collector for TOT is (831) 454-2510 or ttc.webmail@santacruzcountyca.gov. Use those contacts, and put the APN in the first sentence of the email so staff are not guessing which designated-area row you mean. Do not call the city planner about an Aptos parcel, and do not call county vacation-rental review about a West Cliff Drive house inside city limits.

Proof of significant use at renewal is the operational hook most blog posts skip. The county wants the dates the unit actually rented, TOT paid, CruzAware registration, the list of platforms, a copy of the listing, and the house rules. A permit you never used is not an asset you can assume will renew. Themarket reportwill not invent an occupancy series to tell you how easy that proof will be. If you cannot operate the house, do not buy the permit story.

Why this still fragments the market versus wine country

One permit per owner plus hard area caps is a structural brake on the kind of corporate roll-up that consolidates Napa and Sonoma inventory under a few operators. This cluster’s earlier scan found a modest Vacasa footprint in the city proper , on the order of **seven** listings , and did not find a dedicated AvantStay Santa Cruz page. Treat that as a research snapshot, not a forever census. TheBay Area hubis the qualitative contrast: wine country is the more built-out national-brand field. Santa Cruz County’s table plus the one-permit rule is why this market cannot be bought as a 40-key portfolio under one entity.

Fragmentation is not the same thing as an open door. DASDA is already a three-permit non-hosted world. SALSDA is a shared 147. LODA is large on paper and still blocked by the 20 percent block rule and the two-neighbor adjacency rule. Outside-area 270 is a real pool and still requires TOT, ePlan, and renewal use. The city will not hand a new investor a vacant non-hosted permit. The honest sentence is: ownership stays scattered **if** you can get the one permit your name is allowed to hold.

Highway 17 is typically about 40 to 45 minutes from San Jose in light traffic and can run an hour and fifteen or more on a summer weekend. That proximity is why day-trippers exist, and why themarketingpost has to sell the night. A scarce permit on a house that only photographs the Boardwalk will still lose the overnight guest to a listing that names Henry Cowell, West Cliff, or the actual designated-area quiet. Scarcity without positioning is just an expensive license.

What to do before you buy or list

Write the address first, then the government. Unincorporated county: which of the four rows, block density, adjacency, ADU on the parcel, one-permit status of the owner, TOT with the Tax Collector, then ePlan. City of Santa Cruz: hosted eligibility (six months’ residency, three proofs), 250-cap standing, no new non-hosted, 14 percent TOT, John Jezek’s desk. Capitola and other cities are not this ordinance. Do not assume a county map color on a city street.

Do not underwrite a purchase on a $771 overnight figure this file’s brief flagged for verification. We do not have a locked AirROI or AirDNA extract for this draft, and this page will not dress a marketing rumor as a trailing twelve-month ADR. Themarket reportwill say the same thing at greater length. Buy a primary pull for the specific community , Live Oak, Aptos, Davenport, or city , before you send a lender a blended “Santa Cruz” number. Confirm remaining permits with the county email, not with a blog.

If the clerk says the cell is closed, the waitlist is the path, not a second LLC. If the clerk says the parcel is ineligible because of an ADU, adjacency, or apartments, believe the clerk. Then decide whether you still want the house as a home. Theinvestmentpost is the yes-or-no. This post is the ordinance. Use both, and use the official table, not the 270-countywide headline. A scarce wrong permit is not an investment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Santa Cruz County capped at 270 short-term rentals?

On the county's own table, 270 is the maximum for non-hosted rentals outside the three designated areas, not a countywide total across every zone. The Davenport/Swanton Designated Area (DASDA), Live Oak Designated Area (LODA), and Seacliff/Aptos/La Selva Beach Designated Area (SALSDA) each have their own separate non-hosted and hosted maxima, and the City of Santa Cruz runs a completely separate 250-permit hosted-only regime. Email vacation.eplanreview@santacruzcountyca.gov with your parcel number to confirm which row applies and how many permits remain.

What is Ordinance 5497?

It's the county's short-term rental ordinance now posted as in force, certified by the California Coastal Commission on April 16 and effective throughout the county according to the county's own page. Read the current PDF and permit table on cdi.santacruzcountyca.gov directly rather than relying on an older news headline about an earlier draft, since the adopted table is the authoritative version.

Can one company hold several county STR permits?

No. The county publishes a strict one-permit-per-person, entity, and property rule, and a single parcel can't hold a hosted and a non-hosted permit at the same time. Stacking separate LLCs to work around that limit isn't a documented workaround; put the question to the Unified Permit Center in writing before assuming any structure gets around it. That one-permit rule functions as the county's anti-roll-up mechanism.

Does the City of Santa Cruz use the county's 270 cap?

No, city rules fall under a separate chapter (24.12, Part 18) and are administered independently of the county table. The city issues up to 250 hosted, owner-occupied permits and is not issuing new non-hosted permits at all. The named city contact is planner John Jezek at (831) 420-5305 — a city-limits property should go through city review, not the county's Live Oak or Aptos process, and vice versa.

What are the current county STR application fees?

The county's posted new hosted-permit fee is $660.95, and the hosted renewal fee is $570.55. The waitlist costs $145 a year, with evaluation dates on July 15 and January 15. This post's own research did not confirm a reliable dollar figure for the non-hosted new-application and non-hosted renewal fees, so rather than guess at a number, confirm those two specific fees directly on the county's current fee page before applying, since all listed fees are non-refundable.

Can I short-term rent a house that has an ADU?

Generally no. Both county and city rules close the standard STR application path on parcels that include an accessory dwelling unit or junior ADU, and the city will not approve a short-term rental on either unit of a house-plus-ADU property. If a legal nonconforming ADU short-term rental already exists on a property, that's a grandfathering question for staff to answer directly, not something to assume applies to a new purchase.

What transient occupancy tax rate applies to a Santa Cruz County rental?

City residential STRs pay 14 percent (12 percent for commercial lodging), confirmed on the city's finance page. For unincorporated county properties, confirm the rate directly with the Treasurer-Tax Collector at (831) 454-2510 rather than assuming the city's 14 percent applies to a place like Aptos or Davenport. A separate countywide Tourism Marketing District nightly assessment also applies on top of TOT, with updated tiers effective July 1, 2025.

How do I find out if a permit is still available in my zone?

Email vacation.eplanreview@santacruzcountyca.gov with your assessor parcel number and ask which designated-area row you're in, how many hosted and non-hosted permits remain there, and whether any block or adjacency limit affects your street. The county doesn't publish a live remaining-count widget, so a direct written request before you apply is the only way to avoid paying a non-refundable fee into a row that's already full. If the row is closed, the waitlist reviews twice a year, on July 15 and January 15, for a $145 annual fee.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Santa Cruz copy that treats the 270-permit cap as the county's total ceiling confuses one outside-area number with the DASDA, LODA, and SALSDA table underneath it. Copy built on the rounded headline misleads guests and buyers alike.

We help Santa Cruz hosts and investors turn published permit-category data into listing and market copy that matches the real table, not a rounded cap number. Send your listing or page to crestcove.co or call (256) 998-7502 for a fact-check pass.

Reach out at crestcove.co or (256) 998-7502.