Southold Town has recently begun using a new piece of software called Rentalscape to enable it to track short-term rentals to enforce its existing requirement that houses not be rented for less than 14 days.
Pictured Above: AirDNA’s map of short-term rentals on the North Fork on Aug. 14, 2024.
The software enables the town to track when houses are being rented, to enable town code enforcement officers to know when to visit the properties to issue citations, said Assistant Town Attorney Ben Johnson, who is working on the effort.
The town hired a part-time code enforcement officer in April, assigned to work nights and weekends, in order to step up enforcement.
Mr. Johnson said in a June 10 interview that he expects the town to authorize a warning letter be sent to residents who are known to be renting their properties on a short-term basis asking them to comply with the law.
The town currently has 40 active cases in Town Justice Court of tickets issued for short-term rentals, he said, and has gotten “between 25 and 30 convictions” of short-term rental law violations over the past two years.
While the new software will assist the town in providing documentation to back up its case in justice court, a town task force last year recommended Southold implement a permitting process allowing a limited number of short term rentals.
In August of 2024, the task force recommended that the town create a special permitting process for property rentals of shorter than 30 days, after several years of difficulties of managing its current law banning rentals of less than 14 days.
The group proposes the town issue permits for homeowners wishing to rent their primary residence for less than 30 days, and instate a lottery for people wishing to rent out a property they own that is not their primary residence, capping the total number of short-term rentals in non-primary residences at 1 percent of the houses in each hamlet.
Town Board members say they expect to begin work on implementing the task force’s recommendations this fall.
At a joint Southold Town Board/Greenport Village Board meeting Thursday evening, members of both boards agreed to share their draft short-term rental codes going forward, in an effort to coordinate town and village policies.
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