Verified Against City Records, August 2026
The short-term rental permit does not come with the house.
That is the sentence that decides most vacation rental deals in this county, and it is the one almost nobody says out loud before the offer goes in. In San Diego, Oceanside, and Carlsbad alike, the permit is attached to the operator, not the property. It is extinguished at close of escrow. If you are buying a home because it grosses six figures on Airbnb, you are buying the house. You are not buying the income. Here is the city-by-city picture, pulled from city records this month.
Where the doors actually stand
Two cities are nearly full. One is wide open. None of them grandfather you in.
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829
San Diego Tier 3 licenses left
Out of roughly 5,665. Applications are still open as of August 14, 2026.
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0
Mission Beach licenses left
Tier 4 hit its cap of 1,099. The waitlist has been closed since August 2025.
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248
Permitted rentals in Carlsbad
The most permissive coastal city in the county, and the least crowded.
San Diego is not closed. I want to be direct about that, because the shorthand going around says the city is done and it is wrong. Tier 3 covers whole-home, host-absent rentals everywhere outside Mission Beach, which includes La Jolla, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach, Point Loma, Sunset Cliffs, and Crown Point. The city has issued 4,836 of them and has 829 left. Over the past three months it burned through about 29 a month. At that pace the door stays open for roughly two more years.
Mission Beach is a different story and it is genuinely closed. Tier 4 is its own pool, capped at 30 percent of the neighborhood, and all 1,099 licenses are issued.
Crown Point is the trap in that sentence. It sits on Mission Bay and looks like Mission Beach on a map, but it belongs to the Pacific Beach planning area. It is Tier 3, not Tier 4. That single distinction is the difference between an available license and a closed waitlist.
City by city
What a non-owner-occupied rental looks like in each city.
| City | Where it is allowed | Cap | Open? | Min stay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carlsbad | Coastal Zone and the La Costa Resort area only | None published | Yes | None set |
| Oceanside | Coastal Zone only. Banned in R-1 outside it. | 480 | Nearly full | 2 nights |
| San Diego, Tier 3 | Citywide outside Mission Beach | ~5,665 | 829 left | 2 nights |
| San Diego, Tier 4 | Mission Beach only | 1,099 | Closed | 2 nights |
| Encinitas | Citywide with caps and 200 ft spacing | 654 | Verify | 2 nights |
| Solana Beach | Citywide, but a week at a time | None | Yes | 7 days |
| Del Mar | Primary residence required | 129 | Waitlist | 3 nights |
| Coronado | Not viable. 26-night minimum citywide. | n/a | No | 26 nights |
Read that table for what it rules out as much as what it allows. Coronado's 26-night minimum is a short-term rental ban written politely. Del Mar requires you to live there. Solana Beach permits it, but a seven-day minimum means you are running a monthly rental with extra paperwork, not a nightly one.
Carlsbad is the outlier, and it is the one people overlook because it is not the postcard. The city confines rentals to the Coastal Zone and the La Costa Resort area, but within those boundaries it is the least restricted market in the county. There are 248 permitted properties in the entire city. Most of them sit in 92008.
The part that costs people money
You cannot buy the license. Not in any of these cities.
A listing says it grossed one hundred and forty thousand last year on Airbnb. The proof is real. The tax returns are real. The permit on the wall is real.
None of it survives the sale.
San Diego ties the license to the host as an individual, not to the address. When the property sells, the seller's license goes with the seller or is extinguished. The buyer applies from scratch, at the back of whatever line exists that day. In Mission Beach there is no line to get into. Oceanside is the same on transferability, and worse in one respect: non-hosted rentals in R-1 zoning outside the Coastal Zone have been prohibited since December 2023. Permits already in place were grandfathered, but they do not survive a sale. That path is closed permanently.
So there is a category of property in Oceanside right now that produces rental income the next owner will never be allowed to reproduce. Roughly 221 permitted rentals sit outside the city's Coastal Zone. Not all of them are in R-1, and zoning has to be checked parcel by parcel. But some of them are, and those owners are holding an asset whose income is going to evaporate the day they hand over the keys.
If you own one of those, the timing question is worth thinking about now rather than later.
If you are buying, the rule is simple. Underwrite the purchase on what the house is worth as a house. Treat the rental income as upside you have independently confirmed you can obtain, in your own name, before your contingencies expire.
Before your contingencies expire
Call the city yourself. Here are the numbers.
Every figure on this page came from city records in August 2026. Caps move, councils vote, and the Coastal Commission has the final say on anything inside the Coastal Zone. Nothing here is a substitute for a phone call on the specific parcel you are buying.
- San Diego STRO program, licensing and current tier availability: 619-615-6120, [email protected]
- Oceanside, business license and short-term rental permits: 760-435-3878
- Carlsbad, short-term vacation rental permits and code enforcement: 442-339-5978, [email protected]
The three questions worth asking, in this order. Is this parcel in a zone where a non-owner-occupied rental is permitted at all. Is a license available today for this address, or is there a waitlist. And what exactly happens to the existing permit when the property changes hands.
Get the third answer in writing.
Run it on a real address
Looking at a specific property?
Send me the address. I will check the zoning, the current permit status, whether a license is actually available for that parcel, and what happens to the existing one at close. If the answer is that the rental income does not survive the sale, that is what I will tell you, and it is better to hear it before the offer than after. I work the coast from San Clemente down through Carlsbad. Text or email is the easiest way in.
Keep Reading
- House Hacking in South Orange County, on making a coastal purchase carry part of its own weight.
- The San Clemente Market Report, updated with current expected market time and price movement.
- The Dana Point Market Report, same treatment one town north.
- Rent vs. Buy in San Clemente, what the equity half of a mortgage payment actually builds.
- Coastal Currents, a bi-weekly read on the South Orange County market.