New Orleans' short-term rental permits, explained

The eligibility gauntlet

The city defines a short-term rental as renting any part of a residential dwelling "for dwelling, lodging or sleeping purposes to one party with duration of occupancy of less than thirty (30) consecutive days." For the residential category the city calls an NSTR (non-commercial short-term rental), the rules from the city's official training materials and program pages (nola.gov) stack up like this:

1. The owner must be a human being"Only natural persons aged 18 or over may own a property used as a non-commercial short term rental. Ownership, in whole or in part, by a business entity, or any other juridical person is prohibited." No LLCs, no trusts, no corporations, not even partial stakes.City NSTR training materials, 2025 cycle
2. One property, one permit, per person"No person may possess more than one short-term rental owner permit or own, in whole or in part, more than one property used as a non-commercial short-term rental." Portfolios of residential STRs are structurally impossible here.City NSTR training materials
3. The operator lives thereThe application checklist requires the operator to live on site, with the property address on their photo ID. In single-family homes, one bedroom must be reserved for the owner's full-time occupancy.City NSTR application checklist; STR program overview
4. The square must be open"A maximum of 1 NSTR or Bed & Breakfast (B&B) may be permitted per square." A square is a city block. If a square already has one, you are simply ineligible: "As of September 19, 2024, the Special Exception process has been discontinued. If there is an NSTR License on your square, you are not eligible for the NSTR Lottery."City NSTR training materials; CCNO Sec. 26-617(g)
5. The zone must allow itEligibility runs off a defined list of zoning districts (the city's checklist enumerates them, from HU-RS through the CBD districts, including VCE in the French Quarter area). Outside the listed zones, no residential permit issues.City NSTR training materials, eligible-zones checklist
6. The unit is capped at 3 bedrooms, 6 guestsThe application requires "a floor plan (max 3 bedrooms for 6 guests)." Larger operations belong in the commercial (CSTR) category, in commercial zones, with commercial fees.City NSTR training materials

Both permits are required per unit: "Every STR unit in Orleans Parish must have both an Owner permit and an Operator permit associated with it" (city operator-permit page, citing CCNO Sections 26-618 and 26-624 and the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance).

The lottery, run like a raffle because it is one

Contested squares go to a drawing. The city's lottery rules are unusually concrete about the mechanics: "Lotteries will be held on a per-square basis, meaning that lotteries will only be held for squares where more than one complete NSTR application has been submitted," and "Lotteries will be live-streamed via Zoom, YouTube, and/or other similar technology. Lotteries will utilize a bingo or other comparable machine to ensure fairness." Winners have five calendar days to pay their fees or forfeit to the next name drawn. Lotteries run quarterly, with fees prorated by how much of the license year is left, and a license won in any quarter still expires the same June 30.

What operating one costs the city, per night and per year

According to the city's STR taxes and fees page (nola.gov), a permitted rental pays layered nightly charges on top of the annual permits:

All of it is collected and processed by the Department of Finance, Bureau of Revenue, regardless of how a platform remits. On the compliance side, the application's sworn attestations put the safety burden on the operator: "The dwelling unit has working smoke detectors inside and outside every bedroom, carbon monoxide alarms outside every bedroom, and a properly maintained and charged fire extinguisher on all habitable floors," plus insurance meeting City Code Sec. 26-618(A)(1), and a commitment that "the operator will complete a visual inspection daily to verify the dwelling unit and guest(s) are in compliance." Commercial CSTRs additionally require a noise monitoring device, mandatory since July 1, 2023.

Enforcement money is the one place the regime is mild on paper: "These fines are set by state law at a maximum of $1000 for each violation cited in a violation case." The real penalty is structural, because a revoked or lapsed license sends the square back into the next quarterly lottery, and licenses are non-transferable, so there is no buying your way back in.

The June 30 clock

Every NSTR license in the city expires on the same date, June 30, renewable up to 30 days before expiration. Miss the renewal window and the square reopens to the lottery, which on a contested square means your own block's other applicants get a shot at the permit you built a calendar around. For anyone modeling revenue here, that makes New Orleans the rare market where the compliance calendar, not the booking calendar, is the load-bearing one: a three-bedroom cap, roughly 11.75% in parish taxes plus $5 a night, an annual all-in permit cost in the low hundreds, and a permit that must be actively re-won every year.

Against the other heavily-regulated markets we have covered, New Orleans is the most restrictive on ownership structure of any major US city: San Diego caps citywide volume but lets anyone hold a license, and Palm Springs caps by neighborhood percentage. New Orleans caps by the individual block and bans corporate ownership outright.

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