O‘ahu vacation rental owners are pushing back against a bill that could require them to re-register their properties with the City and County of Honolulu.
Bill 62 makes changes to the county’s policies regarding bed-and-breakfasts and vacation rental properties, altering requirements for owners to have their properties registered as such.
Many of the changes imposed by the bill are merely for clarity’s sake — for example, the bill now spells out a variety of tax documents that are acceptable for renewing a vacation rental’s registration.
Technically, these changes are not new. A previous county ordinance made the same alterations, but a 2024 bill amending the county’s land use regulations inadvertently omitted the vacation rental regulations, necessitating a new bill to reinstate them.
But one single clause in the measure has many vacation rental owners unhappy: under the bill, any change in ownership or operator of a vacation rental unit will require a new initial registration of the property.
An initial registration costs a fee of $1,000; a renewal only costs $500. Consequently, the bill could leave owners paying double their registration fees, depending on the circumstances.
For many property managers, this change is unacceptable. Since the bill’s introduction in September, several people submitted testimony to the council ridiculing the idea that what should be a minor update to registration information could cost $1,000.
Kelly Lee, president of the O‘ahu Short Term Rental Alliance, wrote that the law would require a re-registration — complete with $1,000 fee — whenever a property’s operator changes, or even when their point of contact changes.
“In the operation of short-term rentals, switching operators or points of contact is a common business practice,” Lee wrote. “However, under the current regulations, this normal administrative change triggers significant, unnecessary costs and delays for property owners.”
“Good help is hard to find and even harder to keep,” wrote ‘Ewa Beach resident Karen Luke. “The onsite [operator] is a benefit to the traveler and is of no interest to [the county Department of Planning and Permitting], who communicates directly with the owner when necessary and not the employees.”
Many owners noted that the county’s HNL Build system — a new permitting software system launched this year — should allow for such administrative updates to be made easily. Others conceded that a nominal clerical fee of $25 or less should suffice for such a small change.
DPP Director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna told the Council Committee on Zoning and Planning Thursday that updating any information in a property’s registration will require an equal amount of administrative paperwork as any new registration. Therefore, she argued, the $1,000 fee should still apply.
When asked whether DPP could accept a $500 fee in the case of minor administrative updates, Apuna said that “would be unfair for any new owner.”
The committee ultimately moved to pass the bill forward to Council for third reading.
However, Councilman Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, who represents Kaka‘ako and Downtown Honolulu, among other neighborhoods, recommended that Apuna and DPP provide at a future Council meeting more detailed records to determine which property owners are most likely to be impacted by the additional fines. Apuna agreed to this request.
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