Want to Rent a Vacation Unit on Maui? How to Determine if its Permitted
A recent crackdown on un-permitted and illegal vacation rentals on Maui resulted in more than 180 notices of warning and 80 notices of violation against rental operators in 2019.
Maui County also had the largest vacation rental supply of all four counties in January 2020 with 265,400 unit nights, which is an increase of 27.2 percent compared to a year ago, according to the Hawaiʻi Vacation Rental Performance Report compiled by the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority.
With the recent enforcement and news of a large rental supply, we reached out to the Maui County Department of Planning, Zoning Administration & Enforcement Division to find out if there’s a place where the public can go to find out if rentals are vetted.
We found that there are different lists for different types of vacation rentals.
- For bed & breakfasts (single family dwelling, owner lives on site), the list is located here.
- For short-term rental homes (single family dwelling, owner NOT on site), the list can be found here.
For condos in the apartment district and other properties, a partial list is posted at the following link. - For properties that are outright permitted (like those on hotel-zoned parcels), they are not on any list. Those would be ones like Grand Wailea, Maui Coast Hotel, Westin etc.
*Note: The County’s permit databases listed above may not be fully complete.
Bed and Breakfast, Maui. PC: file Maui Now.
According to the county, there are more than 16,000 units (i.e., apartments, condos, houses) that are legally eligible to operate as short-term (less than six months) rentals without requiring a short-term rental permit, Bed & Breakfast Permit or Conditional Permit. These units are generally located in districts zoned for hotel use, but some are also located in apartment districts, or are covered by other pre-existing situations.
The operation of short-term rentals in these zoning districts is consistent with current County of Maui zoning ordinances, Community Plans, General Plan, and State law. All short-term rentals are also required to pay State of Hawaiʻi General Excise Tax and Transient Accommodation Tax.
Outside of the above zoning districts, there are short-term rentals that have received approval to operate using one of the: Short-Term Rental Home Permit, Bed & Breakfast Permit or Conditional Permits. Each of these permits has specific operating requirements.
All bed and breakfast operations are required to have the owner (or lessee in some cases) live onsite or within the bed and breakfast home, all parking is required to be onsite (no parking on the street), and all advertising must include the bed and breakfast permit number.
All short-term rental home operations are required to have a designated manager who is available by telephone at all times and can arrive onsite within one hour in case they are called, all parking is required to be onsite (no parking on the street), and all advertising must include the short-term rental home permit number. Short-Term Rental Home operations may have up to a total six bedrooms distributed over two licensed Short-Term Rental Home dwellings.
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