A permit lapses. Your listing goes dark. You hear it from a guest.

We maintain rule sets for each supported city — permit renewal cycles, night caps, tax filing schedules, and listing-attestation requirements — aggregated from official city sources like published ordinances, STR program pages, and open-data registries. Tell us your city and PermitGuard applies its specific deadlines and limits to your listing.

We aggregate rule sets from official city sources, and a person on our team re-confirms each city against those sources on a 90-day cycle. In between, changes detected on a city's official source can be applied automatically, but only under strict evidence rules — see “How do you find out when a city changes its rules?” below. Every city on the coverage page shows its own status — verified current, change detected, or last confirmed on a specific date — so you can judge each city individually instead of taking a blanket accuracy claim on faith. STR ordinances change, so we're transparent: PermitGuard is a tracking and reminder tool, not a legal authority. Always confirm specifics with your city before a renewal — our job is to make sure that confirmation never sneaks up on you.

Two ways. A person re-confirms each city against its official source on a 90-day cycle. In between, an automated check runs monthly: it fetches each city's official source, normalizes and hashes the content, and compares it against the last version we recorded. When a source has moved, the change is interpreted automatically against the specific fields we store — renewal window, fee, night cap, tax rate. Some of those changes are applied without waiting for a person, and we'd rather you hear that from us than discover it. It happens only when all of these hold: the new value is tied to a word-for-word quote from the source; that quote is checked against the page we actually fetched, so an invented quote or one from the old version of the page fails; the reading is high-confidence; the value passes the same validation a human approval has to pass; and the change isn't high-consequence. High-consequence changes always go to a person, however confident the reading — clearing a value we already hold, a renewal window that shrinks or crosses an alert threshold, a large fee swing, a night cap that rises, a tax rate that falls, dropping a license-display requirement. Each of those rules is deliberately one-sided: we accept changes that make us warn you earlier and escalate ones that would make us warn you later. If the interpreter can't ground a value in a quote, is unsure, or reads the page two ways, it files for review instead of guessing. Every automatic change records its source URL, the exact quote, the model, its confidence and the previous value in the same transaction as the change, under a machine identity rather than a person's name — so it's auditable and reversible. Why not require a person for everything? We used to, and it isn't the safe option it looks like: a rule left stale because nobody worked a review queue is exactly as wrong as one misread, and far more likely.

No, and we'd rather say so than round up. The monthly check depends on each city's official source being reachable and readable — some return errors, some don't respond, and stored URLs occasionally go dead when a city reorganizes its site. When we can't successfully check a city, that city's badge on the coverage page reads “change monitoring unavailable” rather than showing as fine, which means a change since the last confirmation could have gone unnoticed there, with nothing automatic catching it either. The per-city badge is always the honest answer for that city; we don't publish a single number that implies uniform coverage.

Verify Now checks your listing against your city's public permit registry. Three cities have live verification today: City of Austin, New Orleans, and Seattle. New Orleans and Seattle return a real status and expiration date. Austin's open dataset redacts house numbers, so for Austin we confirm that a licensed STR is on file for your street and ZIP and report its permit type — a strong signal, but a street + ZIP match, not an exact-address confirmation. For the other cities we cover, Verify Now gives you a guided manual check with a direct link to the official portal.

Some cities limit how many nights a year you can rent — Portland's 95-night limit, Los Angeles' 120-day cap, San Francisco's 90 un-hosted nights. PermitGuard tracks your bookings against your city's cap and warns you as you approach it, so you don't trigger a violation.

Most STR cities require hosts to collect and remit transient occupancy tax on a set schedule. PermitGuard sends filing reminders ahead of each deadline. We remind you to file — we don't file or pay on your behalf.

Cities like Austin, New York, and Chicago require your STR registration number to be displayed on the listing. If it's missing, platforms can de-list you to stay compliant with local law. PermitGuard tracks this and reminds you to keep your number posted.

Operating on a lapsed permit carries real consequences — cities commonly fine $500–$2,000 per day, and Airbnb and VRBO actively de-list non-compliant listings. PermitGuard fires alerts at 90, 60, 30, and 7 days before expiration and at expiration, so you have advance warning before a renewal turns into bookings lost or fines owed.

No. PermitGuard tracks deadlines and reminds you to act — we never file permits, submit renewals, or pay taxes on your behalf. You stay the accountable party with your city, and we keep you on schedule.

Email alerts are included on every plan. SMS alerts — for the same 90/60/30/7-day and expiration windows — are available on paid plans, so a critical deadline reaches you even when you're not checking email.

Yes. Your permit details, documents, and contact info are stored securely and used only to power your alerts and verification checks. Billing is handled by Stripe — your card details never touch our servers. We don't sell your data, and we're an independent tool, not a reporting channel to any city or platform.

We cover 30 markets — Austin, Nashville, Denver, Portland, San Diego, New York, Chicago, Boston, Miami Beach, San Francisco, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Seattle, plus the Florida Gulf coast (Clearwater, St Pete Beach, Treasure Island, Madeira Beach, Indian Rocks Beach, Anna Maria, Holmes Beach, Bradenton Beach, Sarasota, Siesta Key, Longboat Key, Venice), Phoenix and Scottsdale, and the Charleston coast (Charleston, Isle of Palms). You can also add a listing in any city not yet covered and track it manually — and that tells us where to expand next. If yours isn't listed, let us know and we'll prioritize by demand.

City compliance platforms exist to enforce the rules — they work for the government, flag violations, and support de-listing. PermitGuard works for you. We're on the host's side: our entire purpose is to track your deadlines and alert you ahead of them, so you have the best shot at staying off that flagged-listings list. The rules themselves, and whether you meet them, are always between you and your city.