McCall Stopped Permitting Short-Term Rentals. So What Decides How a House Can Rent Now?

On July 2, 2026, the McCall City Council adopted Ordinance 10-38. It rewrote Titles 3 and 4 of city code to match Idaho House Bill 583 and removed most of the city's short-term rental permits and standards, as Citizen Portal reported from the meeting. Before that vote, a buyer checking a McCall home's rental potential started with the city's rules: the permit, the occupancy formula, the fire inspection. That part of the check now turns up very little. The rules that still limit how a particular house can rent are mostly in the property's recorded documents, and in the history of how those documents were added or amended.

That changes what to look at during due diligence. The city's limits used to apply evenly to every rental. The limits that remain differ from one subdivision to the next.

What came off the books on July 2

McCall adopted its rental rules in 2022, and Valley Lookout's February 2026 coverage laid out what they required. That same report counted 392 short-term rentals permitted to operate in the city.

The inspections affected individual properties directly. Valley Lookout reported that they sometimes kept owners from renting certain rooms until windows were added or enlarged to meet fire code egress. The bill text now bars cities from requiring changes to a property's physical structure, or upgrades to current building code, unless a home not used as a rental would need the same work.

The legislature's bill history shows HB 583 passed the House 54 to 16 and the Senate 23 to 12. Gov. Brad Little signed it on March 16, 2026, and it took effect July 1. Valley Lookout reported strong positions on both sides. Rep. Jordan Redman, one of the sponsors, called a property owner's choice about how to use a home a "fundamental property right." McCall Mayor Colby Nielsen had defended the city's framework as balanced and urged residents to contact their legislators.

The short list a city can still require

The new law caps what a city or county can require of a short-term rental. Under Idaho Code 67-6539(3), local ordinances can require only these five things:

1. Working smoke alarms in every sleeping area, including basements, living rooms and family rooms when people sleep there
2. A working fire extinguisher and carbon monoxide detector on each floor
3. Removable escape ladders in sleeping areas with windows above the ground floor
4. Occupancy limits no stricter than the non-transient residential limits in the international building codes adopted by the Idaho building code board
5. An easy-to-find handout showing exits, fire extinguishers, any first aid kits, and an emergency phone number for the owner or manager

Short-term rentals also stay subject to the noise, parking, nuisance, curfew and traffic ordinances that apply to every other home. McCall's June 2, 2026 notice to operators says the city will no longer require operating permits or mandatory inspections, and it encourages operators to keep doing their own safety checks.

The tax obligation stayed put

The city can no longer issue permits, but it still collects lodging tax. The same notice says lodging operators must still collect and remit the 8% Local Option Non-property Tax on stays of 30 days or less. Some earlier coverage gave a combined 7% rate. The city's own Streets LOT materials describe the lodging portion rising from 3% to 4%, which fits the 8% figure in the current notice.

How the tax gets paid depends on how a stay is booked. When a guest books through a marketplace such as Airbnb or Vrbo, the platform provides the tax information and remits on the owner's behalf. Owners who take bookings directly, whether by phone, through a personal website or by word of mouth, are "Independent Operators." They register with the Idaho State Tax Commission for a State Tax ID, collect the 8% at payment, and send it to the city. The city keeps its authority to audit, and it notes that penalties and interest under its tax ordinances can apply whether or not the property has a local permit.

The covenant clause cities lost and HOAs kept

With city rules mostly gone, private covenants carry more weight. Subsection (4) of the amended statute says:

"No county or city shall enact or enforce any covenant, condition, restriction, or contract that regulates a short-term rental except as allowed in this section."

That provision limits what a county or city can do. It doesn't address a homeowners association enforcing its own CC&Rs. HOA rental restrictions fall under a different law, Idaho Code 55-3211, which became law in 2022:

"No homeowner's association may add, amend, or enforce any covenant, condition, or restriction in such a way that limits or prohibits the rental, for any amount of time, of any property, land, or structure thereon within the jurisdiction of the homeowner's association, unless expressly agreed to in writing at the time of such addition or amendment by the owner of the affected property."

The same section has a separate exception for valid covenants that limit an owner's right to transfer an interest in the property, as long as they applied when the owner bought it. That exception is written about transfers, not rentals. Taken together, the two laws move the deciding question into the subdivision's paperwork: what the covenants say about rentals, when that language was added or amended, and whether the affected owner agreed to it in writing. How 55-3211 applies to a particular declaration and its amendment history is a legal question for an Idaho attorney. Reading the recorded CC&Rs and any amendments is now the core of the rental question, in a way it wasn't while city code controlled.

There's a practical catch. As of this writing, the online McCall code still lists "Chapter 13 Short-Term Rental Permits" in its table of contents, even though Ordinance 10-38 has been adopted. Anyone researching from the published code alone may be looking at rules that no longer apply.

Why bedroom count now carries more of the math

Under the 2022 rules, a six-bedroom house worked out to 14 guests by the two-per-bedroom-plus-two formula. The 10-guest ceiling stopped it at 10 unless the owner secured a conditional use permit. The house also had to pass an annual egress inspection, which could take some bedrooms out of the rental count. Now the cap, the formula and the inspection are gone. The upper limit is the building-code occupancy standard for ordinary residences, along with whatever the CC&Rs say.

For larger homes, the old rules held back rental capacity in ways that had little to do with the house itself. The 10-guest cap applied the same limit to a five-bedroom home and an eight-bedroom home. So in a subdivision without rental covenants, each bedroom beyond the old cap now adds more to a home's potential guest count than it could before July. The general noise, parking and nuisance ordinances still apply to every home.

What the Valley County numbers can and can't show yet

The market data doesn't yet separate out the effect of the new law. Intermountain MLS reports cover Valley County as a whole, not McCall alone. In September 2026, the county recorded 40 single-family sales, compared with 42 in September 2025. The median sale price was $822,500, up 20.07% from $685,000. Active listings fell from 210 to 176, and days on market dropped from 71 to 55. One month earlier, in August 2026, the county median was $747,750, down 13.55% from August 2025.

With roughly 40 sales a month, the median can swing that much on its own. The year-to-date figures are steadier. Through September 2026, Valley County recorded 232 sales against 203 for the same period of 2025, and the median rose just 1.46%, from $790,000 to $801,500. IMLS defines days on market as the time from listing to pending, and it notes that its figures come from agents and may not capture every sale. Activity rose this year while prices barely moved, which leaves room for property-level details like bedroom count and covenant language to affect value. No published dataset yet shows whether that's happening.

Several facts are still unknown. There's no published count of active McCall short-term rentals since July. Valley County's planning director had said parking and trash code updates in response to HB 583 were expected later in 2026, according to Valley Lookout's May 2026 report. Any county rules that come out of that work would have to apply to all homes, not only rentals.

A few questions that come up

Can the City of McCall still fine a rental for noise or parking? Yes. HB 583 keeps short-term rentals subject to the same noise, parking, nuisance, curfew and traffic ordinances that apply to other residential uses.

Does an owner who was already inspected still owe for that inspection? The city's June 2 notice says owners who previously received a fire inspection are still responsible for paying for it.

Can an HOA vote in a new rental ban? Under Idaho Code 55-3211, an HOA can't add or amend a rental restriction that limits an owner's property unless that owner agreed in writing when the change was made. How that applies to a particular declaration is a question for an Idaho real estate attorney.

If you're comparing McCall homes and want to understand how the rental rules apply to each one, Sadie Noah Real Estate Group can help you get the recorded CC&Rs, amendments and bedroom counts lined up side by side before you write an offer. Request a personalized market plan or property tour with Sadie Noah, and we'll start with the documents for the specific addresses on your list.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.