Presidio in the Pines Short-Term Rental Rules

If you own a home in Presidio in the Pines and you want to rent it out, the Presidio in the Pines short-term rental rules that apply to you come from two independent places, and they do not talk to each other. The City of Flagstaff runs a licensing program. Your association runs a recorded declaration. One of them cannot ban a nightly rental. The other one can. Getting a yes from the city means nothing if the recorded document on your parcel says no.

Most owners find this out in the wrong order. They read the city's page, pay the license fee, list the home, and then get a letter from the association. Or they read a neighbor's summary of the rules, assume they are covered, and never pull the document that actually controls the answer.

Here is how the two layers work, what each one can and cannot do, and exactly where you go to get a defensible answer for your own parcel.

The short version

• Flagstaff cannot prohibit short-term rentals. Arizona law preempts a municipal ban.

• Your recorded declaration can prohibit them, and a restriction in a recorded declaration is enforceable.

• A city license is not permission from your association, and association silence is not a city license. You need both.

• Presidio in the Pines has two separate associations, and they are governed by two separate sets of recorded documents.

• The city's rules changed on July 1, 2026, and a bill pending in the 2026 legislative session could change the state framework again.

The short version for Presidio in the Pines owners

Think of it as two gates in series. Layer one is the city, and it controls licensing, life safety, insurance, guest screening, taxes and neighbor notice. Layer two is the recorded declaration for your parcel, and it controls whether you may rent at all and how short a lease term is allowed.

Layer one cannot say no to the concept. Layer two can.

That asymmetry is the whole story, and it is why the answer for a single-family home on the Presidio side of the subdivision may not be the answer for a condominium at Three Peaks at Presidio.

Layer one: what the City of Flagstaff controls

Arizona Revised Statutes section 9-500.39 is the controlling state law. It says plainly that a city or town may not prohibit vacation rentals or short-term rentals. That preemption came out of SB 1350 in 2016 and was narrowed by amendments in 2019 and 2022, which gave cities back a meaningful list of things they may require.

What Flagstaff may do under that statute is regulate for public health and safety, which covers fire, building, sanitation, traffic and solid waste. It may apply noise, nuisance and property maintenance ordinances to a short-term rental the same way it applies them to any other home. It may bar sex-offender housing, sober living homes, illegal drug activity, liquor violations and adult businesses. It may require an emergency point of contact. It may charge a permit fee, capped at the city's actual cost or 250 dollars, whichever is lower.

What it may not do is ban the use, or restrict a property solely because of its classification as a rental. The Arizona Court of Appeals reinforced the limit in Oak Creek Hospitality LLC v. City of Sedona, holding that a city may require a permit but may deny an application only for the deficiencies the statute enumerates.

There is a bill pending in the 2026 session, SB 1076, that would allow smaller Arizona cities to cap the number of short-term rental permits and impose minimum separation distances between them. It has not become law, and it would not authorize an outright ban. Treat it as a watch item, not a rule.

What Flagstaff's short-term rental license actually requires

The city's program lives in Flagstaff City Code Chapter 3-12. A short-term rental is defined by the city as a stay of fewer than 30 consecutive days.

The core obligations:

• A license for every property. It is unlawful to rent without a valid license, one license per short-term rental, and it is not transferable. An online listing is prima facie evidence that the property is being offered.

• A one-year term. The license has to be renewed annually.

• An emergency contact who answers. The contact has to be reachable within 60 minutes of a police request.

• The license number in every advertisement, plus an interior notice posted within 10 feet of the primary entrance.

• Neighbor notification before the first rental. That reaches the adjacent properties, the ones directly across and directly behind, and the ones diagonally across and diagonally behind. It has to be repeated within 10 days of an emergency contact change and again at renewal.

The enforcement side has teeth. Civil penalties escalate inside a rolling twelve-month window, and a third verified violation in twelve months can suspend the license for up to a year. A single felony-level, serious-injury, sex-offender or adult-business violation can do it in one step. An appeal goes to the City Manager within 10 days, and filing the appeal does not pause the suspension.

Separately, operating without a license after written notice runs 1,000 dollars per month, and failing to keep the emergency contact information current runs 1,000 dollars per 30 days.

What changed on July 1, 2026

If you last read the rules before this summer, your information is out of date. Ordinance 2026-11 was adopted on May 19, 2026 and took effect July 1, 2026. The full ordinance text is public.

What it added:

• The fee moved from 185 dollars to 250 dollars, the state maximum, applied at renewal.

• A 500,000 dollar minimum liability insurance requirement before offering or renting the home. Equivalent coverage provided through the booking marketplace satisfies it.

• Guest screening against the National Sex Offender Public Website no later than 24 hours before each stay. Again, marketplace screening satisfies it.

• Life safety specifics. Smoke alarms outside and inside each sleeping area and on every story with battery backup, carbon monoxide detectors where applicable, a fire extinguisher rated at least 2-A:10-B:C and serviced annually, and two distinct unobstructed exit paths kept clear of furniture, storage, debris, snow and ice.

• Fire restriction compliance. During Stage 2 or higher fire restrictions, fire pits, open-flame barbecues and grills have to be removed, disabled or locked. Gas and pellet appliances with an on and off switch are exempt.

• An expanded interior notice covering winter parking restrictions, current fire restriction information with a link, waste and recycling collection, and the human trafficking hotline. The old complaint hotline came off the notice because complaints now go through the city online.

• An owner-occupancy trigger for accessory dwelling units. If the property has an ADU whose certificate of occupancy was issued on or after September 14, 2024, the owner has to live on the property as a primary residence to license the short-term rental.

That last one matters in newer Flagstaff subdivisions more than people expect. If you are looking at a Presidio home with a casita or a permitted ADU, check the certificate of occupancy date before you build a rental model around it.

The two clear-cut snow and exit-path rules are also worth reading as a Flagstaff-specific item. At this elevation, an unshoveled second exit is a code problem, not a courtesy problem.

What a nightly rental costs you in tax

The 30-day line does more than define the license. It also decides which tax regime you are in.

Rent for 30 consecutive days or more and no transaction privilege tax applies. Arizona eliminated the residential rental transaction privilege tax effective January 1, 2025. Rent for 29 days or fewer and the stay is transient lodging, taxed at three levels at once.

Per the Arizona Office of Tourism's Transient Lodging Tax Rates schedule published in January 2025, Flagstaff carries 5.5 percent state, 4.281 percent city and 1.4 percent Coconino County, for a combined 11.181 percent. Flagstaff voters approved continuing the city's 2 percent bed, board and beverage tax through June 30, 2043 in November 2024.

One operational detail people miss: once you hold a transient lodging tax license, you file for every period even when the home sat empty. The Arizona Department of Revenue's short-term lodging guidance is explicit that zero-dollar returns still have to be filed.

Layer two: the recorded declaration on your Presidio parcel

Now the part that actually decides the question.

Arizona has two parallel statutes for this. A.R.S. section 33-1260.01 covers condominiums. A.R.S. section 33-1806.01 covers planned communities. Both open the same way: a unit owner may use the unit as a rental property unless prohibited in the declaration, and shall use it in accordance with the declaration's rental time period restrictions.

Read that clause twice. Two separate hooks. A declaration can prohibit renting outright, and a declaration can restrict the rental time period. The second hook is how most Arizona associations reach short-term rentals without ever using the words. A common form is a minimum lease term of 30 days, which does not say "no short-term rentals" but functionally accomplishes it.

Two things follow from the statutory language.

First, the restriction has to be in the recorded declaration itself. A board policy, a newsletter, a posted rule or an email from the management company cannot create a rental restriction the declaration does not already contain. Arizona HOA practitioners are consistent on this: if the recorded documents do not include a time period restriction and simply permit rentals, the association cannot prohibit short-term rentals.

Second, whether a community can amend its declaration later to add a rental restriction is genuinely contested in Arizona. Shamrock v. Wagon Wheel Park Homeowners Association, 206 Ariz. 42 (App. 2003), is read by some practitioners to mean the restriction has to already appear in the declaration, while others argue a properly adopted amendment binds all owners. If you are relying on either position, that is a conversation with an Arizona real estate attorney, not a blog post.

What is not contested is that the state's preemption of city bans does not reach private associations. Flagstaff's hands are tied. Your declaration's are not.

Presidio in the Pines has two separate associations

This is the specific fact that makes Presidio different from a single-HOA subdivision, and it is why a neighbor's answer may be worthless to you.

The single-family portion of the subdivision is governed by Presidio in the Pines Homeowners' Association, Inc., a planned community, managed locally by Sterling Real Estate Management at 323 S River Run Road in Flagstaff.

The condominiums at Three Peaks at Presidio, at 2950 W Presidio Drive, sit under a separate Presidio in the Pines Condominium Association. That project was built by Miramonte Homes and carries its own dues, its own transfer and capital contribution fees, and its own recorded documents. We broke down the dues difference between the two in our Presidio in the Pines HOA dues explainer.

Two associations means two declarations. A single-family owner on Pico Del Monte Circle and a condominium owner on West Presidio Drive are reading different documents, under different statutes, with potentially different rental language. There is no single Presidio answer.

What your Presidio association may and may not ask about a tenant

Assume you clear layer two and your declaration permits the rental. Arizona then caps what the association can demand and what it can charge, and the limits are identical under both statutes.

It may require the name and contact information of each adult occupant, the lease start and end dates, and a description of each tenant vehicle with the license plate number. It may charge up to 25 dollars for each new tenancy, and it may charge separately for use of recreational facilities.

It may not require a copy of the lease, a rental application or a credit report. It may not demand other personal information about the tenant or the occupants. It may not charge a fee on a lease renewal with the same tenant. It may not charge more than 15 dollars for late or incomplete tenant information. And apart from those specific fees, it may not treat a rented home differently from an owner-occupied one.

If your association is asking for a signed lease copy or running a tenant application, that request is outside the statute.

How to find the answer for your own Presidio in the Pines parcel

We attempted to pull the recorded declarations for both Presidio associations from the Coconino County Recorder for this article and could not complete the search through the county's public portal. So we are not going to tell you what your declaration says. Anyone who tells you what it says without a recording number in front of them is guessing.

Do this instead, in this order.

1. Pull your own parcel's recorded declaration. The Coconino County Recorder maintains the official record at 110 E. Cherry Avenue in Flagstaff, reachable at (928) 679-7850 or recorder@coconino.az.gov. Search by the association name and by your legal description. Ask for the declaration and every recorded amendment, not a summary.

2. Read for two things specifically. Any outright prohibition on renting, and any minimum lease term or rental time period language. The second is more common than the first.

3. Request the current resale disclosure package from the management company. Sterling Real Estate Management can be reached at (928) 773-0690 for the single-family association. Get the documents, not a verbal answer.

4. Then, and only then, go to the city. Flagstaff's short-term rental program and property owner page walk the licensing process. The Housing Section is at 211 W Aspen Avenue, (928) 213-2231, ShortTermRental@flagstaffaz.gov.

One caution about the number of short-term rentals in Flagstaff, because it comes up in every conversation about this: the published figures disagree, and they disagree because they measure different things. Do not average them. Read the label.

City sources put the count at roughly 600 in early 2021 and 1,142 as of February 2025, per Flagstaff Business One Stop Shop reporting. In November 2025, KNAU reported that the city's new interactive map shows 990 registered short-term rentals, that officials estimate 3.7 percent of the city's homes and apartments are short-term rentals, more than double the national average, and that some Flagstaff short-term rentals may not be officially registered, so the real number could be higher. Third-party listing trackers report anywhere from roughly 1,200 to 2,800 for the same market. Those are not reconciled figures and we are not reconciling them here.

Long-term rentals in Presidio in the Pines are a different question

Everything above is about stays under 30 days. A conventional twelve-month lease is a much simpler analysis.

There is no city license requirement, because the city's program only reaches short-term rentals. There is no transaction privilege tax on residential rent as of January 1, 2025. And most Arizona declarations that restrict rentals do it through a minimum lease term, which a twelve-month lease clears by definition.

What still applies is the layer two paperwork. Tenant names and contact information, lease dates, vehicle descriptions, the 25 dollar new tenancy fee. And if your declaration contains an outright prohibition on renting rather than a time period restriction, a long lease does not solve it either.

For owners weighing the two, the honest math in Presidio usually comes down to Flagstaff's seasonality against the compliance load. A nightly operation carries a 250 dollar license, insurance minimums, per-stay screening, annual extinguisher service, snow-cleared exit paths, monthly tax filings and a 60-minute emergency contact obligation. A long-term lease carries none of that.

What this means if you are buying in Presidio in the Pines

If rental income is part of your reason for buying, the declaration is a due diligence item, not a post-closing discovery.

Ask for the recorded declaration and all amendments during your inspection period. Confirm which of the two associations governs the specific parcel. If there is an ADU, get the certificate of occupancy date. If the seller or a listing claims the home is a permitted short-term rental, ask for the license number and verify it, because the license is not transferable to you.

Our Presidio in the Pines community overview covers the subdivision itself, and if you want to see how pricing actually behaves here, we published the full escrow record on a single-family sale on Pico Del Monte Circle and on a Three Peaks condominium sale.

This article is general information, not legal advice or tax advice. Rental restrictions turn on the exact language of your parcel's recorded documents, and city rules changed on July 1, 2026 with further state legislation pending. Confirm your own declaration with the Coconino County Recorder and your own tax position with a licensed professional before you list a home for nightly stays.

Talk to Samantha about your Presidio in the Pines options

Samantha Landress works Presidio in the Pines and can walk the recorded documents and the city requirements with you before you commit to a rental strategy. If you own here and you are weighing a nightly operation against a long-term lease, she can put together a rental-performance and ordinance review for your specific parcel.

Samantha Landress JBRE & Co., brokered by Real Broker (928) 978-2044 samantha@jbreandco.com

Equal Housing Opportunity.