What is considered a short-term rental
What is considered a short-term rental depends on who is asking, and the two countries an American owner of a Mexican house has to satisfy do not answer the same way. In the United States the term is arithmetic: several official texts each fix a number of days, and the numbers are different because the questions behind them are different. In Mexico the question is not how long a guest stayed. It is what the house was offering, and to whom.
That difference is not a technicality, because it decides the date on which a house stops being a private residence and starts being something a public register has a name for. This guide takes each definition in turn — the American ones, the platform's, the federal Mexican one, the state one in Quintana Roo, where Tulum and Cancún stand, and the one written into a condominium deed — and says, for each, what it actually tests and where it can be read.
What counts as a short-term rental, and by whose definition?
In the United States it counts as one when it crosses whichever number of days the authority asking the question happens to use, and there are at least four such numbers in ordinary circulation. Ask what is a short-term rental of a tax rule, a licensing statute and a municipal ordinance and you will get three answers, all of them correct inside their own text and none of them portable to the others.
Four American thresholds, each from the text that sets it, are enough to show how far apart they sit:
Does the platform's definition match the law's?
No, and in Mexico it does not have to, because a platform's categories are product settings rather than legal ones. What the platform does change is who hands the money to the tax authority, and that duty is written in the law itself rather than in any listing.
The Quintana Roo lodging tax defines the platform before it gives it a job, as software that allows its owner or user to act en su carácter de gestor, intermediario, promotor, facilitador o cualquier otra actividad análoga, que ponga en contacto a los anfitriones oferentes de servicios de hospedaje y los usuarios demandantes de los mismos. Where payment runs through that channel, the intermediary estará obligada a retener y enterar el impuesto, and must issue the host a withholding certificate dentro de los 5 días siguientes a la fecha que se efectuó el pago. None of that turns on a minimum-nights setting, and none of it is altered by which product category a listing sits in.
So the practical reading is the reverse of the intuitive one. The platform's own label is the only definition in this guide with no legal force behind it, and it is also the one an owner sees every day. The categories it offers describe an audience; the categories that decide what the house owes describe an activity, and they were written before any platform existed.
Who sets the threshold in Mexico — the state, the municipality, the condominium?
All three have a say and none of them sets a threshold in nights: the state defines the activity, the municipality governs what happens on municipal ground, and the condominium fixes what the unit may be used for in its founding deed. The question an owner arrives with has no answer in days because no text in the chain is written in days.
The state is the one that speaks most directly to a private house. Since the 2024 reform, the Ley de Turismo del Estado de Quintana Roo lists among tourism services those provided by Alojadores y personas anfitrionas, que serán aquellas que brinden servicios de hospedaje en inmuebles de su propiedad, posesión o administración en forma total o parcial, de manera permanente o eventual a través de una plataforma tecnológica o digital. Registration in the state tourism register that follows from it is anual, gratuita y obligatoria for tourism service providers, and the same article extends it to the digital platforms themselves, which must hold their certificate para poder ofrecer sus productos o servicios turísticos. The sentence reaches an individual owner and a short-term rental company by the same words, because it opens on persons of either kind and never on a size or a night count.
The municipality enters through its own door rather than through a definition. The same law gives the ayuntamientos the power to conduct municipal tourism policy and to apply its instruments en bienes y áreas de competencia municipal, en las materias que no estén expresamente atribuidas al Ejecutivo Federal y al Ejecutivo Estado, which is where operating licences, civil protection requirements and land-use questions live. A municipality does not usually redefine what a short-term rental is; it decides what may happen on a given street.
The condominium is the one owners discover last and the one that binds first. A condómino may let the unit sin necesidad de autorización de otros Condóminos, con las limitaciones que establece la ley — and the limitation that matters is three articles later, where the same law says occupants may not destinarla a usos contrarios a su destino, ni hacerla servir a otros objetos que los contenidos expresamente en su escritura constitutiva. The test is a word in a deed, not a number of nights, and it is the one document that can settle the question before any register is consulted. How a house on this coast is administered once that is settled is the subject of Tulum.
What changes for a house that is rented only a few weeks a year?
Nothing in the definition, because both Quintana Roo texts reach occasional letting in the same breath as continuous letting. The state tourism law and the lodging tax law each describe the host as somebody lodging guests in a property held in ownership, possession or administration, in whole or in part, and they each add the same four words: de manera permanente o eventual.
The tax law then names the kind of building, so there is no argument about whether a private house is inside or outside: the object of the tax reaches Departamento, casas y villas particulares, total o parcialmente, and the residual category catches los demás establecimientos en donde se brinde albergue temporal de personas, sin el propósito de establecerse en él. Read that last clause slowly, because it is the whole Mexican test in eight words: what is examined is the purpose of the occupancy, not its length. A guest who is not there to settle is lodged, whether the stay was two nights or two months.
An owner who also has a house in the United States should be careful not to carry one rule across the border. There the fifteen-day floor genuinely does exist, and a house let below it is not treated as a rental activity at all — which is the opposite of the Mexican arrangement, where the first weekend is already inside the definition. The American side of that asymmetry, and the depreciation rule that does most of the work in it, is set out in the short-term rental loophole and how it meets Mexico.
What does the definition change in practice for the owner?
It starts a clock that runs from activity rather than from occupancy, and it changes what the owner is called in a public catalogue. From the day operations begin, the federal deadline is thirty natural days, and an owner who reads that number as a stay length has misread the most consequential line in the subject.
The Ley General de Turismo is explicit about the trigger: tourism service providers, a partir de que inicien operaciones, contarán con un plazo de treinta días naturales para inscribirse al Registro Nacional de Turismo. The category those providers belong to is defined without any reference to duration — they are las personas físicas o morales que ofrezcan, proporcionen, o contraten con el turista, la prestación de los servicios a que se refiere esta Ley — and the catalogue in the regulation places lodging among them as whoever provee la infraestructura y equipamiento para prestar el servicio de alojamiento con fines turísticos. Thirty days is therefore a deadline for a filing, not a threshold for a stay. The two numbers look alike and share nothing.
The second change is that the house acquires counterparties. The register it enters is el catálogo público de prestadores de servicios turísticos en el país, operated by the states and municipalities, and in Quintana Roo the lodging tax adds a fiscal counterpart: a host must obtain state tax registration por cada uno de los establecimientos en donde se brinde el servicio de hospedaje, and the tax itself runs at five per cent, rising to la tasa del 6% for the fraction that covers private houses and villas. What each of those obligations then requires, and on what dates, is the material of obligations and compliance rather than of a definition.
The third change is quieter and is the one worth acting on. Once money arrives through an intermediary it arrives net, which means the figure in the owner's account is no longer the figure the guest paid, and the withholding certificate is the only document that reconciles the two. An owner who never asks for it has given up the ability to check the year without being able to say when.
Where is each definition written down?
Every definition used in this guide sits in a text that anybody can open, and none of them is a summary of another. The table sets each one beside the authority it belongs to, the thing it actually tests, and whether the length of a stay is part of the test.
| Who is asking | The text that defines it | What it tests | Does it turn on length of stay? |
|---|---|---|---|
| The IRS, on passive activity losses | Publication 925 | The average period of customer use across the year | Yes — seven days or less |
| The IRS, on whether the house is a home | Publication 527 | The owner's own nights in the property | Yes — more than 14 days, or 10 per cent of days rented |
| The IRS, on minimal rental use | Publication 527 | How many days the house was rented | Yes — fewer than 15 |
| Florida, on lodging licences | Florida Statutes, section 509.013 | How often and for how long the unit is rented, and how it is advertised | Yes — periods under 30 consecutive days, more than three times a year |
| Mexico, federally | Ley General de Turismo, article 3 | What is offered to or contracted with the tourist | No |
| Quintana Roo, on tourism | Ley de Turismo del Estado, article 3 | Who lodges guests, in what property, and through what channel | No — permanente o eventual |
| Quintana Roo, on the lodging tax | Ley del Impuesto al Hospedaje, articles 2 and 4 | Temporary lodging given for consideration | No — sin el propósito de establecerse en él |
| The condominium | The escritura constitutiva, under the state condominium law, article 17 | The destino the deed gives the unit | No |
Read down the last column and the shape of the problem appears on its own. Every row that answers yes belongs to one country and every row that answers no belongs to the other, which is why an owner who arrives asking for the threshold is asking a question that only half the file can answer. On the Mexican side the useful question is not how many nights, but from what date, and against which deed.
What is considered a short-term rental in Mexico?
Mexican law does not define it by the length of the stay. The federal tourism law describes tourism service providers as persons, whether individuals or companies, who offer, provide or contract with the tourist the services the law covers, and the regulation places lodging among them as whoever provides the infrastructure and equipment to supply accommodation for tourism purposes. In Quintana Roo the lodging tax reaches temporary lodging given in exchange for payment, including private apartments, houses and villas let in whole or in part, and its residual category covers any place giving temporary shelter to people who are not there in order to settle. The test is the purpose of the occupancy and what the property is offering, never a number of nights.
Is there a minimum number of nights that makes a rental short-term in Quintana Roo?
No. Neither the state tourism law nor the state lodging tax law sets a minimum or a maximum number of nights, and neither one distinguishes a short stay from a long one. Both describe the host as a person lodging guests in a property owned, possessed or administered by them, in whole or in part, permanently or occasionally, and both attach their consequences to that description rather than to a count. The thirty-day figure an owner may have seen is the federal deadline for entering the Registro Nacional de Turismo, which runs from the day operations begin and has nothing to do with how long any guest stays.
Does a house rented only a few weeks a year count as a short-term rental?
In Quintana Roo it does, because both of the state texts that matter use the same words for continuous and occasional letting alike, and the lodging tax names private houses and villas explicitly, whether they are let in whole or in part. A house let for two weeks in the winter is inside the definition on the first of those days, and it stays inside it whether or not the calendar fills up afterwards. The position is different in the United States, where a dwelling used as a home and rented for fewer than fifteen days in the year is not treated as a rental activity at all, which is one reason the two systems should not be read across each other.
Who decides whether a house in a condominium can be let to guests?
The founding deed does, before any register or tax authority is consulted. Under the Quintana Roo condominium law an owner may lease the unit without needing the authorisation of the other owners, subject to the limitations the law establishes, and the limitation that decides this question is the rule that a unit may not be put to uses contrary to its destino or made to serve purposes other than those expressly contained in its escritura constitutiva. That means the answer is a word in a document rather than a threshold in nights, and it is worth reading before photographs are commissioned rather than after.