Most new Tempe hosts do the paperwork backwards. They buy the pool home off Rural Road, photograph it, list it, take a booking for a Spring Training weekend, and only then find out the listing is missing a tax number it legally has to display. Then the city notice shows up. Then the county one.
Do it in this order instead. Every item below is a real requirement for an under-30-day rental inside Tempe city limits, and they stack — none of them replaces another.
1. Tempe Short-Term Rental License — $250 a year
Ordinance O2023.01. Two hundred fifty dollars per property, per year, non-refundable, renewed annually. It applies to any rental under 30 days — transient lodging, in the city's language. If your unit only takes 30-day-plus bookings you're exempt, which is why plenty of the snowbird operators running November-to-March stays near Tempe Town Lake never file one.
- Per property, not per owner. Two condos off Apache Blvd means two licenses and two fees.
- Non-refundable, so don't pay it before you're sure the HOA allows short-term rentals at all.
- Calendar the renewal. Year two is where people slip, usually mid-monsoon when they've got other problems.
2. Arizona TPT license — and the number goes on the listing
State requirement, separate from the city. You register with the Arizona Department of Revenue for a Transaction Privilege Tax license, and the TPT number has to appear on every listing and every ad. Not filed in a drawer. On the page.
The tax that comes out of it is stacked: Tempe city TPT around 1.8%, a 5.0% transient (bed) tax on top of that, then state and county TPT. Guests see one number at checkout and occasionally email about it. Have a one-line answer ready so you're not writing it fresh at 11pm.
3. Maricopa County Assessor registration — the $1,000 one
Every rental property in Arizona has to be registered with the County Assessor. This is the step that gets skipped, because it feels redundant after the city and the state have both taken your information. Skipping it carries a $1,000 code-enforcement fine.
It costs nothing to file. Do it the same week as the TPT.
4. The parts Tempe adds that other cities don't
Here's where out-of-state owners get caught, because none of this shows up in the generic Arizona STR articles.
- $500,000 minimum liability coverage. Check the actual policy limit, not the platform's host-protection blurb.
- Written emergency-contact notice to every adjacent residence. In Maple-Ash, where the lots are tight, the housing is old, and you're a half-block off Mill and a two-minute walk from Gammage, that's a real handful of doors. Deliver it in writing and keep proof you did. The neighbor who has your number texts you. The one who doesn't calls the city.
- Sex-offender background checks on guests, with records kept 12 months.
- Three strikes. Three verified violations in a rolling 12-month period — or one serious infraction — can suspend the license for up to 12 months. A suspension landing in January wipes out Spring Training, the Phoenix Open weekend, and spring break in one go. For a lot of Tempe properties that's the entire year's margin.
5. Confirm the property is actually in Tempe
Check the parcel, not the mailing address. The corridors along Baseline, McClintock, and the Loop 101/202 blur city lines, and a Tempe license does nothing for a house in Chandler or Gilbert. Both run their own separate permit programs. If you're picking up a second unit down the Price Freeway, budget for a second application from scratch — which is why we treat Chandler and Gilbert as their own service areas rather than an extension of Tempe.
Then the operational half starts
Compliance gets you legal. The calendar is what actually decides whether the property works. Turnovers cluster hard from Feb 20 through Mar 24 for the 2026 Cactus League — the Angels at Tempe Diablo, the oldest park in the league — and a big share of those guests are out-of-state people using Tempe as a base to catch three or four games in different cities. Spring break stacks straight onto it. Then ASU commencement, May 11 at Mountain America Stadium, which sells out everything walkable to campus for a single weekend.
Then summer, which nobody warns you about at closing. Roughly 111 days a year above 100°F, about 21 above 110°F, monsoon officially June 15 through September 30 with the worst of it in July and August. A haboob rolls through at 30 to 60 mph and leaves fine dust on the patio furniture, across the pool surface, and packed into the filter. Leave a place vacant a week in July and the pool goes green while the AC has been grinding the whole time. Desert and xeriscape yards shed that dust year-round, and the backyard "oasis" setups — heated play pool, spa, turf, BBQ — are the ones that need the most attention between guests.
A printed turnover checklist taped inside the utility closet does more for your review average than another throw pillow. If you'd rather hand the turnovers off before February than during it, send us the address and your calendar, or look at how we run turnovers across the East Valley first.