Short-term rental permit and license records on file with 3 local registries, as of July 2026 — compiled, deduplicated, and free to cite. Part of Cavmir's U.S. STR permit data hub.
Washington's numbers are city-built. Seattle's open-data license file is one of the deepest city registries anywhere — close to nineteen thousand license records — joined by county programs in the San Juan Islands and on the Pacific coast.
Washington's three biggest markets — Seattle, San Juan County, Pacific County — account for about 100% of the state's licensed records; the rest spread across 0 more communities with ten or more on file. Where a property sits on that curve — dense top market or long tail — changes how guests find it, and how hard a listing has to work to stand out.
The headline figure counts short-term rental permit and license records on file with 3 local registries, deduplicated by permit number. A license is not a listing: some licenses cover multiple units, some licensed homes sit unrented, and jurisdictions that publish nothing are missing entirely. Treat it as a verified floor for the size of Washington's legal short-term rental market — not a census.
Seattle operators face a permitted, professionalized market: the registry is public, the competition is countable, and guests increasingly book with hosts who look established rather than improvised. In a city that size, discovery is a search-and-reviews problem — being findable for the neighborhood and the trip type, and looking like a safe, repeatable stay once you are found.
The San Juans are the opposite game: small supply, ferry-access demand, and a guest choosing a whole island trip rather than just a room. There the listing has to sell the getaway — the water, the slowness, the logistics handled — and presentation matters more than volume. Cavmir markets both: the urban listing that needs to be found, and the island stay that needs to be wanted.
The official registries we compiled show 19,773 short-term rental permit and license records on file with 3 local registries as of July 2026. Not every Washington jurisdiction publishes its data, so the true statewide figure is higher.
In the Washington markets covered here, short-term rental permitting runs through city and county programs. The registries in this compilation: City of Seattle Open Data — short-term rental licenses, Pacific County — vacation rentals, San Juan County — vacation rental permits. Rules and requirements vary by jurisdiction — always confirm with the local program directly.
By records on file: Seattle (18,877), San Juan County (768), Pacific County (128). Seattle leads with 18,877.
Directly from the official registries listed on this page, pulled and deduplicated in July 2026. No records are estimated or modeled — see the methodology on the national data page for what was excluded and why.
These numbers are free to use in articles, research, and reports — no permission needed. We ask for one thing: credit Cavmir and link to this page so readers can check the source.
Cavmir, “Washington Short-Term Rental Permit Data,” compiled from official state, city, and county registries, July 2026. https://cavmir.com/data/washington-short-term-rental-permits/New permit requirements, caps, moratoriums, new registries in Washington — one plain-English email when something actually changes. If nothing changes, you hear nothing.
Cavmir markets short-term rentals in Washington — photography-led listings, direct-booking websites, and local SEO built around how guests actually search. The registry tells you how many competitors you have; we make sure you do not look like any of them.
