Greene County's Short-Term Rental Rules Aren't One Law. They're Three Different Bets.

"The barbershop, the insurance company, your favorite restaurant and the juice bar are all businesses."

That's Village of Catskill Trustee Natasha Law, explaining why her board decided short-term rental owners should pay for the privilege of operating one. It's a fair point. It's also a reminder that in Greene County, the rules an STR owner plays by depend entirely on which town line the property sits inside. Three towns within a few miles of each other, all drawing tourists off the same mountain, have landed on three genuinely different answers to the same question: how much should it cost, and how hard should it be, to rent your house by the night.

For a buyer running the numbers on a Catskills investment property, that difference matters more than almost anything on the listing sheet. A house in Hunter and a comparable house in Windham can carry nearly identical purchase prices and produce very different five-year outcomes, because one town treats STR permits like a scarce resource and the other, for now, doesn't regulate them at all.

Three Towns, Three Rulebooks

Start with Hunter. The town passed Short-Term Rental Law No. 2 on July 26, 2023, after board members spent the spring working with the Rhinebeck firm Grant & Lyons on the draft. What they ultimately adopted caps the town at 250 total STR permits, requires a $500 initial permit fee, and layers on a $1,000 compliance bond per property. Existing operators had 180 days to fall in line, a window that closed January 27, 2024. Anyone buying in Hunter today for STR income needs to know a hard number: whether the town is still under its 250-permit ceiling, or whether they're buying a house that would need to wait for a permit to open up.

Windham took the opposite path, or rather, no path at all. The town board drafted a similar law, then walked it back. A public hearing originally scheduled for January 14 was called off after Supervisor Thomas Hoyt announced that the draft would be withdrawn, following a resident petition that gathered more than 1,400 signatures. That reversal came in the months before Hunter finalized its own law in July 2023. Windham currently has no STR permitting law on the books. For a buyer, that reads two ways at once. It's the most permissive of the three towns right now, with no permit fee, no bond, no cap. It's also the least stable, because a board that already tried to regulate once can bring the question back at any time, and the residents who forced the retreat haven't gone anywhere.

Catskill split the difference, and split itself in the process. Both the Town of Catskill and the Village of Catskill run their own separate STR permitting systems, and a property's obligations depend on which government actually has jurisdiction, something a buyer has to confirm before underwriting a deal rather than after. The Village's law has been in effect since November 2020. When trustees set the fee schedule in 2021, they landed on $375 for an initial permit and $125 for annual reinspection. The application the Village posts today shows $500 and $200. The Town's own law, Chapter 133, was adopted by local law in April 2022 and currently carries the same $500 initial, $200 renewal structure. Fees in Catskill have moved in one direction only, and a buyer modeling year-five cash flow should assume they keep moving that way rather than assuming today's number holds.

Here's how the three compare side by side:

Why Hunter's Cap Turns a Permit Into an Asset

A permit cap does something a fee alone never does. It puts a ceiling on supply in a market where demand is set by ski season and leaf season, not by how many houses a town is willing to let compete for the same guests. Once Hunter's 250 permits are spoken for, the next buyer who wants to run a legal short-term rental in town isn't just paying a fee. They're waiting for a permit to become available, the same dynamic that gives a taxi medallion or a liquor license its resale value in other markets. That changes the calculus for anyone buying an existing, already-permitted STR in Hunter. The permit attached to that house is worth something beyond the four walls, because the town has made new ones scarce.

It also means a buyer's first call before making an offer in Hunter shouldn't be about square footage. It should be to the town's code enforcement office, to find out how close the permit count actually is to that 250 ceiling.

Windham's Vacuum Isn't the Same as Windham Being Open

It's tempting to read Windham's lack of a law as a green light. That's not quite right. A town with no STR ordinance is a town where the next board meeting could produce one, and Windham's own board has already shown it's willing to try. The 1,400-signature petition that killed that draft was a snapshot of resident sentiment at one moment. Sentiment on short-term rentals in ski towns doesn't stay fixed, especially as neighboring Hunter's permit cap pushes more STR demand toward towns without one.

For an investor, the absence of a Windham law should be priced as a lower-cost, higher-uncertainty bet rather than a free pass. There's no permit fee eating into year-one returns, but there's also no guarantee the operating rules look the same in three years as they do today.

Catskill's Two Governments, One Property

The trickiest part of underwriting a deal in Catskill isn't the fee, it's figuring out which government actually regulates the parcel. The Village of Catskill and the surrounding Town of Catskill each run independent short-term rental laws, with independent applications, independent inspection schedules, and independent enforcement. A property a few blocks from Main Street might fall under Village rules; one a bit further out answers to the Town instead. Both currently charge the same $500 initial and $200 renewal fee, so the dollar difference has narrowed. The jurisdictional question hasn't gone away, and it's the kind of detail that shows up in a title search or a zoning confirmation, not on a listing sheet.

The State Registry Change Nobody's Listing Mentions

Layered on top of all three town-level systems is a statewide change that already applies no matter which Greene County address a buyer chooses. New York's short-term rental registry law gave counties a choice: stand up a county registry, or opt out by local law before a deadline state guidance pegged at June 25, 2026. That decision point has now passed. Greene County was named on the state's list of counties covered by the requirement, so a buyer or their agent should confirm with the county which way it went and what, if anything, changed about how a specific property's rental activity gets reported.

Whatever Greene County decided doesn't change the town-level permit rules already described. It does change tax mechanics that apply on top of them. Booking platforms like Airbnb and VRBO have been required, since March 25, 2025, to collect and remit New York's 4% state sales tax directly, regardless of a county's registry decision. Greene County separately levies its own 4% hotel and occupancy tax on short-term rental receipts, a cost that stacks on top of whatever a specific town charges for the permit itself. A buyer running numbers on a Hunter or Catskill property should build both the town's permit cost and the county's occupancy tax into the model, since neither one shows up in a purchase price comparison.

Before You Underwrite the Deal

A few questions worth asking before an offer goes in, not after:

• Which jurisdiction actually covers this parcel: Town of Hunter, Town of Windham, Village of Catskill, or Town of Catskill?
• If it's Hunter, how many of the 250 permits are currently issued, and is there a waiting list?
• If it's Windham, has the town board signaled any plan to revisit STR regulation since it withdrew its earlier draft?
• If it's Catskill, has the current permit already been issued to this address, or would a buyer be starting the application from zero?
• What does Greene County's occupancy tax add to the guest-facing price, and how does that compare to the STR's projected average daily rate?

FAQ

Does an existing STR permit in Hunter transfer automatically to a new owner? The town's law ties permits to the property and its ownership record, so a change in ownership triggers a new application rather than an automatic transfer. Confirm the current status directly with Hunter's code enforcement office before assuming a permit carries over.

Could Windham pass an STR law again after withdrawing its earlier draft? Nothing in the withdrawal prevents the board from bringing the question back. A buyer treating Windham's current lack of regulation as permanent is making an assumption the town's own recent history doesn't support.

Do Village of Catskill and Town of Catskill STR rules ever overlap on the same property? No. Jurisdiction is determined by which government's boundary the parcel sits inside, Village or Town, not both. Confirming that boundary is a step worth taking before relying on either jurisdiction's fee schedule.

Three towns, three sets of incentives, and a state registry change layered on top of all of them. None of that shows up in a portal search filtered by price and bedroom count. It shows up when someone who has actually read the local ordinances walks a buyer through what a specific address can and can't do. That's the conversation worth having before an offer goes in, not after closing.

Berardi Realty works Greene County's investor and STR market from the ground level, town by town. Request a Consultation & Free Property Valuation and get a straight answer on what a specific Hunter, Windham, or Catskill address is actually cleared to do.