Columbia is tightening expectations and licensing stipulations for short-term rental owners.
Compliance with new city regulations will be overseen by Neumo, a company the city recently entered into a contract with.
Formerly called Avenu Insights & Analytics, Neumo’s job is to analyze data and monitor services related to short-term rentals. Their services will be in full effect this summer.
Clinton Smith, the city’s community development director, said the firm will help identify unlicensed short-term rentals within the city.
In 2024, the city adopted a series of ordinances that implemented new regulations for land use, rental conversion, business license and taxes. The new policies mandate that short-term rentals apply for a business license and a certificate of compliance.
Before passing the ordinances, short-term rentals didn’t pay lodging taxes, according to Smith.
As of the end of October, 125 of the 475 short-term rentals in the city have sent in applications to receive their license.
Smith says that the city doesn’t have the specialty software and resources to gather all the information it needs to keep track of short-term rentals, which led it to contract with Neumo.
Neumo will have five main services to help the community with short-term rentals, according to a city council memo.
- Short-term rental identification, which will give the public the exact address of each rental.
- Targeted website monitoring, which will monitor how much each short-term rental is making per night and will create heat maps.
- A 24/7 web portal for monitoring, allowing staff to make notes for each short-term rental and to send out notices to noncompliant short-term rental operators.
- A 24/7 complaint hotline, which the community can contact as needed to initiate complaints.
- Providing compliance outreach, which entails mailing two letters to noncompliant short-term rentals a year.
The initial contract spans five years, with the option to add one-year terms, amounting to 10 years overall.
At the end of 10 years, the city will have paid Neumo about $312,000 in vendor services. The city plans to pay that with the taxes collected from short-term rentals, which is expected to amount to over $818,000.
