Austin bed and breakfast rules: owner-occupied, licensed, and you may not advertise the address
This is not a short-term rental
A bed and breakfast is a residential use in its own right, with its own license and its own rules. It is not a short-term rental with a nicer name, and the requirements are considerably heavier.
Three conditions decide whether you can operate one at all:
- You may own only one. One bed and breakfast facility per person.
- You must live there — in the structure itself, or in another residential structure on the same lot.
- You must own the land the structure sits on.
And the license must be renewed annually.
An old building is worth more
The structure has to qualify as Group 1 or Group 2, and within each the permitted rental units turn on the age of the building — not on historic designation, simply on whether it is more than 50 years old.
| Building over 50 years old | Building 50 years or less | |
|---|---|---|
| Group 1 | 5 rental units | 3 rental units |
| Group 2 | 10 rental units | 5 rental units |
§25-2-781(B)–(C). The older building is allowed roughly double in both groups. Subsection (D) provides an exception to both definitions, not summarised here.
And floor area sets the room count
Separately from the group limits, §25-2-783 ties rooms to floor area — and where you live changes the ratio:
- owner resides in the structure — one room per 500 sq ft of gross floor area;
- owner resides in another structure on the lot — one room per 700 sq ft.
Rooms occupied exclusively by the owner do not count toward that gross floor area, so living on site costs you area in the numerator and buys you a better ratio at the same time.
You may not advertise the address
This is the provision people assume must be a misreading. It is one sentence:
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The prohibition is on the street address, through those named media. Advertising the business is not what is banned. The evident purpose is to stop a residential street being marked out as a destination — which fits the rest of the section, where guest parking is pushed off the front yard and meal service is limited to breakfast for overnight guests.
Parking, and keeping the frontage residential
§25-2-784 is short and shapes the street view:
- No guest parking space in the front yard.
- Pervious pavers may be used for driveway and parking surfaces within the property boundaries — useful against impervious cover limits.
- Not more than 25% of the parking surface may be gravel.
What makes a B&B work or not
The owner-occupancy and single-facility rules are the ones that decide feasibility. This is a use designed for someone living on the property, and it does not scale — an investor holding several is outside the section entirely.
On an older Central Austin house the 50-year threshold is worth checking early. Crossing it roughly doubles the permitted rental units in both groups, which changes the economics more than any design decision will.
And plan the parking to the rear from the start. No guest space in the front yard, on a typical narrow lot, is a real layout constraint rather than a detail.
Common questions
Send us an address and we will tell you what we find
We do this research ourselves on every project we take on — zoning, floodplain, watershed, trees, whether it is a legal lot. Send us an address and we will run it and tell you what we find. It works the same whether you own a vacant lot, a house you are thinking of adding a unit to, or a house you are thinking of replacing. No charge and no strings, and if it is a bad lot we will say so.
Send us an addressWe are homebuilders, not the City of Austin. This page explains how we read the code in practice — it is not legal advice and it is not an official determination. Always confirm with Austin Development Services before you rely on it for a project. The authoritative text is the Austin Land Development Code; permitting questions go to Austin Development Services Department.