Following Delays and Frustration, Clark County Looks for Ways to Increase Speed of Short-Term Rental Licensing Process

LAS VEGAS, NV – Following months of delays and mounting frustration from homeowners missing out on income opportunities, Clark County officials have announced they are looking into ways to increase the speed of their short-term rental licensing process.

Assembly Bill 363 was signed into law by the Nevada legislature in 2021, requiring municipalities to draw up regulations governing the short -term rental industries within their borders.

After approving a short-term rental ordinance in June 2022, Clark County had started a pre-application process for short term rentals in September 2022, with the deadline for submission having been August 2023. 1,169 of the pre-applications they received were deemed eligible and the homeowners that submitted them were subsequently allowed to submit a short-term rental license application.

However, the process of approving these applications has been a slow and arduous one that has found itself ensnared in red tape; as of March 2025, a mere 175 licenses have been approved and 141 denied; 515 are still pending, drawing the ire of homeowners who say they are losing money every day they are forced to wait.

As a result, many homeowners are operating rentals with Clark County illegally; at current count, there are approximately 10,000 short-term rentals currently operating in Las Vegas, with the majority of them doing so without the benefit of a license.

Vince Queano, Clark County’s Director of Business Licensing, said that – in addition to several laws that are currently on the books that serve to hamstring the process – it takes county officials an average of one week to approve six rental units.

With over 500 [pending], just doing basic math, it would take about a year and a half [to process the backlog],” Queano said. “But then again, as we license each short-term rental unit, it creates that 1,000-foot buffer so there may be several hundred that may be denied in the future, which would make the licensing [process] overall shorter.”

Queano is proposing several changes to the process to potentially help make the approval process go faster and smoother, such as introducing a first-come, first-served system for applicants – as opposed to the previously-used random number generator – in addition to pushing back requirements that homeowners have wastewater connections and $500,000 in liability insurance at the time their application is approved, as opposed to when they first apply.

And finally, Queano suggests that the process could be sped up if short-term rental platforms got business licenses, although he did not name which companies he was referring to.

Shelter Realty Property Management specializes in the areas of  Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.