Monterey County spent close to fourteen years writing a short-term rental ordinance, and when the Board of Supervisors finally passed it in a 3-2 vote, the framework it landed on was specific enough to plan around: unhosted rentals capped at 4 percent of the housing stock in the coastal zone, a "Limited Vacation Rental" tier that lets an owner rent an entire unhosted home up to three times a year without a commercial permit, and a $965 annual license fee to cover administration. That ordinance is now in effect. For most of unincorporated Monterey County, a buyer can look at those numbers, check the zoning, and know roughly where they stand.
Del Monte Forest, the private community that contains Pebble Beach, is not most of unincorporated Monterey County. Getting a county permit there does not mean you can operate a rental. It means you've cleared the first of two gatekeepers, and the second one has already said no.
The approval nobody puts on a spec sheet
Del Monte Forest has no city hall. Land use runs through the county, but a private company, the Pebble Beach Company, owns and maintains the roads and holds authority over what happens on the properties along them through the covenants attached to every deed. According to the Del Monte Forest Property Owners association's own FAQ page, a vacation rental in the Forest needs three separate approvals before it's legal:
- A Transient Occupancy Tax certificate from the County Tax Collector
- A Land Use Permit from the Monterey County Planning Department
- Written consent from the Pebble Beach Company confirming the rental complies with the property's CC&Rs
The first two are the same paperwork any short-term rental owner in unincorporated Monterey County has to file. The third is where Del Monte Forest diverges from the rest of the county, and where the Monterey County Vacation Rental Association reports the Pebble Beach Company has gone on record opposing all Commercial Vacation Rental permits and Homestay licenses, citing its reading of the CC&Rs and its ownership of the Forest's private roads. The county's response has been to grant "conditional" permits inside Del Monte Forest, with the condition being that the owner still has to get the company to sign off.
That sign-off has not been forthcoming. The property owners association's own FAQ states it plainly: "PBC is not issuing consent for vacation rentals until the County has completed its rule-making process."
The county rule-making process is the part that's finished. The company's consent is the part that isn't.
Two approval systems, one property
| Rest of unincorporated Monterey County | Del Monte Forest / Pebble Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Who issues the permit | Monterey County Planning Department | Monterey County Planning Department |
| Numeric limits | 4% unhosted cap (coastal zone), 3x/year Limited Vacation Rental option | Same county limits apply |
| Additional approval required | None | Written consent from Pebble Beach Company under property CC&Rs |
| Current status of that approval | N/A | Company is not issuing consent while permitting rules are finalized |
A buyer who reads only the county's short-term rental page will come away thinking the math is about the 4 percent cap and the $965 fee. Inside the gates at Pebble Beach, that math is close to beside the point. The binding constraint isn't a number set by an elected board. It's a private company that isn't required to explain its timeline to anyone.
The company's reach doesn't stop at rentals
This isn't a one-off veto invented for short-term rentals. The Pebble Beach Company's Architectural Review Board reviews exterior construction plans for the entire Forest, and its construction standards restrict building activity to Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with no work allowed on Sundays or federal holidays. Even something as routine as removing a dead tree runs through both the county and the company's guidelines side by side. A Monterey County Planning Department report dated July 27, 2026 lists a waiver request to remove 27 dead and dangerous Monterey pines at a property on Del Ciervo Road in Pebble Beach, one of a steady stream of similar filings the county processes for Del Monte Forest properties in any given month.
None of that is unusual for a mature private community. What's worth understanding before you write an offer is that the pattern extends to income strategy, not just paint colors and pine trees. The Del Monte Forest Property Owners association, a voluntary group active since 1951, doesn't have regulatory authority of its own. It coordinates with the county and the company on things like road maintenance under a 1984 agreement, and its own materials are candid that neither it nor the county can force the company's hand on a private consent decision. If you're buying with rental income built into your numbers, the entity you actually need to convince isn't on a ballot anywhere.
What this means for the pro forma
Even setting the permit question aside, Pebble Beach's price data is noisy enough that a buyer underwriting rental income needs to be careful about which month's comps they trust. MLSListings reported a single-family median sale price of $2.22 million for Pebble Beach in April 2026, down 20.4 percent year over year, on just five closed sales and a median of 173 days on market. One month earlier, Redfin's figures put the March 2026 median at $4.0 million, up 44.6 percent year over year, with homes selling in a median of 85 days.
Both numbers describe the same neighborhood a month apart. The gap isn't a sign that the market swung wildly in four weeks. It's a sign that Pebble Beach sells so few homes in any given month that one or two luxury closings can move the median by nearly double. That volatility is already a reason to treat any single headline price as a starting point for a conversation, not a number to underwrite against. Layer in a rental income assumption that depends on a private company's consent it currently isn't giving, and a buyer's pro forma has two independent sources of uncertainty stacked on top of each other, not one.
What actually holds up as a plan
None of this means Del Monte Forest is closed to income-generating ownership. A Homestay, where the owner is on-site during the rental, faces fewer county restrictions than a fully unhosted Commercial Vacation Rental, though it still needs the same written consent from the company under the CC&Rs. A long-term lease of 30 days or more sidesteps the vacation-rental permitting structure entirely, both at the county level and the company level, since it isn't defined as transient use. For a buyer whose plan depends on nightly or weekly turnover, the more realistic underwriting question right now isn't whether the county will issue a permit. It's whether the company will ever sign off while its own review process stays open-ended.
FAQ
Does the Monterey County ordinance apply inside Pebble Beach's gates? Yes. The county's permitting rules, including the 4 percent unhosted cap in the coastal zone and the $965 annual license, apply to Del Monte Forest the same as any other unincorporated area. The difference is the added layer of Pebble Beach Company consent required under the property's CC&Rs.
Is a Homestay easier to get approved than a full rental? The county places fewer restrictions on Homestays because an on-site owner doesn't remove year-round housing from the market. Del Monte Forest still requires the same written company consent for a Homestay license as it does for a Commercial Vacation Rental, so the county's lighter touch doesn't remove the private approval step.
Could a Del Monte Forest owner use the three-times-a-year option instead? The Limited Vacation Rental category exists countywide for owners who want occasional income without a commercial permit. Whether it also requires Pebble Beach Company consent under the property's specific CC&Rs is the kind of detail worth confirming in writing before counting on it, since the company's position has applied broadly to vacation rental consent in the Forest.
If you're weighing a purchase in Pebble Beach or anywhere else in Del Monte Forest with rental income as part of the plan, it's worth having someone walk the CC&Rs and the current state of the company's consent process with you before the number on a spec sheet becomes a number in your offer. That's the kind of groundwork Monterey Coast Realty does before a client ever writes a check, not after.
