Last July, Massachusetts updated its building code to require many short-term rentals to undergo safety inspections on a regular basis by the local building department. But language that puts the onus on the owners to request inspections and logistical hurdles for understaffed Island building departments has resulted in few inspections on the Vineyard, which has thousands of vacation rentals across the six towns.
Building inspectors, town officials and committees in recent weeks have all raised the subject of the new state building code, which calls for annual inspections of rentals that are not owner occupied. Many said they are already stretched too thin to add on potentially hundreds of new inspections.
“I think the town, if they want to do this in the interest of public safety,...would have to really look at this through a budget lens,” Adam Petkus, the building commissioner in Oak Bluffs, said at a meeting last week. “I would humbly say — conservatively — that if we were going to go through with this, with teeth, that we’re looking at half a million dollars of added employee cost.”
The new, 10th edition of the building code was adopted in October 2024 and then, after a concurrency period when inspectors could use older editions of the code, went into full effect in July 2025. At the time, the state sent municipalities guidance on the short-term rental changes, saying it wished to have uniformity in enforcement wherever possible.
Oak Bluffs recently created a short-term rental ad hoc committee to look at potential rules and regulations for the vacation properties. Mr. Petkus told the committee that the new building code requires the homeowner to ask for the inspection before the previous inspection certification expires.
The regulation wording has allowed towns to forgo rentals inspections.
Mr. Petkus, who is also the building inspector in Aquinnah and previously worked in Chilmark, said he’s never had a homeowner ask for an inspection. With no inspections being done, there is no certificate to expire.
Basically, if a town doesn’t start inspecting, it doesn’t have to in the future; once inspecting begins, it has to continue, inspectors said.
“If you don’t issue an original inspection, nothing’s expired,” said Mr. Petkus. “If a town should choose to begin inspections for short-term rentals, they’ll be beholden to conduct those annually.”
Oak Bluffs and Edgartown both started to talk about inspections for vacation rentals in recent months as they looked to get short-term rental bylaws in the books. Establishing rental regulations has become priority for the Vineyard after a lawsuit on Nantucket raised questions about rental’s legality if they aren’t specifically allowed in town bylaws.
Alex Morrison, an Edgartown select board member and member of the Edgartown short-term rental committee, said his town has been thinking about it for the last year and a half or so, but has not taken action yet on inspections.
Logistically, it would be a heavy lift for Edgartown, which has upwards of 1,000 short-term rentals.
“We understand it’s a large can of worms to open,” he said.
Edgartown has hired UMass Amherst to do a study of the town’s rental inventory, which Mr. Morrison hopes can help give the town a better idea of what it is dealing with. The town also just hired a new building inspector, and they’ll be tasked with helping guide the town through the regulations.
“We want to first understand our inventory and understand our measures to moderate it,” he said.
Right now, only one town regularly conducts inspections. West Tisbury enacted its own short-term rental bylaw last year that put parameters around rental properties, and also required an inspection every two years.
The town sent a letter out to homeowners with the property tax bill last year, and the first inspection application came later in 2025.
West Tisbury building inspector Joe Tierney said that the town has received about 100 applications.
“It’s been going pretty smoothly,” he said. “Everything has pretty much been good.”
The building inspector, health agent and fire inspector all go out together, often doing two to three inspections a week. They check to make sure the rentals are safe, looking out for fire detectors, mold and other obvious dangers.
“The biggest thing we are finding is smoke alarms,” Mr. Tierney said. “We are finding a lot of expired devices out there.”
There was a case where a home had a bedroom in a basement, but didn’t have the necessary egress windows. The homeowner had just purchased the property and got a permit to rectify the issue, according to Mr. Tierney.
Outside of the inspection requests themselves, ensuring people are following the rules and inspection requirements is difficult. Given the staffing levels in town hall, enforcement is largely based on responding to neighbor complaints. The town is attempting to fill a full-time inspector role to help out, but several other towns are also looking for staff.
“We just don’t have the staffing to go out and enforce,” Mr. Tierney said. “That’s why we are looking at additional help. I can’t imagine [the workload] is going to go down.”
Several officials said the language adopted by the state is not straightforward, leading to many questions.
Rental properties that are not owner occupied are supposed to be inspected annually. One- or two-family rental homes that are primarily owner occupied can be certified for up to five years.
For Reade Kontje Milne, the former Edgartown building inspector who recently became the Chilmark building inspector, the rules are convoluted because they come out of the commercial building code, but fall in the residential.
“There’s a lot of confusion on a state code level,” she said. “There’s a lot of words that aren’t defined.”
The state Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulations declined an interview about the rules and instead referred the Gazette to town officials and the fact sheet that was sent out to the towns last summer.
According to Ms. Milne, no one has asked for an inspection in Chilmark nor when she worked in Edgartown.
Tisbury, which does have local rules calling for inspections, is attempting to set up a framework to enforce its own rules and has hired a new full-time inspector to help.
“We are working on short-term rental program compliance,” town administrator Joe LaCivita wrote to the Gazette in an email. “[O]nce this person is up to speed we will be looking toward developing processes to monitor rentals.”
Some towns also don’t have a strong appetite to enforce more regulations on rentals. The inspection issue has come up with the Oak Bluffs short-term rental ad hoc committee, but members have been more interested in whether the town should implement a short-term rental registration.
“My question is: is there anyone here who’s advocating for the inspections and has a compelling health and safety reason why they’re advocating for the inspections?” Keija Minor, a real estate agent and member of the committee, said last week.
“I haven’t heard anyone clearly articulate ‘Yes, we need inspections, and this is why and this is why this cost is worth it,’” Ms. Minor added.
Some wondered if there could be a liability for the town. Committee member Leah Brown contended the responsibility falls to the property owner to ensure everything is safe.
“It’s ultimately the owner’s responsibility to have fire detectors in there, not the town,” she said. “The town cannot be held responsible for policing every rental.”
Mr. Petkus didn’t believe that renters would be walking into unsafe homes if inspections aren’t conducted in town. People renting homes for thousands of dollars every week usually aren’t shy about highlighting the conditions.
“I do think that we can all rest assured that violations are constantly being called into my office and they are being dealt with,” he said.
“If we don’t do this inspection process, and we do get into the registration, [we should] require that the registration be posted with a phone number to call or contact for my office if you find something that was unsafe.”
Rentals have been something the state has been wrestling with for years, and regulations have been slow to update. Ms. Milne, who sits on several state level boards and is giving input on the next iteration of the building code, said she expected regulators would continue to tweak the language to make it more clear for the town officials that enforce the rules.
“We’ve discussed short-term rentals a bunch,” she said. “My sense is that hopefully this will be clarified in the 11th edition.”
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