Two three-bedroom houses list the same week. Same square footage, same asking price, same walk to the beach. One sits on the west side of Beach Drive. The other sits six blocks inland, past Holladay. On the listing sheet they're twins. Under Seaside's short-term rental ordinance, they aren't playing the same game at all, and no median price on any portal will tell you which house you're actually looking at.
That's the number buyers comparing Seaside to Cannon Beach or Astoria usually skip past. They anchor on the roughly $500,000 median showing up across this year's market reports and start doing mortgage math. But if the plan involves renting the place out even part of the year, the median is the wrong first question. The right first question is which side of an invisible line the parcel sits on.
The line the ordinance actually draws
Seaside doesn't cap the citywide number of short-term rental licenses the way some neighboring towns do. Instead, the city's short-term rental code, adopted as Ordinance 2024-04 and amended in early 2025, draws eligibility by geography. The ordinance spells out the eligible blocks street by street: properties "west of the Necanicum River to the ocean shore," parcels that abut Avenue U over to the river, and a stretch running from the Cove parking lot north to the Sailor's Grave. Outside those described zones, in the purely residential interior of town, new short-term rentals aren't permitted at all.
That's the mechanism that actually prices a Seaside investment property. A house priced at the city's median might sit squarely inside one of those eligible corridors, a few blocks from the Promenade and downtown Broadway, where rental demand and the legal right to meet it line up. Or it might sit at the same price six or eight blocks inland, in a zone built and zoned for full-time residents, where the same rental income the seller projected in the listing description simply isn't available to a new owner.
You can read the boundary language yourself on the City of Seaside's short-term rental ordinance page. It's worth doing before you tour anything, not after.
What happens once you're inside the line
Being in an eligible zone doesn't mean a permit is automatic. The city doesn't set a hard citywide cap, but it does limit how densely short-term rentals can cluster, with rules that vary by zone and restrict how many vacation rental dwellings can operate within 100 feet of each other. So a parcel can sit entirely inside the eligible geography and still get turned down if the block around it is already saturated.
Once a license is granted, the requirements are specific enough to matter for underwriting. Every short-term rental needs a local contact who lives in Clatsop County and can respond to problems within two hours. Occupancy is capped using a formula tied to bedroom count, and the city requires a minimum of two off-street parking spaces plus one more for every bedroom beyond two. An approved application has 180 days to schedule and pass an inspection with the Community Development staff, and every licensed rental is subject to annual re-inspection after that. None of this shows up in a comparable-sales report. All of it shows up in whether the numbers on your pro forma survive contact with the city.
How Seaside's approach compares to its neighbors
Buyers cross-shopping the North Coast for a rental property are often comparing three genuinely different regulatory systems, not three versions of the same one.
| Town | Approach | Key constraint |
|---|---|---|
| Seaside | Zone-based eligibility, no citywide numeric cap | Density limit within eligible zones (properties can't cluster within 100 feet) |
| Astoria | Citywide numeric cap of roughly 30 permits | Waitlist, which was reported full as of late 2024 |
| Gearhart | New STR permits banned in residential zones since 2021 | Existing licenses grandfathered but not renewed once given up |
Astoria's system tells you your odds up front, since a full waitlist means a new buyer isn't getting a permit soon regardless of address. Gearhart's system tells you the door is closing, since existing licenses can continue but the city isn't issuing new ones in residential areas. Seaside's system is the one that rewards doing the legwork, because the answer genuinely depends on the parcel, not just the zip code.
The income number underneath the median
There's a second number worth sitting with, and it explains why the STR question matters as much as it does in this particular market. Seaside's median household income runs around $45,807, per this year's local cost-of-living data. Comfortably carrying a mortgage on a median-priced Seaside home, by contrast, takes something closer to $80,000 to $95,000 in annual income, based on a typical down payment at the roughly 6.8 percent mortgage rate that data was built around.
That gap is wide enough that it shapes who's actually buying. A lot of Seaside home purchases aren't being carried by local wages. They're being carried by income earned somewhere else, retirement income, remote income, or rental income the property itself is expected to generate. Which is exactly why the zoning question isn't a side detail for a meaningful share of Seaside buyers. If the plan to make the monthly payment work assumes rental income, and the parcel sits outside the eligible zone, the plan doesn't survive the first city meeting.
What the condo-versus-house gap is actually telling you
One more comparison is worth making before you decide what kind of Seaside property to chase. Across the city, single-family homes run roughly $33 more per square foot than condos on average. On its own, that just looks like the usual condo discount for shared walls and an HOA. In Seaside specifically, it's also a proxy for location.
The condo stock clusters near the convention center and downtown Broadway, inside the same corridor the short-term rental ordinance already carves out as eligible. The single-family stock spreads further inland, into the residential zones where new short-term rental licenses aren't available at all. So the per-square-foot discount on a condo isn't only paying for smaller square footage. Part of it is paying for a location where the rental question has already been answered in your favor, versus a larger house further inland where it hasn't.
Before you write an offer
A few things worth confirming before an offer goes in, not after:
- Ask the city's Code Compliance office, not just the listing agent, whether the specific parcel falls inside an eligible short-term rental zone. The city's planning staff can answer this directly at 503-738-7100.
- Ask whether the block or building already has vacation rental dwellings operating within 100 feet, since that density limit can block a new license even inside an eligible zone.
- If rental income is part of your financing plan, treat any income figure in the listing as unverified until the zone and density questions are answered, since a projected number based on the current owner's use doesn't transfer automatically to you.
- Budget for the annual re-inspection fee and the 180-day inspection window as part of your first-year carrying costs, not as an afterthought.
A few direct questions
Does Seaside cap the total number of short-term rental licenses citywide? No. Unlike Astoria, which caps citywide licenses at roughly 30 with a waitlist reported full as of late 2024, Seaside regulates by geography and density rather than a fixed citywide number.
If a property is inside an eligible zone, is a permit guaranteed? No. The city's density rule limits how many vacation rental dwellings can operate within 100 feet of each other, and that limit varies by zone, so a parcel inside the eligible geography can still be turned down if the surrounding block is already at capacity.
Who do I ask before assuming a Seaside property can be rented short-term? The city's Community Development staff handle STR compliance and permitting questions directly, and confirming zone eligibility with them before writing an offer is more reliable than relying on a listing description.
If you're weighing a Seaside property against something in Cannon Beach, Astoria, or across the river in Long Beach, and rental income is any part of the math, the zoning conversation belongs before the financing conversation, not after it. PNW Real Estate Experts walks Clatsop County zone maps with buyers before an offer goes in, so the number you're underwriting against is the one the city will actually let you collect.
