Maryland's New Safety Act: What Every Unit Must Have by 1 October 2026

Four physical items, two posted documents and one replacement rule. The failure point is the alarm's production date, not the alarm.

Last updated: September 21, 2026

Maryland's short-term rental fire safety Act takes effect on 1 October 2026. For every unit let for fewer than 30 consecutive days it sets four requirements: a posted evacuation diagram, posted emergency numbers for law enforcement and fire or rescue, a fire extinguisher, and smoke and carbon monoxide alarms that meet its installation, maintenance and replacement standards. The Governor signed it on 14 April 2026; it cleared the House of Delegates 111 to 16 and the Senate 44 to 0. The chapter carries no penalty clause of its own, so what bites comes later and from below — counties and Baltimore City must write annual inspections into local ordinances by 1 July 2028. The parts that decide whether you pass are the two pieces of paper and the date stamped on the back of an alarm.

Key Takeaways

• The line is 30 consecutive days. Anything sold as a stay shorter than that carries the four duties, whatever channel sold it.
• Two of the four are paper on a wall. An evacuation diagram and emergency numbers have to be posted, not filed.
• Replacement runs from the production date. Over ten years from the date on the device, or no date at all, and the alarm has to go.
• The Act itself has no penalties. Counties and Baltimore City write enforcement by 1 July 2028, with a state report due 1 October 2028.
• The duty follows the unit. Airbnb, your own website or a phone booking — all four obligations attach the same way.

What the Act covers and what every unit must carry

The Act attaches to the unit rather than the address book: holds it against whoever controls the property and lets it for short stays. Nothing in it depends on which company brought the guest.

Requirement	What the Act asks for	What fails in practice
Posted evacuation diagram	A diagram showing every exit from the unit and, where it applies, the exits of the building it sits in	A drawing made from memory that leaves out the door a guest would actually reach for
Posted emergency numbers	Emergency telephone numbers for law enforcement and for the fire and rescue service, posted in the unit	One number for one service, or a number that reaches nobody after dark
Fire extinguisher	An extinguisher provided in the unit	Bought, then stored in a locked cupboard or left in a car
Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms	Alarms installed, maintained and replaced to the required standard	Devices that chirp correctly and are still two years past their replacement date

Two of the four are paper. Hosts budget for hardware and forget the printer, and those are the two items an inspector can check without touching anything.

None of this touches availability — until a missing extinguisher takes nights off sale, at which point the change has to reach every selling channel at once. Availability and rates for Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda and Trip.com sit on one calendar at localsbnb.com.

Reading the 30-day line against real bookings

The wording is "fewer than 30 consecutive days", and almost every question hosts ask turns out to be a question about what counts as a stay.

Letting pattern	In scope?	Why
Nightly and weekly stays, any channel	Yes	The stay itself is shorter than 30 consecutive days, which is the trigger
One three-week booking in an otherwise long-let unit	Yes	One qualifying stay brings the unit into scope for the duties attached to it
A 31-night corporate let agreed in writing	No, on that stay	The term is not consecutive-under-30; keep the agreement as the evidence
A unit you use yourself between short bookings	Yes, on the short stays	Owner use in between does not lift a duty that attaches to the unit
Direct bookings on your own website	Yes	The four duties follow the property and its operator, not the sales channel

These readings of the 30-day test are inferred from the structure of the requirement rather than quoted from county guidance, and the whole county layer sits downstream of them. Where a booking sits close to the line, ask your county before relying on a reading in either direction.

Alongside the four duties sits one for booking service platforms: they must notify Maryland hosts of these fire safety requirements electronically and require hosts to provide confirmation documents. That obligation belongs to the platform, not to you, but it means a confirmation request is coming and it is worth keeping a copy of what you sent back.

Ten years, counted from the device

This is the item that catches people, because the clock does not start where hosts expect. The Act ties replacement to the production date marked on the alarm itself — not the date on the receipt, not the date it was fitted, and not the last time somebody pressed the test button.

Two triggers, both of them about what is printed on the unit: a device more than ten years past its production date must be replaced, and a device carrying no production date at all must be replaced. A receipt from three years ago does not rescue an alarm whose back is blank, and an alarm bought in 2022 may already have been sitting in a warehouse for two winters.

What is on the back of the alarm	What it means	What to do
A production date less than ten years old	The device is inside its expected life	Write the date into your record and keep the photo
A production date more than ten years old	Past replacement age regardless of how it behaves	Replace it, and photograph the new device before it goes up
No production date anywhere on the unit	Treated as expired	Replace it; do not argue from a purchase date you cannot tie to the unit
A date nobody can read	Effectively the same as no date	Replace it rather than guessing at its age

Take the alarm down, read the back, photograph it and write the date into the file. One unit takes about ten minutes.

Who comes looking, and what to record now

Nothing in the chapter sets a fine. That is not a loophole so much as a division of labour: counties and Baltimore City must adopt local ordinances providing for annual inspections by 1 July 2028, and the State Fire Marshal must report to the General Assembly by 1 October 2028. Until then the evidence you gather is for your own protection, and five things belong in one file per unit:

• Photographs of the posted diagram and numbers in place, dated, which prove they were displayed rather than purchased.
• A photograph of the back of every alarm, showing the production date, before it goes back on the ceiling.
• Purchase and installation records for anything fitted after you took the unit on.
• A dated test record, refreshed on a fixed interval, because a device with no test date fails in the same way as one with no battery.
• The confirmation you returned to your booking platform, kept alongside the other four.

All of this sits next to a point worth repeating: none of it depends on where the booking came from. Requirements differ by county and change as local ordinances land, so the list above is a shape rather than a standard, and the file it produces is worth more than any single item in it.

FAQ

Do the four duties apply if I list only on my own website?

They do. The requirement is written against units let for fewer than 30 consecutive days and attaches to whoever controls the property, so moving the sale off a platform changes who takes the booking and nothing else.

Does an alarm that still chirps on cue have to be replaced?

If it is more than ten years past the production date printed on it, or carries no date, yes. Behaviour is not the test; the printed date is. A working alarm past replacement age is the single most common failure this rule produces.

When do inspections actually begin?

Counties and Baltimore City have until 1 July 2028 to put annual inspections into local ordinances, and the State Fire Marshal reports to the General Assembly by 1 October 2028. Ask your own county rather than waiting for a letter, since the local date may come sooner.

Two things are worth doing before the end of the month: read the backs of every alarm you own, and put the two pieces of paper on the wall. Everything else in the Act is a purchase decision and can wait a week. The units that fail will fail on a date stamp nobody looked at — so keep availability and rates for Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda and Trip.com on one calendar at localsbnb.com, and spend the saved hour on the alarm backs instead.

---

Requirements differ by city and region and change over time; confirm the current position with your own authority. How the 30-day line applies to particular booking patterns, and how to read a production date, are our readings of the Act rather than quotations from guidance. LOCALSBNB provides software, not legal advice.