Nashville Short Term Rental Rules: Airbnb Laws in Nashville and Williamson County (2026)

Nashville short term rental rules come down to one question most buyers ask too late: will the owner live there? In Nashville and Davidson County, an owner-occupied Airbnb is allowed in nearly every zoning district with a $313 permit. A new non-owner-occupied permit, the kind an investor needs, is not available at all in the AR2A, R, RS and RM districts that cover most of the county’s neighborhoods. Williamson County is stricter still. Brentwood prohibits rentals of 30 days or fewer, Franklin has required new rentals in residential areas to be owner-occupied since December 2019, and unincorporated Williamson County has allowed vacation rental homes only in the Leiper’s Fork Village district since 2013.

Relocating buyers and investors watching Nashville’s tourism numbers often find a listing that says “turnkey Airbnb” before they find the rules. This guide covers the rules city by city as of September 2026, the grandfather clause that trips people up at closing, what an HOA can do on top of the city, and the taxes that land on every booking. Rules change and this is not legal advice. Verify the specific parcel with the permitting office before you rely on it, and bring in a real estate attorney for anything unusual.

Nashville Short Term Rental Rules: The Two Permit Types

Metro Nashville calls these Short Term Rental Properties, or STRPs, and the Metro Codes Department issues two kinds of permit. Since March 11, 2026, both are applied for online. Nearly everything else follows from which of the two a property can get.

Owner-Occupied Permits

An owner-occupied permit is for a home where the owner permanently lives, or for a lot with an owner-occupied residence on it, such as a main house with a rentable garage apartment. The owner must be a natural person, not an LLC, corporation, trust or partnership, and must document the home as a primary residence. These permits are allowed in essentially every zoning district unless a Specific Plan (SP) or Planned Unit Development (PUD) says otherwise. Metro issues only one permit per lot in single-family and two-family districts, and in a two-family property both units must be under one ownership, with one of them serving as the owner’s primary residence.

Non-Owner-Occupied Permits

This is the permit investors want, and it is where the map gets narrow. New non-owner-occupied permits are issued only in mixed-use, office, commercial and downtown districts: MUN, MUL, MUG and MUI (and their -A versions), OG, OR20 through OR40, ORI, CN, CL, CS, CA, CF, and the DTC downtown districts. They are not permitted in AR2A, R, RS or RM zoning. Metro also applies a 100-foot rule, so a new non-owner-occupied permit cannot sit within 100 feet of a religious institution, a school or its playground, a park, or a licensed daycare. Non-owner-occupied operators must carry liability coverage of at least $1,000,000 per occurrence.

Rules Both Permits Share

A permitted unit can have no more than four sleeping rooms and rents to one party at a time. Occupancy is capped at twice the number of sleeping rooms plus four, with 12 as the ceiling. Stays must be at least 24 hours and no longer than 30 consecutive days, and every online listing has to display the permit number. Three violations can cost a property its permit, and Metro will not issue a new one for that property for a year. Operating without a permit brings citations and the same mandatory one-year wait before you can apply.

Where Non-Owner-Occupied Airbnbs Are Allowed in Nashville

Zoning codes mean little to most buyers, so here is the translation. The districts that allow new non-owner-occupied permits cluster downtown, in the Gulch, SoBro and Midtown, and along the mixed-use and commercial corridors that run out from the core. The single-family streets people picture when they think of Nashville, the bungalow blocks of East Nashville, Sylvan Park and 12 South, are overwhelmingly R or RS zoning, where a new non-owner-occupied permit is not available at all. The investor-owned rentals you see operating on those streets are running under permits issued before the current rules or under state grandfather protection, and neither carries over to the next owner. More on that below.

Two details narrow the map further. First, a lot of Nashville’s newer townhome construction is zoned SP, and the Specific Plan’s own text controls whether short-term rental is allowed, sometimes even for an owner-occupant, so the base zoning district is not the last word. Second, the districts that do allow investor permits are dominated by condos and apartments, and many condo declarations prohibit short-term rentals outright. The property that actually works is the overlap of three things: the right zoning, a governing document that allows it, and no disqualifying neighbor within 100 feet. If you are shopping downtown Nashville homes and condos for sale with rental income in mind, check the HOA documents as early as you check the zoning.

Zoning is parcel by parcel. Metro’s online parcel viewer shows the district for any address, and the Codes Department’s short-term rental property search shows whether an address currently holds a permit. I pull both before a client writes an offer on anything marketed for its rental income.

The Rule That Catches Buyers: Permits and Grandfathering Do Not Transfer

Here is the single most useful sentence in this guide: a short-term rental permit in Nashville does not come with the house. Metro’s code says a permit “shall not be transferred or assigned to another individual, person, entity, or address.” A change of ownership cancels it, and that includes moving the property from your own name into a trust or an LLC. The buyer applies fresh, under the rules in force on the day they apply.

Tennessee’s Short-Term Rental Unit Act, passed in 2018, is the reason so many older rentals are still operating in neighborhoods that no longer allow them. It says a local rule that prohibits or regulates short-term rentals does not apply to a property that was already being used as one before the rule was enacted. But that protection ends when the property is sold or transferred, when it stops being used as a short-term rental for 30 continuous months, or after three or more separate violations of local law. Grandfather status belongs to the current owner’s situation, not to the dirt.

Put those two together and a listing that says “turnkey Airbnb, five-star reviews, $80,000 in bookings” on an RS-zoned street is selling you a history, not a right. The furniture conveys. The permit and the protection do not. Franklin works the same way: when its ordinance took effect in December 2019, existing permitted rentals were grandfathered, and that status is lost when the property sells. My advice is to underwrite any rental listing as a long-term rental first. If the numbers only work as an Airbnb, confirm in writing during your inspection period that you can get a permit of your own before you are past the point of walking away.

Williamson County Short Term Rental Rules, City by City

Williamson County does not issue short-term rental permits countywide. Each city sets its own rules, and the county controls the unincorporated areas through its zoning. The short version: this is owner-occupant country, and the rules reflect that. If you are browsing Williamson County homes for sale with a vacation rental plan, read this section first.

Franklin

Franklin’s ordinance, adopted in December 2019, requires new short-term vacation rentals in residential areas to be owner-occupied, meaning the homeowner lives at the property, and allows only one short-term rental per lot. Permits are issued annually through the city, and each rental also needs a city business tax registration. Commercial districts are treated differently from residential ones. Rentals that were permitted before the ordinance were grandfathered, but that status ends when the property is sold. If you are looking at Franklin homes for sale, plan on a rental suite you live next to, not a second house you rent out.

Brentwood

Brentwood is the strictest city in the area. Its code makes it unlawful to offer, advertise or rent any part of a dwelling for 30 consecutive days or fewer, and the rule covers every dwelling in the city, accessory dwelling units included. It was updated by Ordinance 1079 in December 2024, and the city’s older rule for single-family districts required rentals of at least three months. Because Brentwood’s limit predates 2014, it falls under a specific exception in the state law, so the usual grandfather protection does not help here either. Buyers shopping Brentwood homes for sale should treat short-term rental income as zero.

Unincorporated Williamson County and Leiper’s Fork

In January 2013, the county’s rewritten zoning ordinance made vacation rental homes a permitted use in the Leiper’s Fork Village zoning district, and not elsewhere in the unincorporated county. Rentals that were already operating before the change were allowed to continue as nonconforming uses. That is why the village and its surroundings have the county’s best-known concentration of legal vacation rentals, and why a farmhouse five miles away on a different zoning district may not qualify at all. The rule is more than a decade old, so confirm the current text with county Planning for the specific parcel before you buy Leiper’s Fork property on the strength of it.

Spring Hill, Thompson’s Station and Nolensville

The fast-growing southern towns have been writing their own rules. Thompson’s Station adopted short-term rental regulations in 2023 through Ordinance 2023-11, covering rental periods of less than 30 consecutive days, and runs its own permit application. Spring Hill has minimum standards for short-term rentals in its city code. Nolensville buyers should confirm the current position with the town directly. In all three, the bigger constraint is usually the HOA, because most homes sit in master-planned subdivisions with their own leasing rules.

HOAs Can Say No Even When the City Says Yes

The state law that limits what cities can do does not touch private agreements. HOA declarations, condo bylaws and neighborhood covenants can restrict or ban short-term rentals regardless of what the zoning allows, and Metro’s own guidance says plainly that HOA rules can be more restrictive than Metro’s. In Williamson County, where most homes sit inside master-planned communities, the declaration is often the stricter of the two.

The case every Tennessee buyer should know is Pandharipande v. FSD Corp., decided by the Tennessee Supreme Court in October 2023. A homeowner was renting his house for stays of two to 28 days in a subdivision whose original covenants required the lots be used for “residential and no other purposes.” The Court held that language was ambiguous and did not bar his short-term rentals. But the HOA had later amended the covenants to require a 30-day minimum lease, and the Court held the amendment did prohibit them. The lesson is not that the old wording protects you. It is that an HOA can amend its rules after you buy, and the rules at closing are not guaranteed to be the rules forever.

So in due diligence, read the full declaration and every recorded amendment, the rules and regulations, and the resale certificate, and look specifically for minimum lease terms, rental caps and any pending amendment. Those documents belong on the same checklist as the inspection and the flood map, which is why they appear in my Middle Tennessee due diligence guide.

Taxes, Insurance and the Math Before You Buy

Every Nashville booking carries three layers of tax. Metro’s hotel occupancy tax is 7% plus $2.50 per night, raised from 6% on July 1, 2023 to help repay the bonds for the new Titans stadium. State and local sales tax adds 9.75% in Davidson County, where the local rate rose to 2.75% when the transit half-cent took effect on February 1, 2025. Some short-term rental guides still quote the older 9.25% figure. Together that is roughly 16.75% of the room rate plus $2.50 a night, on the guest’s bill. Booking platforms collect and remit some of these taxes, but the permit holder stays responsible, and Metro requires proof of hotel occupancy tax payment at each annual renewal. In Williamson County, the county Business Tax Department handles hotel and motel tax for short-term rentals, and cities can add their own.

Insurance is the line that catches people. A standard homeowners policy generally is not written for a business use, so a rental needs a policy that actually covers guests, and Nashville’s non-owner-occupied permit requires at least $1,000,000 of liability coverage. Price that before you write an offer, not after.

The $313 permit is the smallest number in the model. The real costs are cleaning and turnover, platform fees, furnishing, vacancy, and regulatory risk that you cannot insure away. Companion bills in the 2026 legislative session, SB 104 and HB 109, would further limit what cities can do to regulate short-term rentals, but HB 109’s last hearing was in the House Development Committee on March 18, 2026, with no floor vote. I would not buy a house on the promise of a bill. If you want the fuller picture of the city itself, my honest pros and cons of living in Nashville covers the tax and growth backdrop.

Where a Short-Term Rental Actually Makes Sense in Middle Tennessee

After all of that, there are still good plays, and they tend to fall into three groups. The first is the owner-occupant in Nashville who lives in the main house and rents a garage apartment, a basement suite or a backyard cottage. The rules are friendly to that almost everywhere, as long as an SP, PUD or HOA does not say otherwise, and it can carry a meaningful share of a mortgage. The second is the investor who buys a condo or townhome in an eligible district with governing documents that allow short-term rentals. That is a narrower market than most people expect, and my guide to downtown Nashville condos covers how those buildings differ. The third is Leiper’s Fork, where the county’s zoning actually contemplates vacation rentals.

For most of Williamson County, the better answer is not a short-term rental at all. Furnished rentals of a month or more serve traveling nurses, corporate relocations and families between homes, and they sit outside Nashville’s short-term rental permit, which covers stays of 30 days or fewer. Brentwood’s older single-family language used a three-month minimum, so confirm the current definition with each city before you plan around it. If you are weighing Nashville homes for sale or a Williamson County property for rental income, I will pull the zoning, the permit history and the HOA documents before you write an offer. Call or text Stephen Strickhausen at 615.480.5770, or email SStrickhausen@gmail.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Airbnb legal in Nashville?

Yes, with a permit. Nashville requires a Short Term Rental Property permit from the Metro Codes Department before a home is listed. Owner-occupied permits are allowed in nearly every zoning district for owners who live at the property. New non-owner-occupied permits are limited to mixed-use, office, commercial and downtown districts. Every listing must display the permit number, stays must be at least 24 hours and no longer than 30 consecutive days, and the permit costs $313 a year.

Can I get a non-owner-occupied short term rental permit in Nashville?

Only if the property is in an eligible district such as MUN, MUL, MUG, MUI, OG, OR, ORI, CN, CL, CS, CA, CF or the DTC downtown districts. New non-owner-occupied permits are not issued in AR2A, R, RS or RM zoning, which covers most single-family neighborhoods. A new permit also cannot be within 100 feet of a religious institution, school, park or licensed daycare, and the operator needs at least $1,000,000 of liability insurance. The HOA or condo documents must also allow it.

Are short term rentals allowed in Franklin and Brentwood, TN?

Franklin has required new short-term vacation rentals in residential areas to be owner-occupied since December 2019, with one rental per lot and an annual city permit. Brentwood prohibits renting any dwelling for 30 consecutive days or fewer, accessory dwelling units included. In unincorporated Williamson County, vacation rental homes have been a permitted use only in the Leiper’s Fork Village zoning district since 2013.

Does a short term rental permit transfer when you buy a house in Tennessee?

No. A Nashville permit cannot be transferred or assigned, and a change of ownership, including moving the property into a trust or LLC, cancels it. Tennessee’s Short-Term Rental Unit Act protects rentals that operated before a local rule was enacted, but that protection ends when the property is sold or transferred. The buyer applies fresh under the current rules, so confirm you can get your own permit during the inspection period.

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