Starting Short Term Rental

[Johnathan Osborne]

I am interested in starting a short term vacation rental business using airbnb and would like some advice. I have purchased 10 acres just outside of Asheville NC and we are turning it into a homestead type place. We live on the land full-time. The land was part of a larger farm and was abandoned for about 15 years prior to us obtaining it. We have lots of work yet to do clearing/landscaping to get it back to beautiful. We currently have two barns (needing some rehab), chickens, and a garden. We would like to generate some income from the place and think short term rentals would be a viable option. My hesitation are start up cost. I do not want to rent space in my house so we are considering building a tiny house/tree house or possibly some type of glamping tents. Since we are not 100% sure we will enjoy this type of business we don't want to invest crazy amounts of money and then figure out this is not the route for us(although we would probably have a pretty cool guest house). I do realize you have to take some risk and the more unique the place is the more successful it will be. Some rentals in this area seem to be successful with minimal amenities i.e. composting toilets, solar panels, no running water bring your own cooler type of place. Has anyone out there started from ground up...please give advice?

Thanks!

[Johnathan Osborne]

What I've found out from the county is that a property(which mine is)must be classified within an open USE zoning district and their definition of a short term rental is posted below.

The ordinance defines a short term rental as follows:

Vacation rental means no more than two single family homes with a combined total of no more than 9,000 square feet gross floor area which are rented for two (2) days or more to tourists, vacationers, or similar transients.