New STR Restrictions Coming for the Asheville Area

[Mitch Davidson]

As you may be aware, the City of Asheville (about 2/3 of Asheville is in city limits; the rest is under county jurisdiction) has had strict STR regulations in place since 2016. Basically, you can't STR an entire home here, or even an ADU, and can only STR out a portion of a home that you reside in. Recently, Woodfin, which is just North of Asheville, under the leadership of some of the people that formerly lead Asheville's STR initiatives, adopted similar restrictions.

Last month, Buncombe County, which Asheville sits in the middle of, published plans to disallow STR's throughout the rest of the County. Property owners can apply for an STR permit now, before the effective date of the new plan, and can operate thereafter (i.e., be grandfathered). Their permit will not be transferable when they sell though, according to the draft plan. And commercial districts will be excluded from the restrictions, as will parcels in open use zoning (with a special use permit). The County is holding what will be their second public meeting on the topic this Monday, from 5:30PM until 7:30PM at AB Tech (and online).

Here is a link to the meeting: https://www.buncombecounty.org/countycenter/news-detail.aspx... 

And here is a link to the plan the County presented in the first meeting, last month: https://engage.buncombecounty.org/DownloadFile/ImportFile_00...

[Dito Calderon]

Here to update the thread.  The proposed timeline (by the planning committee, not the commissioners who would vote it into effect) was shared at the end of the March 4th discussion.  Here are the dates proposed.  

March 18th public comment (already passed)

April 1 final working session to finalize the proposed language

April 22nd public hearing where they will vote on the proposal

TBD dates - sent to commissioners for review and public hearing to vote on the proposal. 

This cannot get passed through until the commissioners review and choose to vote on the bill.  The entire timeline is hazy since those dates have not come into focus yet.  

A majority of the sentiment from the listening session on the 18th was in favor of STRs and there were a lot of people who shared personal stories of their rentals or their business which support their life, family, and future retirement of inheritance for their families. 

Hope that helps anyone else if you're following along or interested in these discussions.