What is going on with STRs in Greensboro?

We've been hosts on Airbnb since 2016 and love welcoming guests from all over the world to our five West Wendover homes. We also use these homes to teach job and life skills to high school students in Guilford County Schools' Occupation Course of Study. After facing HOA limitations in our previous homes, we purchased these older, neglected homes without HOA restrictions to rehab and offer as short-term rentals. However, while we were working on rehabbing these homes, the city of Greensboro began redefining some of the key vocabulary related to rentals.

The city now categorizes short-term rentals as Tourist Homes and has specific regulations on where they can be located and how long guests can stay. Unfortunately, these changes made our freshly rehabbed and rented West Wendover homes non-compliant, requiring us to rezone each of the homes. We had to have Stutts Surveying do a $1200 survey of all four parcels, mail out letters to anyone living within 750 feet of our homes, and submit rezoning applications for each of the homes. Fortunately, the city allowed us to submit all four rezoning applications under one $1200 fee, and we were successful in rezoning the homes to multifamily. We then had to submit variance request applications for each of the homes to allow operation as short-term rentals of less than 30 days. Again, we were allowed to submit all four applications for variance under another $1200 application fee, but these variance requests are still pending while the city works out their definitions.

We've attended several city meetings related to short-term rentals in Greensboro, and while we agree that some short-term rental operators can be neglectful and careless with their homes and guests, we don't agree that these regulations should apply only to short-term rentals. Absentee landlords and low-performing property managers can be just as problematic for neighborhoods. We've seen blighted homes with tenants who have no ability to navigate the bureaucratic labyrinth created to grant them decent homes to live in, creating a glut of slumlords who remain unaccountable for providing decent homes. As a teacher, I've had many kids sit in my class who are without heat, hot water, or reliably functioning appliances.

We're unsure about the legal ground that cities are plowing through by applying rental restrictions based on the duration of a tenancy. In our opinion, and based on cases in other parts of the US, we would hazard a guess that the ground is feeling a bit more shaky. For example, in 2019, the Arizona Supreme Court struck down a Phoenix law that prohibited property owners from renting out their homes for less than 30 days, while in 2018, a federal court struck down an ordinance in Miami Beach, Florida, that prohibited short-term rentals in most residential areas.

These cases, and others like them, have limited the ability of cities to impose restrictions on short-term rentals and have led to legal uncertainty in some jurisdictions. However, the law in this area is still evolving, and the scope of cities' authority to regulate short-term rentals remains a complex and frequently litigated issue.

While we wait for Greensboro to figure out who they want to regulate, we'll continue to operate our rentals in a way that's respectful to our neighbors and neighborhood. We're always happy to welcome guests to our curated homes and provide them with a comfortable and enjoyable stay in Greensboro.

FAQs About Proposed Regulations for Short Term Rentals

City of Greensboro Short-Term Rental Proposed Regulations

Register for the May 2nd, 5:30pm meeting

The proposed Short Term Rentals Ordinance includes the following changes:

• Require zoning permit to be posted on the interior of the property and on any advertisements so renters know unit is meeting City requirements.

• Require a new zoning permit if property owner or local operator changes and must be done within 30 days of the change.

• Allow revocation of the permit if owner/operator is charged with a criminal offense on the premises of the Short Term Rental or if there are two or more verified violations of any City ordinance on the premises within a 365-day period.

• Added language to note Short Term Rentals must comply with all applicable state and local laws and permit can be revoked if not in compliance.

• Set a cap on the number of dwellings in a multi-family building that are allowed to be Short Term Rentals to either 1 unit or 25 percent of the total units in the building, whichever is greater. 

• Added language that Short Term Rentals have the same parking rights and are subject to any relevant community standards that are normally applied to the dwelling unit.

• Clarified that the exit from any bedroom must include least one clearly defined “exterior” exit.

• Updated the definition of what consists of “available bedrooms” for rent.

• Removed the minimum two-night stay for Whole House Rentals.

The same people who are giving traditional landlords a pass on ALL of this are going to be the same people “regulating” short-term rentals? How long before the price for a permit increases and by how much? What contractor will we be paying to police short-term rentals and what incentives are being given? Why not require traditional landlords to meet these same standards?

Short-term rental operators are turning over a sizeable stack of cash to local city, state agencies as well as occupancy taxes. Are these regulations targeting short term rental operators going to improve living conditions in neighborhoods? Why limit these regulations to just short term rentals? If these regulations are truely intended to improve liiving conditions in neighborhoods, why not apply them to all rentals?