A new STR ordinance landed at Council. What BL2024-478 would change.
An ordinance was introduced at Metro Council today. BL2024-478 would change how owner-occupied short-term rental permits work in Davidson County.
Before anything else: this is a proposal. It has been introduced, not passed. It will go through readings and a public hearing, and it may be amended, deferred or withdrawn along the way. Anyone telling you today what the rules will be is guessing.
With that said, here is what it contains and how I would prepare.
The three provisions that matter
Owner-occupied permits limited to natural persons. As proposed, an owner-occupied permit could be held by a person, not by an LLC or other entity. If your owner-occupied property is titled to an entity — which a lot of people were advised to do for liability reasons — this is the provision to read carefully.
Four documents to prove residency. Rather than a lighter affidavit-style showing, the proposal would require multiple forms of documentation that the owner actually lives at the property. Driver's license, voter registration, utility bills, tax filings — that category of thing.
Revocation on a change of ownership. The permit would not survive a sale. The buyer would need to establish their own eligibility rather than inheriting the seller's permit.
What each of those actually does
The natural-persons provision is aimed at a real pattern: owner-occupied permits held by entities in situations where the "owner occupancy" is thin. If it passes, some legitimate owners with entity-titled homes will have paperwork to redo, and it is worth having a conversation with your attorney and your insurance agent about the tradeoff between the permit and whatever the entity was protecting you from. I am not giving you legal advice and you should not take any from a blog.
The documentation requirement is the one that will cause the most friction in practice, because it moves the burden of proof onto the owner at renewal. Four documents is not hard if you have them organized. It is genuinely difficult if you moved recently, if your mail goes to a different address, or if the utilities are in a spouse's name.
The revocation-on-sale provision matters most to anyone thinking about an exit. A permit that transfers is part of the sale value. A permit that dies at closing is not.
What this does not touch
As introduced, this is about owner-occupied permits. It does not appear to change the existing position on non-owner-occupied permits in residential zones, where Metro has not issued new ones since 2022 — a door that has stayed shut while the county's listing count kept climbing.
If you hold one of those, your situation is unchanged by this bill as written — which is a reminder, not a reassurance. Your permit is still a renewable, losable asset in a market where you cannot get a replacement.
What to do between now and the hearing
Get your residency documentation together now if you are an owner-occupied permit holder. Driver's license at the property address. Voter registration at the property address. Utility bills in your name at the property address. Whatever your tax filings say. Do this whether or not the bill passes, because it costs you an afternoon and it makes every future renewal trivial.
Check the title on the property against the name on the permit. If they do not match, or if the property is held by an entity, find that out now rather than at renewal.
Find your council member and read your district's agenda. This bill will have a public hearing, and Council has been taking short-term rental items one at a time all year. Owners who show up and speak have more effect on local legislation than any other form of participation, because so few people do it.
Do not sell in a panic. Introduced bills are not law and Nashville has a long history of short-term rental proposals that changed substantially between introduction and vote, or never got there.
Our side of it
Permitting is included with management at Boost. That means we hold the permit details for every home we manage, we track the renewal dates, and we assemble the filings — owners pay Metro's fees, we do the running. When requirements change, that job gets bigger, which is exactly the argument for it being somebody's job rather than nobody's.
We will be following this one through its readings and telling our owners what changes and when, in plain language, rather than after the fact.
If you hold an owner-occupied permit and you are not sure your documentation would stand up to a stricter renewal, that is worth fixing now. Get started here and I will tell you where your home stands.