Metro's STR Permit Application Moved Online. Here's the New Process.
As of March 11, Metro Codes runs the short-term rental permit application through its online ePermits process. One submission, online, with the sensitive documents emailed separately rather than uploaded.
This is a good change. It is also the kind of change that makes people think the hard part got easier. It did not. The hard part was never the form.
What the process looks like now
The Apply page lays out the steps. In practice:
You submit once, online, through ePermits. Documents that contain personal information — the residency proof for an owner-occupied application, the entity chain-of-ownership paperwork for a not-owner-occupied one — go to Codes by email rather than through the portal. You can then track status in ePermits by permit number, which is a genuine improvement over calling.
The application is valid for 90 calendar days from filing. If it is not completed in that window, it expires and you start over.
The fee is $313, and it is due when the application is approved, not when it is filed. Cash, check made out to the Metropolitan Government, or card with a surcharge. Metro never asks for a wire or a QR-code payment — they publish a scam notice about exactly that, and it exists because people have been taken.
What still trips people up
In my experience the online form is not where applications die. These are:
Residency documents on owner-occupied applications. The four-document requirement was one of the changes Council took up in 2024. Metro's current Apply page asks for four documents with your name and the property address on each — two from Group A and two from Group B — and the address has to match the recorded deed. Not the mailing address you use. The deed.
The entity chain on not-owner-occupied applications. If an LLC owns the property, you have to show the paper trail linking the applicant to the entity: articles of organization, operating agreement. Emailed, not uploaded.
Life-safety certification. Smoke alarms in every sleeping area, on every egress path, and on each story including the basement, meeting the 2018 IRC requirements for location and interconnection. Egress windows in sleeping rooms. Contrasting three-inch premises numbers on the building or mailbox. For a one- or two-family home, this gets certified by a Tennessee-licensed architect, engineer or home inspector, with every page stamped, sealed, signed, dated and carrying the license number. A missing seal on one page sends the whole thing back.
Zoning. This is the one that ends applications rather than delaying them. New not-owner-occupied permits are not available in residential districts — AR2A, R, RS and RM, which is why the standalone-house permit pool is a closed and slowly shrinking set. If you bought a house in a neighborhood expecting to run it as a non-owner-occupied rental, the online form will not save you.
The HOA statement. Required on every application, and an HOA prohibition beats a Metro approval every time.
How long does it take
Metro does not publish a service level. Third-party guides quote anywhere from 30 to 90 days, and the honest answer under the new online process is that nobody has enough data yet. Anyone quoting you a firm number in March 2026 is guessing.
What is inside your control is whether the application is complete on the first submission. That is the entire variable.
How the Boost permit desk works
We file on the owner's behalf using Metro's notarized Owner Authorization Form, which lets someone other than the owner apply or operate the permit for them. The permit is still issued to the owner — that does not change and cannot.
The workflow is: eligibility check first, always. Parcel and zoning lookup, Metro's permit eligibility viewer, and a straight answer about whether the property can hold a permit at all before anybody assembles a document package, because permit status is what decides whether there is a nightly rate. I would rather tell an owner no in twenty minutes than take a fee and discover it in week six.
Then the document package, the inspection coordination, the submission, and the follow-through to approval and payment. Boost can also be named the responsible party — the contact within 25 miles who answers 24/7 for the length of every stay.
Permitting is included with management; the owner pays Metro's fees. As a standalone service it is $1,000.
One caveat I always give
Metro updates these pages more often than owners expect, and there are a handful of edge cases the published guidance does not settle cleanly — detached ADUs in RS districts, duplexes divided under an HPR, the exact current minimum-distance rules near schools and parks. On anything in that territory, the right move is a direct question to Codes before you spend money.
If you are looking at a Nashville property and want to know whether it can hold a permit, send me the address. The eligibility answer is free and it is the single most useful thing I can tell a prospective buyer.