www.lodgecompliance.com/articles/south-carolina-greenville-county-moves-toward-first-ever-str-framework

Greenville County, South Carolina is moving toward its first regulatory framework for short-term rentals, with a draft ordinance that would require Airbnb and Vrbo hosts operating in unincorporated areas of the county to register with local government. The proposal is not yet finalized. The county's short-term rental ad hoc committee reviewed a working draft during its August 17, 2026 meeting and voted to hold it in committee while outstanding language questions are resolved.

The county estimates there are approximately 1,200 short-term rentals operating in its unincorporated areas, and according to VisitGreenvilleSC, the county is likely missing out on roughly $900,000 annually in local accommodations tax revenue due to the absence of any tracking or registration system. That gap is a central driver of the committee's work.

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What the draft ordinance would require

Under the current draft, all STRs in unincorporated Greenville County would be required to register with the county and provide a range of documentation, including owner information, operator information if the property is managed by someone other than the owner, property details and rental type (room versus entire dwelling), and proof of accommodations tax registration with both the South Carolina Department of Revenue and Greenville County.

The registration requirement is the ordinance's primary mechanism. It would give the county a formal record of which properties are operating as short-term rentals, something it currently has no system to track. The draft designates the county zoning administrator as the official responsible for overseeing the registration process.

Unresolved issues are holding the draft in committee

The committee did not advance the ordinance to full council because several substantive questions remain. One concern is whether the zoning administrator's office has sufficient staff capacity to administer the registration process as currently written. That is a practical implementation question, not a policy disagreement, but it still needs to be resolved before the ordinance can move forward.

A more structural problem also surfaced. The draft requires each STR registration to include proof of registration under the county's existing business registration ordinance. During deliberations, the county's legal team flagged that ordinance as problematic, describing it as containing conflicting and confusing language. The committee is now weighing whether council should pursue parallel updates to the business registration ordinance alongside the STR framework.

The announcement did not specify a timeline for when revised language would be presented to the committee, or when a vote before the full county council might occur.

A slow-moving process that started in February

The ad hoc committee has been working since its first meeting in February 2026, researching how other counties regulate STRs and collecting input from property owners and hosting platforms. The stated goal from the outset has been to produce an ordinance that creates a regulatory and enforcement framework for STRs in the county.

Six months of work have produced a working draft, but not a finished product. That pace reflects how genuinely complicated it is to build a first-ever framework from scratch, particularly when existing county ordinances create complications rather than a clean foundation to build on.

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The broader pattern: counties catching up to cities

Greenville County's situation is familiar across the country. Many unincorporated areas have watched neighboring cities adopt STR rules while remaining unregulated themselves, often becoming de facto destinations for hosts seeking to avoid municipal restrictions. That dynamic creates tax leakage and compliance gaps that counties are increasingly motivated to close.

In states like Tennessee and Colorado, county-level STR registration efforts have similarly moved slowly, often stalled by questions about enforcement capacity and conflicts with pre-existing licensing or zoning frameworks. South Carolina does not currently have a state preemption law limiting how municipalities and counties can regulate short-term rentals, giving Greenville County broad authority to proceed, provided it gets the legal language right.

What hosts operating in unincorporated Greenville County should know now

No ordinance is in effect yet, and there is no confirmed vote date. But the direction is clear: Greenville County intends to regulate short-term rentals, and registration will be central to whatever framework ultimately passes.

Hosts operating in unincorporated areas of the county on Airbnb, Vrbo, or other platforms should expect a registration requirement to arrive, likely with an accommodations tax compliance component tied to it. Ensuring that state Department of Revenue accommodations tax registration is current is a sensible step regardless of when the ordinance takes effect, since proof of that registration appears to be a required element of the pending framework.

Lodge Compliance tracks short-term rental regulations, licensing, permitting, zoning, and tax requirements across thousands of jurisdictions, helping hosts stay informed as local rules evolve.

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