Southern Shores, NC short-term rental limits

What Southern Shores asks of you

• Transient occupancy means overnight stays of less than 30 days by people who have a home they intend to return to.^[5]

• Unrelated people living together count as a family of five at most. A vacation rental under the North Carolina Vacation Rental Act is exempt from that limit.^[5]

• A home with septic capacity for up to eight people needs three parking spaces. Each two persons of capacity from nine to 12 adds one space, then every person beyond 12 adds another.^[7]

• The county health department sets the septic capacity used in that count.^[7]

• Parking is prohibited on every road and street in the town's residential districts.^[8]

• A vacation rental of up to four bedrooms keeps at least three trash receptacles plus two for recycling. From five bedrooms up, the minimum becomes five trash receptacles with three for recycling.^[9]

• In each rental unit, the owner displays a notice of the town's ban on swimming in dangerous ocean conditions.^[10]

• The zoning chapter is enforced by civil penalties capped at $500 per violation. A violation that lasts several days is charged for each one.^[11]

What North Carolina asks wherever you host

These rules apply at this address whatever the city decides.

• Under G.S. 160D-1207(c), no North Carolina city can make registration a condition of renting your property. Demanding a housing-code permit before you rent is barred as well. The Court of Appeals applied that rule in Schroeder v. City of Wilmington.^[1]

• Zoning is what remains. In that case the court let a city keep whole-house lodging inside named districts. Parking rules survived too, as did limits on large events. So did insurance conditions and posted safety information.^[1]

• Renting out a private residence or cottage owes North Carolina's 4.75% sales tax. Local and transit rates come on top. So does any occupancy tax levied by the city or county. Sales tax stops once a single guest has stayed ninety days in a row.^[3]