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The Buncombe County Planning Board has submitted a proposal to the County Commissioners to allow homes in the county to become vacation rentals. Until now short term rental has been illegal but realtors and property managers feel this would be good for business. The Commissioners will vote on it March 1st.
I cannot decide if this is good, bad or indifferent. It would certainly help those in financial difficulty who might have to go into foreclosure. On the other hand it could hurt those trying to sell a home next to a rental. I cannot help but think it would bring prices down some more.
I wonder how the B&B association feels about this. It's my understanding that they put a cap on the number of B&B's allowed in Asheville so as not to flood the market
This proposal to allow homeowners to rent their properties for less than a minimal of a month at a time is NOT a good thing. Do you want to live next door???
You can rent a house at the beach, or on a lake for a week, why not Asheville? The house does belong to someone else, not you. You have no say as to who can buy it, or rent it long term, so how do you see it as any of your business if the owner wants to rent it short term?
Location: Right there, next time out, look I could be right next ;or in front of you
136 posts, read 287,391 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Asheville Native
You can rent a house at the beach, or on a lake for a week, why not Asheville? The house does belong to someone else, not you. You have no say as to who can buy it, or rent it long term, so how do you see it as any of your business if the owner wants to rent it short term?
I agree .// it is no ones bussiness // short or long turm
BUT! Keep an eye on the political direction that takes in March. they will ammend any present law. so they get a cut
My bet will be that the city will want to tax the rent per day per mo per home rented another tax engine
They do with the hotels , motels, and the B+B's, camp grounds
Good news for the rental agents and Carpetbaggers
I don't have an arm wrestle in this discussion, but a couple of thoughts:
Most HOAs/COAs, (whether one likes HOAs or not), generally have a month rental minimum,
and a rental 'process' to go through: that keeps weekend/week rentals for college kids,
et al, from hanging out for a week. That process generally also includes a fee for the
renter, a credit check & landlord rental history, etc., for the renter.
Not saying all that is 'good', but it does keep the riff raff out of the rental picture, in those HOAs.
And, Ody is right on in terms of sniffing out some more tax revs; in Haywood County, any rental home/condo/apt is taxed a few points on the rental situ.
The position that it's one domicile, so one should be able to rent it by the day or week is a little open ended, as I suspect most people would not wish for all the houses on their block, except theirs, to be weekend/weekly rental properties. A week long vacation joint at 'the beach' is considerably different than a suburban home rented by the week, imo.
GL, mD
I have an idea. Do you think it would go over well if I rented-out a house by the hour? Maybe all I'd have to do is rent-out a room by the hour.
I guess the renters could call it a "vacation rental." Vacations come in many different packages and time frames and vacationers engage in many different vacation activities.
I doubt that the HOA rental clauses would have any standing to complain. They talk about time frames to rent a house, not a room. Whatcha' think?
If this passes on March 1st, it could potentially change neighborhoods like Montford which are located close to town. As someone seriously considering a permanent move to Asheville, if this passes it will give me definite pause about where to live in Asheville and in general, even moving to Asheville. Adding it to my plus/minus list in the minus column. I don't want to live next to a house where people just continually come and go and have no roots in the neighborhood. It can change the entire neighborhood. I like to know my neighbors. And I think most of you do too. It's the permanent residents that give shape and energy to neighborhoods and cities/towns not the tourists. We live in times where local, state and federal governments are looking for ways to create revenue, this proposal is not for the good of the people. Yes, I agree that you should be able to own what you want and do what you want with that property. But there still needs to be rules and regulations and limitations. I am not an HOA-type person but I do now live in South Florida where HOAs often require a minimal of three months rental and that you can only rent once per year plus the renter is often interviewed and a background check is required. Currently, in Asheville someone can rent their cottage or house for the minimal of a month. In fact, I have stayed, on more than one occasion, in a cottage in Asheville with these rules. There are bed n breakfasts and hotels throughout Asheville. Why do we need to amend this rule any further? Homeowners, really think this one through before voting day.
A long time ago, HOAs and CCRs were not even on the radar. They didn't exist in the neighborhood where I grew up and they didn't exist in any neighborhoods where my friends grew up. They were not needed and I never heard of them until many years later, so there wasn't an HOA-type dog in the fight about rental conditions. I'm sure that's the situation for lots of people who were alive well before Nixon was the President.
I won't mention the area, just because it really doesn't matter, but I ultimately ended up with the house where I was raised. It was in a nice, decent middle class community that only got nicer with each passing year.
Nearby was a regionally famous horse racetrack. As a kid, I was happy to get summer jobs cleaning out horse stalls during racing season. I actually enjoyed the work and I had a great time working around the thoroughbreds.
Anyway, this racetrack still exists so, when I ended up with the house, I needed to do something with it. I didn't want to sell it, nor did I want to end up with long-term renters in it. I wanted to be able to come home and spend some time in the area where I was raised so, I rented it for short terms to people who came for the racing season.
The nice thing about the area was that rental homes were very popular in the summer, particularly during horse racing season. People would rent a house during the season for $2000/week in the late 70's. The season lasted for 6 weeks, so if the owner was lucky he would get someone for the entire time. If he wasn't lucky, he might get a couple of different renters in there for a week or so each. In any case, these seasonal rentals would make the owners anywhere from $4000 to $12000 dollars during June and early July. That was a lot of money in the late 70's!!!!!
The bottom line is that these people never caused my neighbors or I any problems and it had absolutely no affect on the neighborhood. The neighborhood that was originally just another tract neighborhood is today a highly sought after area where significant upgrades have been made to many houses. In spite of the current real estate situation, the prices are still grotesquely steep compared to what they used to be and what I personally opine that they're worth. I certainly wouldn't pay the current prices for any of the houses, but that my opinion.
This experience of mine tells me that it doesn't have to be a bad situation. In fact, it might even prove a benefit to the neighborhoods if it keeps the owners from walking away and turning the house into an abandoned, overgrown, vandalized foreclosures occupied by transient drug abusers or other undesirable elements.
In terms of the Asheville region, I remain on the fence about this change. I can see it working. It worked for me. Yet, I understand the other people's concerns.
What I'm sure about is that I wouldn't want another layer of taxation being applied to the owners, other than the existing taxes on the income. I didn't have any transient occupancy tax applied to me when I did my short term rentals and I think it would be difficult for the city/county to identify a house being rented for short terms.
That's my two cents on this subject. Others will have their own pennies. In the meantime, I'll go back to my previous suggestion that maybe a rent-by-the-hour charge would be the way to work around an HOA's problem with the program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . again, just kidding.
Last edited by garth; 02-20-2011 at 09:16 PM..
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another tax engine
Maybe all I'd have to do is rent-out a room by the hour. 
