—Short-term rental rules · Charleston
Charleston regulates short-term rentals tightly, particularly in its historic core. Here is the local context and a house-rules angle tuned to the market.
Last reviewed against current municipal sources on 2026-05-20.
01The Charleston context
Charleston has a strict short-term rental framework, with permitting, occupancy caps, and rules that are especially tight in the historic downtown peninsula. Eligibility depends heavily on the property’s location and whether it is owner-occupied.
Charleston’s appeal is its historic character, and the city protects that — both through preservation rules and through short-term rental limits meant to keep residential neighborhoods residential.
Local rules change — confirm current requirements with your city before you list. This page is a market-context summary and a house-rules starting point, not a legal source or a substitute for Charleston's own South Carolina guidance.
02The house-rules angle
A Charleston host should be precise about occupancy caps, noise in tightly-packed historic streets, and care for an older property. A signed house-rules block keeps the guest count honest and gives you a record that the guest agreed to the limits.
Where occupancy is capped by rule, the guest count is the number most likely to be tested — and the hardest to argue after the fact. A guest who signed the cap before arrival cannot honestly claim they did not know it. Adapt the highlights below to your property and confirm the current cap with the city.
These are starting points to adapt — not legal advice, and not specific to any one South Carolina ordinance. Edit the wording and any amounts to your property and what your platform and city allow.
03Put the rules on the file
A house-rules block in your listing is disclosure — it proves the rule existed. It does not prove the guest who booked your Charleston place ever saw that specific rule or agreed to it. What sits in the file as evidence after an incident, and what shows good-faith compliance in a regulated market, is acknowledgment: the guest confirming each rule and each fee individually, with a timestamp, before check-in.
PreArrive turns the tuned rules above into a packet the guest signs in about ninety seconds. They tap each rule and each fee to acknowledge it, draw a signature, and you get a PDF certificate — disclosure and acknowledgment in one file, with a two-event audit trail and a content hash. It is evidence, not a verdict: it does not litigate a dispute or decide a code question for you, but it puts a traceable record behind every stay.
Build a packet from these rules once, send it on every reservation. Free covers one property. No credit card.
04Verify with the source
This page is a plainspoken summary. The municipal sources below are where the actual rules live. If something here disagrees with the source, the source is right — let us know and we'll re-review.
Page reviewed 2026-05-20.
05Other regulated markets
The same disclosure-versus-acknowledgment gap shows up across every active STR market. Each city below has a plain-language local summary and a house-rules angle tuned to that market.
Want all of them in one place? See PreArrive for regulated-market hosts.
06Keep reading