Key Takeaways

  • Charleston’s Planning Commission deferred an eight-guest occupancy cap after owner pushback
  • Change would replace a four-adult rule with fire marshal bedroom-based limits
  • Only 29 of 600 licensed rentals exceed eight guests currently

Only 29 of Charleston’s roughly 600 licensed short-term rentals currently host more than eight guests, but that small number was enough to fill a public hearing room and stall a rule change years in the making, echoing fights playing out from Georgia to Utah as cities rewrite their STR playbooks.

The city’s Planning Commission had advanced a package of changes meant to replace Charleston’s current occupancy standard, which caps rentals at four unrelated adults, according to a Live5News report.

In its place, the Charleston Fire Marshal would set occupancy by bedroom size using the International Property Maintenance Code.

That new formula would carry a hard ceiling of eight guests no matter how large the home. “This eight-person cap in many instances will reduce the occupancy upwards of 25% or more, which is kind of devastating if you own a small business to lose that much of it,” according to Stephen Ramos, an architect and real estate development consultant who owns a short-term rental in the city.

The commission ultimately deferred the proposal rather than send it to City Council, following a wave of pushback from owners in the Cannonborough-Elliotborough neighborhood.

It would have marked the first major rewrite of Charleston’s short-term rental ordinance since 2018, a rulebook city officials say has grown hard to enforce given how difficult it is to verify which guests count as family.

Deferral leaves eight-guest cap in limbo

The plan must return to the Planning Commission before it can even reach City Council for its two required readings.

The episode also lands as coastal demand keeps climbing, with search interest in coastal markets up sharply this year, and as other South Carolina jurisdictions tighten enforcement using tools similar to those property managers already use to track permit status.

Related: Hundreds of short-term rentals operate without permits in South Carolina city

No new hearing date has been set. Roughly two dozen large-capacity rentals, including listings tracked through short-term rental data platforms, remain in a holding pattern until the commission revisits the amendment.

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