Asheville's homestay program opened 421 permit records in 2017. It opened 18 in all of 2025, and no month since the start of 2024 has reached six.
Published November 5, 2026 by Cavmir Research · All research
The City's permit page defines a homestay as one or two bedrooms rented for less than 30 days at a time, in a residentially zoned home where the host lives full-time. Renting a whole dwelling for less than a month is a short-term vacation rental, which the page says is permitted only in the resort zoning district. Those are outside this file, so nothing here counts Asheville's whole-home rentals.
The busiest single month was March 2017, with 61 records. Yearly counts then fell to 280 in 2018 and 242 in 2019, held between 112 and 183 from 2020 to 2022, and dropped to 79 in 2023 and 25 in 2024.
Counts this small swing easily. January through October 2026 brought 26 records against 16 in the same months of 2025, and 22 of the last 12 months' records came from new addresses, against 20 the year before.
| Month | Records opened | New addresses |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 2024 | 3 | 3 |
| Dec 2024 | 3 | 2 |
| Jan 2025 | 1 | 1 |
| Feb 2025 | 2 | 1 |
| Mar 2025 | 1 | 1 |
| Apr 2025 | 2 | 2 |
| May 2025 | 2 | 2 |
| Jun 2025 | 2 | 2 |
| Jul 2025 | 1 | 1 |
| Aug 2025 | 1 | 1 |
| Sep 2025 | 1 | 1 |
| Oct 2025 | 3 | 3 |
| Nov 2025 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2025 | 2 | 2 |
| Jan 2026 | 4 | 3 |
| Feb 2026 | 2 | 1 |
| Mar 2026 | 3 | 3 |
| Apr 2026 | 1 | 1 |
| May 2026 | 3 | 1 |
| Jun 2026 | 3 | 3 |
| Jul 2026 | 1 | 1 |
| Aug 2026 | 2 | 1 |
| Sep 2026 | 3 | 2 |
| Oct 2026 | 4 | 4 |
326 records, 19% of the file, read Revoked, and 365 read Expired. Most of those were opened in 2016 to 2019: of the 421 records opened in 2017, 138 are revoked and 134 expired. 98 applications read Denied.
900 records read Issued, Renewed or In Compliance, the statuses that suggest a working homestay. The status date tells a more careful story. No Renewed row has a status date after 2023, and 81 of the 900 carry a date of 2024 or later. A permit is renewed annually under the City's ordinance, so many of these may be stale, and 900 is better treated as a ceiling than a count of operating homestays. The City could settle this.
| Year | Records opened | Issued, renewed or in compliance | Expired | Revoked | Denied | Pending or in review |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 21 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
| 2016 | 156 | 59 | 26 | 65 | 6 | 0 |
| 2017 | 421 | 134 | 134 | 138 | 12 | 3 |
| 2018 | 280 | 97 | 106 | 52 | 25 | 0 |
| 2019 | 242 | 125 | 74 | 28 | 13 | 2 |
| 2020 | 112 | 69 | 14 | 20 | 9 | 0 |
| 2021 | 183 | 155 | 2 | 13 | 11 | 2 |
| 2022 | 150 | 128 | 1 | 4 | 16 | 1 |
| 2023 | 79 | 71 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| 2024 | 25 | 19 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
| 2025 | 18 | 14 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| 2026 | 26 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
2026 includes records opened through October 23. Status is what the City's file shows today.
The City's East West Asheville boundary holds the most records, 202, ahead of Montford at 154 and Oakley at 92. By ZIP, 28806 has 670 and 28801 has 433, which together are 64% of the file. 272 records fall outside any neighborhood organization boundary, so the ZIP table is the complete one.
Good standing means a status of Issued, Renewed or In Compliance. Areas are the City's Neighborhood Organization boundaries.
| Neighborhood | Records, all years | Addresses | In good standing | New, Nov 2025 to Oct 2026 | New, Nov 2024 to Oct 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| East West Asheville | 202 | 174 | 115 | 0 | 4 |
| Montford | 154 | 125 | 82 | 2 | 3 |
| Oakley | 92 | 80 | 51 | 3 | 1 |
| Haw Creek | 56 | 56 | 43 | 2 | 0 |
| Kenilworth | 82 | 73 | 41 | 1 | 3 |
| Rhododendron Creek and Horney Heights | 59 | 54 | 29 | 1 | 0 |
| Five Points | 53 | 46 | 26 | 0 | 1 |
| Grove Park/Sunset | 42 | 38 | 26 | 1 | 0 |
| Beaverdam Valley | 43 | 36 | 23 | 0 | 0 |
| West Asheville Estates | 41 | 35 | 23 | 0 | 0 |
| South French Broad | 34 | 31 | 22 | 0 | 0 |
| Shiloh | 45 | 41 | 21 | 1 | 1 |
| Falconhurst | 35 | 31 | 19 | 0 | 0 |
| East End Valley Street | 39 | 34 | 18 | 0 | 0 |
| Emma | 35 | 30 | 18 | 1 | 1 |
| WECAN | 37 | 28 | 17 | 0 | 1 |
| ZIP | Records, all years | Addresses | In good standing | New, latest 12 months | New, prior 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28806 | 670 | 577 | 357 | 7 | 6 |
| 28801 | 433 | 362 | 217 | 3 | 6 |
| 28803 | 232 | 205 | 123 | 6 | 4 |
| 28805 | 176 | 161 | 99 | 3 | 2 |
| 28804 | 182 | 157 | 94 | 3 | 2 |
| 28715 | 15 | 12 | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| All other areas | 4 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Homestay Permits View sits on the City's GIS server, and its catalog entry carries the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License. Our November 5, 2026 read took record ID, date opened, status, status date, address, parcel and map position. Every one of the 1,713 records has a date opened, so the month table is complete.
Business names and comments in the file were left unread. Address text, standardized, identifies a new address, and 214 addresses carry two or more records. ZIP codes are read from the address, with 1 blank. Neighborhoods come from placing each record's map position in the City's Neighborhood Organizations boundaries, which do not cover the whole city.
The City's server agreed with our tables on 26 of 26 direct queries: total, every status, every year and March 2017.
These hold counts, never addresses. You may republish them under CC BY 4.0 with credit to Cavmir.
Asheville Homestay Permits, Cavmir Research, November 2026. Data: City of Asheville Homestay Permits View. https://cavmir.com/resources/research/asheville-homestay-permits/
The City's file holds 1,713 homestay records at 1,479 addresses. 900 read Issued, Renewed or In Compliance, but only 81 of those statuses were updated in 2024 or later, so 900 is best read as an upper limit.
No. It covers homestays only: one or two bedrooms in a home the host lives in full-time. The City says rentals of a whole dwelling for less than a month are short-term vacation rentals, allowed only in the resort zoning district, and they are not in this file.
421 records were opened in 2017. 79 were opened in 2023, 25 in 2024, 18 in 2025 and 26 from January through October 2026.
ZIP code 28806 has 670 of the 1,713 records and 28801 has 433. By neighborhood, East West Asheville has 202 records and Montford has 154.
Renting out rooms near Asheville? Cavmir is a rental marketing agency. Start with our Asheville page and North Carolina permit data.
