A few holders, a lot of permits, and bans you cannot see on the map.
Nashville publishes every short-term rental permit it issues. We counted them. On September 26, 2026, Metro listed 7,015 permits as issued. 2,009 are for homes the owner lives in. The other 5,006 (71%) are whole-home rentals, where the owner lives somewhere else.
How the permits are spread out
| Permits per holder | Holders | Permits | Share of whole-home permits |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 permit | 2,362 | 2,362 | 47% |
| 2 to 4 | 310 | 762 | 15% |
| 5 to 9 | 47 | 318 | 6% |
| 10 to 24 | 34 | 523 | 10% |
| 25 or more | 13 | 1,041 | 21% |
Most holders (2,362) have a single permit. But 13 holders, each with 25 or more permits, hold 1,041 between them. That is more than one whole-home permit in five.
Where they are
Almost half of all issued permits (45%) sit within 3 km (2 miles) of downtown, and 74% within 5 km. The busiest square, just south of downtown, holds 530. We show counts by area only. Squares with fewer than three permits are left off, and we do not publish owner names or addresses.
Where a new whole-home permit is still possible
Metro no longer issues new whole-home permits in residential zoning. They are possible only in mixed-use, office-residential and downtown zoning, in the few Specific Plans whose ordinance allows them, and on commercial lots that pass BL2024-187. Land mostly inside a planned unit development is left out: Metro Planning decides there. By zoning that is 2% of the county's zoned land (6,081 acres). We also decided every commercial lot, the way Metro's own viewer describes: 2,689 of 5,058 qualify (2,946 acres), because the home on them predates 2005 or their longest street side faces an arterial or collector inside the Urban Services District. Owner-occupied permits, where the owner lives in the home, are allowed in most residential zoning. See where whole-home permits are possible, and pick any lot for its own answer.
The bans the city map does not label
Metro marks some zoning districts with -NS, meaning no short-term rentals of any kind, owner-occupied or not. 203 districts carry that label. Specific Plans are different: about a sixth of Nashville's zoning districts (about 4% of its zoned land) are Specific Plans, and each one's rules are written into its own ordinance. Metro issues a rental permit in a Specific Plan only where that plan allows it, and its rental eligibility viewer leaves the question to the Planning Department. We read the 389 Specific Plan ordinances that Metro Council publishes online. 301 of them prohibit all short-term rentals across the whole plan, some by limiting the plan to an -NS district's uses. 9 more prohibit whole-home rentals only, and 3 prohibit them in part of the plan. 5 allow them outright and 3 more allow them in part or up to a set number. None of that shows up as a label on the city's zoning map.
If you are buying to rent, or wondering why a permit was refused, check the ordinance, not just the map label. See every Specific Plan that prohibits rentals on the map, then click one to read the exact sentence from its ordinance.
How we counted
- Source: Metro Nashville's short-term rental permit layer, permits with status "Issued", retrieved September 26, 2026.
- Whole-home means Metro's "not owner occupied" permit types.
- Holders are grouped by the owner name exactly as written on the permit. One owner using several LLCs counts as several holders, so if anything this understates how concentrated permits are.
- Business name means the owner name contains LLC, Inc, Corp, LP, LLP, Ltd, Partners, Holdings, Properties, Investments, Group, Ventures or Enterprises.
- Rental rules come from the text of each Specific Plan ordinance on Metro Council's legislative site. Every text was read twice on Sep 27, 2026, and an independent review the same day added the plans that ban rentals by limiting their uses to an -NS district or to an earlier plan that bans them. None has yet been checked against a Metro zoning letter. Plans older than about 2020 are not online in that form and are not counted.
- MapLedger is not affiliated with or approved by the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. Data is provided as is.
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