Starting a Short-Term Rental in Nelson County, Virginia: Legal Requirements

Nelson CountyLegal
Written By Elise Lauterbach

Nelson County’s natural beauty has attracted hundreds of short term rental investors to its hill.

Nelson County, Virginia has been flooded with short term rentals in the past decade. When I started hosting, there were four listed on Airbnb. A decade later, there are upwards of 820, accounting for 12.5% of the entire housing stock in the County. About 80% of these are in Wintergreen Resort, which has had a robust short term rental market since its inception in the late 1970s. Traditionally, the resort itself managed most of the listings. That’s changed now, with the incursion of larger property management companies, and a proliferation of independent hosts, most of whom live outside the county and purchased homes here as combination investment/vacation properties.

Nelson County is no longer the slam-dunk for short term rental (STR) investment— the market has absolutely softened, and rental rates are down. The county is also taking a more hand-on approach to overseeing the industry, and the soon—to-be-adopted new Zoning Plan will probably make it a little trickier to start a short term rental— a position quite popular with locals, who are under tremendous housing stress.

Nelson County isn't hostile to STRs — the county requires zoning approval and a business license — but the process rewards people who do it in order. Let’s take a look at how to get a short term rental approved in Nelson, and some of the hiccups in the process you might plan for.

Zoning approval comes first, not the listing

  • Contact the Director of Planning and Zoning to confirm the business is permitted on the specific property before doing anything else.

  • People often skip this step, because they assume residential zoning means they are permitted to have an STR. It doesn’t mean that— You have to do this first.

VDOT and the property entrance

  • Contact the Virginia Department of Transportation about entrance requirements for the property. This often surprises people, because it's about the driveway/entrance onto the road, not the house.

  • This can be a real expense, and your business can be shut down if it doesn’t confirm.

Get Your Nelson County Business License

  • A Nelson County business license is required to operate a short-term rental, obtained through the Commissioner of Revenue.

  • New businesses must obtain the license before transacting any business, and licenses renew annually by March 1.

  • If incorporated, add the State Corporation Commission registration.

Understand the Transient Occupancy Tax

All Short term rentals have to pay both Transient Occupancy Tax and Virginia State Sales tax. Both must be paid to the county. If you host exclusively on the Airbnb and VRBO platforms, those companies pay these taxes directly for you. But if you host with a property management company with a forward-facing direct booking site, or if you take bookings directly, you have to account for those and pay the tax directly to the county. The county has specific forms to this, and you need to get them to stay compliant and legal.

  • Nelson County's transient occupancy tax rate is 7 percent, effective July 1, 2024.

  • Airbnb, VRBO, and similar platforms are required to collect and remit that 7 percent on the host's behalf — but this doesn't mean the host is off the hook for paperwork.

  • Every host, including platform-only hosts, must file the Accommodations Provider Annual Attestation Form each year by March 1. Direct bookings still require monthly remittance.

  • If a platform won't share remittance documentation, the host becomes responsible for the tax if they can't produce the platform's itemized documentation.

Special Case: Properties in Wintergreen

Wintergreen Resort is its own STR ecosystem, with demand in the winter and silence much of the spring and summer.

Owners in other parts of the county can skip this section, but Wintergreen owners often assume county compliance is the whole picture and get caught by the HOA layer. Wintergreen Property Owners Association has its own STR rules layered on top of county requirements, effective since January 2023. These include notifying WPOA of rental use, complying with local ordinances, posting WPOA community rules for guests, and providing a 24/7 contact for complaints.

All properties in Wintergreen Resort are allowed to operate as STRs. This cannot be changed by future county zoning laws.

Virginia State Legal Context

Virginia's General Assembly has spent the last few years narrowing what a locality can do about short-term rentals, not widening it. Since 2023, any county or city may set up a registry and require operators to register annually, but the registration has to be ministerial — a name, an address, nothing discretionary.

State law now bars localities from requiring a special exception or conditional use permit for an STR in a dwelling the owner also occupies, and it prevents an ordinance from disqualifying a lessee simply for being a lessee, provided the owner has signed off.

Nelson County's approach — zoning approval, a business license, the transient occupancy tax — sits comfortably inside that frame rather than testing its edges. Other Virginia localities, particularly ones fielding neighborhood complaints in dense residential zones, have pushed harder toward permit caps and overlay districts, and the legislature has been trimming that latitude back each session. None of this changes what a Nelson County host has to do this year. It's worth knowing the ground here isn't static, and that the county could tighten or loosen its own ordinance in response to what Richmond does next— and the mood in the county among residents is certainly to tighten.

Resources

Nelson County STR page (business license, TOT, zoning/VDOT contacts)

Nelson County Code of Ordinances (Municode): https://library.municode.com/va/nelson_county

Virginia Code

Direct numbers:

  • Planning and Zoning: 434-263-7090, 80 Front Street

  • VDOT (entrance requirements): 434-946-7631

  • Commissioner of Revenue: 434-263-7070

Most of what trips up a new host in Nelson County isn't the regulation itself. It's the sequence — calling the Commissioner of Revenue before Planning and Zoning has signed off, or listing the property before VDOT has approved the entrance.

I've made all four calls, more than once, for my own property and for the hosts I mentor. If you're staring down this list and feeling overwhelmed, that's exactly the kind of thing I help with — whether you need someone to co-host the operational side long-term or just want a second pair of eyes before you file anything. Get in touch.

Once you have overcome the legal hurdles, you’ll need to consider the additional hurdles of managing a property is a fairly remote rural area. I have written another post about this very topic— be sure to check it out.

Elise Lauterbach
Artist based near Charlottesville, Virginia.
eliselauterbach.com
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