Lexington County, South Carolina Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Lexington County, South Carolina and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that short-term rentals are legal here, and that holds whether you live on the property yourself or you're renting out a house you never set foot in. The catch, and it's a real one if you're working off anything written before 2025, is that the county didn't actually regulate any of this until January 1, 2025. If your mental picture of Lexington County is "no permit needed," that picture is two years out of date now.

Everything runs through Article 13 of the county's own zoning ordinance, and it applies to any unincorporated part of the county, from the Lake Murray shoreline to the farmland out past Gilbert. Every host needs an annual Short-Term Rental Zoning Permit before that first guest checks in, and the county built in real teeth: inspections, a 45-minute local-contact requirement, and automatic revocation after two violations. Treating this as a formality would be a mistake.

So here's what this guide actually walks through: what counts as legal, what the permit costs and requires in 2026, the taxes that stack on top of it, how hard the county is really enforcing this, and who to call when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from the county's own ordinance or a source I could open and read directly, checked in July 2026, and where the county's own paperwork wouldn't load for me, I've said so rather than guessing. If you're weighing a Lake Murray property against a market where the rules are simpler, run both through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Lexington County, South Carolina?

Before you run any numbers through BNBCalc, though, it helps to see exactly what the county is regulating and since when. Article 13 of the Lexington County Zoning Ordinance is the whole story here. Its purpose clause is worth reading first, because it explains the shape of everything that follows. The county wrote the rule to protect "the quality of life, character of neighborhoods, and water quality of the county's various watersheds," while still letting homeowners use their houses as short-term rentals. That watershed language isn't decorative. A large share of the county's rental inventory sits on septic systems along Lake Murray, which is exactly why septic capacity shows up twice in the requirements below.

The ordinance draws two separate lines, and which one you fall under shapes the rest of your application. A short-term rental, owner-occupied, is one or more rooms in a home where the record owner lives and carries the county's legal-residence classification, rented out for one to 29 days at a time, while a short-term rental, non-owner-occupied, is the whole dwelling instead, converted into a fully functioning private accommodation on that same one-to-29-day basis by an owner who doesn't live there. Either way, both paths need the same permit, mind you, though the difference still matters most for who can apply and how the occupancy math works out.

The regulations apply only within the unincorporated part of the county. Lexington, Cayce, West Columbia, Irmo, Chapin, Gilbert, Batesburg-Leesville and the county's smaller towns each set their own rules, so a property inside any of those town limits needs a different checklist entirely, not this one. Our South Carolina guide is the better starting point if you're comparing markets across the state rather than betting on one county.

Effective January 1, 2025, with no grace period for anyone already operating: the ordinance states outright that there are no nonconformity provisions for short-term rentals that predate the rule. It doesn't matter how long you'd been hosting before that date. The permit requirement applies to you exactly the same as it does to a brand-new host.

That wasn't a snap decision, either. The county spent close to a year taking public comment before council gave final approval in April 2024, and the early draft was noticeably stricter. Non-owner-occupied rentals were originally going to be limited to low-density zones only, and the parking rule started as two required spaces with no street parking allowed at all. Both got loosened before the final vote, which is decent evidence that hosts who showed up to the hearings actually moved the outcome.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Lexington County

Since the rules were shaped by pushback from working hosts, it's worth understanding what was actually driving them before you start one yourself. The county didn't write this ordinance in a vacuum: complaints tracked back to garbage left out, too many cars parked at rental houses, and late-night parties, mostly around Lake Murray. By the time the county acted, it was already looking at roughly 600 short-term rentals operating in the unincorporated area, with growth near 50% a year if nothing changed. The permit mostly exists to put a name, a phone number and an inspection on file for a market that had already gotten large before anyone was watching it closely.

Here's the good news if you're starting from scratch: the ordinance itself doesn't zone you out. Both owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied short-term rentals are permitted in every zoning district in the unincorporated county, which is broader than the original 2023 draft that would've restricted whole-home rentals to low-density areas only. Zoning approval, in other words, generally isn't the obstacle here.

What can still stop you is everything the ordinance doesn't touch. Deed restrictions, HOA covenants and lake-community rules sit entirely separate from county zoning, and Article 13 explicitly stacks on top of, not instead of, other county ordinances like the Landscape and Open Space Ordinance and the Stormwater Ordinance. Make sure you check your subdivision's covenants before you spend anything on a permit application, since a permit from the county won't override a rental ban your own HOA already has on the books.

Septic is the other early filter, especially near the lake. Most of the county's lakefront and rural inventory runs on an on-site sewage disposal system rather than public sewer, and the ordinance ties your maximum guest count directly to what the state's Department of Health and Environmental Control, SCDHEC, has approved for that septic tank. Do check your system's approved capacity before you advertise a bedroom count. It ends up being the ceiling on everything else you plan around it.

If you're weighing a Lexington County lake house against something closer to downtown, the Richland County guide covers the Columbia side of the river, where the rules and the guest mix both look pretty different.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Lexington County

Whichever side of the river you land on, though, the licensing mechanics inside Lexington County itself are what actually get you open, so here's how the permit works. Applications go through the county's Department of Community Development, Zoning Division, and the permit is tied to one specific address. It's issued annually, and Article 13 requires a brand-new application any time ownership, management, or the rental's own parameters change, so selling the house or switching property managers resets the clock.

The ordinance leaves the actual dollar figure to a fee schedule set separately by County Council rather than spelling it out in the zoning text itself, and I wasn't able to get that fee schedule to load directly. From what local news coverage reported when the program launched, including a direct quote from County Council Chairwoman Beth Carrigg explaining why the county needs a local contact within 45 minutes, the fee lands at $320 a year, per rental location. Since I couldn't verify that figure against the county's own current fee page, do check it with Community Development before you budget around it.

Once you apply, Article 13 spells out a dozen operational requirements that stay in force for as long as you hold the permit:

• Any advertisement for the property is enough on its own for the county to treat it as an operating short-term rental.
• The county can inspect for safety and compliance with 24 hours' notice.
• You, or a designated local representative, have to be reachable at all times and able to show up in person within 45 minutes.
• Your current permit number has to appear in every listing, online or otherwise.
• Whoever books the stay has to be at least 25 years old.
• No stay shorter than two nights.
• At least one parking space, guests told the plan in advance, and no overnight street parking.
• Occupancy caps at two guests per bedroom, excluding children under five, and never above what the septic system is approved to handle.
• Immediate neighbors and any relevant HOA get written notice of the rental and your contact information.
• The property has to meet the county's Neighborhood Appearance District maintenance standards.
• A licensed SCDHEC inspector has to sign off on the septic system within 30 days of your application, pump-out included.
• You need a written nuisance abatement plan covering noise, lighting, parking and trash.

That's a genuinely long list, and it's also the entire compliance surface the county checks against when it decides whether to renew, inspect, or eventually revoke your permit.

Required Documents for Lexington County Short-Term Rentals

Getting the operational side right is one thing; getting the paperwork accepted is a separate exercise. The county's application asks for four things up front, and it's worth assembling them in the right order rather than scrambling once you've already started the clock.

• Proof of ownership: a copy of your deed or your most recent tax bill.
• A Good Operating Condition Report: a SCDHEC-licensed inspector's sign-off, dated within 30 days of your application, following a pump-out that lets the inspector actually check the tank, the drain field, and the building for leaks.
• A parking plan: how many vehicles you'll allow and where they'll go, since overnight street parking is off the table entirely.
• A nuisance abatement plan: your own written plan for keeping noise, lighting, parking and trash from becoming a neighbor's problem, addressing the same categories the county later checks you against if a complaint comes in.

Keep in mind that none of this is a one-time exercise. Since a new permit is required for any change in ownership, management company, or the parameters you originally applied under, expect to rebuild this same document set if you sell the property, switch property managers, or add a bedroom to your listing down the line.

Lexington County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming your paperwork clears and you're able to start hosting, there's still tax to work through, and it comes in more than one layer.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
State sales tax (accommodations portion)	5%	SCDOR, via your Retail/Accommodations Tax License, or automatically by your booking platform
State accommodations tax	2%	SCDOR, same license or platform
Lexington County school district sales tax add-on	1%	SCDOR, bundled into the same remittance
Lexington County's own local accommodations tax	Unconfirmed for 2026; the county's prior version expired in 2022	Not administered by SCDOR if it exists; verify directly with the county

Here's the part worth slowing down on, because I think a fair amount of the guidance circulating about this county is out of date. Lexington County ran its own local accommodations tax, layered on top of the state's, for about 25 years, funding its share of the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center jointly with Richland County. That tax expired in 2022. Going through the county's own records and the reporting from when the Town of Lexington rolled out its own separate 3% tax in 2024, I couldn't find anything confirming the county reinstated its own version since. The county's Accommodations Tax Advisory Board is still active, but per the Municipal Association of South Carolina's own guidance, that board oversees the state's redistributed 2% money, which any local government above a revenue threshold has to run through an advisory process regardless of whether it also has a local tax of its own. So do treat any claim of a flat 3% Lexington County accommodations tax with real caution until you've confirmed it directly with the county, because I couldn't confirm it myself.

What's confirmed is the general combined rate. It runs 7% at the state level, plus the county's 1% school district add-on, for 8% total on the accommodations portion of a stay, before whatever the county's own local tax ends up being once you verify it. Additional charges like cleaning fees or pet fees get taxed separately at 5% rather than the full combined rate.

Not every host collects any of it directly. Book exclusively through Airbnb, Vrbo, or another marketplace facilitator, and that platform holds the Retail License and pays the state its share for you, so you never touch that money yourself. Rent directly, even occasionally, and you're the one who has to register for the $50 Retail/Accommodations Tax License through MyDORWAY and file it yourself.

A few situations skip the state tax altogether:

• An owner-occupied property with fewer than six sleeping rooms that isn't run through a rental agency.
• A stay you rent for fewer than 15 days a year, under the federal Section 280A(g) exemption, sometimes called the Masters exemption since it originated with golf-tournament rentals near Augusta.
• Any stay of 90 consecutive days or more.

None of those touch the county's zoning permit requirement, mind you. The tax exemption and the permit obligation are two completely separate questions, and clearing one doesn't clear the other.

South Carolina Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Zoom out from Lexington County specifically, and the state layer above it explains a lot about why the rules here can feel unsettled. South Carolina has no statewide law that forces every city and county to allow short-term rentals, and none that caps what a local government can charge or require. That's why Lexington County can run this fairly permissive, permit-everywhere model while a different South Carolina county bans them in whole zones. Our Greenville County guide is a useful comparison if you want to see how differently two counties in the same state can land on this.

There's a narrower statute worth knowing wherever you host in the state, the South Carolina Vacation Rental Act. It governs the landlord-tenant mechanics of a rental agreement, trust-account handling of advance payments by management companies, evacuation-order compliance, and disclosure obligations when you sell a property that's been rented out. It's consumer protection law, not zoning, so it doesn't touch anything Article 13 covers.

Two bills sitting in committee this session would move the state in opposite directions. H.3861 would bar any county or city from prohibiting short-term rentals at all, and would punish a jurisdiction that tried by pulling its property-tax assessment ratio and state aid. S.442 goes the other way: it would let local governments regulate, or even ban, short-term rentals outright, while setting a statewide floor of registration, liability insurance and inspection standards. Neither has passed as of my last check. A third bill, H.3876, is further along and addresses something narrower: it would make booking platforms responsible for collecting the state and local accommodations tax on every booking and sending it in themselves, and as of May 2026 it had cleared the House and was sitting in Senate Finance awaiting a floor vote. Watch that one if you'd rather tax collection stay automatic than fall back on you.

Does Lexington County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

None of those bills change what Lexington County does today, and today the county enforces this permit system with real consequences. Rack up two violations within any 365-day period and your permit is revoked immediately, no warning shot, no third chance. Getting it back means reapplying from scratch, and Article 13 also requires a Special Exception Review before the Board of Zoning Appeals for the re-permitting, where the board weighs neighbor complaints, public-safety input, and how convincingly you can show the underlying problem won't repeat.

Before it gets to revocation, though, the county follows a set process. A written notice goes out by personal service, certified mail, and posting on the property itself, spelling out exactly what's wrong. You get 72 hours, three calendar days, to put an abatement plan in place, then 10 more days to actually reach compliance, or the permit is gone. Leasing has to stop entirely while that clock is running. One thing worth being aware of: each day a violation continues after that notice counts as a separate offense for enforcement purposes, so a slow response compounds rather than sitting there quietly.

The financial penalty runs through Magistrate's Court like any other zoning misdemeanor in the county, which caps at a $500 fine, 30 days, or both, per offense, and again, every day of continued violation is its own separate offense under the ordinance's general penalty section. The county can also ask the leasing platform to pull your listing until you're compliant, and it can refuse future permits to the same owner, agent, or local representative across every property they touch, not just the one that got flagged.

None of that changes the fact that this whole system leans on complaints to work. The ordinance openly acknowledges that the county depends on property management firms to flag neighbor issues in the first place, and when operators pushed back during public comment, they pointed out that the county had received only two formal complaints about existing rentals before writing a rule covering roughly 600 properties. That's not evidence the rules are toothless, mind you. It's evidence the county built this ordinance to get ahead of a market it expected to keep growing by something like 50% a year, rather than waiting for complaint volume to justify it after the fact. Given how fast the county says this market has been expanding, expect enforcement attention to keep pace with the number of permits on file.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Lexington County

Put all of that together, and here's the order that actually gets you to a working, compliant listing without wasting the application fee.

1. Confirm you're in the unincorporated county. Check your address against Lexington County's zoning map, since incorporated towns run entirely separate rules.
2. Read your deed, HOA covenants and any lake-community rules for a rental restriction before you spend anything on the county process.
3. Schedule the SCDHEC septic inspection and pump-out if you're on a septic system, within 30 days of applying, and confirm the tank's approved capacity, since that becomes your hard occupancy ceiling.
4. Line up your local representative, someone who can be on-site within 45 minutes, if that's not going to be you personally.
5. Write your parking plan and your nuisance abatement plan, gather your deed or tax bill, and submit the full application to Community Development's Zoning Division along with the fee.
6. Put your permit number in every listing, on every platform, before you take a single booking.
7. Register with SCDOR for the Retail/Accommodations Tax License if you'll ever take a direct booking outside a marketplace facilitator, and confirm what your platform already collects automatically.
8. Notify your immediate neighbors and any HOA in writing, with your contact information, before your first guest arrives.
9. Diarize your renewal date. The permit is annual, and Article 13 requires a fresh application the moment ownership, management, or your rental's own parameters change.

Who to Contact in Lexington County about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning

Whichever step trips you up, two offices handle nearly everything above.

Permits, zoning and the ordinance itself

The Department of Community Development, Zoning Division administers Article 13, from the application itself through inspections and any revocation proceeding.

• Address: 212 South Lake Drive, Suite 401, Lexington, SC 29072
• Phone: (803) 785-8121
• Fax: (803) 785-8188
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: county offices run Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

State tax registration and the accommodations tax

The South Carolina Department of Revenue (SCDOR) handles the Retail/Accommodations Tax License and the state's 7% combined tax.

• Business Tax Registration: (803) 896-1350, [email protected]
• Phone hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Wednesday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Apply and file: the MyDORWAY portal

General county line

For anything that doesn't obviously belong to either office above, the County of Lexington's general line can route you.

• Address: 212 South Lake Drive, Lexington, SC 29072
• Phone: 803-359-8000

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Lexington County on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Whichever office you end up calling, the sentiment among hosts already running properties here tells you what to actually expect once you're operating. I want to be upfront about the limits of this section. I haven't run a systematic survey of Reddit or BiggerPockets, so what follows is my read of the recurring themes rather than any kind of formal count, and do weigh it accordingly.

Investors talk about this county mostly in the context of Lake Murray, and the tone splits along a fairly predictable line. Hosts who were already running a compliant, well-maintained property tend to describe the new permit as annoying but survivable, since zoning approval was never really the obstacle here the way it is in cities that ban whole-unit rentals outright. Hosts who ran their numbers through a market tool like BNBCalc Markets before buying tend to be the ones least surprised by the fee and the septic bill, since they'd budgeted conservatively from the start.

The 45-minute local-representative rule draws a second round of pushback, mostly from out-of-state or out-of-county owners who now have to either hire a local property manager or find someone willing to be on call. That's a real, recurring cost for a remote owner, and it's exactly the kind of requirement that makes a Lake Murray rental less attractive to someone managing it from another state.

A smaller group, generally people renting a room or two in a home they actually live in, describe the process as close to painless. They already qualify as owner-occupied, their occupancy math stays simple, and the fee is a rounding error against what they earn on a busy lake weekend.

None of that is unique to this one lake, honestly. Any market that goes from zero enforcement to a real permit system inside a single year tends to separate hosts fast. The ones who treat the paperwork as part of the investment do fine, while the ones who bought purely on the numbers, assuming the rules would stay loose forever, end up stuck paying for an inspection they never planned for.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Lexington County, South Carolina in 2026?

Yes. Both a whole-home rental and a room in your own home are legal in unincorporated Lexington County, as long as you hold a current Short-Term Rental Zoning Permit from the county's Zoning Division. The permit brings a 25-and-up guest-booking age, a two-night minimum stay, an occupancy cap tied to septic capacity, and a requirement that someone be reachable and on-site within 45 minutes. Incorporated towns like Lexington and Cayce set their own separate rules, so confirm your exact address first.

How much does a Lexington County short-term rental permit cost?

The ordinance leaves the exact fee to a schedule set by County Council rather than stating it directly, and local news coverage from the program's 2025 launch put it at $320 a year, per rental location. I wasn't able to confirm that figure against the county's own current fee page directly, so do check the current amount with Community Development's Zoning Division before you budget around it.

What taxes apply to a Lexington County short-term rental?

A confirmed 7% combined state rate applies, made up of 5% state sales tax plus 2% state accommodations tax, plus Lexington County's own 1% school district sales tax add-on, for 8% total, collected by SCDOR or, in most cases, automatically by your booking platform. Whether the county's own separate local accommodations tax, historically up to 3%, currently applies is unclear. The county's prior version expired in 2022, and I couldn't confirm a reinstatement from a primary source, so verify that piece directly with the county.

What happens if you operate a Lexington County short-term rental without a permit?

Operating without a permit is a zoning violation. Lexington County's general penalty runs through Magistrate's Court, capped at a $500 fine, 30 days, or both, with each day counted as a separate offense. Two violations within any 365-day period trigger automatic permit revocation, and getting a revoked permit back requires a full Special Exception Review before the Board of Zoning Appeals rather than a simple reapplication.

Does Lexington County's short-term rental ordinance apply inside the town of Lexington or Cayce?

No. Article 13 of the county's zoning ordinance applies only to the unincorporated parts of Lexington County. Properties inside the limits of the Town of Lexington, Cayce, West Columbia, Irmo, Chapin, or any other incorporated municipality in the county follow that town's own separate short-term rental rules instead, which can differ significantly from the county's, so check with the specific town or city hall for your address.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.