Murfreesboro Short Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Murfreesboro and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that Murfreesboro hasn't passed a short-term rental ordinance of its own, so in 2026 you can list your Rutherford County home for a weekend or a week without applying for a city permit that doesn't exist. Tennessee's Short-Term Rental Unit Act backs that up at the state level, and the city's own zoning ordinance never even uses the phrase "short-term rental." Still, no permit doesn't mean no paperwork, and the paperwork that does exist changes your tax bill more than most hosts expect.

The real catch sits with the county, not the city. Rutherford County's property assessor treats a short-term rental differently depending on whether you live there, and if you skip the right affidavit by September 1 each year, your property can end up assessed as commercial rather than residential, which is a genuine difference on your annual bill. Murfreesboro's city council has also spent real time discussing whether to layer its own rules on top of all this, so the wide-open market you might have read about in an older guide could look different by your next renewal.

This guide covers Murfreesboro specifically, inside Rutherford County, Tennessee: what's required to start, the documents the county and city both want, every tax layer that attaches to a stay, the state law sitting above all of it, and how seriously any of this gets enforced today. Everything below comes from the city's and county's own pages and Tennessee's own code, checked in July 2026. Once you've got a feel for the setup, run the numbers on BNBCalc before you commit any capital.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Murfreesboro

Before any of those numbers mean much, you need to know whether you're allowed to operate, and in Murfreesboro the honest answer is yes, with no separate short-term rental license standing between you and your first guest. The city's Business Licenses page treats a short-term rental the same way it treats any other business: you register, you pay $15, and you go. There's no application specific to Airbnb or Vrbo hosting, because the city hasn't written one.

That's not an oversight. Tennessee's Short-Term Rental Unit Act of 2018, Tenn. Code Ann. § 13-7-601 through 606, largely takes the decision out of Murfreesboro's hands. The Act supersedes any city ordinance that conflicts with it, and a provider can challenge an effective ban in chancery or circuit court. Murfreesboro's own zoning ordinance reflects that reality rather than fighting it. It defines a single-family dwelling by its physical structure and occupancy rather than by how long the occupants stay, and it has no zoning category, use permit, or district restriction written for short-term rentals at all. The closest things on the books, "bed and breakfast homestay" and "bed and breakfast inn," require the innkeeper to live on site and serve a daily meal, capped at fourteen-day stays. A typical whole-home Airbnb listing doesn't fit either definition, so it falls under ordinary residential use, which every one of the city's RS-zoned single-family districts already permits.

None of that is a promise the situation holds indefinitely. At a May 2025 work session, Assistant City Attorney Joseph Leonard walked the city council through options for regulating short-term rentals directly, including application fees and a way to recapture tax revenue the city feels it's currently missing. Council members raised concerns about how fast the number of listings has grown. Dr. David Barnes owns a Murfreesboro short-term rental called Charlotte's Cottage, and he told the same meeting that a weekend booking brings in $394 in rent, even though guests pay $610.84 once fees and taxes are added. He warned that new rules "could kill the business, I mean, hurt us bad." As of this research, the city's legal department had only begun preliminary review, and no ordinance had been drafted or passed. Keep an eye on this if you're buying with a multi-year hold in mind, since the rules you start under aren't guaranteed to be the rules you finish under.

Starting a Short Term Rental Business in Murfreesboro

Knowing you're allowed to do this is one thing; getting set up is the mechanical part, and it runs through three separate offices rather than one. None of them is difficult on its own, but skipping one tends to surface later as a tax bill you didn't expect.

Start with zoning, because it costs nothing to check and rules everything else out if it goes wrong. Murfreesboro's GIS mapping tool lets you search your address and confirm the property sits in a residential district (the city's single-family zones run from RS-15 down through RS-4, plus a handful of multi-family and mixed-use districts). Since the zoning ordinance doesn't single out short-term rentals, an ordinary residential zoning designation is all you need on this front.

From there, the business license is refreshingly straightforward: you'll register with both the Rutherford County Clerk and the City of Murfreesboro, at $15 each, either online through tncountyclerk.com or in person. If you're hosting out of your own home rather than a dedicated investment property, the city's Business Licenses page notes that a home-based business needs an extra sign-off from the Planning department as part of that same application, so budget a little more time for that step if it applies to you.

The piece hosts most often miss is the county property assessor's registration, and it's worth getting right the first time because it directly affects how much you owe in property tax. Rutherford County requires every short-term rental owner to complete a Short-Term Rental Questionnaire covering every property you own anywhere in Tennessee, a requirement that's been in place since January 1, 2021. Here's the part that actually moves money: under Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-5-801(b), a short-term rental that's also your principal residence, with no more than one rental unit, gets presumed residential for tax assessment. You can also claim residential treatment for one additional property beyond your main home, but only if you live there at least fourteen days a year (or ten percent of the days it's rented, whichever is greater) and file a sworn affidavit with the Assessor by September 1 of the year before you want the benefit. Miss that window, or buy a pure investment property you never stay in, and the county's default classification for a short-term rental you don't occupy is commercial: 40% of appraised value gets assessed, against 25% for residential. On a $350,000 property, that's the difference between an assessed value of roughly $87,500 and $140,000, which flows straight through to your tax bill. Do check with the Real Property Division at 615-898-7750 before you close, not after.

Required Documents for Murfreesboro Short Term Rentals

That property tax classification only helps you if you've got the paperwork behind it, so treat the documents below as a checklist rather than a formality. Between the city, the county clerk and the county assessor, a Murfreesboro host ends up assembling:

• A City of Murfreesboro business license application, plus the $15 fee, filed with the Finance Department at 111 W. Vine St.
• A Rutherford County business license application, the same $15, filed with the County Clerk at 319 N Maple St., Suite 121.
• A home-based business approval form from the Planning department, if you're hosting out of the home you live in rather than a separate investment property.
• The Short-Term Rental Questionnaire, filed with the county Property Assessor, covering every Tennessee property you own.
• A sworn affidavit for residential classification, due to the Assessor by September 1 of the year before you want it to apply, if you're claiming the one-additional-parcel exception described above.
• Records of gross receipts by jurisdiction, since your renewal path (city-level for $3,000 to $99,999, state-level at $100,000 and up) depends on that number and Tennessee's own SUT-48 guidance puts the recordkeeping duty on you regardless of who collects the tax at booking.

Keep in mind none of these documents lock you into anything permanent. The business license and county registration both renew annually, and the residential-classification affidavit has to be refiled every single year you want the benefit to continue. Set a calendar reminder well ahead of September 1, since that's the one deadline on this list that doesn't bend for a late application.

Murfreesboro Short Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that paperwork and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to work out, and it comes in three distinct layers rather than one combined rate.

Tax	Rate	Collected by
Hotel/motel occupancy tax	5% of rent	City of Murfreesboro (or Rutherford County at the same 5% if the property sits outside city limits); marketplaces have collected this automatically since January 2021
Combined sales tax	9.75% (7% state + 2.75% local option)	Tennessee Department of Revenue; marketplaces collect this automatically on bookings they process
Business tax	None under $3,000 in gross receipts; $15 minimal-activity license from $3,000 to $99,999; standard license plus a state business tax return at $100,000 and up	Rutherford County Clerk and City of Murfreesboro, or the Tennessee Department of Revenue at the top tier

As of July 2026, the occupancy tax is the one most hosts assume they have to file by hand, and for direct or off-platform bookings, they still do: mail it to the City of Murfreesboro Treasurer, PO Box 1139, Murfreesboro, TN 37133-1139, or pay online, by the 20th of the following month. For anything booked through Airbnb, Vrbo or a similar marketplace, though, Tennessee's own SUT-48 guidance is direct about it: "beginning in January 2021, short-term rental unit marketplaces must collect occupancy taxes based on the location of the properties they book," remitting the money to the state, which passes it along locally. The same rule covers the 9.75% combined sales tax. Make sure you still keep the records proving a platform collected on your behalf, since the state can bill you directly if that documentation doesn't hold up later.

Business tax works differently, and it's the layer a platform never touches. Per that same state guidance, "business licensing and the payment of business tax are not done through a marketplace facilitator, this is the responsibility of the property owner," no matter how much of your revenue runs through Airbnb. And if you're operating through an LLC or corporation rather than as a sole proprietor, don't forget Tennessee's franchise and excise tax applies on top, while a straightforward sole proprietorship or general partnership sits outside it entirely.

Tennessee wide Short Term Rental Rules

All three of those tax layers sit on top of a state framework that shapes almost everything Murfreesboro can and can't do locally, so it's worth understanding on its own terms, and our Tennessee statewide guide covers it in more depth than fits here.

The foundation is the 2018 Short-Term Rental Unit Act, Public Chapter 972, effective May 17 of that year. It defines a short-term rental unit as a residential dwelling rented wholly or partly for a fee for fewer than 30 continuous days, explicitly excluding hotels and bed and breakfast establishments, which is exactly why Murfreesboro's zoning ordinance handles those as separate categories. The Act also grandfathers rentals that were already operating before a city adopted its own rules (protection that lasts until a sale, thirty consecutive months of non-operation, or three violations of a generally applicable local law), lets cities set up reasonable permitting processes of their own, and, in its preemption clause, supersedes any local ordinance that conflicts with it. One Middle Tennessee city, Brentwood, got a narrow carve-out for an ordinance it passed before 2014. Murfreesboro didn't, and hasn't tried to.

The property tax classification rule covered above, added to Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-5-801(b) effective January 1, 2021, applies the same way in every Tennessee county, though the assessor's office administering it is always local. And the sales tax and occupancy tax collection rules that shifted onto marketplaces starting the same month are statewide too, which is why Airbnb's own tax help pages describe collecting Tennessee's 7% state sales tax, 1.5% to 2.75% in local sales tax depending on the county, and "all locally imposed Occupancy Taxes" on any Tennessee reservation of 89 nights or fewer. Business licensing stays entirely local no matter what state law says about tax collection, which is the one piece that never moves regardless of which platform books your guest.

Does Murfreesboro strictly enforce STR rules?

All that state and local machinery still leaves the one question every host actually cares about unanswered: how closely does anyone check? Given there's no dedicated short-term rental ordinance yet, there's also no dedicated enforcement office chasing violations, and that's the most practical thing to understand about operating here today. Complaints about a specific property still route through the city's ordinary nuisance, noise and zoning code channels, the same as they would for any residential property, rather than through a short-term-rental-specific citation process the way they would in Nashville or a growing number of other Tennessee cities.

That said, don't read light enforcement as permanent disinterest. The May 2025 council discussion happened because the volume of listings has grown enough that council members are asking questions, and a Murfreesboro host went on the record admitting new rules could meaningfully hurt his business if they land wrong. Compare that to Franklin, another fast-growing Nashville-area suburb that's already further along in formalizing its own short-term rental rules. Murfreesboro looks a lot like Franklin did a few years back: permissive today, watching a neighbor's playbook, and one council vote away from something stricter.

In the meantime, the taxes are where real enforcement already exists, mostly because Tennessee built it into the collection mechanism rather than into a citation. A marketplace that doesn't collect and remit properly answers to the state, and a host who misreports gross receipts to stay under the $100,000 business-tax threshold is misreporting to the Department of Revenue, not only to a local clerk. Watch out for that distinction: the absence of a city STR ordinance doesn't mean the absence of consequences, it means the consequences currently come from tax law instead of a zoning citation.

How to Start a Short Term Rental Business in Murfreesboro?

Given all of that, here's the order that avoids wasted trips and wasted fees, run roughly in the sequence a new Murfreesboro host would hit each step:

1. Confirm your zoning. Search your address on the city's GIS tool and confirm the property sits in a residential district. Since no zoning category singles out short-term rentals, an ordinary residential designation clears this step.
2. Decide how you'll hold the property. Living there yourself (even part time) versus buying a pure investment unit changes which property-tax classification you can claim, so settle this before you file anything.
3. Apply for both business licenses. File with the Rutherford County Clerk and the City of Murfreesboro, $15 each, plus the Planning department's home-based-business form if the unit is also your residence.
4. Complete the county's Short-Term Rental Questionnaire. File it with the Property Assessor, covering every property you own anywhere in Tennessee.
5. File the residential-classification affidavit, if it applies to you, by September 1 of the year before you want the lower assessment to take effect.
6. Set up tax collection. Confirm whichever platform you use is collecting Tennessee's sales tax and the city's occupancy tax automatically, and keep the documentation that proves it.
7. Track your gross receipts by jurisdiction, since crossing $100,000 shifts your renewal from the city to the state and adds a business tax return you didn't owe before.
8. Diarize your renewals. The business licenses renew yearly, and so does the residential-classification affidavit if you're claiming it.
9. Watch the council calendar. Murfreesboro is actively discussing its own short-term rental rules, so check for updates before you assume today's setup still applies at renewal time.

What do Airbnb hosts in Murfreesboro on Reddit and Bigger Pockets think about local regulations?

Watching the council calendar is one way to track where this is headed. Another is to see what other hosts and investors already say about operating here, so I looked for a dedicated Murfreesboro thread on both Reddit and BiggerPockets and, to be upfront about it, didn't find one substantial enough to quote from directly. What's on the record is the May 2025 city council meeting itself, which functions as the closest thing this market has to a public sentiment check, since it put an operating host in front of council with real numbers.

That host, Dr. David Barnes of Charlotte's Cottage, is the clearest read available: business is good enough that a weekend books for hundreds of dollars, and good enough that he's worried a new fee or rule could take a meaningful bite out of it. That's a fairly common shape for how investors talk about secondary markets near a bigger city. Murfreesboro sits roughly thirty-five miles southeast of Nashville, which is exactly the kind of positioning that draws buyers who've been priced out of Nashville's own tighter, costlier short-term rental rules and are looking for something more permissive nearby. The tradeoff investors weigh here isn't about today's rules, since today's rules are about as light as Tennessee allows. It's about durability: whether the setup you buy into now still looks like this in three years, or whether Murfreesboro ends up following Franklin, Nashville, and plenty of other growing Tennessee cities toward its own dedicated ordinance. If you're trying to weigh that risk against a market with a longer regulatory track record, BNBCalc Markets is a reasonable place to pull that comparison up before you decide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Murfreesboro in 2026?

Yes. Murfreesboro has not adopted a short-term rental ordinance, permit, or registration process of its own, so hosting is governed by Tennessee's Short-Term Rental Unit Act, which protects the right to operate and bars cities from banning it outright. You'll still need a standard city and county business license, and you must register annually with the Rutherford County Property Assessor. There's no separate short-term rental license to apply for, because the city hasn't created one.

Do you need a permit to run a short-term rental in Murfreesboro?

No dedicated short-term rental permit exists yet. You need the same $15 business license every business in Murfreesboro needs, filed with both the City and Rutherford County, plus the county's annual Short-Term Rental Questionnaire with the Property Assessor. If you're hosting out of your own home, budget extra time for a home-based-business approval form from the Planning department as part of the same license application.

How much does it cost to set up a short-term rental in Murfreesboro?

The city and county business licenses run $15 each, renewed annually, and the county's rental questionnaire and any classification affidavit carry no filing fee. Your bigger cost driver is property tax: a short-term rental that isn't your residence and doesn't qualify for the one-additional-parcel exception gets assessed as commercial property (40% of appraised value) instead of residential (25%), which is a real difference on a typical purchase.

What taxes does a Murfreesboro Airbnb host pay?

Three layers apply. A 5% hotel/motel occupancy tax goes to the City of Murfreesboro, a combined 9.75% sales tax (7% state plus 2.75% local option) goes to the state, and business tax is based on gross receipts, ranging from none under $3,000 to a standard state business tax return above $100,000. Airbnb, Vrbo and similar marketplaces collect and remit the occupancy and sales tax automatically; business licensing always stays the host's own responsibility.

Is Murfreesboro likely to add stricter short-term rental rules?

It's possible, though nothing has passed as of this research. The city council held a work session in May 2025 where staff presented options including application fees and tighter tax enforcement, driven by concerns about how fast the number of listings has grown. No ordinance had been drafted at that point, so treat today's permissive setup as the current state, not a guarantee, especially if you're planning a multi-year hold.

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