Lexington passes short-term rental rules for the rural area. Here’s where they’re allowed
The Lexington council voted Thursday to approve rules for short-term rentals in Fayette County’s rural areas, part of an ongoing effort to regulate short-term rentals in Kentucky’s second-largest county.
The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council voted unanimously Thursday to approve the rules, which have been debated for months.
The new rules -- which prohibits unhosted short-term rentals except if the landowner owns property of 10 acres of less -- takes effect immediately.
Unhosted short-term rentals are properties where the owner does not live on the property.
In addition, the new rules say hosted short-term rentals—where the owner lives on the property -- cannot be located within one mile of another short-term rental. Hosted short-term rentals must get a conditional use permit to operate in agricultural zones.
Conditional use permits are approved by the Board of Adjustment.
That same one-mile limitation applies to bed and breakfasts in agricultural zones.
In the city’s urban core, short-term rentals can be within 600 feet of another rental.
The more strict regulations on short-term rentals in the agricultural area are due to the unique circumstances of allowing visitors on or near active farms, those that support the ordinance have said.
In order to be granted approval for a short-term rental in the rural area, applicants also must show they have approval from the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department if they have a septic system. The health department oversees septic system inspections.
Most homes outside the urban service area are not on city sewer systems and rely on septic tanks for waste disposal.
The city first imposed rules on short-term rentals for areas largely inside the city’s urban service area in July 2023. But it allowed a six-month grace period before hosts of those rentals had to follow all city rules including a registration fee .
In August 2024, the city tightened restrictions on how many short-term rentals are allowed in the city’s urban service boundary after receiving repeated complaints from some Lexington neighborhoods that saw a sharp uptick in the number of Airbnbs and VRBOs.
No short-term rentals were allowed in Fayette County’s agricultural zones prior to Thursday’s passage.
