Kentucky Short-Term Rental Permits by City
Program and regulatory figures verified September 15, 2026. Details change; confirm your scenario with us.
Kentucky treats short-term rentals the way it treats landlord law generally: it leaves the question to the city. That consistency is useful, because it tells you where to look for an answer, and it tells you no statewide rule is going to save a deal.
Kentucky leaves it local, and that is a pattern rather than an oversight
There is no statewide Kentucky short-term-rental statute. Cities and counties set their own rules, and a borough-sized city and Louisville Metro can reach opposite conclusions about identical properties.
That will feel familiar if you have read the landlord-law page. Kentucky made its residential landlord-tenant code a local option in 1984 under KRS §383.500 and it has taken the same posture on short-term rentals. The Commonwealth's default is to let the city decide. For an investor that means the research burden is always local, and it means a statewide article about "Kentucky Airbnb rules" is not answering your question.
Compare Wisconsin, where §66.1014 bars a municipality from prohibiting the rental of a residential dwelling for seven consecutive days or longer. Kentucky has enacted no equivalent protection. A Kentucky city can prohibit what a Wisconsin city cannot.
Louisville Metro: registration plus a conditional use permit
Louisville is the most regulated Kentucky market for short-term rentals, and the structure has two parts.
Annual registration with the Office of Planning is required for short-term rentals generally.
A Conditional Use Permit is additionally required for short-term rentals in residential and transit-oriented districts. That is the hurdle that decides most non-owner-occupied investor plans, because a conditional use permit is a discretionary approval rather than a form you file.
The 600-foot buffer is the part worth checking before you make an offer. A buffer of 600 feet applies around each short-term rental holding a conditional use permit. Louisville Metro publishes the affected parcels as a live open dataset, "Parcels affected by the 600 foot buffer around a Short-Term Rental with a Conditional Use Permit," maintained by the Louisville/Jefferson County Information Consortium and last updated September 1, 2026. If your target parcel already sits inside another operator's buffer, your permit path is materially harder.
The governing text is Louisville Metro Land Development Code section 4.3.23 together with Chapter 115 of the Louisville Metro Code of Ordinances. We publish the structure and the citation and not a fee schedule, because Louisville Metro's own site and the code library both block automated retrieval, and we do not print figures we could not read at the source. Confirm current fees, spacing exceptions and occupancy limits with the Office of Planning.
Lexington, Northern Kentucky and the rest of the state
Lexington-Fayette, the Northern Kentucky cities, Bowling Green and Kentucky's smaller cities each set their own rules, and they differ. We do not publish a city-by-city table for Kentucky, because those tables go stale faster than a page can be maintained and a wrong number in a pro forma is worse than no number at all.
The workflow that does work, and it is three calls:
- The city's planning or zoning office. Ask two questions: is short-term rental permitted in this parcel's zoning district, and what registration or permit does it require. Ask whether owner-occupancy changes the answer, because in many Kentucky cities it does.
- The city clerk, while you have them. Ask the landlord-law question at the same time: has this jurisdiction adopted KRS 383.505 to 383.705. One call, two answers.
- Your association, if there is one. A homeowners association or condominium declaration binds you regardless of what the city allows, and declarations restricting short-term use are common.
Do all three before the inspection contingency expires.
How we underwrite a Kentucky short-term rental
Our rule is simple and it protects you as much as us: the long-term rent carries the file unless the permit is already issued. A short-term projection for a property you cannot legally operate that way is not income. Where the permit is in hand, documented short-term revenue can be used, typically from a trailing-12 operating history or a third-party projection with a haircut, up to the usual 70-75% investor ceiling on a cash-out.
In practice that means a Kentucky short-term-rental purchase works best when it also pencils as a long-term rental. In Covington at an 8.7% gross yield or Paducah at 7.0%, that is often true. In Lexington at 5.6%, a short-term plan that fails the permit test leaves you holding a property that does not clear a ratio on its long-term rent, which is the scenario this rule exists to prevent.
No pressure and no obligation: a 20-minute call with our team, the real full payment run against a realistic Kentucky rent, and a straight answer on whether the deal clears before you write an offer.
Frequently asked questions
Does Kentucky have a statewide short-term rental law?
No. Kentucky has no statewide short-term-rental statute, so authority is entirely local. That matches the Commonwealth's posture on landlord law generally, which KRS §383.500 made a local option in 1984. Compare Wisconsin, whose §66.1014 bars a municipality from prohibiting a rental of seven consecutive days or longer. Kentucky has enacted no equivalent protection.
What does Louisville require for a short-term rental?
Annual registration with the Office of Planning, plus a Conditional Use Permit for short-term rentals in residential and transit-oriented districts, which is a discretionary approval rather than a form. A 600-foot buffer applies around each conditional-use-permitted short-term rental, and Louisville Metro publishes the affected parcels as an open dataset last updated September 1, 2026.
How do I check Louisville's 600-foot short-term rental buffer?
Louisville Metro publishes the parcels inside those buffers as a live open dataset through the Louisville/Jefferson County Information Consortium, last updated September 1, 2026. Check your target parcel against it before making an offer: if the property already sits inside another operator's buffer, a conditional use permit for a non-owner-occupied short-term rental becomes a much harder ask.
Will a lender count short-term rental income on a Kentucky property?
Only where the property can legally be operated that way. Our rule is to underwrite the long-term rent unless the municipal permit is already in hand. Where it is, documented short-term revenue can carry the file, usually from a trailing-12 operating history or a third-party projection with a haircut, up to the usual 70-75% investor ceiling on a cash-out.
How do I find out if short-term rental is allowed at a Kentucky address?
Call the city's planning or zoning office and ask whether short-term rental is permitted in that parcel's zoning district, what permit it requires, and whether owner-occupancy changes the answer. While you have the city on the phone, ask the clerk whether the jurisdiction adopted KRS 383.505 to 383.705. Then read any association declaration, which binds you regardless of the city's answer.
Mike Certo · NMLS #260555 · Cornerstone First Mortgage NMLS #173855 · Equal Housing Lender. Educational content, not a loan commitment and not legal or tax advice. Whether your city or county has adopted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, local short-term-rental rules, and county assessment practice all change; confirm with the city clerk, the county Property Valuation Administrator, your CPA, or a Kentucky real estate attorney before you buy. Loans are subject to buyer and property qualification.