Denver, North Carolina

Short-term rentals are legal in Denver, but supply is currently capped and constrained. Denver is unincorporated, so Lincoln County’s Unified Development Ordinance governs rather than a town government. STRs are a permitted use in zoning districts allowing residential or lodging use, defined as whole-structure overnight lodging for fewer than 25 days per rental period; renting individual rooms separately is not allowed.

After roughly two years of study, Lincoln County commissioners adopted a comprehensive STR ordinance, Ordinance 523, which splits the unincorporated county into 7 regions and caps the number of STR licenses allowed in each. The caps reduce the countywide license ceiling from roughly 505 existing licenses to about 181, achieved through attrition rather than revoking existing licenses. Several lake-adjacent regions, including areas around Denver, are already over their cap, so no new STR licenses are being issued there until the count falls below the cap. Operators face use standards covering parking, weekly trash collection, and limits on large gatherings and events. There is no owner-occupancy or primary-residence requirement and no annual night cap. Lincoln County levies a 3.0% room occupancy tax on accommodations, on top of applicable North Carolina state sales tax. Enforcement is rated moderate. Permit cost and renewal period were not published in the current profile. North Carolina appellate law limits how far local governments can go with mandatory STR registration, which shaped the county’s zoning-based licensing approach.