A question owners ask us almost every week
We are asked some version of this question by nearly every owner we onboard: should I list this home as a short-term rental on Airbnb or VRBO instead of as a long-term lease? In Asheville, where the short-term rental market grew rapidly between 2014 and 2022 before the city tightened its enforcement, the question is reasonable. The headline numbers on a well-photographed Asheville STR can look extraordinary — $400 a night in peak season, an apparent annual gross above what a long-term lease would generate.
We have managed both kinds of properties (we no longer take on STR engagements, but we did between 2017 and 2021). What follows is what we tell owners who ask us today.
What the headline numbers leave out
A spreadsheet that compares a $400-per-night STR rate to a $2,400-per-month long-term rent on the same Asheville bungalow appears to favor the STR by a wide margin: 365 × $400 = $146,000 versus 12 × $2,400 = $28,800. In practice, the STR side of the comparison is wrong in three ways.
First, occupancy. A typical well-photographed Asheville STR in 2026 runs at approximately 55% occupancy. The denominator is not 365 nights; it is closer to 200. That brings the gross from $146,000 to $80,000.
Second, the city of Asheville now restricts whole-home short-term rentals to a small set of grandfathered or zoning-compliant addresses. Most homes are not eligible. The legal exposure for operating a non-compliant STR has risen sharply since the 2024 enforcement ordinance.
Third, costs. STR operations involve cleaning fees (typically $90–$150 per turnover, paid by the operator on the cleaner-side), platform commissions (15–18% on most platforms), occupancy and sales taxes (Asheville's combined rate is approximately 14%), higher insurance premiums, faster wear on furnishings and finishes, and property management fees significantly higher than long-term rates (we charged 22% on STR engagements when we did them; the market today is 25%–30%). After all of that, the net to an owner on an eligible STR runs approximately 35–45% of gross — landing in the $28,000–$36,000 range on our hypothetical bungalow. Comparable to the long-term lease, with significantly more operational complexity.
What the long-term math looks like over five years
The five-year owner economics on a long-term lease, in our experience, are durably better than the comparable STR economics. A resident who renews twice contributes 36 months of occupancy with no turnover costs in the middle. A unit that turns over four times in five years (typical of STR market churn even when occupancy is technically high) contributes wear, repair, refinish, and re-list costs that add up to multiple months of equivalent rent. Add to that the soft cost of the owner's time on the platform-management side, and the long-term lease compares favorably even before considering the regulatory risk.
We make no claim that a long-term lease is the right choice for every owner. Owners with a primary residence elsewhere who want to use the home for a few weeks each year, on an eligible address, can run a hybrid model that works. But for owners considering whether to take a recently-purchased Asheville home and run it as a year-round STR — particularly on an address whose STR-eligibility is uncertain — the math, in our experience, simply does not favor it the way the spreadsheets do.
What we recommend instead
We recommend a straightforward 12-month long-term lease, priced honestly to comparable closed-lease data in the immediate neighborhood. Hearth & Hollow's leasing process publishes the credit floor, the income multiple, and the pet policy on every listing — qualified applicants self-select, and the home leases inside three weeks at a fair-market rate to a resident who, in our experience, renews 92% of the time.
That arithmetic, run honestly over a five-year horizon, beats the alternative for most owners we work with. It is also, frankly, less work — for them and for us.
Owners considering us are welcome to write for a complimentary written rental analysis. We will benchmark the home against three to five comparable closed leases and give you a positioning memo within four business days. There is no obligation and no follow-up sales pressure.