In November 2023, Isle of Palms voters killed a referendum that would have capped investment short-term rental licenses at 1,600. The vote failed by a 54 percent margin, and every guide to renting on the island since has repeated the same conclusion: no cap, pro-property-rights, open for business. That framing isn't wrong. It's also three years out of date on the one number that actually determines what a rental purchase on this island is worth.
The city's own records show something the referendum coverage never circled back to check. Since that vote, the number of active short-term rental licenses on Isle of Palms hasn't grown. It has fallen every year.
What the Ballot Actually Decided
The 2023 petition asked a narrow question: should the city cap investment (non-owner-occupied) rental licenses at 1,600, while leaving full-time residents free to rent without limit. Charleston County property tax records from September 2023, cited during the campaign, showed 1,616 short-term rentals already sitting in that investment category, just 16 above the proposed cap. Voters said no. Council members who opposed the measure, including Blair Hahn, called the proposed ordinance flawed and said the defeat gave the city a chance to start over on a better version. Newly elected councilmember Ashley Carroll made a different point after the results came in: nobody on either side of the debate actually agreed on the real license count, and she wanted the city to nail down "the actual number of licenses we have, not just people having them out of fear."
That's the detail worth sitting with. Three years ago, the island didn't have a reliable answer to a question this basic. It does now.
The Number the Coverage Never Circled Back To
The city's Building and Planning department now tracks active short-term rental licenses by license year in its budget and workshop packets, and the trend line runs opposite to the "no cap means no limit" story most rental guides still tell.
| License Year (runs May–April) | Active STR Licenses |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 1,868 |
| 2024 | 1,784 |
| 2025 | 1,733 |
| 2026 (first two months) | 1,715 |
The island's rental license year runs May through April, and the count for license year 2023, which covered the months surrounding the referendum, is the high-water mark in the city's own data. Every license year since has come in lower, without a single ordinance forcing it. Nobody voted this decline into existence. It's the aggregate result of individual owners not renewing, licenses lapsing, or properties reverting to long-term or personal use, at a pace that has quietly erased more inventory than the failed 1,600 cap would have.
There's a second shift buried in the same dashboards. In the city's parcel-level analysis from spring 2025, single-family homes with a current license made up about 22 percent of all single-family parcels on the island. In the update pulled roughly a year later, that share had climbed to 27 percent. So even as the total license count contracted, the mix moved toward houses and away from condos and other property types. Fewer licenses overall, but a larger slice of them attached to single-family homes.
A Different Tracker, a Different Story
Here's where it gets more complicated for anyone underwriting a purchase off a listing's booking history. City license counts are one measure of supply. Platform-level tracking is another, and it tells a nearly opposite story. One national short-term rental data tracker counted 1,047 active Airbnb listings on Isle of Palms over the twelve months ending in May 2026, with supply up roughly 30 percent over that same window, even as the city's own license rolls were shrinking.
Those two numbers can't both describe a market growing in lockstep. Either a meaningful share of active platform listings are operating without a current city license, or the listing count includes properties booked for stretches long enough to fall outside the 30-day short-term definition, or some mix of both. None of the guides that repeat the "no cap" headline mention this divergence, because most of them are working from the license side of the ledger, or from a platform's marketing page, not both at once.
The revenue estimates diverge just as much. That same tracker put median annual host revenue on the island near $87,000, based on a roughly $768 nightly rate and 42 percent occupancy. A different tracker, using a different sample and methodology, put median revenue closer to $100,000, but built on a nightly rate nearly 30 percent lower and an occupancy rate almost 30 points higher. Two data providers, same island, and their underlying assumptions about how often a house rents and at what price barely resemble each other. That's a signal that "typical" income claims for this island deserve more scrutiny than a single blog post's number, including this one.
Why the Gap Matters More Than the Vote Did
If you're comparing Isle of Palms against another coastal option purely on the strength of "no cap, still uncapped," you're underwriting off a fact that's technically true and directionally misleading. The absence of a regulatory ceiling doesn't mean the supply of licensed, compliant rentals is expanding. By the city's own count, it's been contracting since the year the cap failed. Whatever is filling that gap on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO isn't necessarily operating with a current Isle of Palms rental license, which matters a great deal if you're buying a property specifically because its listing history suggests reliable income. A booking history built on an unlicensed run doesn't transfer any legal protection to you as the new owner, and the city's licenses are non-transferable regardless.
How Isle of Palms Still Compares to Its Neighbors
The regulatory backdrop hasn't changed since the vote, and it's still the most useful comparison point for anyone weighing islands against each other:
- Isle of Palms has no license cap, an annual renewal requirement, occupancy limits tied to bedroom count, and a rule requiring an owner's representative who can be on site within one hour of a complaint.
- Sullivan's Island has long prohibited short-term rentals outright.
- Mount Pleasant caps short-term rental permits at 400, a ceiling that's effectively closed to new applicants.
- Folly Beach adopted its own 800-permit cap earlier in 2023, before the Isle of Palms vote, and the group campaigning against the Isle of Palms cap pointed to Folly during the campaign, claiming property values there had dropped 25 to 30 percent since the cap took effect. That figure came from a campaign group, not an independent audit, and should be read as advocacy rather than settled fact.
Isle of Palms remains the most permissive of the group on paper. The license data suggests the practical ceiling has been set by something other than ordinance, whether that's rising insurance costs, tax exposure on non-primary residences taxed at 6 percent of fair market value, or simply owners deciding the math doesn't pencil the way it once did.
What This Means If You're Underwriting a Purchase
Before you price a specific Isle of Palms address against its Airbnb history, verify three things separately: whether the property currently holds a valid city rental business license, whether that property is taxed and licensed in the 4 percent owner-occupied category or the 6 percent investment category the city itself tracks, and whether the HOA or regime governing that specific building or street imposes its own rental restrictions independent of the city. None of those three things move together, and a strong platform listing history tells you nothing about any of them.
The license count decline since 2023 is worth asking about directly during due diligence, not treating as background noise. A seller's agent can tell you the property's current license status. What they likely can't tell you, because the city itself only started tracking it clearly in its recent dashboards, is where that specific block or street sits relative to the island-wide trend.
If you're comparing a specific Isle of Palms property against this data, or weighing it against Sullivan's Island, Mount Pleasant, or a mainland option entirely, Rose Gold Properties can walk through the license history and the numbers with you before you write an offer. Request your home estimate and let's look at what the address you're considering can actually support.
