What It Actually Costs to Start a Short-Term Rental in Highlands or Cashiers, NC

Thomas Garner
11 hours ago
18 min read

Rock escarpment overlook with fall foliage on the Highlands-Cashiers plateau, North Carolina

Ask anyone who has actually opened a short-term rental on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau what surprised them most about the process, and it's rarely the mortgage payment. It's everything stacked on top of it — the furnishing budget for a home that has to compete at a genuinely luxury price point, the insurance premium on a high-value structure at 3,500 to 4,500 feet, the HOA or POA assessment that shows up every year whether you booked a single night or not, and — if you're looking inside the Village of Highlands specifically — a live legal fight over whether short-term rental use will still be allowed on your property a few years from now.

This is a different kind of market than most Southeast short-term rental content assumes. Highlands and Cashiers, North Carolina aren't a budget cabin play in the Smokies foothills. They're a high-elevation, high-ADR, high-purchase-price plateau that draws Atlanta and Florida second-home buyers, and the startup math reflects that at every step. This post walks through what it actually takes in year one to open a single, independent listing here — furnishing, insurance, HOA dues, licensing, management, and realistic revenue — and it starts with the one piece of information you need before you look at a single listing photo.

Two North Carolina zip codes, two very different risk pictures. That's the throughline of everything below: the same plateau, the same guest base, and two towns that a buyer needs to evaluate on completely different terms before a single dollar goes toward furniture.

None of the numbers in this post are meant to talk you out of this market — plenty of owners on this plateau are running profitable, well-reviewed listings today. They're meant to make sure the cash-needed number in your head matches the cash-needed number this specific market actually requires, and that the zoning question in Highlands gets answered before the furnishing budget gets spent.

What "Startup Cost" Actually Means in This Market

We're not walking through mortgage financing here — down payment size, loan terms, and whether you're paying cash vary too much buyer to buyer to generalize responsibly. What we are walking through is the cash you need on top of the purchase to actually open the doors on one typical, independently-run listing: furnishings sized to a luxury-positioned home, an STR-appropriate insurance policy, the HOA or POA dues that come with most Cashiers-area properties, local licensing and registration, management setup, and enough working capital to cover the slow early months before bookings ramp. Every figure below is either sourced to a specific market data provider or flagged clearly as a general estimate — this market has too much dollar variance for anyone to responsibly hand you a single hard number and call it done.

It's also worth naming what this post covers: this is not an exhaustive regulatory reference for every Highlands ordinance detail, but the core short-term rental phase-out rule below is now confirmed directly from the Town of Highlands' own currently-codified Unified Development Ordinance, verified via Municode rather than secondary press coverage. That's the fact every buyer needs before they get further into the numbers.

The Regulatory Split You Need to Understand First

Highlands and Cashiers sit on the same plateau, fifteen minutes apart, and they are not the same regulatory environment. Get this backwards and every other number in this post is irrelevant.

Regulatory note — read this before you buy in Highlands: Property inside the Village of Highlands' R-1 or R-2 residential zoning is subject to a confirmed, currently active ordinance phasing out short-term rental use. Per the Town of Highlands' Unified Development Ordinance (Sec. 6.5.18.B, amended 9-19-24, current through the December 18, 2025 amendment): "Notwithstanding anything in this UDO, short-term rentals in operation as of September 15, 2022 are nonconforming uses in the R-1 and R-2 zoning districts until September 15, 2027. After September 15, 2027, short-term rentals are not permitted in the R-1 or R-2 zoning districts, and all short-term rentals in those districts must be discontinued." This is current, codified law verified directly against the Town's own Municode listing, not a disputed or pending outcome. If you're evaluating a purchase inside Highlands town limits specifically, confirm the property's zoning district and its specific short-term rental use history directly with the Town of Highlands (828-526-2118) before you buy — the rule above applies sitewide in R-1/R-2, and your parcel's individual eligibility is worth verifying before you go under contract.

Cashiers is the opposite case. It's unincorporated Jackson County — there is no town government and, as of this writing, no identified county STR-specific zoning ban. The real constraint there is private: HOA and POA covenants inside the area's gated communities, which can restrict or prohibit short-term rental use independent of anything a government body decides. We break both of these down in detail in the next two sections, but the short version: Highlands carries government-level regulatory risk that is genuinely unresolved, and Cashiers carries private-covenant risk that is knowable in advance if you do the diligence.

Highlands: An Active Ordinance, Confirmed and Current

On September 19, 2024, the Town of Highlands Board of Commissioners voted 4-1 to amortize short-term rentals in the town's R-1 and R-2 residential zoning districts — meaning existing STRs in those districts would eventually have to stop renting for stays under 30 days, with a phase-out period rather than an immediate ban. The vote went against the recommendation of the town's own planning board, the mayor, and its paid legal counsel, all of whom reportedly advised against it.

A group calling itself the Save Highlands Committee retained the Asheville firm Allen Stahl + Kilbourne and filed a legal challenge to the ordinance, and the case drew attention from property-rights litigators. The core legal argument was that a use which was legal when a property owner started it should be allowed to continue as a valid nonconforming use, even after a new ordinance restricts that use going forward. That challenge has not changed the ordinance: the Town of Highlands' currently-codified Unified Development Ordinance, current through the December 18, 2025 amendment, retains the phase-out intact — short-term rentals in R-1 and R-2 that were in operation as of September 15, 2022 remain nonconforming uses until September 15, 2027, after which they are not permitted in those districts. Treat the September 2027 deadline as confirmed, codified law, verified directly against the Town's own ordinance text, not a disputed press report.

What this means practically for a buyer: if you're looking at a property inside Highlands town limits, the first two questions are not "what's the ADR" and "what's the cap rate." They're (1) is this parcel in R-1 or R-2, and (2) has this specific property operated as a short-term rental since before September 15, 2022, which determines its nonconforming-use status under the ordinance. Some in-town commercial and mixed-use zones are not affected by the residential amortization at all, and existing STRs in the affected districts are grandfathered only until September 15, 2027 under the ordinance as currently codified. Call the Town of Highlands directly to confirm your specific parcel's zoning and STR-use history, and loop in a North Carolina real estate attorney, before you go under contract on anything inside Highlands' town limits.

It's also worth understanding why the fight is happening at all: opponents argue the town is effectively eliminating a lawful, existing property use through zoning rather than through a more direct regulatory process, and that owners who bought specifically to operate an STR are being asked to absorb the cost of a policy reversal they had no part in creating. The town's stated rationale has centered on neighborhood character and housing availability concerns common to mountain resort towns nationwide. Both sides of that argument matter to the eventual outcome, and neither side has won yet.

Cashiers: No Town Zoning Fight, But HOA Covenants Rule

Cashiers has no town government to pass an ordinance like Highlands did, which is why it's the more straightforward path from a pure zoning standpoint. That doesn't mean it's unrestricted — it means the restriction, where it exists, comes from private covenants rather than a public vote.

A large share of Cashiers-area real estate sits inside gated communities and private clubs — Wade Hampton, Chattooga Club, High Hampton, and Trillium among the better-known names on the plateau. Each of these operates under its own POA or club governing documents, and those documents can restrict rental terms, cap the number of rentable weeks, require owner presence, or ban short-term rental use outright, completely independent of county zoning. High Hampton is more resort-facing with membership options, while communities like Wade Hampton and Chattooga Club are tightly membership-gated. Trillium ties membership to property ownership. The rules — and how strictly they're enforced — differ community by community and can change when a board revisits its bylaws.

So the Cashiers due-diligence checklist looks different from Highlands': pull the specific community's current covenants (not a summary from a listing agent), confirm in writing whether short-term rental under 30 days is currently permitted, ask how any rental cap or registration requirement is enforced, and ask whether that community has revisited its rental policy recently or has a pending vote on the subject. Properties outside any gated community, on unrestricted Jackson County land, avoid this layer of friction entirely but are less common in the immediate Cashiers core.

This is worth internalizing before you fall in love with a listing photo: a $1.5 million home inside a club community with a no-rental covenant is not an STR opportunity, no matter what the market data for the broader Cashiers zip code suggests. The covenant, not the county, is the binding constraint on that specific parcel — and it's a document you can and should read in full before writing an offer, not after.

What a Genuinely STR-Viable Property Costs to Buy Here

This is explicitly a high-purchase-price market, and it's worth saying plainly before anyone runs numbers off a generic Southeast STR spreadsheet. Highlands has run at a median single-family home price in the roughly $800,000 to $1.2 million range through 2026, with luxury inventory well into the multi-million-dollar range — and that's a market median, not the floor for a property that will actually book well as a short-term rental. Cashiers spans a wider range, roughly $400,000 to well over $1 million depending on lot, view, and whether the property sits inside one of the gated golf communities.

A genuinely STR-viable property in this market — meaning a home with the bedroom count, condition, and location guests actually search for and book at this price tier — realistically starts well above $600,000 in most cases, and often considerably higher for anything inside a name-brand gated community or with a real long-range view. Treat any number here as a general planning range, not a quote: get current comps from a local agent working this specific plateau before you set a budget, since pricing on the Highlands-Cashiers plateau moves differently than the broader Western North Carolina market and can shift meaningfully year to year.

Financing at this price point also tends to look different than a typical vacation-rental purchase. Many lenders treat a non-owner-occupied, high-value mountain property as a jumbo loan with its own down payment and reserve requirements, and some buyers in this market purchase in cash specifically to move faster in a low-inventory environment where well-priced, STR-viable homes don't sit long. If financing is part of your plan, get pre-qualified with a lender who has specifically underwritten jumbo, non-owner-occupied loans in Western North Carolina before you start touring — the terms can differ meaningfully from a standard conforming mortgage.

Furnishing a Luxury-Positioned Listing

Furnishing budget is where a lot of new owners underestimate this specific market. A cabin competing in a $150-a-night market in the Georgia mountains and a home competing at a $400-plus average daily rate on the Highlands-Cashiers plateau are not furnished the same way, and guests booking at this price point notice the difference immediately — in photos before they ever book, and in reviews after they stay.

As a general planning estimate — not a fixed number, since finish level, home size, and how much you're keeping versus replacing all move this significantly — a furnish-to-luxury-standard budget for a home in this market commonly runs from roughly $80,000 on the lean end for a smaller, already well-appointed home, up past $150,000 or more for a larger property furnished fully from scratch to compete with the plateau's top listings. That figure typically needs to cover higher-end furniture and case goods, a full kitchen build-out with commercial-grade appliances guests expect at this tier, linens and bedding sized for the property's real bed count, outdoor living furniture (porches and decks are a major selling point on this plateau), and the styling and professional photography that actually sells the listing once it's built.

Get an itemized quote from a furnishing company that has specifically worked Highlands or Cashiers listings before finalizing a number — regional freight and installation costs to get furniture up the mountain add a real line item that flat-market estimates miss entirely. Winterization matters here too: outdoor furniture, hot tubs, and exterior fixtures at this elevation need to be rated for real winter conditions, not the mild-climate patio furniture that works fine in a lowland Southeast market.

Insurance on a High-Value Mountain Property

Insurance on a high-value mountain home run as a short-term rental has more moving parts than a standard homeowner's policy, and it's worth budgeting for before you're under contract rather than discovering it during underwriting. You'll generally need a policy written or endorsed specifically for short-term rental use — a standard homeowner's policy typically doesn't cover commercial-style guest turnover — along with dwelling coverage set to true replacement cost on a property whose rebuild cost at this elevation and finish level can run meaningfully above the purchase price, increased liability coverage appropriate to hosting paying guests, and consideration of location-specific risk like wildfire exposure (a real and increasingly discussed factor across the Southern Appalachians), wind, and water/pipe risk during winter freeze periods at elevation.

Premiums on high-value mountain STR properties vary widely by carrier, exact replacement cost, and how the property is used, so treat any specific dollar figure as a general estimate to validate with a broker who writes STR-specific policies in this region — not a number to bank a budget on sight unseen. Get quotes from at least two brokers who specifically write short-term rental coverage in Western North Carolina before you finalize a first-year budget, since general homeowner's carriers frequently either decline STR coverage outright or price it in a way that makes the property uneconomical.

HOA and POA Dues: The Recurring Cost Most Buyers Underestimate

This is the cost that's easy to miss when you're focused on purchase price and furnishing, and it's a genuinely defining feature of this market compared to most Southeast STR destinations. A meaningful share of Highlands-Cashiers plateau inventory — especially in Cashiers' gated golf and club communities — carries HOA or POA dues, and in some cases club membership costs on top of that, running every single year regardless of how many nights the property books.

These dues vary enormously by community, from a modest annual assessment in a smaller subdivision to a substantial figure in a full-amenity gated club community with golf, dining, and recreational infrastructure to maintain — treat this as a real, ongoing line item you need the actual current number for from the specific community you're considering, not a percentage-of-price rule of thumb that works elsewhere. Ask for the current dues schedule in writing, ask whether there's a pending special assessment (mountain club communities periodically assess members for major capital projects), and confirm whether the community requires or restricts club membership separately from HOA dues — some communities tie amenity access to a membership that isn't automatically included with a home purchase.

Licensing, Permits, and Local Registration

Beyond the zoning question covered above, both towns and Jackson/Macon County generally require some form of registration, occupancy tax collection and remittance, and life-safety compliance (smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers, posted evacuation information) for a legally operating short-term rental — the specific permit process, fee, and inspection requirements are best confirmed directly with the applicable town or county office at the time you're preparing to list, since these requirements are exactly the kind of local detail that changes as ordinances get revised. For a property inside Highlands, this conversation should happen in the same call where you confirm the R-1/R-2 zoning status and the property's STR-use history relative to the September 15, 2022 cutoff covered earlier — don't treat licensing and the phase-out timeline as two separate questions, since a property's eligibility past September 2027 depends on that same nonconforming-use determination.

Self-Managing vs. Professional Management: The Cost Trade-off

Most owners in this market aren't full-time locals, which makes the management decision a real cost line rather than a lifestyle preference. Self-managing a luxury listing from a distance means coordinating cleaning crews, a maintenance contact who can respond quickly at elevation (winter pipe issues don't wait for a convenient weekend), guest communication across time zones, and dynamic pricing that keeps pace with a market where rates swing seasonally. Professional co-hosting or full management typically runs as a percentage of booking revenue rather than a flat fee, and that percentage needs to be weighed against what it actually buys: faster response times, established local vendor relationships, and — in a market with two different regulatory pictures fifteen minutes apart — a manager who already understands the difference between operating in Highlands and operating in Cashiers.

Neither path is automatically the better financial decision. A hands-on local owner can often keep more net revenue by self-managing; an absentee owner who tries to self-manage a high-ADR luxury property from out of state often loses more in guest experience, review scores, and missed maintenance issues than a management fee would have cost. Price this trade-off honestly against your own availability before finalizing a first-year budget, not against a generic rule of thumb.

Seasonality and Off-Season Carrying Costs

The Highlands-Cashiers plateau has a real seasonal rhythm — summer and fall leaf season carry the bulk of demand, while winter months at this elevation are quieter and colder, with occasional snow and ice that affect both guest volume and property maintenance. That seasonality matters directly to a first-year cash plan: occupancy and revenue won't distribute evenly across twelve months, and HOA dues, insurance premiums, and basic utility costs (particularly heating a large home at elevation through a mountain winter) continue whether the calendar is full or not.

Building a working-capital cushion that specifically accounts for a slower winter stretch — not just an average monthly number smoothed across the year — is one of the more common gaps in first-year STR budgets in mountain markets generally, and this plateau is no exception.

What Revenue Actually Looks Like

On the revenue side, third-party short-term rental market data for the plateau shows Highlands running around 45% annual occupancy with an average daily rate near $497 and average monthly revenue in the neighborhood of $45,000 for an active listing, while Cashiers runs somewhat lower at roughly 43% occupancy, an average daily rate near $381, and average monthly revenue around $27,700. Those figures come from third-party STR data aggregators pulling from live Airbnb and Vrbo listings and reflect market averages across all listing types and sizes on the plateau — a specific property's actual results will move up or down from that average based on bedroom count, condition, location relative to downtown Highlands or Cashiers Crossroads, view, and how professionally the listing is marketed and managed.

Treat these as directional market benchmarks rather than a guarantee for any individual property, and pull current, listing-specific data (ideally filtered to comparable bedroom count and location) before finalizing a pro forma. The gap between Highlands and Cashiers pricing is real and consistent with the general pattern that Highlands' more concentrated downtown and higher average home price support a rate premium over Cashiers. It's also worth remembering that these are annualized averages across a market with real seasonal swing — the months that generate the bulk of that revenue are not evenly spread across the calendar.

Running a rough gross-revenue-to-carrying-cost comparison illustrates why the first-year cash number matters so much here. At Highlands' benchmark figures, a listing tracking close to the market average could gross somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000 a year before expenses — a strong top-line number, but one that still has to absorb management costs (if used), cleaning and turnover costs scaled to a luxury standard, utilities on a large home at elevation, HOA dues where applicable, insurance, and property taxes before it reaches net cash flow. None of those operating costs are covered in the first-year startup figures walked through above, which are specifically about the cash needed to open, not the ongoing cost of running the property once it's booking.

The point isn't to discourage anyone from this math — it's to make sure the person running it is looking at gross revenue, operating costs, and startup cash as three separate numbers, rather than assuming a strong ADR automatically means a comfortable first year.

How This Compares to Other Southeast Mountain Markets

It's worth putting these numbers next to a more typical Southeast mountain STR market to make the point concrete. In parts of North Georgia or East Tennessee, a well-located cabin might trade in the $350,000 to $500,000 range, furnish for $25,000 to $50,000, and book at a $200 to $300 average nightly rate. Every one of those numbers roughly doubles or more on the Highlands-Cashiers plateau — the purchase price is higher, the furnishing bar is higher because the guest expectation is higher, and the nightly rate is higher too. That's not a coincidence; it's the same basic economics playing out at a different price tier.

What doesn't scale up proportionally is the regulatory picture, and that's the part worth sitting with. A buyer moving from a $400,000 Georgia cabin market into a $900,000 Highlands purchase is taking on meaningfully more capital risk in a market where the Town of Highlands has a confirmed, codified deadline on short-term rental use in R-1/R-2 districts. That combination — higher capital exposure and a hard regulatory expiration date in one of the two towns — is the single biggest reason to confirm your specific parcel's zoning and eligibility before assuming this market behaves like the mountain STR markets a buyer may already be familiar with.

Putting Together a Realistic First-Year Number

Stacking the pieces above gives you the shape of a first-year cash-needed number, even though the exact total will move meaningfully based on the specific property, community, and how much of the furnishing and improvement work is truly needed versus already in place:

Furnishing to a luxury-market standard: roughly $80,000 to $150,000-plus as a general estimate, verified against an itemized quote for the specific home.
STR-specific insurance: a real annual line item, quoted from a broker who writes short-term rental policies in Western North Carolina rather than assumed from a standard homeowner's rate.
HOA/POA dues (where applicable, common in Cashiers): the actual current schedule from the specific community, not a market-wide average.
Local licensing, registration, and occupancy tax setup: confirmed directly with the town or county at the time of listing.
Management setup, whether self-managed tooling and local vendor relationships or a professional co-host's onboarding: budgeted against your own realistic availability, not a rule of thumb.
Working capital for the ramp-up and off-season: enough cash reserve to cover several months of carrying costs before bookings and reviews build toward the market's average occupancy, sized around this market's real winter slowdown rather than a smoothed annual average.

None of that includes the purchase price itself, which — as covered above — realistically starts well above $600,000 for a genuinely STR-viable property in this specific market and should be budgeted with current local comps, not a generic Southeast average. The honest takeaway is that Highlands-Cashiers is not a low-capital entry point into short-term rental ownership. It rewards owners who can absorb a real first-year cash outlay and are buying for a longer hold — which makes the regulatory picture in Highlands, and the covenant picture in Cashiers, worth resolving before the furnishing budget, not after.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it currently legal to run a short-term rental inside the Village of Highlands, NC?

Existing short-term rentals in Highlands' R-1 and R-2 residential districts are operating under a confirmed, currently codified phase-out ordinance passed in September 2024 (UDO Sec. 6.5.18.B). Short-term rentals in operation as of September 15, 2022 remain nonconforming uses in those districts until September 15, 2027; after that date, short-term rental use is not permitted in R-1 or R-2. This rule survived the Town's most recent ordinance amendment (December 18, 2025) intact. Confirm your specific property's zoning district and STR-use history directly with the Town of Highlands before buying.

What is the September 2027 deadline for Highlands STRs?

The Town of Highlands' Unified Development Ordinance (Sec. 6.5.18.B) sets September 15, 2027 as the date after which short-term rentals are no longer permitted in the R-1 or R-2 residential zoning districts; rentals operating there since before September 15, 2022 are nonconforming uses until that date. This is confirmed, currently codified law — verified directly against the Town's own Municode-published ordinance, current through the December 18, 2025 amendment — not a disputed or pending outcome.

Does Cashiers, NC have its own short-term rental ban?

No town-level ban has been identified for Cashiers, which makes sense because Cashiers is unincorporated Jackson County and has no town government to pass one. The practical restriction in Cashiers typically comes from private HOA or POA covenants inside specific communities, not from a government zoning ordinance.

Which Cashiers-area communities have HOA rental restrictions?

Restrictions vary by community and change over time, so they need to be confirmed directly with each community's current governing documents. Well-known gated communities on the plateau include Wade Hampton, Chattooga Club, High Hampton, and Trillium — each sets its own rental policy, and some are considerably stricter than others.

How much does it cost to furnish a short-term rental in Highlands or Cashiers?

As a general estimate, furnishing a home to the standard this luxury-positioned market expects commonly runs from roughly $80,000 to $150,000 or more, depending on home size, current condition, and finish level. Get an itemized quote from a furnishing company experienced with plateau listings rather than budgeting off a generic figure.

What's the average nightly rate for a short-term rental in this market?

Third-party market data shows Highlands averaging around $497 a night with roughly 45% occupancy, and Cashiers averaging around $381 a night with roughly 43% occupancy. These are market-wide averages, not a guarantee for any specific property, and should be validated against comparable listings before finalizing a revenue projection.

Do I need special insurance for a high-value STR in the North Carolina mountains?

Generally yes. A standard homeowner's policy typically doesn't cover short-term guest turnover, so most owners need a policy written or endorsed specifically for short-term rental use, with dwelling coverage set to full replacement cost and liability coverage sized for hosting paying guests. Get quotes from a broker who specifically writes STR coverage in Western North Carolina.

Is Cashiers or Highlands the safer place to buy an STR right now from a regulatory standpoint?

Cashiers is generally the more straightforward path on paper because it has no town government and no identified STR-specific zoning ban — its main constraint is private HOA/POA covenants, which are knowable in advance through due diligence. Highlands carries a confirmed, codified government-level phase-out of short-term rental use in its R-1/R-2 districts, effective September 15, 2027, so any purchase inside Highlands town limits specifically needs current zoning and STR-use-history confirmation from the Town before you buy.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

The bottom line: Buying into a luxury mountain market with an active zoning fight in one town and a covenant maze in the other isn't a DIY listing-description problem.

Crest & Cove Creative builds and markets short-term rental listings for owners navigating exactly this kind of market — visit crestcove.co or call (256) 998-7502 to talk through what a Highlands or Cashiers listing needs to compete.