Short-Term Rentals in Brown County, Indiana

The Special Exception process, and why it exists here

A short-term rental in Brown County is defined as a dwelling rented for 30 days or less; a long-term rental (31 days or more) needs no Special Exception or Planning Department permit at all. For a short-term rental in unincorporated Brown County, the owner has to apply to the Planning Department and win approval from the Board of Zoning Appeals for a Special Exception before renting the property out. This isn't a rubber-stamp administrative filing -- it's a discretionary approval, meaning the BZA can weigh site-specific factors like traffic, septic capacity, and neighborhood character before granting it, in a way a simple permit application wouldn't allow.

The reason this matters more in Brown County than in most rural Indiana counties is straightforward: Brown County State Park and the Nashville arts-colony tourism economy generate real, sustained demand for vacation-rental cabins across the whole county, not just near the park itself, so the county has built out a genuinely specific ordinance rather than leaving short-term rentals as an afterthought in its general zoning code.

The spacing rules: 250 feet from a neighbor, a quarter mile from another rental

Two distance thresholds govern where a short-term rental can sit. First, the property must be at least 250 feet from the nearest residence that isn't itself a short-term rental -- a buffer meant to limit how much a renter-occupied property with rotating guests can affect a full-time neighbor. Second, it must be at least 1,320 feet (a quarter mile) from the nearest other approved short-term rental, which caps how densely rentals can cluster in any one area even where demand is high. Practically, this means a parcel that looks perfect for a cabin-rental business on paper can still fail the application if a competing rental already sits nearby, or if a full-time residence is closer than 250 feet -- check both distances against the county's current inventory of approved rentals before assuming a parcel qualifies.

One more wrinkle worth knowing before you buy specifically for this use: an accessory dwelling unit on a property can't be used as a short-term rental at all, even where the primary residence itself has an approved Special Exception. If your plan involves renting out a guest cottage or converted outbuilding separately from the main house, confirm with the Planning Department whether that structure counts as an ADU under the ordinance before counting on the income.

Nashville's separate rule: Home Stays, not the county's Special Exception

A parcel inside Nashville, the county's only incorporated town, follows a different process than unincorporated county land. Nashville determines short-term rental eligibility by the property's town zoning district, and within its R1 and R2 residential districts, a "Home Stay" requires its own Special Exception plus a yearly Home Occupation permit -- separate paperwork from the county's own process, administered by the town rather than the county Planning Department. If you're comparing a parcel just outside Nashville's town limits against one just inside them, don't assume the same rule or the same spacing thresholds apply to both -- confirm which jurisdiction's process actually governs the specific parcel.