Most of our clients own units in more than one spot. A carriage house off Jones Street, a beach place on Tybee, maybe a newer build over the river in Bluffton. Same owner, same cleaner, same key handoff at 11 a.m. And four completely different rulebooks that decide what we can promise you.
That gap trips people up. A guarantee that's fine downtown can put your permit at risk on Tybee. So here's how the turnover job actually changes as you cross from one line on the map to the next.
Downtown Savannah: the overlay and the 20% math
Inside the city you can only run a short-term rental if you're inside the STVR overlay — the Downtown, Victorian, and Streetcar historic districts. Outside those lines, it's a no. The certificate runs about $150 a year and it's non-refundable, and there's a 20% per-ward cap on non-owner-occupied rentals in the wards everybody wants. If your ward's full, you wait.
Two things drive what we do here. First, every STVR needs a local agent reachable 24/7. A lot of out-of-state owners lean on their cleaner as the boots-on-the-ground contact, which is fine, but it's a real job, not a favor. Second, the buildings. Downtown stock is walk-up carriage houses and multi-story townhomes with narrow stairs and no driveway. You're hauling linens up two flights and parking three blocks away. During St. Pat's week — parade steps off 10:15 a.m. from Gwinnett and Abercorn on March 6, 2026 — that's the worst parking of the year stacked on back-to-back same-day turns. We build extra time into that week on purpose, and we tell owners to expect it.
One thing cleaners forget: your cleaning fee is taxed. Georgia sales tax hits the cleaning fee on any stay of 89 nights or less, on top of the 8% local excise (it went up from 6% in September 2023) and the $5-a-night state fee. Doesn't change how we clean, but it should change how you price.
Tybee: grandfathered means fragile
Tybee is a different animal, and the reason is one road. US-80 is the only way on or off the island, two lanes that flood and jam on any decent-weather weekend. Plan a same-day turn on Pirate Fest weekend (Oct 8–11, 2026) or the Irish Heritage Parade (March 14, 2026) and that causeway is your whole schedule.
The rule that matters: as of June 2024, Tybee won't issue new STR certificates in the R-1, R-1B, and R-2 zones — roughly 85% of the island. If you're already operating, you're grandfathered as a legal nonconforming use, but only as long as you keep the permit and stay clean. That word "compliant" is doing a lot of work. Tybee runs one of the most aggressive enforcement programs in the state — platform surveillance, tax audits, neighbor complaints, physical inspections. A grandfathered permit is worth a lot and it's easy to lose.
So on Tybee we treat the small stuff as the main stuff. Noise, trash out on the wrong day, an occupancy count over the two-adults-per-bedroom line — those are the things that draw a complaint, and a complaint is what puts an inspector at your door. The salt air and humidity here are relentless too; grout and upholstery grow mildew fast, and sand off the beach and Wilmington Island gets tracked everywhere. We push blended-synthetic linens over pure cotton because they dry quick and don't hold the mildew smell. If you also keep a place out on Wilmington Island, same climate playbook applies.
Hilton Head and Bluffton: 2026 rewrites the deal
Cross the Savannah River and you're in South Carolina, and Hilton Head just changed the math. Fees moved from a flat $250 permit to $150 per bedroom a year. Starting May 1, 2026, your permit number has to appear in every ad, the permit has to be in a person's name and not an LLC, HOA properties need a letter from the HOA, and you're capped at six cars in the driveway. The portal opens April 6, 2026 — don't wait on that.
The line that reshapes the cleaning contract: operators have to answer the phone 24/7 and get someone on-site to a complaint within one hour. Fines run $250, then $500, then $1,000, and three-plus citations in a year can pull the license. If we're your one-hour body on the island, that's a defined service with a real clock, not a text you'll get to. We'll quote it that way, honestly.
And Bluffton is its own trap. Much of greater Bluffton sits in unincorporated Beaufort County, which needs a separate Short-Term Rental Property permit plus a business license — different from Hilton Head's. Own on both sides of that line and you're running two filings, not one.
What this means for you
The short version: downtown is about the agent and the parking, Tybee is about protecting a permit you can't get back, and Hilton Head is about that one-hour clock. We don't hand every client the same guarantee because the jurisdictions won't allow it. Our newer suburban work out in Pooler and Richmond Hill — detached homes, real driveways, garages — is honestly the easy end of the spread.
If your units cross two or three of these lines, that's the conversation worth having before peak season, not during it. Tell us where they are and we'll map the turnover plan to each rulebook, or start on the main page to see the areas we cover.