Short Term Rental Distance Rules: What 500 Feet Allows

On September 11, 2025, Austin's city council approved a rewrite of its short term rental rules 10-0 and, in the same session, defeated a geographic density cap amendment on an 8-3 vote. Legal staff had warned that geographic limits could be challenged under equal protection or state constitutional claims, and enforcement staff said the caps Austin adopted a decade earlier contributed to widespread violations. The council kept a spacing requirement measured in feet instead.

That trade is spreading. Richardson, Texas adopted a 500 foot separation between short term rentals on August 10, 2026, Bend, Oregon requires 500 feet between whole-house rentals, and Chatham County, Georgia froze new approvals in July 2026 while it drafts a replacement ordinance. A distance rule reads as a zoning technicality, so it moves through a council with a fraction of the fight a percentage cap draws.

It should draw more. A separation requirement is arithmetic: the distance sets the maximum number of rentals the rule permits per square mile. No city has published that number, and as far as we can find, no outlet has calculated it. It is usually tighter than the percentage cap the same council rejected.

Key facts

• Austin's council approved its short term rental rewrite 10-0 on September 11, 2025 and defeated a geographic density cap amendment 8-3 in the same session, according to the Austin Monitor.
• Austin's 1,000 foot rule governs one operator's own units, not rentals owned by different people: "An individual may operate up to two STR units on a site and may operate additional STRs elsewhere, provided they are at least 1,000 feet apart" (austintexas.gov, read September 21, 2026).
• Richardson, Texas requires a new short term rental to sit at least 500 feet from an existing one. Council passed the rules August 10, 2026, the pause on new registrations expired August 25, 2026, and registered rentals are exempt (Community Impact, September 3, 2026).
• Bend, Oregon requires "500 feet of separation between whole-house short term rental properties," applied to Type II whole-house rentals and measured radially from the property boundary, including all properties wholly or partially within that radius (bendoregon.gov).
• Under ideal geometry a 500 foot separation permits at most 129 short term rentals per square mile, a 1,000 foot separation at most 32, and a 300 foot separation at most 358.

Two rules that look identical and do opposite things

A separation requirement refuses a permit when another permitted rental sits within a set distance. That sentence hides a split that decides whether the rule limits anything at all.

Austin's version runs against one operator. An individual may run up to two units on a single site, and any further units that person operates must be at least 1,000 feet apart. Two different owners can hold licensed rentals on the same block. The rule disperses portfolios rather than capping neighborhood density, and summaries describing Austin as having a buffer between all short term rentals describe a rule Austin does not have.

Richardson and Bend wrote the other version, where the distance runs between properties regardless of who owns them, so the first registration on a block forecloses every address inside the radius. That is a density cap, administered at the permit counter as a map query rather than as a running tally against a denominator, which is the part of percentage caps that tends to end up in court. We covered what happens when the denominator in a percentage cap is wrong, and separately how attrition licensing shrinks a permit pool. A buffer is a third mechanic, and it behaves like neither. Councils appear to believe it is the more durable one, which is what Austin's vote suggests, though the belief is untested in court.

How many rentals a 500 foot buffer actually allows

Treat each rental as a point no other rental may come within d feet of. The densest legal arrangement of such points is a triangular lattice, where each occupies (square root of 3, divided by 2) times d squared of land. That factor is about 0.866.

At 500 feet: 0.866 x 250,000 = 216,506 square feet per rental. A square mile is 5,280 squared, or 27,878,400 square feet. Divide: 27,878,400 / 216,506 = 128.8. Call it 129 rentals per square mile.

The same division at other distances: 1,000 feet gives 866,025 square feet each and 32.2 rentals per square mile, and 300 feet gives 77,942 square feet each and 357.7 rentals per square mile.

To convert those into the percentages councils argue about, you need homes per square mile, and Richardson's own coverage supplies it. Community Impact reports that the 500 foot rule "creates a buffer zone of roughly 80 houses around an existing STR." A 500 foot radius disc covers 785,398 square feet, or 18.03 acres. Eighty houses across 18.03 acres is 4.4 homes per acre, about 2,840 per square mile, an ordinary single family suburb. The geometry and the local reporting agree, a good sign both are right.

At 2,840 homes per square mile, a 500 foot buffer is a 4.5 percent cap (128.8 / 2,840), a 300 foot buffer is 12.6 percent, and a 1,000 foot buffer is 1.1 percent.

That last figure is worth sitting with. Austin's council treated a geographic density cap as the aggressive option and a 1,000 foot spacing rule as the moderate one. Applied between all rentals rather than within one operator's portfolio, 1,000 feet would have been roughly a 1 percent cap, tighter than nearly any percentage cap a US council has put to a vote.

These are ceilings under perfect geometry, not forecasts. Street grids, lot shapes, and first come registration all push the real number down, never up. Our audit of U.S. short-term rental regulation treats distance requirements as structural rules that can matter more than the fee.

The measurement sentence matters more than the number

Two ordinances can both say 500 feet and permit very different numbers of rentals, because they measure from different places.

Bend measures radially from the property boundary and excludes every property wholly or partially inside that radius. That is not 500 feet between two points. It is 500 feet plus part of both parcels. On a 60 by 120 foot lot the center sits 67 feet from the far corner, and adding that at both ends puts effective center to center spacing near 634 feet.

Run the formula on 634 feet: 0.866 x 401,956 = 348,281 square feet per rental, and 27,878,400 / 348,281 = 80 rentals per square mile. The measurement language cut the ceiling from 129 to 80, a reduction of 38 percent, without changing the number in the headline.

Austin amended exactly this clause: the 2025 rewrite moved the measurement from unit to unit to site to site, which permits up to two rentals on one lot. Point to point, boundary to boundary, and structure to structure are three different rules wearing the same number.

Who gets grandfathered is the money question

Every version of this rule we verified protects the people already inside it. Richardson's rule "will apply to currently unregistered STRs and all future rental properties, while existing, registered STRs will not be impacted," Community Impact reports. Chatham County's moratorium, approved July 10, 2026, leaves existing rentals and in-process applications untouched.

Follow that through. A buffer removes no existing rental from the market. It removes addresses from eligibility. In Richardson, each registered rental takes an 18 acre disc, roughly 80 houses, off the board for everyone else. Supply freezes at whatever it was on the effective date, and the holders of registrations on that date own the only ones the city will issue in that radius.

That makes a registration a location asset rather than a piece of paper, and it should show up in what a property sells for. It is the mirror image of markets where a permit does not convey to the buyer at all. The two regimes point in opposite directions on price, so identify which one governs your address before setting one.

Work from the adopted ordinance, not the city's web page. Richardson's program page still showed the 2022 framework on September 21, 2026, with no mention of the distance rule.

What to do about it

Find out which of the two rules your jurisdiction uses. The operative facts are the distance, what it measures from, whether it runs against all rentals or one operator's units, and the effective date.

If a buffer is proposed and you are not registered, register before that date. Every one of these ordinances draws its line there, and in practice the difference between the two sides of it is permanent. If you are buying, check the buffer before the inspection, because a location that fails a separation test is not curable by any repair.

Ask the clerk two questions in writing: whether a lapsed or revoked registration frees the radius, and whether the buffer runs against registrations or against active listings. Most ordinances are silent on both, and the answers decide what a gap year costs you.

Then price the risk into how you get bookings. A host whose ability to operate rests on a rule a council can amend has more reason, not less, to own the guest relationship outright. A direct channel on your own domain, which is what Haven builds, is the part of the business no ordinance revokes. Our state by state guide to what changed in 2026 tracks where the rules are moving.

What to watch next

Chatham County's 120 day moratorium, counted from July 10, 2026, runs out on November 7, 2026, and commissioners said they expected to finish sooner. The draft ordinance has not been published, so whether it contains a buffer is unknown.

Richardson should produce the first denials under a 500 foot rule this fall, since the registration pause lapsed August 25, 2026. Those denials are the first real test of how the measurement clause gets applied. Worth watching too is whether any city publishes how many rentals its buffer leaves room for. None has yet, which means councils keep voting on density caps without seeing the cap.

FAQ

How far apart do short term rentals have to be?

It depends on the city, and there is no state or federal standard. Verified examples as of September 21, 2026 include 500 feet in Richardson, Texas and 500 feet between whole-house rentals in Bend, Oregon. Austin uses 1,000 feet, but only between units run by the same individual.

Is a distance requirement the same as a cap on short term rentals?

Functionally yes, when it applies between rentals owned by different people. A 500 foot separation permits at most 129 rentals per square mile under ideal geometry, roughly 4.5 percent of homes in a suburb of 2,840 homes per square mile. The ordinance never uses the word cap, and the cap is usually tighter than the percentage limits councils debate openly.

Does a new distance rule apply to my existing short term rental?

In the cases we verified, no. Richardson exempts existing registered rentals and applies the rule to unregistered and future ones, and Chatham County's moratorium exempts existing rentals and in-process applications. Confirm it in your city's adopted text, since the exemption is what the rule turns on.

What happens if my neighbor registers first?

Under a true separation rule you are ineligible for as long as their registration stands, regardless of how well your property would otherwise qualify. Whether a lapse or revocation reopens your address is usually not addressed in the ordinance, so ask the permitting office.

How do I calculate how many rentals my city's buffer allows?

Multiply 0.866 by the square of the distance in feet to get the land each rental occupies, then divide 27,878,400 by that figure for the maximum per square mile. For a percentage, divide the result by the homes per square mile in your area. Treat it as a ceiling, since real street layouts reduce it.