Snowshoe, WV Airbnb & Short-Term Rental Regulations 2026

Regulation Overview

West Virginia's premier ski-resort short-term-rental market; investors buy condos and cabins near Snowshoe Mountain Resort for winter ski demand plus a growing summer mountain-bike and festival season.

Confirmed requirements are a county health permit and a county business license, both administrative, with no confirmed cap, owner-occupancy rule, or zoning ban — this is a comparatively light, investor-friendly regulatory regime as far as could be verified.

West Virginia State Law

State preemption: No state preemption. West Virginia has no statute barring local short-term-rental regulation, so cities, towns and counties set their own permitting, zoning and caps independently; the one state-imposed layer is a health permit.

Statewide rules: Every short-term rental must hold an annual health permit under West Virginia's General Sanitation Rule, issued by the relevant county health department (fee generally scaled to bedroom count). Operators must also obtain a business registration certificate (reported at $30) from the West Virginia State Tax Department before renting a unit for fewer than 30 consecutive days.

Taxes: West Virginia's state consumer sales/use tax (6%) plus a state lodging excise tax (6%) combine to roughly 12% on lodging statewide. Counties and municipalities may additionally levy a local hotel occupancy tax by ordinance — West Virginia Code sets a base rate of 3% with authority to raise it (reported up to 6% for counties under §7-18-2, and higher for some municipalities under §8-13-3) — the actual adopted local rate varies by jurisdiction and was not independently confirmed for every market below.

2025–2026 legislation: No statewide STR preemption or licensing bill was confirmed as enacted for 2025/2026. A hotel-occupancy-tax-rate bill (HB 4776) was tracked in legislative databases but its specific short-term-rental relevance and current status were not confirmed.

Snowshoe Rules

Governing jurisdiction: Pocahontas County Commission (business license) and Pocahontas County Health Department (health permit); Snowshoe is an unincorporated resort area within the county, not its own municipality, so county rules govern government-level regulation (resort/HOA covenants are separate and don't count as government regulation)..

• Snowshoe operates under Pocahontas County's general regulatory framework rather than its own municipal STR ordinance, since Snowshoe itself is unincorporated.
• All STRs need an annual health permit from the Pocahontas County Health Department, at a reported $125 non-refundable fee per property.
• A separate business license from the Pocahontas County Commission is also required for all STR operations.
• Pocahontas County collects a local hotel occupancy tax and reports meaningful annual distributions from it, according to the Pocahontas Times, though the current percentage rate was not confirmed.
• No cap, quota, or owner-occupancy requirement was found for this market — it appears to allow both owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied (investor) rentals.
• Snowshoe Mountain Resort itself may impose separate HOA/resort covenants on units within the resort footprint, but these are private rules, not government regulation, and are not reflected in this strictness rating.

Not confirmed

We could not verify the following against a primary source. Confirm each with the jurisdiction before you rely on it:

• Exact Pocahontas County business license fee.
• Exact current Pocahontas County hotel occupancy tax rate.
• Whether any county zoning ordinance restricts STRs in specific areas.
• Occupancy limits, minimum stay, and penalties for noncompliance.
• Exact health-permit validity period (one source suggested July 1–July 31, which seems inconsistent with an annual permit and should be reconfirmed).

Buyer Due Diligence Checklist

Before you write an offer on a short-term rental here:

• Get a written determination from the governing jurisdiction for the specific parcel. Verbal guidance from anyone else is not diligence.
• Establish which jurisdiction governs — city, town, village and unincorporated county can differ sharply within a few miles.
• Ask whether an existing permit transfers on sale. In many markets it does not, and a listing marketed as a running short-term rental may convey nothing of the sort.
• Read the HOA or condo covenants during your inspection period. Private covenants bind even where the jurisdiction permits the use.
• Model revenue against the legal occupancy cap, not the bedroom count.

Frequently Asked Questions