The Costigan Group Expands STR Advisory Services - Featured in USA Today

Press coverage is only meaningful if the thing being covered is real.

The USA Today feature published on March 17, 2026 highlighted The Costigan Group's expansion of short-term rental advisory services for Nashville investors. You can read it here: The Costigan Group at Compass Highlights Jack Costigan as Nashville's Leading STR and Investment Advisor

This post is not about the coverage. It's about why the expansion is happening now, and what it means for anyone approaching Nashville's STR market in 2026.

Why We Expanded STR Advisory Services

The demand for real advisory — not just transactional help — has been building for two years.

Nashville's STR market has gotten significantly more complex. Permitting rules have tightened. Occupancy rates have normalized in the low-to-mid 50s across core corridors. Average daily rates are down 15 to 25 percent from COVID-era peaks. The gap between what a projection says and what a property actually produces has never been wider.

That environment does not punish buying. It punishes buying without diligence.

Most investors coming to Nashville, whether from out of state or locally, are still relying on AirDNA projections or management company estimates to evaluate deals. Those tools have their place. They are not a substitute for a pre-acquisition screen built around the actual regulatory and financial conditions of the specific property in question.

That's what we built. And that's what we formalized with this expansion.

If you want to understand how we evaluate STR deals before clients write offers, the full framework is here: Short-Term Rental Advisory.

Nashville's Two-Tier Permit System Is Not Optional Knowledge

The USA Today piece specifically called out Nashville's permit classification system, and it's worth going deeper on this because it is where most investors are most exposed.

Nashville operates under two STR permit types. Type 1 permits are owner-occupied. Type 2 are non-owner-occupied, and they are restricted to commercial and mixed-use zoning districts. A residential property in a standard single-family zone is not eligible for a Type 2 permit, regardless of how the listing is marketed or what the current owner is doing.

This is not a technicality. It is the difference between an investment property and a liability.

We verify zoning and permit classification before a client ever tours a property. That sequence matters. Emotional commitment happens fast in real estate. If you tour first and verify later, you are making a harder decision under worse conditions.

Our underwriting calculator is a useful first filter if you want to run numbers on a specific property before you go further: Nashville STR Underwriting Calculator.

The Market Reality Behind the Expansion

The feature referenced current market conditions, and I want to be precise about what those conditions actually look like.

Occupancy compression is real and stabilizing. The Nashville metro added significant STR inventory between 2021 and 2024. That inventory has normalized demand across the major corridors. The East Nashville and Gulch submarkets that were producing 68 to 72 percent occupancy a few years ago are now running in the low-to-mid 50s. That is a structural shift, not a seasonal dip.

Rate normalization followed the same curve. Properties that were averaging $285 per night during the peak travel surge are now averaging $210 to $230 after seasonality, last-minute discounting, and platform fees are accounted for.

Neither of these conditions makes Nashville STRs a bad investment. They make conservative underwriting a non-negotiable.

The deals that have performed for our clients share one characteristic. The model was built on conservative assumptions, and the actuals came in above the floor. The deals that have underperformed were built on optimistic projections that did not survive contact with real operating conditions.

What STR Advisory Actually Covers

The expansion formalizes a practice that has been core to how we work since the beginning. Every STR acquisition we advise on goes through the same pre-acquisition screen:

Zoning and permit verification. We check Metro Nashville's parcel viewer and planning records before anything else. If the property is ineligible, we stop there.

HOA and deed restriction review. Several of Nashville's most active STR corridors have seen HOA amendments in the last two years that restrict short-term rentals. We pull CC&Rs and amendment history on day one.

Revenue stress testing. We rebuild the expense stack from scratch using current market rates for management, cleaning, platform fees, utilities, insurance, and maintenance. We do not use the seller's numbers.

Conservative cash flow modeling. We model DSCR against real net operating income. A property that only works on gross revenue projections does not work.

Regulatory risk modeling. Nashville's Metropolitan Council has signaled more stringent oversight of STR operations. We structure deals with that trajectory in mind, not against the most optimistic regulatory scenario.

If you are considering a Nashville STR acquisition, this is where we start: Short-Term Rental Advisory. If you are selling an STR and want to understand how investor buyers will evaluate your property, the same framework applies: Selling.

What $70 Million in Nashville Real Estate Taught Us

The feature cited our transaction volume: $40 million last year, $70 million total, 141 percent year-over-year revenue growth.

I mention these numbers not as credentials but as context. The volume represents hundreds of individual due diligence reviews across a range of property types, price points, and market conditions. The patterns that emerge from that sample size are real.

The single most consistent pattern: investors who get into trouble in Nashville's STR market trusted a projection over a verified operating history. The investors who have built durable positions did the work before the offer, not after the inspection.

That is what we built the advisory practice around. And that is what the USA Today feature captured.

If You Are Evaluating a Nashville STR

Start with the zoning. Then verify the permit. Then build a conservative model.

If you want help with any part of that process, book time directly: Visit. We work with out-of-state investors, local buyers exploring STR conversions, and portfolio operators looking to expand or exit positions in Davidson and Williamson counties.

The market is more complex than it was two years ago. The advisory standard should be too.