Long-Term and 30-Day Rentals in Savannah’s Ardsley Park
A 1910s residential neighborhood — Daffin Park, Habersham Village, and 5 minutes to downtown. We manage long-term and 30+ day stays here. Nightly vacation rentals in Ardsley Park are mostly illegal under city ordinance, and we won’t pretend otherwise.
Forbes Business Council · 100+ properties · 50,000+ stays · Co-author of The 30 Day Stay (BiggerPockets)
Where Ardsley Park is, and why it’s different
Ardsley Park is a residential neighborhood roughly 3 miles south of River Street, bordered approximately by Bull Street to the west, Waters Avenue to the east, Victory Drive to the north, and 54th Street to the south. The fuller historic district is Ardsley Park / Chatham Crescent, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985, and developed as Savannah’s first automobile-era suburb starting in 1910.
Ardsley Park sits west of Habersham Street; Chatham Crescent sits east of it. Locals usually use “Ardsley Park” to refer to the whole district. The neighborhood was designed by Henri Bignault, who trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris — Chatham Crescent is Georgia’s only City Beautiful Movement neighborhood, with a grand mall, crescent-shaped avenues, and small circular parks.
The housing stock is stately and substantial: Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Mediterranean, Spanish Revival, Arts and Crafts, Prairie, and Dutch Colonial homes built between 1910 and 1935. Many are large single-family houses on lots that combine two or three of the original equal-sized parcels — a different scale from the Historic District’s narrow row houses.
Daffin Park is the gravitational center: 80 acres at the eastern edge of the neighborhood, including Grayson Stadium (home of the Savannah Bananas), tennis courts, ball fields, walking paths, and a community pool. Habersham Village is the small commercial cluster on Habersham Street near 49th Street — coffee, restaurants, and a market all within 5 minutes’ walk for most of the neighborhood.
What makes Ardsley Park genuinely different from Historic, Victorian, or Starland: this is where Savannah families actually live. Lawyers, doctors, professors, and small-business owners. The streets are quieter, the homes are larger, and almost nothing turns over at the nightly-rental scale because it’s not legal at the nightly-rental scale.
Ardsley Park Map
Bull Street (W) · Waters Ave (E) Victory Drive (N) · 54th Street (S)
Daffin Park · Habersham Village · Grayson Stadium Chatham Crescent Grand Mall · Starland (north)
View on Google Maps →What we manage in Ardsley Park
Three legal product lines. We don’t manage what we can’t operate legally.
Long-term rentals
Furnished or unfurnished single-family homes and apartments on 12-month leases. Tenant placement, rent collection, maintenance, lease enforcement, and ownership reporting. This is the bulk of what we operate in Ardsley Park. See current LTR availability →30-day stays
Furnished homes and apartments on minimum 31-night stays. Legal everywhere in Savannah’s residential zones because they exceed the 30-day STVR threshold. Strong demand from traveling nurses, relocating families, slow-traveling retirees, and project-based professionals. Our founder Julie Gates co-authored the BiggerPockets guide on this category. See current 30-day availability →Property management
Full-service management of Ardsley Park investment properties — LTR, MTR, or hybrid. Owner reporting, accounting, maintenance, tenant management, and a Savannah-based team that lives here. We also help owners decide which strategy actually pencils for their specific address. Get a management proposal →What’s walkable from Ardsley Park
Distances measured from the corner of Habersham Street and 49th Street (the heart of Habersham Village). Your walk varies by exact address.
Eat and drink — within 5 minutes on foot (Habersham Village)
- 5 Spot Midtown (Habersham — comfort food, brunch, family-friendly)
- Foxy Loxy in Habersham Village (coffee and pastries)
- Habersham Beverage (wine and beer shop)
- Smoothie King
- Gianna’s Pizza
- Habersham Village Market (small grocery / gourmet)
Eat and drink — within 10 minutes on foot or 3 minutes by car
- Ardsley Station (modern Southern, 4.7 stars — one of the most-booked restaurants in midtown Savannah)
- Cotton & Rye (Habersham — modern Southern, dinner)
- Common Thread (37th Street — frequently named one of Savannah’s best dinners)
- Elizabeth on 37th (long-running fine dining)
- The Vault Kitchen & Market (Bull Street toward Starland)
- Squirrel’s Pizza, Bull Street Taco, Big Bon Bodega (Starland — 5–8 min by bike)
See and do — within Ardsley Park itself
- Daffin Park (80 acres — walking trails, tennis courts, ball fields, playgrounds, community pool)
- Grayson Stadium (Savannah Bananas baseball, April–August)
- Chatham Crescent grand mall (the Beaux Arts central avenue — a quiet, photogenic walk)
- Savannah Arts Academy (the historic Savannah High School at the south end of the mall)
See and do — within 10 minutes by bike or car
- Forsyth Park and the Saturday Forsyth Farmers’ Market
- Starland District (Bull Street — Starland Yard, Two Tides Brewing, all the food)
- Savannah Historic District (5–8 minutes by car, 20–25 by bike)
- Bonaventure Cemetery (10 minutes east by car)
Practical note
Ardsley Park is genuinely walkable inside the neighborhood, but most trips to downtown, Tybee, the airport, or work happen by car. Plan on a vehicle. Most homes have driveways or garages — a real difference from Historic, Victorian, and Starland.Picking the right block within Ardsley Park
Ardsley Park is large and architecturally varied. Within the same neighborhood, you can rent a 1,200 sq ft 1930s bungalow or a 4,000 sq ft Colonial Revival mansion. Four honest tradeoffs:
If you want a 30-day stay close to Habersham Village
Look on or near Habersham Street between 45th and 51st, or on the cross streets within two blocks of Habersham. You’re walking distance to coffee, restaurants, and the small grocery. Trade-off: Habersham Street has steady traffic. Side streets are quieter.If you want grand-house character on the Chatham Crescent side
Look east of Habersham toward the Chatham Crescent grand mall — Atlantic, Washington, Reynolds, and Maupas Avenues. This is where the largest historic homes are. Trade-off: rates are higher per square foot, fewer rentals turn over because owner-occupants typically stay long-term.If you want walking-distance to Daffin Park and Grayson Stadium
Look in the eastern half of Chatham Crescent — Reynolds Avenue, Washington Avenue, or the streets between Atlantic Avenue and Waters Avenue. Daffin Park is right there. The Bananas season turns this corner of the neighborhood into the most fun place in midtown Savannah for two months a year.If you want a long-term lease at the lower end of the rate range
The bungalow streets — particularly the 49th, 50th, 51st, 52nd, 53rd Street corridor west of Bull Street — typically have smaller homes and lower monthly rates. Still inside the historic district, still walkable, but you’re trading square footage for rate.Honest note
Ardsley Park is not perfectly even. The blocks on the western edge (toward MLK Jr. Boulevard) and the southern edge (south of 54th Street into Ardmore) are more transitional and less consistently maintained. We tell prospective tenants and owner-investors which addresses fall outside the lines we’d cross ourselves.The legal landscape: why most “Ardsley Park Airbnbs” are illegal
The City of Savannah’s Short-Term Vacation Rental ordinance limits where STVRs can legally operate. Permitted overlay zones include the Downtown (Historic) Local Historic District, the Victorian Local Historic District, the Streetcar (Thomas Square / Starland) Local Historic District, and specific commercial and agricultural zones. Outside those overlays, short-term rentals — defined as stays of 30 days or fewer — are illegal in residential zones. (City of Savannah STVR ordinance)
Ardsley Park is residential-zoned and outside every STVR overlay. New STRs there are not legal. A small number of pre-September 2017 grandfathered permits exist, but no new permits are being issued for the neighborhood.
The City has actively enforced this. The most well-known case: in December 2017, Savannah filed suit against an operator who was running 26 illegal STRs across Ardsley Park and surrounding neighborhoods through Airbnb. Most of the neighborhood STR listings you see on Airbnb today fall into one of three categories:
Sid Was Here does not list category 3 inventory. We don’t book guests into rentals that could be shut down mid-stay, and we don’t sign management contracts with owners insisting on category 3 strategies. That is not where the dollars are anyway — Ardsley Park’s strongest economics are on long-term rentals and 30+ day stays, both of which we do all day.
If you searched for an Ardsley Park nightly Airbnb and landed here:
Your two legal options are: (a) book a 31+ night stay through us in Ardsley Park, or (b) book a nightly rental in the Historic District, Victorian District, or Starland District, all of which are inside the legal STR overlay.If you’re an owner or investor:
We can underwrite your Ardsley Park property honestly across all three legal use cases — long-term lease, 30+ day MTR, and primary residence — and tell you which one actually pencils for your address. If someone is pitching you a nightly STR strategy on an Ardsley Park acquisition, ask them to put the permit number in writing before you close.Parking: Most Ardsley Park homes include driveways, garages, or off-street parking pads. This is one of the genuine advantages of the neighborhood relative to downtown — parking is rarely the constraint here.
Frequently asked questions
Why work with Sid Was Here in Ardsley Park
Local broker, local team
Our founder Julie Gates is a Savannah-based RE/MAX broker who lives and operates in this market. The team handles tenant placement, maintenance, and owner accounting from Savannah, not a national call center. When a 30-day stay guest texts at 8pm because the AC stopped, someone from our team is on it within the hour.Legal product only
We don’t list illegal STRs in Ardsley Park, and we don’t sign management contracts with owners insisting on illegal STR strategies. That’s not lost revenue — that’s risk we won’t carry on behalf of an owner who can be sued, fined, and shut down. We’ll tell you which strategy actually pencils for your specific address: long-term lease, 30+ day MTR, or hybrid.MTR specialists
Julie co-authored The 30 Day Stay (BiggerPockets Publishing, 2023) — the category guide for medium-term rentals. We don’t dabble in MTRs; we have furnishing standards, marketing channels, and tenant screening processes specifically for this category. If you’re an Ardsley Park owner looking at MTR strategy, this is the team that wrote the book.Own an Ardsley Park property? You have three legal options.
Most management companies in Savannah lead with the strategy that pays them the most fee. We lead with the math. For Ardsley Park specifically, the right answer is usually a long-term lease, a furnished 30+ day stay, or some structured hybrid — never a category-3 illegal STR. If you own an Ardsley Park property and want a manager who’ll model all three strategies honestly for your address, run them past city zoning, and tell you which one wins on cash flow, vacancy risk, and exit value, talk to us. We’ll send you a written proposal with rent comps, expected expenses, and projected net before you sign anything.Member, Forbes Business Council · Co-author, The 30 Day Stay (BiggerPockets, 2023) · Licensed Georgia broker, RE/MAX
