Leola's Missing Rental Ordinance Is the Real Risk for Investors Right Now
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
On July 17, 2025, an Upper Leacock Township supervisor sat down at a public hearing to consider a request that should have been routine: a homeowner wanted to rent a single-family house on West Main Street short-term, through a platform like Airbnb. What happened at that meeting is the reason anyone shopping for a rental property in or around Leola should read township meeting minutes before they read another median-price chart.
Applicant Chris Swarey, representing CDS Ventures, needed a conditional use approval to operate the short-term rental in the mixed-use zone. Township Manager Michael Morris told him directly, in a comment LancasterOnline captured from the hearing:
"We have no ordinance for Airbnb, and you're testifying that you want an Airbnb."
The board didn't deny the application. It didn't approve it either. It postponed the decision to an August 21, 2025 meeting so staff could research whether a short-term rental could be squeezed into the township's only defined rental category: a boarding house. Substitute township solicitor Alexa Martin told the board the two uses are fundamentally different. Swarey said he wasn't trying to open a boarding house. Nobody at the table had a clean answer.
That's the most recent public record of how Upper Leacock actually handles a short-term rental request, and it matters more to a buyer today than whatever the median sale price did last quarter.
Leola isn't an incorporated borough with its own council and zoning code. It's an unincorporated village inside Upper Leacock Township, which means every hearing, every ordinance, and every board vote coming out of the township office on Newport Road applies to Leola addresses the same way it applies to the rest of the township.
That's why the Swarey case isn't a curiosity from a different part of the county. It's a preview. As of this writing, Upper Leacock's own zoning page still lists a "Future Ordinance for Rental Properties" among its open business, and the township's news feed confirms the board is drafting rules meant to cover both short-term and long-term rentals under one framework, not just Airbnb-style listings.
The paper trail runs back further than the Swarey hearing. At a February 20, 2025 meeting, the board voted to advertise an ordinance regulating, inspecting, and licensing residential rental units. As drafted then, it would:
That draft predates the Swarey case, and the Swarey case exposed a hole in it: nothing in the existing zoning code addressed short-term rentals at all. The township's site now describes rental rules covering both categories, short-term and long-term, as still being finalized. Put plainly, the rule set governing a rental you buy in Leola today is not the rule set that will govern it in a year.
The rental ordinance isn't happening in isolation. Two other township and county processes are converging on the same properties.
First, on New Holland Pike just west of Leola, developer Kapp Development Group holds conditional approval for an 83-unit multifamily project called the Villas at Twin Maples. The board granted a one-year extension in February 2025, with conditions including a turn lane on New Holland Pike and an offsite sewer agreement due by March 31, 2026. A neighboring property owner, Wendy Fitts, told the board the four-year process had already disrupted her family's life and asked supervisors not to grant more time. Whatever the project's exact timeline turns out to be, an 83-unit development of that scale sitting adjacent to Leola signals that the township is planning for more rental-scale housing nearby, not less.
Second, Lancaster County is running its first countywide property reassessment since 2017, targeting new values for 2027. The county's property assessment office has confirmed that assessors are conducting exterior-only inspections and photographs throughout 2025 and 2026, so a car with county markings parked outside a Leola rental this year is very likely part of that process rather than code enforcement. The county is explicit that the reassessment is designed to be revenue neutral: assessed values may shift, but taxing bodies are required to adjust their rates so the process doesn't generate new tax revenue on its own. Still, if you close on a rental property in the next year, the assessed value your tax bill is based on today may not be the value it's based on in 2027.
Portal data on Leola's market disagrees with itself in a way that says more about the size of the market than about its direction. One dataset puts the three-month median sale price at $360,000 through June 2026, essentially flat year over year, with price per square foot up 9.1 percent. Another puts the June 2026 median list price at $394,000, down 9 percent from a year earlier, with price per square foot down 17 percent over the same window.
Both figures can be technically accurate. One measures closed sales, the other measures active listings, and Leola sees so few transactions each month, roughly a dozen, that a couple of unusually large or small homes changing hands can swing the median in either direction without reflecting any real shift in the underlying market. If you're trying to time a rental purchase around a market trend, that thin a sample size makes the published median close to noise. The ordinance timeline and the reassessment calendar are the two things actually worth tracking, because they are dated, documented, and about to apply to whatever you buy.
If you're evaluating a rental purchase in or near Leola right now, a few things follow directly from the record above:
None of this makes Leola a bad place to buy a rental. It makes it a market where the paperwork is still catching up to the demand, and where the buyers who do best are the ones who know which board meeting to read before they write an offer.
Does Leola have separate zoning from the rest of Upper Leacock Township? No. Leola is an unincorporated village within Upper Leacock Township, so all township ordinances, including the pending rental ordinance and the existing zoning code, apply to Leola addresses directly.
If I already own a rental in Leola, will the new ordinance apply to my existing tenants? Based on what the township has advertised so far, the draft ordinance is written to cover rental properties broadly, both short-term and long-term, rather than only new short-term rental applications. Current owners should expect to register under whatever licensing structure the board finalizes.
Will the 2027 reassessment raise my property taxes? Not automatically. Lancaster County has stated the reassessment is designed to be revenue neutral, meaning taxing bodies must adjust their rates so the process doesn't generate new revenue on its own, even if individual assessed values change.
Looking for a clearer read on how a specific Leola property fits into this regulatory picture before you make an offer? David Wissler and the Wissler Team track Upper Leacock Township meetings the same way they track new listings. Start with a Free Home Valuation and let's talk through the numbers together.
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