Glossary
Do You Need a License to Rent a Florida Home Short-Term?
Florida requires a Department of Business and Professional Regulation vacation rental license for any dwelling rented more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 consecutive days. That threshold makes the property a transient public lodging establishment under Fla. Stat. 509.013, which is a state obligation entirely separate from whatever the city requires.
The trigger is frequency plus duration, not intent. Rent a house four times in a year for a week each and it is a transient public lodging establishment; rent it once for six months and it is not. Owners who think of themselves as occasional hosts rather than operators are the ones most often caught out, because nothing about the statute turns on how the owner describes the activity.
DBPR issues the license in one of two classes depending on the building. A Vacation Rental Dwelling covers a house, townhouse, or unit in a non-condominium building; a Vacation Rental Condo covers a unit in a condominium. Under s. 509.241 a single collective or group license can cover multiple units, which matters if you operate several properties in the same building or complex rather than licensing each one separately.
Tax is a second, independent obligation, and it splits between two authorities. Florida sales tax of 6% plus the county discretionary sales surtax are reported to the Department of Revenue on Form DR-15. The county tourist development tax is reported and paid directly to the county. That split is the common failure point: booking platforms frequently collect and remit the state portion while leaving the county tourist tax to the host, so the money arriving net of tax does not mean every tax has been paid.
None of this is affected by whether a city can restrict you. State licensing and tax apply everywhere in Florida, including in the cities that most welcome short-term rentals. Preemption governs whether a municipality may prohibit the use; it grants no relief from registering with DBPR or from collecting tax.
One further note on the legal backdrop: Senate Bill 280, which would have imposed statewide occupancy caps and expanded preemption considerably, was vetoed on June 27, 2024 and never became law. The framework described here is the one currently in force.