Florida HOA Short-Term Rentals

Quick-Reference Table

Last verified: July 17, 2026

Cooperative note (Chapter 719): Cooperatives are a distinct ownership form governed by the Cooperative Act, with amendments made under § 719.1055. Chapter 719 carries no rental-amendment grandfathering carve-out parallel to § 718.110(13) or § 720.306(1)(h), so the recorded cooperative documents and the common-law presumption of validity for recorded restrictions control.¹⁰

Section 1: Overview — Can an HOA restrict short-term rentals in Florida?

A Florida condominium or homeowners' association can generally restrict short-term rentals through its recorded declaration, but which owners a restriction binds depends on the chapter, and the two frameworks aren't symmetrical. Florida governs community types under separate statutes that aren't interchangeable: condominiums under the Condominium Act, Chapter 718; planned communities under the Homeowners' Associations Act, Chapter 720; and cooperatives under the Cooperative Act, Chapter 719.¹ The recorded declaration is the source of any rental restriction within each chapter. Two grandfathering provisions, § 718.110(13) for condominiums and § 720.306(1)(h) for HOAs, provide that a newly adopted rental restriction generally applies only to owners who consent and owners who take title after the amendment's effective date.² The decisive difference sits in the carve-out: the HOA statute lets an association reach all owners with a restriction on rentals for terms of less than six months or on renting more than three times per year, while the condominium statute contains no such carve-out, so a condominium amendment that alters rental duration binds only consenting and future owners.² A separate statute, § 509.032(7)(b), preempts local governments from prohibiting vacation rentals or regulating their duration or frequency, but that preemption restrains cities and counties, not associations, which retain their declaration-based authority.⁴ At the state level, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation licenses vacation rentals under Chapter 509.⁵ Florida stands as the leading example of a large, active vacation-rental market — the state recorded 143 million visitors in 2024, an all-time high, concentrated in the Orlando and Kissimmee corridor, Miami and Miami Beach, the Florida Keys, the Panhandle beaches, Naples, and Tampa Bay.¹¹ Its rules get litigated and legislated constantly. The detailed sections that follow set out the framework, the operational mechanics, and recent activity.

Section 2: The legal framework for HOA short-term rental restrictions

2A. The three statutes and the source of rental authority

Florida isn't a Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act state. It regulates each community form under its own chapter, and provisions don't cross-apply. The Condominium Act, Chapter 718, governs condominiums. The Homeowners' Associations Act, Chapter 720, governs planned communities of parcel owners. The Cooperative Act, Chapter 719, governs cooperatives, a distinct form in which a corporation holds record title and members hold shares with proprietary leases.¹⁰ Within each chapter, the authority to restrict rentals originates in the recorded declaration or, for cooperatives, the cooperative documents, not in a general grant of state power. A board may also adopt rules, but board-made rules face closer scrutiny than declaration provisions and must be authorized by, and consistent with, the governing documents. Florida law draws a working line between authority over long-term leasing and authority over short-term or transient rentals, and that line runs through the grandfathering statutes discussed below. An association that wants to control transient use must decide whether it's regulating rental duration, rental frequency, the number of units that may be rented, or the approval and disclosure of tenants, because each category gets treated differently depending on the chapter. Cooperatives warrant separate handling: amendments to cooperative documents get made under § 719.1055, which, where the documents fail to provide a method, permits amendment on approval of not less than two-thirds of the units, and Chapter 719 doesn't carry the rental-amendment grandfathering language found in the condominium and HOA acts.¹⁰

2B. Grandfathering and the short-term carve-out

The grandfathering provisions form the highest-stakes item, and the two statutes differ in a way that reverses common assumptions. For condominiums, § 718.110(13) states that an amendment "prohibiting unit owners from renting their units or altering the duration of the rental term or specifying or limiting the number of times unit owners are entitled to rent their units during a specified period applies only to unit owners who consent to the amendment and unit owners who acquire title to their units after the effective date of that amendment."¹ Chapter 718 contains no exception. A condominium therefore cannot bind an existing, non-consenting owner to a new minimum-lease-term or short-term-rental restriction; such an amendment reaches only consenting owners and later purchasers. A condominium can, by contrast, adopt lease-approval or tenant-information requirements that don't prohibit renting, alter duration, or limit frequency, and those may reach all owners. For HOAs, § 720.306(1)(h)1 sets the same default: a governing document or amendment enacted after July 1, 2021 that prohibits or regulates rental agreements applies only to a parcel owner who takes title after the effective date or who consents.² But § 720.306(1)(h)2 adds the carve-out that the condominium act lacks: "an association may amend its governing documents to prohibit or regulate rental agreements for a term of less than 6 months and may prohibit the rental of a parcel for more than three times in a calendar year, and such amendments shall apply to all parcel owners."² That carve-out is what lets an HOA reach existing owners with a short-term-rental restriction. Section 720.306(1)(h)3 provides that the paragraph doesn't affect the amendment restrictions for associations of 15 or fewer parcel owners. The carve-out threshold, a term of less than six months, shouldn't get confused with the vacation-rental licensing threshold, which is less than 30 days or one calendar month; they're different measures serving different statutes.³ The amendment vote follows the declaration or governing documents in each chapter, with statutory defaults: § 718.110(1)(a) sets two-thirds of units where the condominium declaration is silent and caps required approval at four-fifths for declarations recorded after April 1, 1992; § 720.306(1)(b) defers to the HOA's governing documents.¹

2C. State preemption, vacation-rental licensing, and the local layer

Section 509.032(7)(b) provides that "a local law, ordinance, or regulation may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals," and that "this paragraph does not apply to any local law, ordinance, or regulation adopted on or before June 1, 2011."⁴ A local ordinance predating that cutoff stays grandfathered and remains enforceable, which is why some coastal cities, Miami Beach among them, retain rules stricter than a newer ordinance could impose.⁴ This preemption restrains local governments only. It doesn't limit a condominium or HOA's declaration-based authority, and it doesn't appear in Chapter 718, 719, or 720. The Legislature has tried repeatedly to revise the preemption; the most consequential recent attempt, CS/SB 280 (2024), was vetoed, leaving § 509.032(7) intact.¹² Separately, Chapter 509 imposes a host-to-state licensing layer: § 509.241 requires a vacation-rental license from DBPR's Division of Hotels and Restaurants, issued in two property types, Dwelling and Condominium, with the vacation rental defined in § 509.242(1)(c) and the underlying transient threshold in § 509.013(4).⁵ Taxation forms a further owner-facing layer: § 212.03 imposes the 6% state transient rentals tax on rentals of six months or less, and counties levy a tourist development tax under § 125.0104.⁶ These layers run independent of association authority. An owner who holds a DBPR license, collects the bed tax, and satisfies every local rule may still violate the declaration, and an owner who complies with the declaration may still be operating unlawfully without a state license.

Section 3: Operational mechanics and enforcement

Adopting a valid restriction (the tools)

The tool an association chooses determines who's bound. For an HOA, the mechanism that reaches all owners is a short-duration restriction within the § 720.306(1)(h)2 carve-out — a restriction on rentals for terms of less than six months, or a limit of no more than three rentals per parcel per calendar year.² A broader leasing prohibition or a longer minimum-lease-term amendment outside that carve-out binds only consenting and future owners. For a condominium, no carve-out exists: any amendment that prohibits renting, alters rental duration, or limits rental frequency binds only consenting and future owners under § 718.110(13), although a lease-approval or owner-and-tenant information requirement that does none of those things may reach all owners.¹ Rental caps by percentage of units are permitted by declaration in both forms but carry the same grandfathering consequence. The amendment procedure and vote threshold follow the governing documents, with the statutory defaults in § 718.110(1)(a) for condominiums and the governing-document rule in § 720.306(1)(b) for HOAs; cooperative amendments follow § 719.1055.¹⁰

Enforcement

Before an association fines an owner for a rental violation, it must follow a prescribed notice-and-hearing process. For condominiums, § 718.303(3) requires at least 14 days' written notice and an opportunity for a hearing before a committee of at least three members appointed by the board who aren't officers, directors, or employees, or relatives of the same; the committee can only confirm or reject the proposed fine.⁷ For HOAs, § 720.305(2) requires the same 14-day notice and a hearing before a like independent committee, with the hearing held within 90 days of the notice.⁸ The fine caps differ in how firmly they hold. In a condominium, a fine may not exceed $100 per violation or $1,000 in the aggregate, and a fine may not become a lien against a unit.⁷ In an HOA, a fine may not exceed $100 per violation or $1,000 in the aggregate unless the governing documents provide otherwise, and a fine of less than $1,000 may not become a lien against a parcel — which means a fine of $1,000 or more can become a lien where the declaration authorizes it.⁸ That lien distinction marks a genuine difference between the chapters. Both forms may also seek injunctive relief and, in the appropriate case, recover prevailing-party attorney fees. A mandatory pre-suit step applies before most covenant-enforcement litigation. For condominiums, § 718.1255 requires a party, before filing suit on a covered dispute other than an election or recall matter, to either petition DBPR for nonbinding arbitration or serve a demand for pre-suit mediation.⁷ For HOAs, § 720.311 requires pre-suit mediation for use and covenant-enforcement disputes, though it expressly excludes the collection of a fine or assessment from the mediation requirement.⁸ Only after that step, or an impasse, does the matter proceed to court, where it interacts with any parallel DBPR or local-government enforcement.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

Recent bills

Recent appellate rulings

No qualifying Florida District Court of Appeal or Florida Supreme Court decision issued in the past 36 months could be verified against primary sources as squarely resolving the enforceability of a residential rental restriction, the § 718.110(13) or § 720.306(1)(h) grandfathering provisions, or the § 509.032(7) preemption. The controlling authorities remain older framework decisions. The Florida Supreme Court in Woodside Village Condominium Ass'n v. Jahren, 806 So. 2d 452 (Fla. 2002), upheld a declaration amendment restricting leasing against an existing owner — a ruling that prompted the Legislature to enact the § 718.110(13) grandfathering statute.¹⁴ The First District Court of Appeal in Santa Monica Beach Property Owners Ass'n v. Acord, 219 So. 3d 111 (Fla. 1st DCA 2017), held that short-term vacation rentals count as a residential use, so a covenant limited to "residential" use doesn't by itself bar them.¹⁵

Active legislative debates

Legislators and local officials keep debating whether to revise the § 509.032(7) preemption after the 2024 veto, with coastal governments seeking room for local registration and duration limits and vacation-rental and real-estate interests defending the current framework; no successor preemption bill has been enacted.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Florida stands as the leading example of a state that pairs strong statutory preemption of local short-term-rental bans, § 509.032(7)(b), and mandatory state vacation-rental licensing under Chapter 509 with multi-statute association authority and a grandfathering regime that treats condominiums and HOAs differently. Unlike states that leave rental questions entirely to the declaration, or states that cap or curtail HOA rental authority directly, Florida sets the default by statute and then splits it: HOAs may reach existing owners through the short-duration and frequency carve-out in § 720.306(1)(h), while condominiums may not, since § 718.110(13) has no carve-out. The preemption in § 509.032(7) gets frequently misread; it restrains local governments and doesn't limit association authority. For a multi-state operator entering Florida, the practical implications: three separate statutes apply by community type, the short-term carve-out is an HOA feature and not a condominium feature, a state DBPR license and transient taxes attach independently of the declaration, and mandatory pre-suit arbitration or mediation precedes most enforcement litigation.

HOA Weekly's Florida Short-Term Rentals coverage updates quarterly as the Legislature, the Florida District Courts of Appeal and Supreme Court, DBPR, and local governments act. Federal frameworks — including the Fair Housing Act, the ADA, the FDCPA, the SCRA, and OTARD — also apply to Florida associations regardless of the state framework.

1. Fla. Stat. § 718.110 (2025), Amendment of declaration, subsections (1)(a) and (13) ↩
2. Fla. Stat. § 720.306 (2025), Meetings of members; voting and election procedures; amendments, subsections (1)(b) and (1)(h) ↩
3. Fla. Stat. § 509.013 (2025), Definitions (public lodging establishment; transient occupancy); see also §§ 509.242, 509.241 ↩
4. Fla. Stat. § 509.032(7) (2025), Duties; Preemption authority, paragraph (b) ↩
5. DBPR, Division of Hotels and Restaurants, Guide to Vacation Rentals and Timeshare Projects (Fla. Stat. § 509.241 licensing requirement) ↩
6. Florida Department of Revenue, Local Option Transient Rental Tax Rates (Form DR-15TDT); see Fla. Stat. §§ 212.03, 125.0104 ↩
7. Fla. Stat. § 718.303 (2025), Obligations of owners; fines; and Fla. Stat. § 718.1255 (2025), Alternative dispute resolution ↩
8. Fla. Stat. § 720.305 (2025), Obligations of members; levy of fines; and Fla. Stat. § 720.311 (2025), Dispute resolution ↩
9. The Florida Bar Journal, Navigating With a New Map: Changes to the District Courts of Appeal Territorial Boundaries (Sixth DCA operational January 1, 2023) ↩
10. Fla. Stat. § 719.1055 (2025), Amendment of cooperative documents; alteration and acquisition of property ↩
11. Executive Office of the Governor / VISIT FLORIDA, Florida recorded 143 million visitors in 2024 (all-time record, February 2025) ↩
12. Executive Office of the Governor, Governor Ron DeSantis Vetoes One Bill — CS/SB 280 (June 27, 2024); see also flsenate.gov Session/Bill/2024/280 ↩
13. The Florida Senate, CS/SB 606 (2025), Public Lodging and Public Food Service Establishments — Chapter 2025-113, effective July 1, 2025 ↩
14. Woodside Village Condominium Ass'n, Inc. v. Jahren, 806 So. 2d 452 (Fla. 2002); the Florida Supreme Court decision preceding enactment of Fla. Stat. § 718.110(13) ↩
15. Santa Monica Beach Property Owners Ass'n, Inc. v. Acord, 219 So. 3d 111 (Fla. 1st DCA 2017), No. 1D16-4782 ↩