St. Petersburg, FL Airbnb & Short-Term Rental Regulations 2026

Regulation Overview

A Gulf Coast city with a strong arts scene, downtown waterfront and year-round visitor demand — and one of the most restrictive short-term rental regimes in Florida.

Governing jurisdiction: City of St. Petersburg, Pinellas County. Local position: Effectively restricted — 3 short stays per 365 days.

Florida State Preemption — and the 2011 grandfather clause

Florida is a partial preemption state, and the detail decides everything.

Fla. Stat. § 509.032(7)(b) bars local governments from adopting new ordinances that prohibit vacation rentals, or that regulate their duration or frequency of rental, or that regulate them based solely on their classification, use or occupancy.

What Florida local governments do retain regardless:

• Local business tax receipt and registration programmes.
• Fire and building code inspections.
• Noise, nuisance and parking enforcement not based solely on rental classification.

State licensing. Under Fla. Stat. § 509.241, anyone operating a transient public lodging establishment — a unit rented more than three times a year for periods under 30 days, or advertised as regularly available for such stays — must hold a Florida DBPR vacation rental licence before operating. State sales tax plus the county Tourist Development Tax apply on top.

2026 status: SB 280 (2024), which would have centralised vacation rental regulation under DBPR, was vetoed by the Governor in June 2024, and no equivalent preemption-expansion bill has since passed. The 2011 framework above remains the operative law.

St. Petersburg Rules

St. Petersburg is the clearest example in Florida of why the 2011 grandfather date matters more than the preemption statute.

The city's Land Development Regulations allow a residential property to be rented for under 30 days up to three times in any consecutive 365-day period without being classified as a “transient accommodation use”. Exceed three, and the property must meet the zoning standards for hotel and motel-type transient accommodation — which almost no residential zoning district in the city permits.

• Where it can still work: certain downtown and mixed-use zoning districts, and properties carrying a hotel/motel overlay or specific approval, are not bound by the three-stay cap and can operate as transient accommodation.
• St. Petersburg is not covered by the unincorporated Pinellas County short-term rental Certificate of Use programme — that programme explicitly excludes municipalities.
• If you can operate legally, you still need a Florida DBPR vacation rental licence, a city Business Tax Receipt, and Pinellas County Tourist Development Tax registration.

Verify before you buy. The pre-2011 adoption date underpinning the grandfathering is consistently reported but we could not confirm it against the primary code text, and the exact list of exempt zones and overlays was not available. Get a written zoning determination from the City of St. Petersburg for the specific parcel — in this market that determination is the investment thesis, not a formality.

Buyer Due Diligence Checklist

Before you write an offer on a short-term rental in this market:

• Get a written determination from the governing jurisdiction for the specific parcel. Verbal guidance from anyone else is not diligence.
• Establish which jurisdiction governs — incorporated city and unincorporated county can differ sharply within a few miles.
• Ask whether an existing permit transfers on sale. In several markets it does not, and a listing marketed as a running short-term rental may convey nothing of the sort.
• Read the HOA or condo CC&Rs during your inspection period. Private covenants bind even where the jurisdiction permits the use, and discovering a prohibition after closing is not grounds to unwind the sale.
• Model revenue against the legal occupancy cap, not the bedroom count. Where a cap is low, it — not the house — sets your ceiling.

Frequently Asked Questions