Florida Senate Passes a Vacation Rental Bill That Caps Local Registration Fees (April 2023)

From the record. This is a look back at April 2023. The desk wrote it on 11 October 2026 from sources published at the time; Stay Gazette opened in July 2026 and did not report this as it happened.

On 27 April 2023, the Florida Senate voted 28 to 10 for a bill that would have set one statewide frame for vacation rentals: cities and counties could register them within fixed limits, and the platforms that advertised them would answer to the state.

The bill, CS/CS/CS/SB 714, was sponsored by Senator Nick DiCeglie, a Pinellas County Republican who said he had a short-term rental for a neighbor in Indian Rocks Beach. It was not law when April ended. The House companion, HB 833, had not had a floor vote, and the 60-day legislative session was scheduled to end on 5 May 2023.

“It’s not perfect. Nothing up here we do is perfect. We all recognize that”, DiCeglie said, ABC Action News reported on the night of the vote.

What the Senate passed

Florida law already barred local laws that prohibited vacation rentals or regulated how long or how often they were rented. Senate staff traced that to laws of 2011 and 2014. Only local laws adopted on or before June 1, 2011 were exempt. SB 714 would have kept the bar and added the licensing of vacation rentals and the regulation of advertising platforms to what the state reserved for itself.

In return the text the Senate passed would have allowed local registration, within limits:

Fee. A local government could charge no more than $150 to process an individual registration application, or $200 for a collective application covering up to 25 vacation rentals. After registration it could also charge a reasonable fee to inspect a rental against the building and fire codes. The caps had been $50 and $100 until a committee raised them on 18 April.
Conditions. A city or county could only require what was on a fixed list. It included a state license, tax registrations, a stated maximum occupancy, payment of recorded code liens, and a responsible party reachable by telephone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Equal treatment. Parking and solid waste rules could be a condition only if they were not imposed solely on vacation rentals. An occupancy limit would have to apply uniformly to rented residential properties, vacation rental or not.
Deadline. The local government would have 15 business days to review an application. One it failed to accept or deny in time would be deemed accepted.
Suspension. Under an amendment adopted on the floor that day, where a code enforcement board or special magistrate had found the violations and the local government had issued a written warning or notice after each violation, it could suspend a registration for up to 30 days for three or more violations during a 90 day period, and for up to six months for a further violation within six months of that suspension.

The bill did not override condominium, cooperative or homeowners' association documents, Senate staff wrote.

What it asked of platforms

The platform rules were to start on January 1, 2024. An advertising platform would have to require each advertisement to carry the state vacation rental license number and any local registration number, with the person placing it attesting that the numbers were current, valid and accurate. From July 1, 2024, the platform would have to check the license number against state records before publishing an advertisement, and again at the end of each calendar quarter.

A platform told in writing by the state that a listing failed to display a valid license number would have 15 business days to take it down. The state could fine a platform up to $1,000 per offense. Platforms that took payment would collect and remit the taxes due on the rental.

The Department of Business and Professional Regulation estimated that it would need six additional staff and $540,417 in fiscal year 2023-2024 to do its part, Senate staff reported.

Why the Legislature took it up

Senate staff, citing the state licensing division's annual report, listed 12,716 vacation rental condominium licenses and 26,733 vacation rental dwelling licenses among the 63,690 public lodging licenses the state had issued. One license could cover more than one unit. The state was not required to inspect vacation rentals, and inspected them when a consumer complained. Of the 325 complaints about them that the division received in fiscal year 2021-2022, its inspections confirmed a violation in 34.

DiCeglie argued that cities would keep the powers that mattered. “They’re going to still be able to deal with noise, parking, and trash, which are the three top issues when it comes to vacation rentals”, he said, ABC Action News reported on 12 April 2023.

The Capitolist, a Tallahassee news site, set out the case for the state's role on 26 April 2023: the earlier preemption laws were meant to stop local governments from singling out vacation rental owners unfairly.

How beach towns and hosts reacted

The mayors of coastal towns read the same text as a loss. “The bill gives us nothing. It does not give us any more tools than we already have to regulate short-term rentals”, said David Will, the mayor of Redington Beach. His objection was the equal-treatment rule: a town, he said, could regulate a short-term rental only as it regulated any other home.

Cookie Kennedy, the mayor of Indian Rocks Beach, said the city felt its tools were being taken away. Her city was one vote from adopting its own short-term rental ordinance, which ABC Action News reported would be partially or fully preempted if the bill became law. In Holmes Beach, Mayor Judy Titsworth had told the station earlier in the month that the city's rules on length of stay and occupancy had played a large part in keeping residents in town.

The city of Anna Maria put itself at the front of the opposition. Its clerk told the city commission on 13 April that 30,489 emails had gone to state legislators through the city's Home Rule Florida website since the session began in March. Anna Maria charged registration fees by occupancy, from $336 a year for a rental allowing four occupants to $2,440 for one allowing 29, and expected about $415,000 from them in its fiscal year, money that funded enforcement of its vacation rental ordinance, the Anna Maria Island Sun reported on 1 May 2023.

Owners were not all for the bill either. A Pensacola host told WEAR News that it was unfair, and that a few bad actors were giving owners like her a bad name.

The House showed doubts of its own. HB 833 passed the Ways & Means Committee on 12 April by 13 votes to 10, the Sun reported, and ABC Action News said members of both parties voiced concern. A House staff analysis of 15 April, cited by the Sun, put its fee caps at $50 and $100.

Since then

The House passed an amended version on 3 May 2023 by 73 votes to 39, the Senate refused to concur on 5 May, and the bill died in returning messages that day, the Florida Senate's bill history shows. A later bill from the same sponsor, SB 280, passed the House on 6 March 2024 and won final Senate passage the next day. Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed it on 27 June 2024, saying it would tie local officials up in red tape, the News Service of Florida reported.

The Gazette Verdict, looking back

The Senate's bill, had it become law, would have been a good trade for a host who ran a clean rental, and a poor one for the towns that policed the bad ones. An owner in Anna Maria paying $336 to $2,440 a year would have paid no more than $150 to have a registration processed, plus a reasonable inspection fee, with a review due in 15 business days. The cost would have landed on the city, whose occupancy-based fees were expected to bring in about $415,000 that fiscal year for enforcement, and on the state, which priced its own share at $540,417 and six staff. In exchange every host would have accepted a license number on every advertisement, a platform check each quarter and the risk of suspension after three or more violations in a 90 day period. The lesson for a host was to hold a valid state license and to know the property's complaint record.

The other side

Put at its strongest, the towns' case was that the bill bought cheap registration by removing the rules that made registration worth having. If an occupancy limit had to apply to every rented home alike, and parking and trash rules could not single out vacation rentals, a city would be left with a list of names and telephone numbers. David Will said the bill gave Redington Beach no tool it did not already have, and the mayor of Holmes Beach credited the city's own rules on length of stay and occupancy with keeping residents. Weak local rules do nothing for the reputation of the hosts who follow them.

What it meant for hosts

When April 2023 ended, a Florida host had nothing new to comply with: the Senate had voted, the House had not, and local ordinances stayed in force. The bill showed what a statewide deal would ask of an owner.

Every advertisement would need the state license number, and from July 1, 2024 the platform would check it before publishing and at the end of each quarter.
Local registration would cost less where a city charged more than the cap: no more than $150 to process an application for one rental, with a review due in 15 business days. A city could add a reasonable inspection fee.
A responsible party reachable by telephone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week was a condition a city could set.
Three or more violations in a 90 day period could bring a suspension of up to 30 days.

Sources

The Florida Senate, CS/CS/CS/SB 714, Third Reading: Senate vote record, 2023 Regular Session (27 April 2023).
The Florida Senate, CS for CS for CS for SB 714, First Engrossed (bill text as passed by the Senate) (27 April 2023).
The Florida Senate, Committee on Fiscal Policy, Bill Analysis and Fiscal Impact Statement: CS/CS/CS/SB 714, Vacation Rentals (25 April 2023).
ABC Action News (WFTS Tampa Bay), Fla. senate passes bill that would change how some cities police vacation rentals (27 April 2023).
ABC Action News (WFTS Tampa Bay), Fla. bill targeting short-term vacation rental rules advances but hears criticism (12 April 2023).
The Capitolist, Vacation rental changes gaining momentum in Florida Senate, would grant more local control to cities and counties (26 April 2023).
Anna Maria Island Sun, Opposition to vacation rental legislation continues (17 April 2023).
Anna Maria Island Sun, Vacation rental bills reach final votes (1 May 2023).
WEAR News, New bill could soon require Florida vacation rental owners to follow more regulations (28 April 2023).
The Florida Senate, CS/CS/CS/SB 714: Vacation Rentals (bill history) (5 May 2023).
The Florida Senate, CS/SB 280: Vacation Rentals (2024 bill history) (17 June 2025).
Jacksonville Today (News Service of Florida), DeSantis vetoes contentious vacation rental bill (28 June 2024).

Florida Senate Passes a Vacation Rental Bill That Caps Local Registration Fees