Home · Blog · Short-term rental laws

Miami Beach short-term rental rules: where a stay under six months is banned, and what the fine actually is

Sergej Sitki · founder of ReceptionGO and host
Published November 2, 2026 · 5 min read

General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change often and vary by state, county and city — confirm your situation with the local agency or a CPA.

In most of Miami Beach, renting for less than six months and one day is prohibited — every single-family district, and apartment or townhouse districts including RM-1, the RM-PRD districts, RPS-1, RPS-2, CD-1, RO, RO-3 and TH. Where short stays are allowed, you need zoning approval, a business tax receipt and a resort tax account, and both numbers in every ad. The old $20,000 first-offense fine was struck down. Current fines follow Florida’s cap: up to $1,000 a day the first time and $5,000 a day for a repeat.

Try ReceptionGO free for 30 days — no credit card required. →

Miami Beach is the Florida exception people mean when they say a city banned Airbnb. The ban is real, it is zoning, and it is older than the state law that stopped other Florida cities from copying it. The fine people quote is not real anymore. Both facts matter, because hosts make decisions off the wrong one.

Where a short stay is prohibited

The city defines a vacation or short-term rental as less than six months and one day. That is a much longer line than the 30 days used almost everywhere else. Under the city’s code:

• Every single-family district. Leasing a house for less than six months and one day, and advertising it, is a prohibited commercial use.
• Many apartment and townhouse districts: RM-1, RM-PRD, RM-PRD-2, RPS-1, RPS-2, CD-1, RO, RO-3 and TH. The city’s own enforcement notices cite these by name.

Where short stays are allowed — generally the higher-intensity commercial and mixed districts that are not on that list — you still need the zoning approval, a business tax receipt and a resort tax certificate. Both numbers have to be conspicuous in every advertisement. Renting a room inside a unit, rather than the whole unit, is not the workaround. Confirmed legal units are a list the city keeps; “my neighbor does it” is not on that list.

The fine, without the legend

Florida Statutes §162.09 caps what a city special magistrate can fine. Miami Beach’s $20,000-to-$100,000 schedule did not survive that statute: the Third District Court of Appeal said so in 2020, and the city replaced the schedule with “fines as provided in Chapter 162”. In practice that is up to $1,000 per day for a first violation and $5,000 per day for a repeat, with a higher ceiling if the magistrate calls the violation irreparable. Orders become liens. The city’s current page tells you to call code compliance rather than quoting a dollar figure, which is a hint to read the statute and not a 2019 blog.

Why this city can ban duration at all, when Orlando cannot, is the grandfather in §509.032. Ordinances in place before June 1, 2011 were kept. Miami Beach’s were. The rest of the state — license, registration, three layers of tax, HOAs — is the Florida vacation rental guide.

If your address is actually allowed

Then you are running a lodging business, not a loophole. DBPR license if you are a vacation rental under state law, city business tax receipt, resort tax account with the city’s finance department, numbers in the listing, and a guest who knows the building rules before they hit the lobby. Resort tax is easy to double-pay or to miss on a direct booking. Sort it the same way as every other Florida county tax: read what the platform remitted, file what it did not. The statewide version is the occupancy tax guide.

Theme-park counties, where the state preemption means the opposite of Miami Beach — you generally cannot be banned, and you can be taxed and inspected — are covered in Orlando and Kissimmee. The national map is short-term rental laws by city.