Broward Doesn't Have One Short-Term Rental Rule. It Has Dozens.

A client called me last month with a plan. Buy a place in Broward, rent it out short term on the weeks she is not using it, let the income cover the mortgage. Good plan. Then she asked which permit she needed, expecting one answer. There isn't one.

Florida requires a state vacation rental license from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation for any property rented for less than 30 days more than three times in a calendar year. That part is the same no matter where in Florida you buy. You also need a Florida Department of Revenue account to collect the state's transient rental tax.

Broward County adds its own layer on top. Every short-term rental in the county has to collect and remit the county's 6 percent Tourist Development Tax, along with the state transient tax and a discretionary sales surtax. If the property sits in an unincorporated part of the county, meaning it is not inside the limits of a city like Davie, Weston, or Fort Lauderdale, the county's Code Compliance Section also requires its own Residential Rental Certificate. That means a $75 annual fee, proof of ownership, and an exterior inspection before you are cleared to rent.

Then your specific city gets a say, and Broward has more than thirty of them, each writing its own rules. Fort Lauderdale is a useful example because its process is well documented: a separate city registration, a Broward County Business Tax Receipt, a City of Fort Lauderdale Local Business Tax License, and a mandatory inspection before a Certificate of Compliance is issued. Fort Lauderdale defines a short-term rental as any unit rented more than three times a year for under 30 days, worth knowing if you were assuming an occasional weekend rental would fly under the radar. Other cities in the county set their own thresholds, their own fees, and their own inspection schedules, and none of them are required to match each other.

None of this used to matter much, because enforcement was thin. That has changed. Broward County has expanded its short-term rental enforcement capacity over the past two years, and unregistered rentals are now drawing fines that commonly run into the thousands of dollars per violation, per day, in the more active jurisdictions. Fort Lauderdale in particular has pushed fines toward the higher end of that range for repeat violations. On top of the fines, failing to collect and remit the required taxes carries its own separate exposure.

Buyers usually aren't being careless. They research the rent comps and the cash flow numbers carefully, then treat permitting like paperwork to sort out after closing. By then you already own the property. If it sits in a city with a stricter process, or doesn't qualify for short-term rental at all, the numbers you underwrote no longer hold. Before you write an offer on anything you plan to rent short term in Broward, call that specific city's planning or code compliance office and ask what applies to that address. If you want a second set of eyes on a property before you make that call, reach out. I'm happy to help you map out what applies before you're under contract.

Roger Averbuj, Broker | Prestige Heritage Realty | (954) 663-8461

Source: Broward County Code Compliance, Residential Rental Certificate