St. Petersburg

Operating rules

Primary residence

—

Min stay (nights)

—

Max nights / year

—

Max occupancy

—

Zoning-restricted

Yes

Cap on licenses

—

Grandfathering: The City's transient-accommodation regulations predate June 1, 2011 and are therefore grandfathered and enforceable under the Fla. Stat. 509.032(7) preemption carve-out; the City Attorney's Office has declined to adopt a new short-term-rental use for this reason.

Zoning: Short-term rentals (durations less than 30 days) in residential properties are capped at 3 rentals per consecutive 365-day period. To exceed that, a property must operate as a licensed hotel/motel or be located within an approved Resort Facilities Overlay (RFO) district — no RFO district currently exists anywhere in the city. Bed and breakfasts (owner/manager resides on premises) are separately allowed in NT zoning districts via Special Exception review and are not treated as transient accommodation use.

• For residential properties within the City of St. Petersburg, short-term rentals (durations of less than 30 days) may only be rented a maximum of three times within any consecutive 365-day period. Short-term rentals exceeding this allowance must be operating as a licensed hotel/motel or located within an approved Resort Facilities Overlay district.
• The LDRs allow a property to be offered for an occupancy duration of less than 30 days up to three times in any consecutive 365-day period without it being considered a transient accommodation use. The City does not have a specific 'short-term rental' use.
• Bed and breakfasts have generally been viewed to align with the character of traditional neighborhoods within the City and are allowed in the NT zoning districts if approved through the Special Exception review process ... One of the requirements is that an owner or manager must reside on the premises.
• The frequency cap is a duration/frequency-of-rental regulation that would normally be preempted by Fla. Stat. 509.032(7)(b), but survives because the City's ordinance was adopted on or before June 1, 2011 (grandfathered).

Enforcement

Active enforcement

Code enforcement of the transient-accommodation frequency cap; violations of a property being used as a transient accommodation more than the permitted 3 times per 365-day period are pursued through the City's code-enforcement process.

Fines

—

Notes

The official City handout does not publish specific per-day fine amounts. Florida's general local code-enforcement fine framework (up to $500/day for first violations, up to $1,000/day for repeat violations, with higher 'irreparable/irreversible' fines) applies via Fla. Stat. Ch. 162, but no city-published dollar figures were confirmed firsthand from an official St. Petersburg source, so fine amounts are left null pending verification.