Is short-term rental legal in Orlando, FL?
Orlando's home-sharing rules allow short-term rental of a home only while the host lives on site (hosted) in residential areas — whole-home rentals under 30 days in residential zones are not the lawful product; registered hosted sharing is.
Rules checked October 2026
Run the Orlando verdict on your facts
| What counts as a short-term rental | Orlando's home-sharing rules allow short-term rental of a home only while the host lives on site (hosted) in residential areas — whole-home rentals under 30 days in residential zones are not the lawful product; registered hosted sharing is. |
|---|---|
| Permit / license | Home-Sharing Registration — issued by City of Orlando |
| Fee | Registration per the city schedule (a few hundred dollars) |
| Renewal | Annual |
| Primary-residence rule | The host must live on site — Orlando's residential STR is a hosted-only category. |
| Whole-home rental | Hosted stays in your lived-in home: lawful with registration. Whole-home (host away) rentals in residential zones: not allowed. |
| Night cap | — |
| Guests / occupancy | Per registration |
| Minimum stay | Under 30 days defines the regime |
| Zoning | Residential = hosted only. (The metro's whole-home product lives in unincorporated Osceola County's resort subdivisions — a different government's answer.) |
| Density / scarcity | No density cap found in the current rules |
| Fines | Unregistered/whole-home operation draws code fines per day under the city schedule |
| Taxes | State DBPR license + tourist taxes accompany registration where applicable. |
| Platform duties | Enforcement by listing review. |
| State layer | § 509.032(7), Fla. Stat.: a local law may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate their duration or frequency — EXCEPT ordinances adopted on or before June 1, 2011, which survive in full. That grandfather clause is why Miami Beach-style bans persist a few miles from cities that cannot ban at all. A state DBPR vacation-rental license and local business tax receipt / registration still apply on top. |
What trips hosts in Orlando
- Orlando is the metro split in one line: hosted in the city, whole-home in the county's purpose-built resort subdivisions.
The private layer still applies
These are the city's rules. Your HOA, condo board, lease or mortgage can say no on top of them — that layer is printed as a warning in the checker, never merged into the city's verdict.
Sources: Orlando City Code Ch. 58 (home-sharing, 2018) · City of Orlando home-sharing program. Rules checked October 2026.