Coral Gables Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Coral Gables and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, unfortunately, the answer for almost every home in the city is no, and it has been that way for over a decade. Coral Gables sits inside Miami-Dade County, Florida, and its zoning code has never listed a short-term rental as a permitted use in a residential district. The city said so again on August 12, 2026, reminding owners that stays of less than six months aren't permitted where land is zoned single-family or multifamily, and that a rental agreement in those areas has to run six months at minimum.

That's a harder line than most of Florida draws, and an illegal use doesn't get a fine and a shrug. Under the city manager's Administrative Order AO-2021-05, an officer who confirms a short-term rental issues a citation on the spot with no warning, at $150 per day, then $500 per day once a new set of guests turns up. Both the Code Enforcement Division and the Police Department are told to go out and look.

So let's walk through what the code actually says: which districts can legally take a paying overnight guest, the one narrow bed and breakfast opening the city still leaves, what a licence and a Certificate of Use cost if you qualify, the five taxes that stack on a stay, how the fines compound if you don't qualify, and who to call before you spend a dollar. Every figure below comes from the City of Coral Gables, Miami-Dade County or the State of Florida's own documents, checked in July 2026. And before you buy here on a nightly-rate assumption, run the property through BNBCalc first.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Coral Gables

Running those numbers is the easy part, mind you. The hard part is that the zoning map decides whether you're allowed to collect them at all, and in Coral Gables the map does nearly all the work.

The city's Zoning Code is a permissive-list code, which is the whole ballgame. Section 4-101(A), governing the Single-Family Residential district, says it plainly: "In an SFR District no use other than these listed below shall be permitted." Not discouraged, and not subject to approval. Anything absent from that list is prohibited outright.

Here's what the list holds. Accessory dwellings, accessory buildings and structures, family day care, single-family dwellings, utility infrastructure facilities, and private yacht basins as a conditional use.

Short-term rentals are nowhere in it.

The city's own lawyers worked through that logic and published the answer. In City Attorney Opinion CAO 2013-055, dated December 5, 2013, Special Counsel Yaneris Figueroa concluded that "any short-term rental of property located in an SFR District is a violation of the City Zoning Code", leaning on the old canon that expressly permitting some uses necessarily excludes the rest. Since Section 2-702 makes the City Attorney the final authority on interpreting the zoning code, that opinion isn't one lawyer's view. It's the reading the special masters apply.

Where the code does allow transient guests, it uses a different word. Overnight accommodations are defined in Article 8 as "a building or portion thereof designed and used primarily to provide sleeping accommodations for transient guests for a daily or weekly rental charge".

And per CAO 2013-055, those, along with bed and breakfasts, are "expressly, and exclusively, permitted in Mixed-Use, Industrial, and Commercial districts". That's a hotel entitlement sitting on hotel-zoned land.

Now, people often assume the multi-family districts are the loophole, so it's worth killing that idea early. Reading Sections 4-102, 4-103 and 4-104, the MF1, MF2 and MFSA districts permit duplexes, multi-family dwellings, townhouses, single-family homes, family day care and assisted living facilities. Overnight accommodations appear in none of them, and the city's August 2026 notice names multifamily land explicitly. A condo in the Gables is no freer than a house on Alhambra Circle.

There is exactly one residential opening, though, and it's narrow enough to be worth stating precisely. Section 5-2601 allows a bed and breakfast as a conditional use, but only on MF2 property inside the block bounded by Southwest Eighth Street to the north, Navarre Avenue to the south, Douglas Road to the east and LeJeune Road to the west. Only structures fifty years or older qualify.

The operating conditions are strict too. The owner or manager has to live on the property and be available daily, no weekly rates may be offered, a guest's cumulative stay is capped at ten days in any sixty, and food service is breakfast only, for guests only. Receptions and parties are banned outright, and you keep a current guest register.

Assuming your property doesn't sit in that pocket, and almost none do, what's left is the long lease. AO-2021-05 defines its target as any rental "for a period of less than 6 months", which means a six-month or longer tenancy is the clean side of the line, and it happens to be the same threshold Florida uses for transient rental tax.

Plenty of Gables owners run furnished corporate and academic lets on that basis. It's a real business, yet do model it as a lease rather than as a nightly-rate calendar.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Coral Gables

Since the use itself isn't on the permitted list, there's no short-term rental licence to go and buy, which surprises people who arrive expecting a registration portal and a fee. Coral Gables runs no short-term rental registry and issues no host permit. Remember that a licence you can't get is a different problem from a licence you haven't got around to yet.

What the city does issue is a Certificate of Use, and Zoning Code Section 3-209 names who needs one: everybody "except for single family and multi-family uses". So a lodging use in a commercial or mixed-use district needs one, while your house does not, which is another way of saying the code never contemplated your house hosting guests.

The city's business-startup page puts the fee at $120 as of July 2026, with a 7 to 10 working day turnaround, and Miami-Dade County DERM has to sign off before the city will. Once issued, the use has to commence within 180 days, the certificate runs no more than a year, and you renew it annually.

On top of that comes a Local Business Tax Receipt from the Finance Department, levied under City Code Section 66-21 on anyone maintaining a business location in the city. The city's Citizen's Guide to Code Enforcement is the plain-English version of both requirements, and Miami-Dade County wants its own business tax registration alongside the city's.

The bed and breakfast route needs more than paperwork, though, because a conditional use is a public hearing rather than a counter transaction. It runs through the review process in Article 3, Division 4, and Section 3-210 then bars you from resubmitting a substantially similar application on the same property for six months after a denial. Budget for that timeline before you budget for furniture.

Then there's the state layer, which trips up more owners than any city rule. Florida requires its own vacation rental licence from the DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants under Fla. Stat. § 509.241, in either the Vacation Rental Dwelling or Vacation Rental Condo class, and the lodging fee schedule puts a new single-unit licence at a $50 application fee plus $170 for a full year, with a $10 Hospitality Education Program fee on top.

Keep in mind that holding one proves nothing about zoning. A DBPR licence is a state lodging licence, and Coral Gables can still cite a property that holds one, because the state never authorised the use of the land.

Required Documents for Coral Gables Short-Term Rentals

Since the paperwork only exists on the paths that are open, it splits into three piles depending on which one you're standing on.

Assuming you're pursuing the bed and breakfast conditional use, Section 5-2601 spells out what the package has to contain, and a thin one gets bounced:

• Floor plans and a survey of the property.
• A parking plan, with the off-street spaces the section requires.
• A landscaping plan.
• A lighting and signage plan, allowing one wall-mounted sign of 160 square inches maximum.
• Building elevations.
• Proof the structure is fifty years or older, since younger buildings aren't eligible at all.

Assuming instead you're on commercially zoned land, the stack still runs longer. For a lodging use there you'll need the Certificate of Use application with DERM approval attached, the city Business Tax Receipt and the Miami-Dade business tax registration, then the DBPR vacation rental licence, a Florida Department of Revenue sales tax registration and a Miami-Dade tourist tax account. Be aware that the county opens a separate tourist tax account for every location, so three properties means three accounts and three monthly returns.

And if a citation has already landed, AO-2021-05 sets out exactly what the city wants before it will call the property compliant. The listing has to come down from every online platform, the daily and weekly guest accommodation has to stop, and you hand over either a compliant lease or a vacant property registration. Officers are also instructed to ask guests on site for their check-out date and come back on it, so a quiet week proves nothing.

Coral Gables Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you manage to land on one of those legal paths and are able to start taking bookings, there's still the tax stack to deal with, and in Miami-Dade it's five separate charges answering to two different governments.

Charge	Rate	Remitted to
Florida transient rental (sales) tax	6%	Florida Department of Revenue
Miami-Dade discretionary sales surtax	1%	Florida Department of Revenue
Tourist Development Room Tax	2%	Miami-Dade Tax Collector
Professional Sports Franchise Facilities Tax	1%	Miami-Dade Tax Collector
Convention Development Tax	3%	Miami-Dade Tax Collector
Total	13%	State and county

The state half comes from Florida's sales tax on transient accommodations, which applies at 6% to living, sleeping or housekeeping accommodations rented for six months or less, while Form DR-15DSS for calendar year 2026 sets Miami-Dade's discretionary surtax at 1%.

The county half is self-administered rather than run through Tallahassee, which is why Form DR-15TDT shows Miami-Dade's 6.0% local option transient rental tax as collected by the county rather than the Department. Split out on the county's own tourist tax page, that 6% is the 2% room tax, the 1% professional sports tax and the 3% convention development tax.

Booking through Airbnb takes most of the mechanics off your desk. Airbnb's tax collection list names all three Miami-Dade taxes as well as the Florida transient rental tax and the discretionary surtax, so a stay of 182 nights or shorter has the full stack added at checkout and remitted for you. Do check it listing by listing rather than assuming, and note that Vrbo's arrangements weren't something I could confirm from a primary source this pass.

Where you're remitting the county piece yourself, the calendar is unforgiving. Returns and payments are due on the 1st and late after the 20th of the following month, you file every month even when you collected nothing, and the minimum penalty on a delinquent return is $50. Since October 2025 the county adds a $10 fee for filing on paper when you should have filed electronically.

One piece of good news to end on: Florida charges no personal income tax, so the profit lands on your federal return and nowhere else at state level.

Florida Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That tax stack is the part of Florida law that reaches every host equally. The zoning part doesn't, and understanding why is what explains Coral Gables.

Florida preempted a lot of local control back in 2011. Fla. Stat. § 509.032(7)(b) says a "local law, ordinance, or regulation may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals", which is why most Florida cities can't ban them.

Read the next sentence, though. The paragraph "does not apply to any local law, ordinance, or regulation adopted on or before June 1, 2011", and that grandfather clause is the entire basis of the Coral Gables position.

CAO 2013-055 makes the argument in a line. The single-family district ordinance was created on January 1, 2006 and last amended on June 1, 2010, so the city treats itself as expressly exempt from the preemption. Cities that wrote their rules in 2015 have no such shelter.

Coral Gables does, and it has never needed to pass a new ban, which is exactly the point.

Watch out for guidance written in 2024 that promised a statewide registry, because that reform never happened. The package that would have expanded preemption and created a state registration and advertising-platform framework died twice over. HB 1537 was laid on the table on March 5, 2024, and SB 280 passed both chambers only to be vetoed on June 27, 2024. Neither is law, and no equivalent bill has surfaced since.

What did pass is quieter, yet it changes your licensing test. Chapter 2025-113, from SB 606, took effect on July 1, 2025 and rewrote when a rental counts as transient: more than three times in a calendar year for periods of under 30 consecutive days, counted in consecutive days rather than calendar months, with a stay now presumed temporary unless a written lease says otherwise.

The 2026 session then produced a near miss on water safety, where CS/CS/SB 658 passed the Senate 37-0 and died in Messages on March 13, 2026. It would have required pool-safety features and a compliance certificate at licensure, and I'd expect a refile in 2027.

Because so much turns on which city you're in, the contrast elsewhere in the state is worth a look. Our Florida statewide guide maps the preemption in full, while Collier County and Orange County show what a registration-based county looks like when the local rules postdate 2011 and the state framework actually binds.

Does Coral Gables Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Yes, and the design of the enforcement tells you how seriously the city takes it, because the city manager wrote the procedure down instead of leaving it to an officer's discretion.

AO-2021-05 splits the work between two departments. Complaints reaching the Code Enforcement Division get an officer sent out to verify the use, and a confirmed violation draws an immediate citation with no warning. That's $150 per day for a first offence, then $500 per day once a new tenant arrives and the case counts as a repeat.

Complaints reaching the Police Department, plus anything after hours or at weekends, get the same treatment from a police officer, who issues the citation and hands the file back to Code Enforcement. If the owner isn't there, the citation gets posted on the property.

Then it compounds. Zoning Code Section 7-201 provides that "each day such violation continues shall be considered a separate offense", and the administrative order says the city may keep fines running on all open citations until the owner demonstrates compliance. That's not a one-time cost you can price into a spreadsheet. It's a meter, and it keeps running while you argue.

The ceilings sit in Section 7-302. Through code enforcement proceedings, the board or hearing officer can order up to $250 per offence for a first violation and $500 per offence for a repeat, plus reinspection costs of $50 to $100 every time an officer has to come back. Through the courts, a zoning violation carries a fine of up to $500 per offence, imprisonment of up to 60 days, or both.

And per CAO 2013-055, the special masters hearing these cases hold the same authority as a code enforcement board under Fla. Stat. § 162.03, which includes subpoenas, sworn testimony and orders "commanding whatever steps are necessary to bring a violation into compliance".

The staffing is the last tell. Coral Gables runs its Code Enforcement hotline from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, which is exactly when a weekend rental turns over. Outside those hours a neighbour calls the police non-emergency line instead. Not many cities of this size staff code enforcement on a Sunday morning.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Coral Gables

Given all of that, the order below is built to fail you fast and cheap rather than after you've furnished a house. The first two steps decide whether the rest are worth reading at all.

1. Check the parcel's zoning before anything else. The city's parcel check tool and 3D zoning map will give you the district in about a minute. SFR, MF1, MF2 or MFSA means no nightly or weekly rental, full stop.
2. If the parcel is MF2, check the boundary streets. The bed and breakfast conditional use lives only between Southwest Eighth Street, Navarre Avenue, Douglas Road and LeJeune Road, and only in buildings fifty years or older.
3. Read your HOA or condo documents anyway. A private covenant can prohibit what zoning permits, and Airbnb's own Coral Gables hosting page points hosts to leases, condo board rules and HOA rules for that reason.
4. On a commercial or mixed-use parcel, apply for the Certificate of Use. $120, 7 to 10 working days, DERM approval first, and the use has to start within 180 days.
5. Get the Local Business Tax Receipt from the city's Finance Department, then the Miami-Dade County business tax registration.
6. Apply for the DBPR vacation rental licence in the Dwelling or Condo class, and register with the Florida Department of Revenue for sales tax.
7. Open a Miami-Dade tourist tax account for each address, and diarise the monthly return. Due on the 1st, late after the 20th, filed even in a zero month.
8. Otherwise, restructure to six months or longer. That's the clean side of the AO-2021-05 line and of the transient rental tax threshold, and it's what compliant Gables owners are already doing.

Who to Contact in Coral Gables about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever step you get stuck on, four offices cover almost all of it, and picking the right one first saves an irritating amount of time on hold.

Zoning questions and the Certificate of Use

The Development Services Department owns zoning interpretation, the code hub and the Certificate of Use.

• Address: 427 Biltmore Way, Coral Gables, FL 33134
• Phone: 305-460-5245
• Email: [email protected]
• Certificate of Use: Plans Coordinator Assistant Kathy Arguinzoni, 305-460-5269
• Online: the Zoning Code and Map page carries the code, the interactive map and the parcel check tool

Citations, complaints and compliance

The Code Enforcement Division issues the citations and decides when a property is back in compliance.

• Address: 427 Biltmore Way, Suite 100, Coral Gables, FL 33134
• Phone: 305-441-5777
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
• After hours: Police Department non-emergency line, 305-442-1600

Business tax

The Finance Department handles the Local Business Tax Receipt and its annual renewal.

• Phone: 305-460-5296 or 305-460-5298
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday
• City Hall switchboard: 305-446-6800, at 234 Minorca Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134

County tourist taxes

The Miami-Dade Convention and Tourist Tax Section registers accounts and takes the monthly returns.

• Address: 11805 SW 26th Street, Suite 230, Miami, FL 33175
• Phone: 305-375-5550
• Fax: 305-375-5594
• Hours: 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday
• Online: the county's tourist and restaurant tax page carries the registration forms

For the state licence, the DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants handles vacation rental licensing, and the Florida Department of Revenue handles sales tax registration and the surtax. Neither one can tell you whether your parcel is zoned for the use, so make sure you settle that with Development Services first.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Coral Gables on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those two departments and their Sunday shift shape how owners here talk about the city, and the tone differs from most Florida markets. What follows is my read of the recurring themes in public discussion rather than a survey, and I should say plainly that Reddit blocks automated reading, so nothing below is a quotation from a thread I opened.

• Investors treat the Gables as closed and move on. The advice that circulates for anyone asking about buying here for nightly rentals is to look at a different municipality, because the model most investors want, a whole furnished unit at daily rates, isn't purchasable at any price in a residential district.
• The confusion is almost always about the state preemption. Owners read that Florida stops cities from banning vacation rentals, assume that covers Coral Gables, then discover the June 2011 grandfather clause after a citation. That one sentence in § 509.032(7)(b) is the most misunderstood line in Florida short-term rental law.
• A DBPR licence gets mistaken for permission. The state licence is straightforward to obtain, which is exactly why people assume it settles the question. It doesn't, and the city cites regardless.
• The workaround people actually run is the long lease. Furnished six-month-plus tenancies aimed at relocating professionals, visiting faculty and medical residents come up constantly, and that's the version of the business the code leaves alone.
• Nobody argues that the rules go unenforced. The debate is whether a 2010-vintage ordinance should still bind a 2026 housing market, which is a different conversation from whether the city means it.

Are you weighing that against places in the metro where an entire unit can legally be listed by the night? The Hialeah - Miramar market is the nearest large one with real numbers to look at. The gap between what a unit clears there and what a Gables long-let clears is the actual decision in front of you.

Zoning that predates a preemption is worth more to a city than any ordinance it could pass today, and this one has quietly held that card for fifteen years. Wherever you're buying, the date on the ordinance deserves as much of your attention as the text of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Coral Gables in 2026?

Not in a residential district. The Coral Gables Zoning Code permits only the uses it lists in the Single-Family Residential district, and short-term rental is not among them, a reading the City Attorney confirmed in opinion CAO 2013-055. The city restated the rule on August 12, 2026, covering both single-family and multifamily land. Overnight accommodations are permitted exclusively in Mixed-Use, Industrial and Commercial districts.

What is the fine for an illegal short-term rental in Coral Gables?

Administrative Order AO-2021-05 directs an immediate citation with no warning at $150 per day for a first violation, rising to $500 per day once new guests arrive and the case is treated as a repeat. Zoning Code Section 7-201 makes each day a separate offence, and the city may keep fines running on every open citation until the owner removes the listings and proves compliance. Court proceedings can add up to $500 per offence and 60 days.

How does Florida's vacation rental preemption not apply to Coral Gables?

Fla. Stat. § 509.032(7)(b) bars local governments from prohibiting vacation rentals, then exempts any local law adopted on or before June 1, 2011. Coral Gables says its single-family district ordinance was created on January 1, 2006 and last amended on June 1, 2010, so the city treats itself as grandfathered and outside the preemption. The 2024 bills that would have narrowed that clause never became law.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in Miami-Dade County?

Five charges totalling 13% on stays of six months or less: a 6% Florida transient rental tax and a 1% Miami-Dade discretionary surtax, both remitted to the Florida Department of Revenue, plus a 2% Tourist Development Room Tax, a 1% Professional Sports Franchise Facilities Tax and a 3% Convention Development Tax, all remitted to the Miami-Dade Tax Collector. Airbnb collects and remits all five. County returns are monthly and late after the 20th.

Can you rent a Coral Gables property for 30 days instead?

Thirty days clears Florida's transient test but not the city's. AO-2021-05 applies to any property "leased to an individual for a period of less than 6 months", and the city's own 2026 notice repeats that six-month minimum, so thirty days still draws a citation. Six months also matches the Florida sales tax line, since rentals longer than that fall outside the transient rental tax. Furnished six-month leases are the standard compliant structure here.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.