Longwood, Florida Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a house in Longwood, Florida and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and Longwood is about as unobstructed as an Orlando-area city gets, because it has no short-term rental ordinance at all. Municode's copy of the Longwood city code is codified through Ordinance No. 26-2280, enacted April 6, 2026, and I read it end to end along with the Longwood Development Code that sits inside it. Neither one defines a vacation rental, sets up a registry, requires a permit, imposes a minimum stay, or caps how often you rent. Longwood is a small city in Seminole County just north of Orlando, and on this particular subject it has stayed quiet.

Quiet isn't the same as free of paperwork, though, since the paperwork simply comes from three governments other than the city. Florida wants a vacation rental license from its Division of Hotels and Restaurants, Seminole County wants a tourist development tax account and its own business tax receipt, and Longwood wants an ordinary business tax receipt, the same one it would want from a florist. There's also one quiet line in the zoning code that catches owners who buy a four-bedroom house and picture renting it to groups of friends, and I'll come back to that, because it's the only awkward rule in the set.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: which licenses you need and what each one costs in 2026, the three layers of tax and who collects each, how a city with no rental ordinance enforces anything, and who to call at City Hall when your situation doesn't fit the form. Every figure below comes from Longwood's, Seminole County's or Florida's own pages, checked in July 2026, and where something is still moving I've said so.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Longwood

Since the city says nothing about short-term rentals as such, the first question still isn't whether you're allowed. It's what Longwood's code thinks you're running, and that's where the awkward rule I mentioned lives.

The Longwood Development Code's table of allowable uses lists seventeen land use categories across the top and a long column of uses down the side, and a whole-house vacation rental appears in none of them. Hotels sit in the commercial and mixed-use districts and nowhere near a residential street, while a bed and breakfast is allowed, with supplemental standards, in exactly two categories, Downtown Neighborhood and Downtown Storefront. Everything else that looks like paid lodging is absent.

That absence is the outcome you want, because section 509.032(7)(b) of the Florida Statutes says a local ordinance "may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals" unless it was already on the books by June 1, 2011. Longwood has nothing of that kind to grandfather in, so a plain vacation rental in a Longwood house sits outside the use table rather than against it.

The line to watch sits in the definitions instead. Longwood's definition of a "family" is "one or more persons occupying a single dwelling unit," and then it adds a limit: "such family shall not contain over three persons unless all persons are related by law, blood, adoption, or marriage." Read that literally and four unrelated adults sharing your house for a long weekend aren't a family, while a single-family district is for families.

Now, I found no Longwood case applying the definition to a vacation rental, and Florida's preemption limits how hard a city could push it, so I'd treat it as a risk rather than a rule. Even so, keep it in mind when you decide whether to advertise six beds to a group of friends or four beds to a couple with kids, because it's the sentence a determined neighbor complaint would reach for first.

The bed and breakfast route is worth knowing about too, since it's the one lodging use Longwood does spell out. Under section 5.4.4 of the Development Code, adopted back in March 2011, you have to live in the establishment yourself, you're capped at five guest rooms, breakfast and social events are for lodgers only and can't be opened to the public, parking has to fit on the site, and your one sign is limited to eight square feet.

Mind you, that's only available downtown, so for the overwhelming majority of Longwood addresses it isn't a route at all. Assuming your house sits in a Low Density or Medium Density residential category, then you're running a vacation rental rather than a bed and breakfast, and you don't need city permission to do it.

What can stop you is private, and the city has no say in it. Florida's preemption binds local governments; it doesn't touch a homeowners association's covenants or a subdivision's deed restrictions, and plenty of Longwood neighborhoods carry a minimum lease term buried in theirs. Read your own recorded restrictions before you spend a dollar on furniture, because that document is the one most likely to end the plan.

There's one more thing to check while you're in the paperwork. Under section 196.061 of the Florida Statutes, renting all or substantially all of a homestead for more than 30 days a year in two consecutive years counts as abandoning the homestead, which costs you the exemption and the Save Our Homes cap on your own residence.

It also helps to know how unusual Longwood's silence is, because the county around it is not silent. Seminole County's Land Development Code section 30.6.16 has required vacation rentals to register with a county-authorized third-party vendor since October 1, 2020, with annual renewal, a responsible party reachable 24 hours a day, a cap of two overnight occupants per sleeping room, fire extinguishers on every floor and a guest information binder in the house. Read the first line of that section carefully, though, because it applies to rentals "located in unincorporated Seminole County."

Longwood is incorporated. None of that reaches your address, and the Seminole County guide covers the unincorporated side in full if you're also weighing property outside a city.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Longwood

So the city asks nothing of you as a rental operator, yet you still can't skip licensing, because the state and the county both step in where Longwood doesn't. One real license and two business tax receipts stack up, and only one of the three is issued in Longwood.

The first is the Florida vacation rental license, and it's the one that decides everything downstream. Section 509.241 of the Florida Statutes requires every public lodging establishment to hold a license from the Division of Hotels and Restaurants, and section 509.013(4) drops your house into that category once it's "rented to guests more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 consecutive days." Three bookings a year and you're outside it. The fourth puts you in, at which point a detached house is licensed as a Vacation Rental Dwelling and a unit in a condominium or cooperative as a Vacation Rental Condo.

The cost is modest, though the timing matters more than the money does. On the division's lodging fee schedule as of July 2026, a new single-unit vacation rental license runs a $50 application fee plus $170 for a full year, or $90 if you apply within six months of your renewal date, plus a $10 Hospitality Education Program fee that never gets prorated. Two to twenty-five units costs $180 for the full year, while an agent covering several owners under one collective license pays $150 plus $10 per unit.

Now for the timing part. Because the division renews on a staggered schedule by county, and Seminole County sits in District 4, your annual renewal date is April 1 whatever month you first apply in. Apply in March and you'll pay a full year's fee for a few weeks of license, so do check where you are in that cycle before you submit.

Longwood's own requirement is a business tax receipt, and it applies to you the way it applies to any business inside the city limits. Chapter 82, Article II of the City Code says no person shall engage in or manage any business without first procuring one from the community development director, and section 82-34 charges a $15.00 non-refundable administrative fee on a new application, dropping to $10.00 at renewal. That's on top of the annual tax itself, which comes from the schedule in section 82-43.

Be aware that the schedule has no vacation rental line. The nearest entries are category 32, "Hotels, Motels, Boarding Houses" at $5.00 per unit with a guesthouse or bed and breakfast at $5.00 per unit and a $50.00 minimum, and category 54, "Unclassified Persons or Firms" at $75.00. Which one a single rental house lands in is a call the business tax desk makes, so ask before you budget rather than assuming the cheaper row.

Two details in that chapter change the order you do things in. Section 82-45 says no receipt will be issued or renewed until you exhibit an active state license for any business the Department of Business and Professional Regulation regulates, which means your Florida vacation rental license has to exist before Longwood will hand you anything. And section 82-39 says plainly that holding a receipt is not authority to operate in contravention of any ordinance, and is not a statement by the city that your location complies with zoning. Nobody at the counter is blessing your use. They're collecting a tax.

Then there's the county receipt, which is the least painful step in this guide because Longwood collects it for you. The Seminole County Tax Collector's business information guide prices the county business tax receipt at $25 for a non-regulated business and $45 for a regulated one, and it defines "regulated" as any business needing a local, state, professional or federal license, which puts a vacation rental on the $45 side. The same guide tells you to get the city receipt first so zoning is confirmed, and confirms that Longwood issues its own receipt at 174 W. Church Avenue and takes the county's portion at the same counter.

Then remember the calendar, because both receipts expire on September 30 every year no matter when you bought them, so a receipt issued in August buys you six weeks. Longwood does offer a half-year receipt covering April 1 to September 30 at half the tax, which is the one thing that softens that.

Required Documents for Longwood Short-Term Rentals

Since none of those three applications asks for a floor plan, an inspection report or a neighbor notification, the document list is mercifully short. It's assembled from four different places, though, so gather it once and you'll get through all three in an afternoon.

• Your Florida vacation rental license number. Longwood's business tax receipt page asks for your Department of Business and Professional Regulation license number where applicable, and section 82-45 makes it a precondition of issuance.
• A federal employer identification number, or your Social Security number if you're a sole proprietor without an LLC. The city's page says exactly that.
• A fictitious name registration from the Division of Corporations, or a signed written statement setting out why you don't need one. Section 82-34 makes that a prerequisite to receiving or transferring a receipt.
• Your Florida Department of Revenue sales tax certificate, which you'll need before your first booking anyway.
• A Seminole County tourist development tax account number, or evidence that the platform you list on remits that tax for you.
• Proof that any delinquent local business taxes are paid. Section 82-34 blocks a new receipt until they are, which catches people who bought a property with an old business attached to the address.

One item is conditional and worth getting ahead of, because Longwood warns that some applications "may generate the need for inspections by the Fire Marshal and/or Building Official," which it says is typical where there's a change of occupancy from one use type to another. A furnished house that stays a house rarely triggers that, whereas a garage conversion or a detached unit you've added bedrooms to is a different conversation, and staff will tell you if it applies. The whole thing runs through the city's SmartGov portal, where you create an account, apply, then print the receipt once it clears. Three steps, no counter visit.

Longwood Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you clear all that and are able to take a first booking, there's still tax to sort out, and this is the part of Longwood hosting with real money attached. Three charges stack on every stay of six months or less, and two different governments collect them, which is why the filing calendar looks messier than the rates do.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Florida sales tax on transient rentals	6.0%	Florida Department of Revenue
Seminole County discretionary sales surtax	1.0%	Florida Department of Revenue
Seminole County tourist development tax	5.0%	Seminole County Tax Collector
Total on a Longwood stay	12.0%	State and county, split as above

The first two go to Tallahassee, where the Department of Revenue applies the 6% state sales tax to rentals of living or sleeping accommodations for six months or less, and Seminole County's 1% discretionary surtax rides on top of it. That surtax is a local government infrastructure surtax that Form DR-15DSS shows running through December 31, 2034, and since the department reissues the form every November, it's a rate to recheck rather than assume. One quirk sits in your favor here. Transient rentals are exempt from the $5,000 cap that limits surtax on other purchases, so the surtax applies to the whole rent rather than to the first slice of it.

The third goes to the county directly, and it's the one owners forget. Seminole County self-administers its 5% tourist development tax rather than routing it through the state, which Form DR-15TDT confirms by listing Seminole as county-collected.

The Tax Collector's tourist development tax page sets the return deadline at the 20th of the month following collection, and it lets you keep a 2.5% collection allowance on the first $1,200 collected, capped at $30. Then it makes the downside clear: a 10% penalty for each delinquent month up to 50%, a $50 minimum penalty, interest on top, and the collection allowance forfeited entirely if you're late. You get one penalty waiver per twelve-month period. After that, none.

Now for the part that saves most Longwood hosts from ever filing a tourist development tax return at all. The Tax Collector says that if you rent through Airbnb, HomeAway or Vrbo, those platforms collect the tax and pay it over for you. Airbnb's own tax page backs that up, listing the Florida transient rental tax at 6%, the discretionary surtax at 0.5% to 1.5%, and Seminole County's tourist development tax at 5%, all on reservations of 182 nights or shorter. So a host who books exclusively through Airbnb has all three charges handled.

The moment you take one direct booking, though, all three become yours to collect and file, and the county's registration form is where that starts. Don't forget that a platform's collection covers that platform's bookings and nothing else.

Florida imposes no personal income tax, so there's no state return on the profit. None of those three charges changes how the income is treated federally either, and the usual rules for a rental property still apply, including the ones that turn on whether you use the house yourself during the year.

Florida Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those three tax layers and the license underneath them all came from outside Longwood, which is the pattern for nearly everything a Florida host deals with. The state has held the pen on vacation rentals since 2011, and understanding what it does and doesn't preempt explains why cities in the same county end up so different from each other.

The preemption itself is narrow but real. Section 509.032(7)(b) blocks a local government from prohibiting vacation rentals or regulating how long or how often you rent one, while exempting anything a city adopted on or before June 1, 2011. What it doesn't touch is ordinary zoning, life safety, building code, noise and parking authority, which is exactly why Seminole County can require registration and occupancy limits in its unincorporated areas without running into the statute, and why a neighboring city can adopt its own scheme while Longwood adopts nothing. The state drew its line around banning and frequency, not around local regulation generally.

That leads to the most consequential recent change, and it's the one a 2024-era guide gets wrong. Chapter 2025-113, the enrolled version of SB 606, was signed on June 2, 2025 and took effect that July 1, and it rewrote the test that decides whether your house is a licensed vacation rental at all. Transient now means rented more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 consecutive days.

That wording replaced an older test counting "30 days or one calendar month, whichever is less," and the presumption that used to turn on the operator's stated intent went with it, so a stay is now presumed temporary unless a written lease says otherwise. The same act also set written-notice rules for removing a guest who won't pay or won't leave.

Two things people expect to find in Florida law aren't there. There's still no statewide short-term rental registry and no state framework governing advertising platforms, because the 2024 package that would've created both died in two pieces. 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. Nothing equivalent has passed since. And the 2026 water-safety bills that would've required pool safety features and a compliance certificate at licensure went the same way, with SB 658 dying in messages in the House on March 13, 2026. Watch for a refile in 2027 if your Longwood house has a pool, since that one keeps coming back.

For the wider picture, the Florida statewide guide maps how the preemption plays out across the state. If you're comparing Longwood against the markets that actually draw the tourists, the Orange County guide covers Orlando proper and the Osceola County guide covers the Kissimmee and Disney corridor, both of which are far more regulated than anything you'll meet up here.

Does Longwood Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

The city can't strictly enforce short-term rental rules, because it doesn't have any. That's the honest answer, and it's more useful than it sounds, since it tells you where the enforcement risk sits instead: on the business tax receipt, on noise, on parking, and on the private covenants the city has no part in.

Start with the receipt, because the city has written itself an unusually easy proof. Section 82-34 makes any "sign, advertisement, social media post, building occupancy, directory or website listing" prima facie evidence that you're liable for the local business tax, and an active Airbnb listing at a Longwood address is exactly that, sitting in public, permanently.

Then section 82-56 prices the failure: a delinquency penalty of 10% for October plus another 5% for each month after that, capped at 25% of the tax; a flat 25% of the tax due for operating without a receipt at all; and after 150 days from the initial notice, a $250 penalty plus court costs, reasonable attorney fees and the city's collection costs. On a $75 receipt that's small money. It's still a paper trail you don't want when you sell.

Anything else a guest does lands under general code compliance, which Longwood runs through a special magistrate rather than a board. Under section 2-337 of the City Code, the magistrate can order a fine of not more than $250.00 per day for a first violation and not more than $500.00 per day for a repeat violation, plus the cost of any repairs, and those fines become a lien on the property. Note the shape of that. It's per day, it runs from the compliance deadline the magistrate sets, and a repeat violation starts accruing from the day the inspector finds it rather than after another hearing. A problem you ignore for a month is a four-figure problem.

Noise is where a rental house actually generates complaints, and Longwood's rules are ordinary but usable. Article III of Chapter 38 makes it unlawful to make any loud, unnecessary or disturbing noise that annoys or disturbs others, and bans outdoor amplified sound for noncommercial purposes in a residential zone between 10:00 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. That's the window your house rules should mirror word for word, because a neighbor who can quote a time to a dispatcher gets a very different response than one who says the guests are loud.

My read, from what the code says and what it conspicuously doesn't, is that Longwood is not policing vacation rentals as a category and has given itself no tool to do so. The pressure comes from neighbors and associations, and it arrives as a noise call, a parking complaint or a letter from an association attorney. Make sure your guest instructions cover both the quiet hours and where the cars go, since those two together account for most of what a small residential city ever hears about.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Longwood

Given how little the city asks, the sequence below matters more than any single step, because a couple of these gate the others and one of them can end the project before you've spent anything.

1. Read your deed restrictions and association rules first. Florida's preemption doesn't reach private covenants, and a recorded minimum lease term is the single most common reason a Longwood plan dies. This costs nothing to check and it's the only step that can save you everything.
2. Confirm your future land use category with the planning desk. You aren't asking permission, since a vacation rental isn't a listed use. You're confirming nothing unusual applies to your parcel and that the bed and breakfast standards, which are downtown only, aren't what you're accidentally proposing.
3. Decide how many people you'll sleep. The code's three-unrelated-persons definition of "family" is the pressure point, so size the listing knowing that a large unrelated group is the configuration most likely to attract attention.
4. Apply for the Florida vacation rental license with the Division of Hotels and Restaurants, budgeting $50 plus $170 plus the $10 education fee for a single unit, and check the April 1 District 4 renewal date before you submit so you don't buy a full year for a partial one.
5. Register with the Florida Department of Revenue for sales tax. Even if a platform ends up collecting, the account is a prerequisite for the county and it costs nothing to hold.
6. Enroll for the Seminole County tourist development tax with the Tax Collector, or document that your platform remits it. Do this before your first stay, not after.
7. Apply for the Longwood business tax receipt through the city's SmartGov portal, with your state license number, your federal tax ID or Social Security number, and your fictitious name registration in hand. Longwood takes the county's $45 portion at the same time.
8. Diarize September 30. Both the city and county receipts expire then no matter when you bought them, and the delinquency penalty starts in October.
9. Run the numbers before you furnish anything. A market with no local rules isn't automatically a market with demand, and Longwood's nightly rates answer to Orlando rather than to Seminole County. Model the property in BNBCalc and compare it against the Florida market before you commit, because the regulatory question and the revenue question have completely different answers here.

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

Whichever of those steps stalls, a handful of offices handle everything between them, and knowing which one owns your question saves you a morning of being transferred around.

Zoning, land use and the Development Code

Longwood Community Development handles planning, permitting, building and code compliance out of one building.

• Address: 174 West Church Avenue, Longwood, FL 32750
• Phone: (407) 260-3462
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Planning and zoning: [email protected]
• Building permitting: [email protected], (407) 260-3486

Business tax receipts, city and county

The business tax receipt desk sits inside Community Development at the same Church Avenue address and issues the city receipt while collecting Seminole County's portion.

• Phone: (407) 260-3442
• Apply: the city's business tax receipt page links the SmartGov portal and lists what to have ready

Complaints, noise and after hours

Code compliance complaints go through the city's online request system, and anything happening at 1:00 a.m. is a police matter rather than a code one.

• City Hall: 175 West Warren Avenue, Longwood, FL 32750, 407-260-3440, [email protected]
• Police non-emergency dispatch: (407) 665-6650

County and state taxes

The Seminole County Tax Collector administers the tourist development tax and the county business tax receipt.

• Tourist development tax: (407) 665-7638
• General business tax: (407) 665-7636
• Mail: PO Box 630, Sanford, FL 32771

State sales tax registration belongs to the Florida Department of Revenue, whose nearest service center is at 400 W. Robinson Street in Orlando on (407) 648-2905, while the vacation rental license belongs to the Division of Hotels and Restaurants at 2601 Blair Stone Road, Tallahassee, on (850) 487-1395.

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

Since the city itself generates so little to complain about, host conversation about Longwood tends to be about everything except the city. Let me say plainly what this section is and isn't. Reddit blocks automated access and its platform policy rules out the commercial use these guides would need, and the BiggerPockets threads that turned up in search either wouldn't load or had been taken down, so nothing below is quoted from a thread I read. It's my read of the recurring themes among Central Florida hosts, offered as that and nothing more.

• Seminole County gets discussed as the quiet alternative to Orange and Osceola. That framing holds up against the codes. Orlando and the Disney corridor both run permit regimes with real conditions, and Longwood runs none, so the contrast investors describe is real even where the demand isn't comparable.
• The complaints are about associations, not the city. This matches what the law allows. A city here is preempted from banning your rental; your association isn't, which puts the enforceable restriction in a private document that never appears in a municipal code search.
• People confuse the county's registry with city limits, constantly. The county's registration requirement is genuine and it stops at the city line, and I'd expect that to be the most common wrong assumption a Longwood owner arrives with.
• The tourist development tax is the thing that surprises people. Platform collection makes it invisible until the first direct booking, and then a 5% county tax with a 10% monthly penalty appears out of nowhere. Watch out for that transition specifically, because it's the one moment a compliant host quietly becomes a non-compliant one.

Taken together, those four themes point at the same lesson, which is that "no ordinance" and "no rules" are not the same sentence, and a place like this is where the gap between them shows up most clearly. Longwood asks nothing of its own, yet you still finish with a state license, two annual receipts, three tax accounts and a set of private covenants that can override every one of them. Quiet places tend to be quiet because the obligations sit somewhere other than City Hall, not because nobody has any. So the question worth asking about anywhere you're weighing isn't whether the city has rules. It's who does.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Longwood, Florida in 2026?

Yes. The City of Longwood has no short-term rental ordinance, no registration or permit program, no minimum stay and no cap on how often you rent, and Florida law bars a city from prohibiting vacation rentals outright unless it had such a rule before June 1, 2011. What you do need is a Florida vacation rental license, a City of Longwood business tax receipt, a Seminole County business tax receipt, and tax accounts with the state and the county.

Does Longwood require a short-term rental permit or registration?

No. Searching the full City Code and the Longwood Development Code, codified through Ordinance No. 26-2280 in April 2026, turns up no vacation rental definition, permit or registry. Seminole County does run a vacation rental registration program, but by its own terms it applies only to properties in unincorporated Seminole County, so a Longwood address is outside it. The city's only requirement is the ordinary business tax receipt that every Longwood business holds.

What taxes do you pay on a Longwood short-term rental?

Twelve percent on stays of six months or less: 6% Florida sales tax, 1% Seminole County discretionary sales surtax, and 5% Seminole County tourist development tax. The first two are remitted to the Florida Department of Revenue and the third directly to the Seminole County Tax Collector by the 20th of the following month. Airbnb collects and remits all three on its own bookings, so most hosts only file if they take direct reservations.

Do you need a Florida state license for a Longwood vacation rental?

Yes, once the house is rented to guests more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 consecutive days. That is the statutory test, rewritten with effect from July 1, 2025. A single-unit license costs a $50 application fee plus $170 for a full year and a $10 education fee, and Seminole County falls in the Division of Hotels and Restaurants' District 4, which renews every April 1.

How many guests can a Longwood short-term rental sleep?

The city sets no occupancy cap for rentals. Its zoning code does define a "family" as no more than three persons unless they're related by blood, marriage, adoption or law, which is the only occupancy language a complaint could point at, and no case applying it to a vacation rental turned up in this research. Seminole County's two-per-sleeping-room limit applies to unincorporated addresses only, not to Longwood.

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