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

Do you own a home in Celebration and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Unfortunately, the answer is no, and two separate rulebooks say so rather than one. Celebration isn't a city, mind you. It's an unincorporated community in Osceola County, Florida, which means the county writes the zoning and a private recorded charter writes almost everything else.

The county half is the one buyers miss. Osceola allows short-term rental only in a Planned Development that falls inside its Short-Term Rental Overlay, and Celebration doesn't fall inside that overlay. Celebration's own charter then requires leases of at least a year, so even a 30-night stay is out unless the board says yes in writing. Advertising a short stay is treated as its own separate violation.

So let's walk through what that leaves you in 2026: what the county code actually says, what a legal Celebration rental looks like, the taxes that still attach to any stay under six months, how the county and the association enforce, and who to call when your parcel turns out to be an edge case. Every figure below comes from Osceola County's, Celebration's or Florida's own pages, read in July 2026.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Celebration

Those two rulebooks work in completely different ways, so take them one at a time.

Zoning comes first, because zoning decides whether a use is legal at all. Osceola County has exactly two incorporated cities, Kissimmee and St. Cloud, according to the county's Cities and Communities page. Celebration is neither. It's unincorporated, which puts it under the Osceola County Land Development Code directly, with no town council of its own to lobby.

And the operative provision is one sentence long. LDC § 3.6.1.K says short term rental is permitted in the Planned Development zoning district, and that the proposed developments must fall within the boundaries of the Short-Term Rental Overlay. Both conditions have to hold.

That text was last touched by Ord. No. 2025-10 on 17 March 2025, so it's current law rather than a leftover.

Now, where is the overlay? The county's Short-Term Rental Overlay article carries the map as Exhibit 3.12.2, drawn by the county's GIS section on 15 January 2025. The shaded boundary sits in the western US 192 corridor running out to the Polk County line, the stretch people call Four Corners, plus a small separate pocket near the Turnpike. Celebration, up against the Orange County line at I-4, isn't in the shaded area.

Going through the county's own Short Term Rental Listing tells the same story from the other direction. It names 249 subdivisions and communities approved for short-term rental, from Academy Village through to Windsor Hills. Celebration appears nowhere on it, and neither does any Celebration village.

Then comes the charter, which would stop you even if the zoning didn't.

Rule 7 of Exhibit "C" to the Celebration Charter, as approved by the CROA board on 28 August 2024, says no unit may be used as a boarding house, a bed and breakfast, or any similar accommodation for transient tenants. It then sets the floor: all leases run an initial term of no less than one year, except with the board's prior written consent. You can't let a single room either, since only an entire dwelling or an entire garage apartment may be leased.

Garage apartments get their own carve-out, and it's narrower than it sounds. Those can go on a three-month initial term, but no unit or garage apartment may be leased to more than two separate tenants in any 12-month period. So a granny flat turning over every three months breaks the rule by the third guest.

Do check your own village Supplement before you rely on any of that, because rule 7 opens by deferring to whatever a Supplement says, and Celebration's condominium and service-area documents are separate instruments.

The county closes the accessory-dwelling door as well. Under LDC § 3.6.1.A, an accessory living unit can only be rented at all if the primary structure carries a homestead exemption, and then only for long-term periods, with the code saying in as many words that it isn't intended for short-term rentals.

So what's actually left? Two things, and both of them are real businesses.

The first is an annual lease in Celebration, which is permitted, common, and priced by a very different market than nightly stays. The second is buying a few miles west inside the overlay, where whole subdivisions were purpose-built for exactly this and the county has already blessed the use.

Run both through BNBCalc before you commit to either. The gap between a 12-month tenant in Celebration and a rental home near Disney is wide enough to change which property you should be bidding on in the first place.

Our Osceola County guide covers the overlay communities in detail, and the Orange County guide covers the other side of the Disney corridor.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Celebration

None of that means Osceola runs a light-touch system where short-term rental is allowed. It's worth knowing the licensing chain anyway, so you can price the overlay option properly.

Osceola's STRPD district page, updated 25 August 2025, lays the sequence out in three steps, and the first one is the step Celebration owners fail: verify that your zoning allows short-term rental, using the county's overlay map, with the Zoning office standing by on 407-742-0200 for anything ambiguous.

Step two is the state license, which Florida issues rather than the county. Under Fla. Stat. § 509.241 every public lodging establishment must hold a license from the Division of Hotels and Restaurants, and § 509.242 classifies a vacation rental as either Vacation Rental Condo or Vacation Rental Dwelling.

DBPR's lodging fee schedule prices a single unit at a $50 application fee plus $170 for a full year or $90 for a half year, with a $10 Hospitality Education Program fee on top in every case.

Step three is the county's Local Business Tax Receipt, which the Osceola County Tax Collector issues on a dedicated short and long term rental application. What it costs depends on when in the year you apply: $30 for a 12-month receipt between 1 October and 31 March, $15 for six months between 1 April and 30 June, and $45 for an 18-month receipt between 1 July and 30 September. Every receipt expires on 30 September regardless.

Approval takes 7 to 10 business days, because Zoning, Environmental Health and Building each review the application. That zoning review is exactly where a Celebration address stops.

Renewals matter more than people expect. Miss the 30 September deadline and the penalty ladder starts at $3.00 in October and climbs to $4.50, $6.00 and finally $7.50 in January. The bigger risk isn't the money, though. The Tax Collector's own applicant sheet warns that failure to maintain the short term rental Local Business Tax Receipt may result in loss of zoning approval, which is a much more expensive thing to lose.

Two Celebration-specific notes on all this. There's no city license, because there's no city. And CROA doesn't issue permits at all, so nobody at Town Hall can grant you a short-term rental right, whatever the county says about your zoning.

If you're leasing annually in Celebration, keep in mind that a Local Business Tax Receipt still applies to residential rentals generally, so call the Tax Collector at 407-742-4000 rather than assuming a 12-month tenant puts you outside the system.

Required Documents for Celebration Short-Term Rentals

Since that receipt still has to clear three county departments, the paperwork is worth assembling in the right order rather than discovering a gap halfway through.

The Tax Collector's applicant sheet is the most specific list anyone publishes, and it wants the following on a county rental application:

• A copy of your DBPR license, or a copy of the application submitted to DBPR on form DBPR HR-7028, in the current owner's name.
• Your Florida sales tax number, which you get by registering with the Department of Revenue before the unit is rented.
• Your Social Security number or federal EIN, plus the rental address and the owner's name, address, phone and email.
• Management company details where an agent runs the property, with a power of attorney if anyone other than the owner submits the application.
• A signed and dated application with the fee. Unsigned applications come back.

Then there's the tourist tax account, which is separate again. You file a Tourist Tax Application with $5 for each unit rented for 180 days or less, and the office mails you return forms, a calculation sheet and the green envelopes it wants those returns to arrive in.

Celebration adds one document that no county form mentions. Under rule 7 of the charter, notice of any lease plus a copy of the lease itself has to reach the CROA board within 10 days of execution, and failure to do so will result in a $1,000 fine to the owner. Make sure you diarize that one the day a tenant signs, because it applies to the perfectly legal 12-month lease just as much as to anything else.

Celebration Short-Term Rental Taxes

Get all of that filed on a property inside the overlay and you're still not finished, because there's tax on top, three layers of it, and the third layer behaves differently from what most hosts expect.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Florida sales tax on transient rentals	6%	Florida Department of Revenue
Osceola discretionary sales surtax	1.5%	Florida Department of Revenue
Osceola tourist development tax	6%	Osceola County Tax Collector

That's 13.5% on the rent, and the county's own applicant sheet independently states the state-level piece as 7.5%. One caveat on the surtax, though. As of July 2026 the Department of Revenue's current DR-15DSS is still the Calendar Year 2025 edition, and both Osceola components run well past 2026, so I'm treating 1.5% as live rather than pending.

The tourist development tax is the one that catches people. It's been 6% since 1 July 2004, and the Tax Collector states flatly that Osceola County is not contracted with Airbnb, VRBO, Evolve, or any other third-party booking platform. Airbnb's Florida tax page confirms it from the other side: it collects the 6% state transient rental tax and the county surtax statewide, and it lists 23 Florida counties whose tourist development tax it also collects. Osceola isn't one of them.

So you collect and remit that 6% yourself, every month.

The substitute return has to be postmarked by the 20th. File on time and you keep a 2.5% collection allowance, capped at $30. File late and the penalty is 10% of the tax due or $50, whichever is greater, and it's never less than $50. Even a late nil return draws the $50, which is a cheap mistake to avoid and an annoying one to make.

One threshold trips up Celebration owners who assume none of this reaches them. Both the sales tax and the tourist development tax attach to rentals of 180 days or less, not 30. A three-month furnished let and a six-month corporate let both sit inside the tax net, even though neither is a short-term rental for zoning purposes. Only when you cross six months does the lodging tax fall away.

Florida takes nothing else. There's no state personal income tax, so your rental profit meets a federal return and stops there.

Florida Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

All of that raises a fair question, which is why Florida doesn't override a county that zones short-term rental into a single corridor. The state does preempt some of this, though less than the headlines suggest.

Fla. Stat. § 509.032(7)(b) is the provision people cite: a local law may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals. It carries a grandfather clause for anything adopted on or before 1 June 2011, and it leaves ordinary zoning, life-safety, noise and building-code powers untouched. That's the gap Osceola's overlay lives in.

The preemption also doesn't reach a private covenant. CROA is a Chapter 720 community association operating on recorded documents, and § 509.032 says nothing about deed restrictions, so the one-year lease rule stands whatever the state does to local ordinances.

Two attempts to expand the preemption have failed recently. A 2024 package would have added statewide registration and platform rules, but HB 1537 was laid on the table on 5 March 2024 and SB 280 passed both chambers only to be vetoed on 27 June 2024. Neither is law, and I found no 2025 or 2026 revival of that model.

What did pass is Chapter 2025-113, SB 606, effective 1 July 2025. It rewrote the test that decides whether a rental is transient at all: rented more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 consecutive days, counted in consecutive days rather than calendar months. A stay is now presumed temporary unless a written lease says otherwise, which is another quiet argument for papering your Celebration lease properly.

One more bill is worth tracking. SB 658 would have required vacation rental licensees within 150 feet of a pool or water body to install water-safety features and certify compliance at licensure. It passed the Senate 37-0 on 19 February 2026, then died in Messages in the House on 13 March 2026, the same day HB 79 died in subcommittee. I'd expect a 2027 refile, though that's a guess rather than a filing. Our Florida statewide guide tracks the rest of the state picture.

Does Celebration Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Yes, and the awkward part for an operator is that two different bodies can come at you for the same booking, on separate timetables.

Start with the county. Osceola's code enforcement chapter gives an inspector the ordinary route first: notice, a reasonable time to correct, then a hearing. Where it goes after that is the expensive bit. Under § 7-5 the board may impose a fine of up to $250 per day for a first violation and up to $500 per day for a repeat violation, for every day the violation continues past the compliance date, plus costs. A violation found irreparable or irreversible can draw up to $5,000.

That's not a one-time ticket. It accrues daily, and a certified copy of the order can be recorded as a lien against the property, which is how a $250 nuisance becomes a title problem.

There's a separate citation route as well, where an officer gives notice, allows up to 30 days to correct, and can then issue a civil citation. Repeat violations, transient violations and anything threatening public health or safety skip the grace period entirely. Ignore the citation and a special master can enter a judgment of up to $500 plus fees and costs, recorded in the public records.

Complaints do have to be signed now. The county's code complaint page says anonymous complaints are no longer accepted under Senate Bill 60, and asks for the complainant's full name and address before an investigation opens, which is public record. Be aware that this cuts both ways in a community like Celebration, where neighbors know each other and a signed complaint isn't much of a deterrent.

Then there's CROA, which moves faster than any county process because it doesn't need one. Fla. Stat. § 720.305 lets an association sue at law or in equity, and the prevailing party recovers reasonable attorney fees and costs.

Fines carry procedure, though. They need at least 14 days' written notice and a hearing before a committee of three members who are independent of the board, held within 90 days. The statute's default caps are $100 per violation and $1,000 in the aggregate, and those apply only where the governing documents don't say otherwise. Celebration's Exhibit C does say otherwise.

The advertising rule is what makes all this easy to enforce. Rule 12 of the charter treats disseminating information or advertising in any medium, the internet included, soliciting tenants for short-term rentals where the use isn't authorized, as a violation in itself. Nobody has to catch a guest at the door. The listing is the evidence.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Celebration

Since a listing is all it takes to open a case, the cheap checks still belong at the front of the process. The first three steps below cost nothing and answer the only question that matters, and working through them out of sequence is how people end up owning the wrong house.

1. Confirm which jurisdiction you're actually in. Search your address on the Property Appraiser's site and read the Tax District field. 300 means unincorporated Osceola County, which is what a Celebration address should return.
2. Check the parcel against the overlay. Open Exhibit 3.12.2 on the county's Short-Term Rental Overlay page, then call Zoning on 407-742-0200 and get the answer for your specific parcel rather than your neighborhood.
3. Read your charter and your Supplement. The master Exhibit C rules set a one-year floor, and your village documents can be stricter. Both bind you regardless of what the county says.
4. Decide which business you're in. Annual leasing in Celebration and nightly rental inside the overlay are different assets with different financing, different management and different exit buyers. Pick one before you write an offer.
5. Register for tax before the first booking, not after. Florida sales tax with the Department of Revenue, then the tourist tax application with $5 per unit if you're renting for 180 days or less.
6. Get the DBPR license for a vacation rental, budgeting $50 plus $170 plus the $10 education fee for a single unit in a full year.
7. Apply for the Local Business Tax Receipt and allow 7 to 10 business days for the three-department review. Diarise the 30 September expiry the day it's issued.
8. Send CROA a copy of every lease within 10 days. That $1,000 fine applies to compliant landlords who are simply late with the paperwork.
9. Sort insurance and remittance before guests arrive. Tourist tax returns are due by the 20th each month, and a nil return filed late still costs $50.

If you're weighing an annual lease in Celebration against a rental home a few miles west, the Walt Disney World (South) market is where the nightly numbers for that corridor actually live.

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

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, five offices and one state division cover almost all of it, and knowing which one owns your question saves a lot of transferred calls.

Zoning, the overlay, and use questions

Osceola County's Zoning office answers whether a use is permitted on a specific parcel, and it's the only place a written determination comes from.

• Phone: 407-742-0200, listed on both the STRPD district page and the county's zoning FAQs
• Ask for: your zoning designation, whether the parcel is inside the Short-Term Rental Overlay, and what a Zoning Map Amendment would involve if you're determined to try
• I couldn't find a published street address or counter hours for this office on any county page I could reach, so call before you drive over.

Complaints and enforcement

Osceola County Code Enforcement handles violations in unincorporated areas, Celebration included.

• Phone: 407-742-0400
• Email: [email protected]
• Note: complaints can't be anonymous, and your name and address become public record

Taxes and the business tax receipt

The Osceola County Tax Collector runs both the Local Business Tax Receipt and the tourist development tax.

• Main office: 2501 E. Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, Kissimmee, FL 34744
• Mail: PO Box 422105, Kissimmee, FL 34742-2105
• Phone: (407) 742-4000
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm

The community charter

Celebration Town Hall houses CROA, which administers the charter, the rules and the fines.

• Address: 851 Celebration Avenue, Celebration, FL 34747
• Phone: (407) 566-1200, fax (407) 566-1210
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday, Wednesday and Friday 9:00 am to 5:30 pm, Tuesday and Thursday 9:00 am to 6:00 pm

Infrastructure, and who it isn't

The Celebration Community Development District is a Chapter 190 special-purpose government created by county ordinance in March 1994. It maintains infrastructure, and it has nothing to do with rentals, so don't waste a call there on a leasing question.

• Address: 313 Campus Street, Celebration, FL 34747
• Phone: 407-566-1935
• Email: [email protected]

For the state license, DBPR's Division of Hotels and Restaurants keeps an Orlando office at 400 W Robinson Street, North Tower Suite 802, Orlando, FL 32801, reachable on (850) 487-1395.

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

Those contact numbers get used a lot, mostly by people who found out late. Nothing below comes from Reddit, which blocks the kind of automated access these guides would need, so what follows is my read of BiggerPockets threads I opened and read directly.

• The advice to newcomers is geographic, not legal. In a thread on where to start a short-term rental in Florida, a Central Florida agent puts it plainly: around Disney there are many communities zoned specifically for this purpose, with no need to worry about local ordinances or HOAs that change the rules on you. That's the overlay, described from the buyer's side.
• Nobody credible suggests fighting an association. Asked directly about getting around HOA short-term rental restrictions, the most experienced responder doesn't offer a workaround at all: don't even consider buying a condo or house that has HOA rules governing what you can do.
• The recurring mistake is closing before verifying. Threads about Osceola keep circling back to buyers who assumed that because a neighboring subdivision runs nightly rentals, theirs must too. The overlay boundary doesn't follow anything a visitor can see from the road.
• Celebration itself barely comes up as an investment question on the threads I read. Where it does appear, it's discussed as a long-term hold or a place to live, which tracks with what the charter allows.

Take the first point seriously, because it's the useful one. The Disney corridor isn't a single regulatory market. It's a patchwork where the difference between a legal nightly rental and an illegal one can be four miles and one boundary line.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

No. Celebration is unincorporated Osceola County, and the county's Land Development Code permits short term rental only in a Planned Development that sits inside the Short-Term Rental Overlay. Celebration is not inside that overlay. Its recorded charter separately bars accommodation for transient tenants and requires leases of at least one year unless the CROA board consents in writing. Both would have to change for a nightly listing to be legal.

What is the minimum rental period in Celebration?

One year for a whole dwelling, as an initial lease term, under rule 7 of Exhibit "C" to the Celebration Charter approved on 28 August 2024. A garage apartment separate from the main house can go on a three-month initial term, but no unit or garage apartment may be leased to more than two separate tenants in any 12-month period. Single rooms may not be leased at all. A shorter term needs the CROA board's prior written consent.

Do you owe tourist tax on a six-month lease in Osceola County?

Yes, and this surprises people. Florida sales tax and the Osceola tourist development tax both apply to rentals of 180 days or less, which is a longer window than the 30-day line used for zoning. A three-month or six-month furnished let therefore carries 6% state sales tax, the 1.5% county surtax and the 6% tourist development tax. Cross six months and the lodging taxes fall away.

Does Airbnb collect Osceola County taxes for hosts?

Only part of them. Airbnb collects and remits the 6% Florida transient rental tax and the county discretionary sales surtax on Florida bookings. It does not collect Osceola's 6% tourist development tax, and the Osceola County Tax Collector states that the county is not contracted with Airbnb, VRBO, Evolve or any other third-party booking platform. Owners and agents remit that 6% themselves, with returns postmarked by the 20th of each month.

What are the penalties for renting a Celebration home short-term?

Two sets, from two bodies. Osceola County's code enforcement board can impose up to $250 per day for a first violation, up to $500 per day for a repeat, and up to $5,000 for an irreparable one, then record the order as a lien on the property. Separately, the Celebration Residential Owners Association can fine and can sue at law or in equity, with attorney fees going to the prevailing party.

Deed restrictions outlive politics. A county can rezone, a legislature can preempt, and a governor can sign a bill that forces a city to allow something it spent a decade resisting. None of that reaches a covenant a developer recorded decades ago and the neighbors have voted to keep ever since. So wherever a community looks a little too well-kept to be true, read the charter before you read the comps.

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