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

Do you own a place in Kendall and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and no local government in Florida is allowed to ban you outright. The awkward part is that Kendall isn't a city, so there's no city hall to call about it. It's an unincorporated community inside Miami-Dade County, which makes the county's zoning code your rulebook, and the section you want is Sec. 33-28.

One provision in that section decides whether there's a business here at all. In any area the county maps as Estate or Low Density Residential, the person responsible for the rental has to live in the property for more than six months a year. Renting it out while you're living there is fine, and plenty of people do. Buying a house in Kendall, furnishing it, and running it whole from somewhere else is not, at least not on those parcels. Everywhere else on the density ladder there's no residency rule at all, which is why looking up your own address comes before everything else.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly: the Certificate of Use the county wants before you advertise, what the application asks you to swear to, the five layers of tax that stack to 13%, how the county actually catches people, and who to call when something goes sideways. Every figure below comes from Miami-Dade County's or Florida's own pages, checked in July 2026, and where I couldn't confirm something I've said so plainly. Before any of it, run the property through BNBCalc, because that residency rule moves the numbers far more than any fee does.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Kendall

That address lookup starts with a more basic question, though: is your property in Kendall the way the county understands Kendall?

Miami-Dade's own roster of 34 incorporated municipalities doesn't include Kendall. It never has, because Kendall has never incorporated. Several places that do appear on that roster, Pinecrest, Palmetto Bay, South Miami and Cutler Bay among them, sit right up against the area everyone calls Kendall, and postal addresses don't follow the municipal boundary. So the mailing address on your deed proves nothing.

The county publishes a cleaner test. Its vacation rental rules apply to "properties located within the unincorporated area (folios/property numbers beginning with 30) only," per the county's own application FAQ. That page now lives on a server I couldn't reach at all in July 2026, so I read it through an Internet Archive snapshot from March 2023. Pull up your folio number before you read another line. A folio starting with 30 puts you under the county, and anything else puts you under a city with entirely different rules.

Assuming your folio checks out, short-term renting is legal here and has been since January 2018. Section 33-28 of the Miami-Dade County Code was created by Ordinance No. 17-78 on October 17, 2017 and amended once, by Ordinance No. 20-8, on January 22, 2020.

It defines a vacation rental as any dwelling unit or residence, condos and co-op units included, "rented in whole or in part to a transient occupant for a period of less than 30 days or one calendar month, whichever is less," or advertised as available for that. Rent for 30 nights and up and you're outside the ordinance entirely.

Now the provision that matters most. Subsection (D)(4) says that in any area designated Estate or Low Density residential on the county's land use plan, the vacation rental must be "a residence in which the responsible party resides for more than six months per calendar year."

The ordinance is explicit that you may rent the place while you're living in it, so this is a residency rule rather than a hosted-stay rule. It also spells out where the rule stops, because there's no residency requirement at all in Low-Medium, Medium, Medium-High or High Density areas.

Miami-Dade repeats that in plainer English on its short-term vacation rentals page, and Airbnb repeats it again in its own Miami-Dade host guidance. Three sources, one rule, so treat it as settled.

What none of them will tell you is which category your lot falls into, since that turns on the parcel rather than the neighborhood. The county's CDMP land use plan map viewer is the place to settle it, and it's free.

Make sure you check the actual folio and not the block, because designations change across a single subdivision. The archived county FAQ also confirms vacation rentals are allowed in areas designated Residential Communities, Business and Office, and Office Residential, so the designation is doing two jobs at once: deciding whether you can rent at all, then deciding whether you have to live there.

One more filter sits above all of that, and it's the one that quietly kills the most deals. Section 33-28 requires you to notify your homeowners association or condo board that the property will be used as a vacation rental, and to "adhere to all policies, rules, and regulations of such association or board pertaining to vacation rentals."

The county grants you a Certificate of Use. It doesn't override your HOA's covenants, though, so if the property sits inside an association of any kind, read those documents before you read anything else. A county certificate is worth nothing against a recorded restriction.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Kendall

Assuming your association isn't a dead end and your parcel's designation works, the county's own permission arrives as a Certificate of Use, and you need it before the listing goes live rather than after.

Section 33-28(C) puts it bluntly: no property owner, responsible party or platform may offer a vacation rental in unincorporated Miami-Dade "unless a Certificate of Use has first been obtained." The county's page adds that you must hold one "prior to listing and advertising the property on any peer-to-peer platform."

There is one genuinely generous piece of drafting in there, though. The ordinance lets you offer the property "immediately upon submission of an application for Certificate of Use, unless and until such time as the application is thereafter rejected or revoked for failure to pass inspection." You don't have to sit out the review period. You do carry the risk that a failed inspection ends it.

You apply through the county's Certificate of Use portal, where "Vacation Rental Certificate of Use" is one of five certificate types, or in person at the permitting center on SW 26th Street. An inspection gets scheduled when you apply, and again at every renewal. The certificate runs one year and has to be renewed annually, and the county won't renew it while there are outstanding fines or liens against the property.

The fee is the one number I can't give you with a straight face. Miami-Dade doesn't publish it on either of its short-term rental pages any more, and both say only to "contact Certificate of Use at [email protected] or call 786-315-2660."

The last figure the county published on a page I could open was $136.17 for the certificate and the required inspection, and that sat in the March 2023 archived snapshot. Secondary sites quote other numbers. Do check it with RER before you budget, and treat anything you read on a blog, this one included, as a starting point rather than a quote.

Three things get a certificate denied or pulled, and they're worth knowing before you spend the money:

• A failed inspection. The property is inspected at issue and at renewal to confirm it meets all applicable code requirements, and you have to produce your licenses and records at the inspection itself.
• Outstanding fines or liens. Either one blocks issuance and renewal.
• A violation history. Three or more violations of Section 33-28 in the preceding 12 months and the department cannot issue or renew until every violation and lien is cleared and you post a $10,000 bond in a form the Director approves.

That bond deserves a second look, because it isn't a deposit you get back on schedule. Get cited again within 12 months of posting it, and if the citation resolves against you, the bond is forfeited, the certificate is revoked, and it "may not be reissued for 12 months." Go a clean year and you have to ask in writing to get it released. Until you do, it stays exposed.

Once you're issued, the certificate has to be displayed where guests can see it, showing the responsible party's name, address and phone number plus the maximum occupancy. That posting is also how a neighbor or an inspector checks you in about four seconds.

Required Documents for Kendall Short-Term Rentals

Since a failed application costs you both the fee and the calendar, it's worth getting the paperwork right the first time. The Certificate of Use application is signed under oath or affirmation, and most of it is a series of statements you're attesting to rather than documents you upload.

Section 33-28(C)(1) lists what goes in:

• The address and legal description of the property.
• Name, address and phone number of the property owner.
• Name, address and phone number of the responsible party, who must be reachable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The owner can serve as responsible party.
• Name and contact details for every platform the rental is or will be listed on.
• A statement that you're remitting Miami-Dade business and tourist taxes, or that a platform is remitting them on your behalf.
• A statement that you have the owner's permission and authority to act as responsible party.
• Whether the whole property or only part of it goes on the market.
• A statement that liability insurance covering injury or harm to guests and invitees will be in force at all times, with an acknowledgement that "a standard homeowner's or renter's insurance policy may not necessarily provide such liability coverage."
• An acknowledgement that you've received, and passed to the owner, information explaining that vacation rental use could cost the property its Homestead Exemption.
• How many times, and for how many days in total, the property was used as a vacation rental in the previous calendar year.
• An acknowledgement that the property must be registered with the Florida Department of Revenue and that state taxes have been or will be paid.
• An acknowledgement that a DBPR vacation rental license must be obtained.
• An acknowledgement that the property will be maintained in compliance with the operating standards.

Two of those carry more weight than the rest. The insurance line is doing real work, because most standard homeowner's policies exclude commercial short-term rental use, and the county is putting that in writing so you can't claim surprise later. The Homestead line is the one that quietly changes the math, since losing homestead status also means losing the Save Our Homes assessment cap on a Kendall house you may have owned for years.

You aren't uploading proof of all this at application, but you are promising to keep it. The ordinance requires the responsible party to "maintain all required licenses, records, and other documentation sufficient to demonstrate that the statements and information required" are true, and to produce them on request. Failure to produce can bring denial, suspension or revocation. Providing false or misleading information is separate grounds to deny or revoke, and that determination can be appealed to a hearing examiner under Chapter 8CC or Section 1-5.

Then there's the guest register. You have to keep names and dates of stay for everyone, guests and their invitees included, "open to inspection by the County." Keep it somewhere you can hand over in a hurry rather than reconstructing it from your inbox.

Kendall Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get the certificate and are able to start taking bookings, there's still the tax stack, and in Miami-Dade it's taller than most of Florida because the county levies three separate lodging taxes of its own.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Florida sales tax on transient rentals	6%	Florida Department of Revenue
Miami-Dade discretionary sales surtax	1%	Florida Department of Revenue
Tourist Development Tax	2%	Miami-Dade County
Professional Sports Franchise Facilities Tax	1%	Miami-Dade County
Convention Development Tax	3%	Miami-Dade County

That comes to 13% on a Kendall stay of six months or less. Two of those layers belong to the state: the 6% sales tax on transient rentals, plus the discretionary surtax that the Department of Revenue's surtax rate table sets at 1% for Miami-Dade. The other three belong to the county, and Miami-Dade's tourist and restaurant taxes page breaks them out exactly that way.

Where Miami-Dade differs from most Florida counties is who you pay. On the Department of Revenue's local option transient rental tax table, Miami-Dade's 6.0% is marked "Collected By: County," meaning the county self-administers it instead of routing it through Tallahassee. The same table's footnote sets the rate at 4% for Surfside and Bal Harbour and 7% for Miami Beach, "and 6% for the rest of the county," which is the Kendall figure.

To pay it you open a Tourist Tax Account with the county, and the county wants three things in hand first: a Florida sales tax number, your Certificate of Use, and a Miami-Dade Local Business Tax Receipt, which is required because you're in the unincorporated area.

That business tax receipt catches people out, since it's a separate registration from everything else and it runs on its own October-to-September year. I couldn't open the Tax Collector's fee page from this machine, so ask them for the current amount rather than trusting a figure off a blog.

Filing is monthly and unforgiving about zeros. Returns and payments are due on the 1st and turn late after the 20th of the following month. The county is blunt about the empty months too: you "must file a tax return for each reporting period, even if your business was not in operation."

Miss it and the penalty is 10% per 30 days with a $50 minimum. And since October 1, 2025, there's a $10 fee per violation for not filing electronically, so the paper habit now costs money.

The part that saves most hosts real work is platform collection. Airbnb's Florida occupancy tax page says it collects and remits the 6% state transient rental tax and the discretionary surtax, plus Miami-Dade's 2% Tourist Development Room Tax, 1% Professional Sports Franchise Facility Tax and 3% Convention Development Tax. That's the whole 13%. Vrbo's arrangement I could not verify on a primary source, so if you list there, confirm per listing rather than assuming, and keep your county account open either way.

On the profit side, Florida imposes no personal income tax, so what you clear meets a federal return and nothing else. That's a real edge over most of the country, and it's why the Collier County guide and the Osceola County guide are worth a look when you're comparing which Florida county to buy in. The local option rate and the platform arrangements shift from one to the next.

Florida Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those county taxes sit inside a state framework that also explains why Miami-Dade's ordinance looks the way it does, rather than looking like an outright ban.

Fla. Stat. § 509.032(7)(b) says a local law "may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals." Ordinances adopted on or before June 1, 2011 are grandfathered, but Section 33-28 dates to 2017, so it has to live inside that limit. Which it does, and cleverly. Nothing in it caps how many nights you rent or sets a minimum stay. What it does instead is license, inspect, and regulate conduct, and none of that is preempted.

Above the county sits a state license. Under Fla. Stat. § 509.242 a vacation rental is a licensed public lodging establishment, issued by the DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants as either a Vacation Rental Dwelling or a Vacation Rental Condo.

The lodging fee schedule puts a new single-unit license 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. Two to 25 units runs $180 for a full year. Remember that this license is separate from the county certificate, and neither one substitutes for the other.

Whether you need that state license at all turns on a test the legislature rewrote recently. Chapter 2025-113, formerly SB 606, took effect on July 1, 2025. It redefined transient occupancy as renting "more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 consecutive days."

Two details in there changed the outcome for a lot of owners. The count now runs in consecutive days rather than calendar months, and the old presumption built on what the operator said they intended is gone. So rent four times a year for short stays and you're a vacation rental, whatever you call it.

Two other bills are worth knowing about because people still quote them as law. A 2024 package would have expanded preemption and built a statewide registration system, but SB 280 was vetoed on June 27, 2024 and never took effect.

Then in 2026, a water-safety bill requiring pool safety features and a compliance certificate at licensing passed the Senate 37-0 in February and died in the House on March 13, 2026. Neither is on the books. Our Florida statewide guide tracks the wider picture, including how differently this plays out in counties that never adopted a certificate program.

Does Kendall Strictly Enforce STR Rules? Is Kendall Airbnb Friendly? (Compared to Other Cities)

Strictly enough that the paperwork is worth doing, though the county's teeth aren't where most people look for them. Kendall has no night cap, no minimum stay and no permit lottery. What it has is a license you can lose, a residency test on a lot of its land, and a platform rule that does the county's detective work for it.

Start with the money, since the fine schedule is public. Operating a vacation rental without a Certificate of Use draws $100 for a first offense, $1,000 for a second within 24 months, and $2,500 for a third and each one after that.

Penalties accrue, and the county can place a lien on the property if the fines and enforcement costs go unpaid. Then, once a citation has issued under Section 33-28, getting a certificate costs you a $231.90 violation fee plus double the price of the certificate itself. So the cheap path and the expensive path diverge the first time somebody complains.

Everything else runs on Chapter 8CC's civil penalty schedule, and the liability is joint and several. The ordinance makes the property owner liable for violations even where somebody else was running the rental, and it extends that to any combination of owner, responsible party, platform and guest who are together responsible. Naming a friend as responsible party doesn't move the exposure off you.

The real enforcement lever isn't the fine, though. It's the platforms. Section 33-28(D)(1)(b) says a platform may "only provide payment processing services, or otherwise facilitate payment for a vacation rental that has a valid Certificate of Use."

A platform stays off the hook by doing three things:

• Requiring a certificate or application number before a listing can go up.
• Reporting to the county at least weekly the certificate number, listing ID, address and responsible party contact for every unincorporated-county listing.
• Removing any listing within 10 days of county notice that the number is invalid or expired, or that the property has three or more violations in 12 months.

Which means the county doesn't need to find you. It gets a weekly file.

Complaints then work in a way that cuts both ways, and it's useful to understand which way. The county's own page cites Fla. Stat. 125.69, under which a code inspector may only investigate an anonymous complaint where the reported violation "presents an imminent threat to the public health, safety, or welfare."

A complainant who gives their name and address gets an investigation regardless of imminence. So an annoyed neighbor who wants action has to sign their name to it, and a pool party at 1 a.m. is exactly the sort of thing that clears the imminent-threat bar anyway.

One more design detail tells you how the county thinks about this. Five percent of every fine collected under Section 33-28 goes into Miami-Dade's Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The ordinance frames the whole exercise as protecting "the quiet nature and atmosphere of residential areas," and the housing-fund clause makes clear who the county considers the aggrieved party.

Set against other Florida markets, that puts Kendall in an unusual spot. There's no cap on nights, no minimum stay and no lottery for permits, which are the mechanisms that strangle supply elsewhere. What there is, on every parcel designated Estate or Low Density, is a requirement that you live in the house.

So if the model you want is an absentee whole-home rental, the comparison worth making isn't between fee schedules. It's between Kendall's residency rule and how the same question gets answered a couple of hours north, in a county like Orange County.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Kendall

Given how much of the above can end the plan outright, the order below matters more than it looks. The early steps cost nothing and tell you whether the later ones are worth attempting.

1. Confirm the folio starts with 30. That's the county's own test for the unincorporated area. Anything else and you're under Pinecrest, Palmetto Bay, South Miami or another municipality with its own ordinance.
2. Look up the CDMP designation for that exact folio on the county's Land Use Plan Map viewer. Estate or Low Density Residential means the responsible party has to live there more than six months a year, which is the difference between an investment and a spare room.
3. Read the HOA or condo documents. You're required to notify the association and follow its rules, and a recorded prohibition beats a county certificate every time.
4. Register with the Florida Department of Revenue for sales tax, since your county tourist tax account needs that number first.
5. Apply for the DBPR vacation rental license, as a Dwelling or a Condo depending on the property type. Budget $50 plus $170 plus the $10 education fee for a single unit on a full year.
6. Get the liability insurance in place. Confirm in writing that the policy covers short-term rental use, because the county is going to make you attest that it does.
7. Apply for the Certificate of Use through the county portal or in person, and expect an inspection. You can list as soon as the application is in, though a failed inspection stops it.
8. Open the Local Business Tax Receipt and the Tourist Tax Account, in that order, then diary the monthly return: due on the 1st, late after the 20th, filed even in an empty month, and filed electronically since October 2025.
9. Set up the operating side on day one. Post the certificate where guests will see it, put the written house rules in the unit, start the guest register, and if the property is within 2,500 feet of a school, build the offender-screening check into your booking process.
10. Diary the renewal. The certificate lasts a year, renewal triggers another inspection, and any outstanding fine or lien will block it.

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

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, three county offices handle nearly all of it, and two of them sit in the same building on SW 26th Street.

Certificates of Use, inspections and zoning

The Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources (RER) issues the Certificate of Use and runs the inspections.

• Certificate of Use questions: [email protected] or 786-315-2660
• Permitting center: Herbert S. Saffir Permitting and Inspection Center, 11805 SW 26 Street, Miami, FL 33175
• Phone: 786-315-2000, with an automated response line on 305-591-7966
• Hours: 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday, except legal holidays
• Department head office: Stephen P. Clark Center, 111 NW 1st Street, 11th Floor, Miami, FL 33128, 305-375-2877, [email protected]

Tourist taxes

The county's RER Business Section administers the Convention Development, Tourist Development and Professional Sports Franchise Facilities taxes, and it's a different desk from the one that issues your certificate.

• Address: 11805 SW 26th Street, Suite 230, Miami, FL 33175
• Phone: 305-375-5550, fax 305-375-5594
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Filing: online through TouristExpress

Complaints and code enforcement

The Neighborhood Compliance side of RER handles violations, which means this is the number your neighbors have as well as the one you'd call about somebody else's party house.

• Report a violation: call 311, or email [email protected]
• Neighborhood Regulations Division: 786-315-2552
• Offender screening and school-distance checks: the ordinance directs you to the same 311 contact center

For the state license, the DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants is the right office, and for sales tax registration it's the Florida Department of Revenue. Neither one can answer a question about Section 33-28, and county staff can't answer one about your DBPR license, so make sure you're calling the right building before you sit on hold.

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

Given how narrow the legal path is on some parcels and how open it is on others, sentiment here splits along the map rather than along the rules.

What follows is my read of the recurring themes rather than a survey, and I'll be straight about the limits. Reddit blocks automated access, so I haven't quoted it, and while BiggerPockets' short-term rental forum loads fine, it renders individual threads in a way I couldn't read directly. Nothing below is attributed to a specific thread, and every hard number in this guide comes from an official page instead.

• The residency rule is the thing people find out about last. It isn't in the headline of any county page, it lives in subsection (D)(4), and it applies to a designation most owners have never looked up. The pattern I watch repeat is someone budgeting for a certificate and a state license, then discovering the constraint isn't a cost at all.
• HOAs get blamed more than the county does. Miami-Dade's requirements are demanding, yet they're knowable and you can work through them in a week. A covenant that flatly bans transient rental isn't negotiable at any price, and the county won't help you with it.
• Nobody complains much about the taxes, which surprised me. At 13% it's a real number, but Airbnb collects the whole stack, so for a host running one listing on one platform it's close to invisible. The friction shows up on the county side, in the monthly return you still have to file even when the platform paid.
• The complaint-driven model shapes behavior more than the fines do. Two vehicles, no outdoor amplified sound, bins out and back on collection day: none of that is expensive, and all of it is what a neighbor notices first.

Worth tracking as of July 2026: the county's published version of Section 33-28 still ends at Ordinance No. 20-8 from January 2020, so nothing has amended it in six years. I couldn't reach Miami-Dade's legislative tracking system to check for pending items, though, so treat "no recent change" as what the code says rather than as a forecast.

Before committing to any of it, look at what the underlying returns actually are. The county-level numbers across the Florida market are the comparison that matters, since Kendall competes for the same guests as places carrying none of these constraints.

The broader lesson generalizes past this one county. When a jurisdiction can't limit how often you rent, it limits who you have to be to rent, and a residency test does quietly what a night cap would do loudly. Check who the rules say you must be before you check what they say you must pay.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you run an Airbnb in Kendall, Florida in 2026?

Yes, with conditions. Kendall is unincorporated Miami-Dade County, so Section 33-28 of the county code applies, and it requires a Certificate of Use before you list or advertise on any platform. You also need a Florida DBPR vacation rental license, Department of Revenue registration, a Miami-Dade Local Business Tax Receipt and a tourist tax account. In areas designated Estate or Low Density Residential, the responsible party must live in the property more than six months a year.

Do you have to live in your Kendall short-term rental?

Only in certain areas. Section 33-28(D)(4) requires the responsible party to reside in the property more than six months per calendar year where the parcel is designated Estate or Low Density residential on Miami-Dade's CDMP land use plan. There is no residency requirement in Low-Medium, Medium, Medium-High or High Density areas. Renting the property while the responsible party is living there is expressly allowed. The designation varies by parcel, so it has to be checked on the county's Land Use Plan Map.

How much tax do you pay on a short-term rental in Kendall?

Thirteen percent on stays of six months or less. That is 6% Florida sales tax on transient rentals, 1% Miami-Dade discretionary sales surtax, 2% Tourist Development Tax, 1% Professional Sports Franchise Facilities Tax and 3% Convention Development Tax. Miami-Dade self-administers its 6%, so the county piece is remitted locally rather than to the state. Airbnb collects and remits all five layers, though a monthly county return is still required even in months with no bookings.

What is the fine for renting without a Certificate of Use in Miami-Dade?

The civil penalty is $100 for a first offense, $1,000 for a second within 24 months, and $2,500 for a third and every one after that. Penalties accrue and the county can place a lien on the property. Once a citation issues, obtaining a certificate costs an extra $231.90 violation fee plus double the normal certificate price. Three or more violations in 12 months also require a $10,000 bond before any certificate can be issued or renewed.

How many guests can a Kendall vacation rental sleep?

Two people per bedroom plus two more per property, capped at 12 overnight, excluding children under three. Overnight is defined as 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. During the day the limit rises to the overnight maximum plus four, capped at 16 on the same terms. No arrangement may exceed the maximum occupant load set by the Florida Building Code. Guests may also park no more than two vehicles at a time on the property or on the street directly in front of it.

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