St. Pete Beach favors a proposal to ban tourist tenants who rent for less than 90 days, and will likely make it a law.
By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published June 13, 2004
ST. PETE BEACH - Any tourist planning to rent a single-family home soon may have to pack more than an overnight bag. The City Commission on Tuesday signaled an intent to eliminate short-term rentals for houses, a common practice up and down the beaches, according to Realtors.
The new measure, approved on first reading but not yet formally adopted, forbids homeowners in single-family zoning districts from renting for fewer than 90 days. City Manager Mike Bonfield said that the need for such an ordinance became apparent through an increasing number of resident complaints. But he acknowledged that the new law may be difficult to enforce.
But difficult beats impossible, and that is how Bonfield described the current law, which allows homeowners two rentals twice in the same year of 30 days or less.
Some of the complaints from neighbors dealt with loud noise, or such things as 10 or 15 cars in front of a house where a person might be staying for only a weekend.
Commissioner Deborah Martohue said that her north St. Pete Beach neighborhood is zoned residential and intended for a low-density use. Yet owners are renting out their homes to vacationers on a daily or weekly basis.
"It's not good for the overall stability of the neighborhood," Martohue said. "If there's a way to manage that from a codes enforcement and zoning perspective, that's what we're going to do."
Realtor Gail Byrne said she could understand neighbors' concerns. "I can't really blame the residents," she said. "I wouldn't want to have to live next to a house that was rented out every week."
The rule would not affect most condominiums, which often permit daily and weekly rentals. But more people who walk into Byrne's's office in Treasure Island ask for seasonal rentals of one, two, or three months than for anything longer, Byrne said.
Many of these properties are owned by retirees looking to supplement fixed incomes, or by future retirees who are trying to buy the houses they now lease.
Matt Workman of Sandcastle Realty said that short-term rentals make more money.
"If you have two $500,000 houses sitting side by side, and you rent one by the week and one for 90 days and up, you're talking about one bringing in $12,000 (the 90-day rental) and the other one making $30,000."
Beach cities have wrestled in recent years with changing laws to limit short-term rentals, or enforcing laws already on the books.
As Martohue told commissioners Tuesday, these renters do not pay tourist and sales taxes typically required of visitors who stay at a location for less than six months.
Realtors say they arrange short-term rentals in all beach cities now. But the planning commission in Madeira Beach in 2003 turned down one woman's request to rent her home out by the week. And a weekly rental of a beachfront house ran afoul of neighbors in Redington Beach, where the city's charter stipulates residential use only.
If passed in a final reading June 22, the law could prove tough to enforce, even though anyone who advertises short-term rentals in homes now signals an intent to break the law. Catching such advertisers would mean checking not only newspaper and promotional magazines but Web sites such as greatrentals.com and vacationrentals.com. Both sites show St. Pete Beach waterfront homes for rent, starting at about $1,400 a week.
"It's complaint-driven," Bonfield said. "You don't have any other way of knowing."
Many single-family rentals can be found in Pass-a-Grille, where an abundance of cottages and duplexes afford easy walking distance to the beach. Frank Hurley, a Realtor for more than 40 years on Pass-a-Grille, said that mandating a minimum 90-day stay would hurt summer rentals, when visitors stay two weeks or less.
"I'm surprised that they would dig this up now," Hurley said of the new law. "It's going to be harmful."
