Can You Rent Out Your Miami Condo? Five Rules To Check Before You Buy

Can you rent out your Miami condo during the weeks you are not using it? Yes, sometimes. It depends on something most buyers never look at until it is too late. Not the building's website, and not what anyone tells you on the tour. It is in the documents.

I am Paula Aragone with Aragone & Associates. I have spent 23 years in real estate and closed more than 900 transactions, and as a Certified Relocation Specialist I help California families work out what a move actually looks like before they commit to it.

The Answer Lives In Two Places

Every condominium in Florida runs on its own governing documents. The declaration and the bylaws set the frame, and the association adds its own rules on top of that.

So the answer usually lives in two places at once: the local rules that apply at that address, and the condominium documents that apply inside that building. Whichever of the two is more restrictive is the one that controls what you can actually do.

What catches Californians out is that none of this is standardized. Two buildings across the street from each other can have completely different answers and both are perfectly normal. So "can I rent it out?" is never a Miami question. It is a building question.

Most of the people who ask me this are selling something in Orange County first. Sometimes it is a Newport Coast house that has been carrying the same property tax basis since the nineties. More often lately it is a place in Irvine the kids moved out of six years ago, or a Laguna Beach condo that has done its job and is now mostly stairs. If that is where you are, the Florida question and buying a second home in Miami without selling the California one are really one decision wearing two hats.

These buyers are not Miami investors. They want a second place that pays for part of itself during the months they are back in California, and that is a specific plan with a specific set of ways to fail. When I look at this for a client, I check five things.

Is It Legal To Rent Out A Condo? Short Term Rental Miami Rules Come First

Number one: is the rental you are picturing even legal at that address? Miami-Dade County and individual municipalities set their own rules on short term rentals, and some restrict or prohibit them outright before you get anywhere near the building's documents. This is the first filter, not the last one.

There is a wrinkle worth knowing, because it explains why the map is so uneven. Florida Statutes section 509.032(7)(b) says a local law may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals. That restriction does not apply to any local rule "adopted on or before June 1, 2011."

So a municipality that already had strict short term rental rules on the books before that date generally keeps them, while one that did not cannot go and adopt them now. That is why a city can be close to impossible while the one next door is wide open, and why nobody can honestly give you a single answer for "Miami."

Minimum Lease Terms

Number two is the minimum lease term, and buildings vary enormously. Some allow stays as short as seven days, and a few allow one. Plenty require a month. A good number require six months or a full year.

If your plan is to rent the place for the weeks you are not in it, a six month minimum does not make that plan harder. It ends it.

How Many Times A Year You Can Rent

Number three: how many separate tenancies a year will the building allow? Even where short leases are permitted, many buildings cap the turnovers. Some allow one a year. Some allow four. That single line in the documents decides whether you own an income property or a home you occasionally hand to somebody else.

Tenant Approval

Number four: does the association have to approve your tenant? Many do. There is an application and a fee, and then a review that nobody will quote you a timeline for in advance. That is fine if you know about it going in. It is a real problem if you already promised somebody February.

When You Can Start

Number five: when are you allowed to begin? Some buildings require you to own the unit for a period, often a year, before you can lease it at all. If the whole plan depends on renting in year one, that one clause is the end of it.

The Five Checks On One Page

Buying A Condo In Miami: How People Get Caught At The Sales Gallery

It is almost never dishonesty. You ask at the sales gallery whether you can rent it out, and you get an answer that is friendly and general, and accurate as far as it goes. "Yes, owners do rent here." You take that as a yes.

But "owners do rent here" and "you can rent yours the way you are imagining" are two different statements. The first one is about the building. The second one is about your plan, and only the documents and the local rules can answer it.

The sales gallery works for the developer. They are not misleading you. It simply is not their job to check whether your particular idea survives contact with the paperwork.

Can The Rules Change After You Buy?

They can, and this is the part where Florida treats owners better than people expect. Under Florida Statutes section 718.110(13), an amendment that prohibits owners from renting their units, alters the duration of the rental term, or limits the number of times owners may rent during a set period applies only to the owners who consent to it and to the people who take title after it becomes effective. If you owned before the amendment and you did not vote for it, it does not reach you.

That protection has a hole in it, and it is worth seeing clearly. It covers the association. It does not cover the city. A municipal short term rental ordinance is not your association's amendment, and you get no vote on it.

So if the only way your numbers work is nightly or weekly rental income, my honest advice is to walk away from that purchase. I have seen that plan work. I have also seen it work for three years and then stop, and the second version is expensive in a way the spreadsheet never shows.

Either way, ask for the minutes, and ask whether leasing has come up at a meeting. If it has, ask how the vote went and who was pushing it. That is a fifteen minute conversation and it tells you where a building is heading rather than only where it stands today.

I know this from the owner's side of the table and not only the agent's. Our own association put a change to the short term rental rules to a vote, and it did not pass. Which meant that how I voted mattered. These documents do not come down from anywhere. The owners write them.

Do It In This Order

1. Decide what you actually want before you look at buildings. A place you will use, or a place that earns. If it is honestly both, put numbers on it: how many weeks, and which weeks.
2. Get the city and county short term rental rules for the address. This part is cheap and fast, and it eliminates whole neighborhoods before you fall for a view.
3. Get the governing documents and the current association rules, and read the leasing sections before anything else in them.
4. Read the last twelve months of board minutes for anything touching leasing.
5. Only then decide whether this building belongs on your list.

The buyers who get this right are not the ones who read every page. They are the ones who ask in the right order, and who get a real answer before they are emotionally committed to a view.

Get The Actual Answer For Your Building

Tell me the building you are looking at and what you picture doing with it, and I will get you the real answer from the Florida side rather than the friendly one. Book a free call here.

Prefer to start on your own? The California to Miami buyer guide walks you through the neighborhoods and the true cost of holding a place there, well before you tour anything.

And if you are selling a home here in California to make Miami happen, that is the part I handle directly. We maximize value and minimize stress. Strategy is what we do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Paula Aragone
Aragone & Associates, Newport Beach

Paula has spent 23 years in Orange County real estate, with more than 900 transactions and over $900 million in sales behind her. She studied law before moving into real estate, and holds the CPRES, SRES, Certified Luxury and Certified Relocation designations. Much of her work is with families selling through probate or trust, and with buyers relocating into or out of the state.

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