Highlands County, FL Business Licensing & Operations: Secondhand Dealers (2026)

314, part of the Land Development Regulations' supplementary district standards (Chapter 12, Article 5), governs any outdoor storage or display of used or secondhand goods in unincorporated Highlands County. Whenever such merchandise sits outside a building, other than motor vehicles, farm machinery, boats, mobile homes and travel trailers that are in running condition, the operator must build and maintain a continuous fence at least six feet high enclosing the entire storage or display area. The fence must be uniform in composition, construction and color, and must completely screen the merchandise from view.

Plans for the fence go to the Development Services Planning and Zoning (P&Z) Division for review, and no building permit for the fence can be issued until P&Z signs off. Once built, the fence must be kept in good order and cannot be allowed to deteriorate, and no signs of any kind may be hung on it, which forecloses using the required screening as free advertising space. Operations already storing or displaying secondhand merchandise outdoors as of January 1, 1971 were not exempted outright: the code gave those owners, lessees or operators only 90 days from that date to put up the same fence.

The section does not set a separate business tax or occupational license specific to secondhand dealers; that requirement, where it applies, runs through the county's general business tax receipt process rather than this zoning section. 314 sits in the Land Development Regulations, it is treated as a zoning standard rather than a licensing statute, but noncompliance is still pursued as a code violation.