Leon County, FL Short-Term Rentals: Permit Requirements (2026)

Leon County has no separately adopted ordinance creating a local short-term-rental (vacation-rental) permit, conditional-use, or zoning approval for the unincorporated area. Florida preempts most local STR regulation: under Florida Statutes § 509.032(7)(b), "A local law, ordinance, or regulation may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals," except for measures adopted on or before June 1, 2011. Leon County has no such grandfathered pre-2011 vacation-rental ordinance on record, so the state floor controls. Instead of a county permit, the operative authorization is a state license from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), Division of Hotels and Restaurants. Under § 509.242(1)(c), a vacation rental is a single-, two-, three-, or four-family house or dwelling unit (or a condominium/cooperative unit) that is a transient public lodging establishment but not a timeshare. A DBPR license is required when the whole unit is rented to guests more than three times a year for periods of less than 30 days (or one calendar month), or is advertised or held out as regularly rented for such periods. Renting only a private room, rather than the whole unit, is not a public lodging establishment and is not licensed by DBPR.