Osceola County, FL Short-Term Rentals: Short-Term Rental Permits (2026)

Osceola County's short-term rental regulation is constrained almost entirely by state preemption. 032(7)(a) removes the regulation of public lodging establishments, including inspections, sanitation and training standards, from local government to the state, while carving out local authority to inspect for compliance with the Florida Building Code and Fire Prevention Code. Subsection (7)(b) goes further for the vacation-rental market specifically: a county cannot prohibit vacation rentals or regulate how often or how long they can be rented out, unless its ordinance doing so was already on the books on or before June 1, 2011; Osceola never adopted such a pre-2011 ordinance, so it cannot cap turnover or ban rentals in a given neighborhood through the county code.

Within that ceiling, the county's own text is limited to a registration requirement. Sec. 13-48(b) says anyone renting out a single-family detached house, duplex, triplex or multifamily unit on a short-term or long-term basis must get one local business tax receipt covering every unit under the same ownership, whether managed personally or through a property-management contract under subsection (c); an owner of several detached houses under one entity needs only the single receipt, not one per address. Because vacation rentals also count as taxable transient accommodations, an owner charging for stays of six months or less must additionally collect the county's 6 percent tourist development tax under Sec.

13-61. The business tax receipt is issued through the tax collector's office under Sec. 13-34 through 13-37 and is the sole permit-style requirement Osceola imposes on a short-term rental beyond the underlying property tax and the transient rental tax.