More Broward cities trying to regulate short-term rentals

Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach are the latest to roll out registration requirements

Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach have started registering short-term rental properties.
Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach have started registering short-term rental properties.

More cities in Broward County are trying to regulate residential property owners who list their homes online with Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms.

Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach last month started enforcing new regulations for short-term rentals, which have turned some South Florida neighborhoods into all-night party zones.

The new regulations for short-term rentals in Deerfield and Pompano are similar to those elsewhere in Broward, including Wilton Manors, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Hollywood, Hallandale Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Dania Beach.

Municipal regulations in Broward generally require owners of short-term rental properties to register them. The regulations also limit noise and the number of guests at short-term rentals, and they prohibit parking cars on swales or trying to park too many in one area.

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is implementing new regulations for short-term rental properties to encompass residential buildings with two to four units, to regulate music and to limit the hours when community pools can be used.

Compliance can be spotty. In Hollywood, for example, city officials suspect that 785 residence are available for short-term rentals. But owners of only 52 have registered since the city government began to require registration last year.

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City officials have considered changing the noise code in Hollywood to require quiet hours between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Pompano Beach is planning to ban musical performances outdoors at properties registered as short-term rentals.

Hollywood city officials also have considered rules that Deerfield and Pompano have adopted to require periodic inspections of short-term rental properties and posted contact details for owners on the exteriors of their properties.

Shifting state law in Florida has contributed to a local patchwork of rules and regulations that Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms face.

The state government enacted a law in 2011 that prohibited local governments from regulating what it calls “vacation rentals,” defined as residential properties rented more than three times per year for less than 30 days at a time. The law exempted, or “grandfathered,” local governments – including the City of Miami Beach – that started regulating short-term rentals prior to the law’s enactment on July 1, 2011.

But the state then softened its preemption of local regulation in 2014 by enacting a revision to the 2011 law allowing cities to require vacation rentals to register with them. But the 2014 law prohibits cities from regulating the duration or the frequency of short-term rentals.[Sun-Sentinel]Mike Seemuth