Short-term rentals in Miami: what the listing numbers leave out

Start with the number that is missing

Occupancy. Every projection you will be shown starts with a nightly rate; almost none starts with how many nights are actually booked.

A $300 a night unit is a $109,500 a year business at 100% occupancy and a $54,750 one at 50%. The gap between those two numbers is larger than every expense below combined, and it is the number nobody in the sales conversation volunteers.

The seven lines that come out

Add property tax with no homestead exemption, the association fee, and the 10% assessment cap instead of 3%, and the subtraction is substantial before you have counted a single vacant night.

The two things that can stop it entirely

Neither is financial, and both are checkable before you buy.

1. The municipality. Short-term rental rules in South Florida are set city by city, and they range from licensed and routine to effectively prohibited. Miami Beach in particular has restrictions and fines that make a casual approach expensive. The rule is not “Miami-Dade” — it is your specific city, and sometimes your specific zoning district.
2. The association. A condominium declaration can impose a minimum lease term — 30 days, 90 days, sometimes a year — and can require board approval of every tenant. That single line in a document you have not read yet decides whether the business exists.

Compare it against the boring option

Short-term should beat long-term by enough to pay for the work and the risk. Often it does not.

Across the Florida areas we track, the median gross yield on a long-term rental is 5.82%, and it takes no furniture, no cleaner, no licence and no vacancy management. A short-term operation has to clear that comfortably to be worth doing — and the honest comparison is net to net, not nightly rate to monthly rent.