St. Augustine will charge short-term rental owners considerably more to operate starting October 1, after city commissioners voted 3-0 to raise both the base registration fee and the per-bedroom charge that funds annual fire and safety inspections. The base registration fee climbs to $335.75 from $303.03, a 10.8% jump, while the per-bedroom fee rises to $100.20 from $79.30, a 26.4% increase — the largest percentage hike in the fee schedule.
As reported by the Jacksonville Daily Record, commissioners Jim Springfield and Jon Depreter were both absent from the vote. City official Melissa Burns said the increase reflects the cost to administer and regulate the program, and the outlet notes the fee hikes are intended to cover the city's cost of running the registration and inspection system so that the expense falls on rental owners rather than general taxpayers. The new fee schedule also sets a $50 reinspection fee for units that fail an initial code compliance or fire-safety check, and a $100 late fee for owners who miss their annual registration renewal.
If owners pass the full increase on to visitors, the same report calculates that guests staying in a typical three-bedroom rental would pay an extra 26 cents per day. The fees recur annually and apply to both initial registration and every subsequent renewal, and they exist because City Ordinance 2019-50 requires registration and inspection of every short-term rental operating within city limits.
What the Fire Inspections Actually Check
Those inspections are not a rubber stamp. Under Ordinance 2019-50, the City of St. Augustine requires the fire department to verify functional smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, mounted fire extinguishers, battery-backed emergency lighting, exit signage, and posted evacuation plans in every registered unit. The city also enforces a citywide occupancy cap of 12 people per rental, calculated as two people per bedroom plus two additional children under 18, with limits checked during those same annual inspections.
Zoning still shapes where and how these rentals can operate. Ordinance 2019-51 requires approved short-term-rental registration and sets a one-week minimum stay in the RS-1 and RS-2 low-density single-family residential districts, where nightly rentals are prohibited outright. Commercial and mixed-use districts, by contrast, allow stays of less than seven days, including overnight rentals.
State Law Limits How Far the City Can Go
St. Augustine's options are bounded by state law. Florida Statute 509.032(7)(b), in effect since June 1, 2011, bars cities from banning short-term rentals outright or regulating how long or how often they can be rented, though it does allow a pre-June 2011 local ordinance — like St. Augustine's — to keep regulating stay duration. The statute also lets municipalities maintain local registration, fee, and safety inspection programs, which is the lever the city is pulling here.
Lawmakers have tried to tighten that preemption before. SB 280, which would have shifted more short-term-rental authority to the state, passed the Legislature in 2024 but was vetoed by Governor Ron DeSantis that June.
A Fast-Growing Rental Market
The fee increases land on a market that has grown substantially. Airbnb listed 2,310 vacation rentals for St. Augustine, according to the Jacksonville Daily Record's report, while data platform Rabbu counted 2,237 active Airbnb listings in the St. Augustine market as of April 2026, and AirROI separately counted 1,178 short-term rentals for the same market. That growth mirrors trends documented by the St. Johns Citizen, which reported that vacation rental occupancy grew more than 5% and revenue per available listing rose 8.2% to $172 in mid-2025, even as traditional hotel occupancy fell to 62% and hotel revenues dropped 7.3%.
Short-term rental guests already pay a 5% Tourist Development Tax collected by St. Johns County on top of Florida's 6% state sales tax, per the St. Johns County Tax Collector, with the bed tax revenue funding regional tourism promotion and coastal maintenance. Hoodline reported this month that monthly Tourist Development Tax collections in the region hit $2.23 million driven by rentals, underscoring how much the vacation rental sector now contributes locally.
Part of a Larger Budget Squeeze
The rental fee hikes are only one piece of a much bigger fiscal year 2027 budget package. The St. Johns Citizen reported the city is proposing to raise its residential fire assessment fee by nearly 16%, pushing the annual charge on a representative $400,000 assessed home from $139.68 to $162. The same proposal includes 3.5% increases to residential water and wastewater base rates and 4.2% increases to monthly garbage and stormwater fees, adding roughly $62 a year to an average home's bill.
City commissioners also approved fee increases covering fire assessment, utilities, and vehicles for hire as part of the same broader package. St. Augustine has proposed holding its property tax millage rate steady at 7.5 mills for the coming fiscal year, but because that rate sits 3.61% above the state's revenue-neutral rolled-back rate, Florida's truth-in-millage law classifies it as a tax increase regardless of the flat rate. The city collects roughly 38% of a typical property tax bill, generating about $25 million a year for its general fund, while the rest goes to St. Johns County, the school board, and regional water management authorities, according to the city.
