St. Augustine Short-Term Rentals: The 2026 Guide to Zoning, Registration, and Tax

Key Takeaways

• RS-1 and RS-2 allow one stay per week and HP-1 needs a month, while all other districts allow nightly
• City registration runs $315.51 to $729.76 by bedroom count and renews every October 1, so timing matters
• In addition to City registration, a Florida DBPR vacation rental licence is mandatory, and most hosts miss it
• Total tax collection is 11.5%, not the 5% most guides quote, and 13.5% in World Golf Village
• Airbnb does not remit the 5% county tourist tax, so you file it monthly, including zero months
• Outside city limits the County caps occupancy at 10, although parcels west of the Intracoastal are exempt

Introduction

Two houses four blocks apart in St. Augustine can live under completely different rules. One takes two-night bookings all year. Meanwhile, the other cannot legally host a single weekend stay. Zoning is the reason, and it is the first thing to check before you buy, list or renew.

St. Augustine short-term rentals are legal citywide but gated by the zoning district. RS-1 and RS-2 parcels allow stays of one week or longer only, HP-1 requires a month minimum, and every other district permits nightly rental. In every case, though, you need an annual City registration, a life safety inspection, and a Florida state licence.

In practice, that last requirement catches more owners than any other. Plenty of hosts register with the City, pass inspection, and never realise the state and the county want paperwork of their own. Below is the full stack, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, as it stands in October 2026.

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St. Augustine Short-Term Rental Zoning Map: What Your District Allows

The City Commission set the framework in 2019 through three ordinances: ORD 2019-50 on short-term rental regulations, ORD 2019-51 on RS-1 and RS-2, and ORD 2019-52 on submerged lands in HP-1. As a result, the rules turn entirely on which district your parcel sits in. Notably, there is no night cap and no lottery. There is a minimum stay, and it varies.

Zoning district	Minimum rental period	Nightly stays
RS-1 and RS-2	One week	Not permitted
HP-1	One month	Not permitted
All other districts	None	Permitted with registration

Registration is required in every one of those cases, including the districts where nightly booking is fine. Skipping it is not a grey area.

How to Check Your District Before You Buy or List

Owners regularly assume a historic-district address means HP-1, or that a quiet residential street means RS-1. Neither assumption is safe. Look the parcel up instead.

1. Open the City’s zoning map through the St. Augustine GIS public portal.
2. Enter the property address in the search box.
3. Select the parcel and click it to reveal the zoning district.
4. Cross-check against the table above before you commit to a booking strategy.

The City also publishes an interactive map of registered short-term rentals. Specifically, it is worth a look for two reasons. You can confirm your own registration appears once approved, and you can gauge how saturated your block already is.

What the Weekly Minimum Actually Means in RS-1 and RS-2

Here is the detail that trips people up. “One week or longer” sounds like a seven-night floor, so owners assume a five-night stay is simply shortened revenue. However, the City reads it differently.

According to the City’s published guidance, the weekly minimum means an RS-1 or RS-2 property can host one stay per week. That covers anything from a one-night booking to a six-night booking. You are not being told to sell seven nights. You are being told you get one turnover per week, whatever its length.

For a revenue model, therefore, that distinction is enormous. A three-night and a four-night booking in the same week is a violation, not a win.

Registering a St. Augustine Short-Term Rental

Every listing needs its own registration. Two Airbnb listings on one property mean two registrations, two fees, and two inspections. On this point, the City is explicit.

The process runs through five steps:

1. Confirm your zoning district on the City map.
2. Submit the application through the City’s online permit portal.
3. Upload a site plan and a floor plan.
4. Pay the registration fee, which scales with bedroom count.
5. Schedule the life safety inspection with the St. Augustine Fire Department.

One caveat worth absorbing early: application fees are non-refundable if the application is denied or the property fails its final inspection. Sort out zoning and obvious safety gaps before you pay.

What Registration Costs in 2026

Generally, fees are tiered: a base charge plus a per-bedroom charge. Both have risen since the schedule most third-party guides still quote, so older figures understate the real cost by roughly ten percent. The numbers below are the City’s published schedule as of October 2026.

Unit size	Base + bedroom fee	Total registration fee
Studio	$315.51	$315.51
One bedroom	$315.51 + $82.85	$398.36
Two bedrooms	$315.51 + $165.70	$481.21
Three bedrooms	$315.51 + $248.55	$564.06
Four bedrooms	$315.51 + $331.40	$646.91
Five or more bedrooms	$315.51 + $414.25	$729.76

In addition, two surcharges sit on top: $100 for a late renewal and $50 for a re-inspection. Studio and efficiency units are capped at two occupants regardless of layout, a studio being defined as a dwelling with a single habitable room. Fees are reviewed on the City’s budget cycle, so confirm the current schedule before you budget a renewal.

The October 1 Deadline That Wrecks Budgets

St. Augustine runs registration on its fiscal year, October 1 through September 30. Renewals are due by October 1, and a late renewal costs $100 on top of the fee.

Now the part that genuinely costs money: new registrations submitted outside the October renewal window are not prorated. Register a four-bedroom in July and you pay $646.91 for roughly ten weeks of coverage, then pay again on October 1.

If you are closing on a St. Augustine property in late summer, the timing of your registration is a real line item. For that reason, owners buying in August or September should price two registration fees into year one, not one.

The Life Safety Inspection

The Fire Department inspects at registration and annually after that. The annual visit covers life safety, zoning, and property maintenance compliance together, so it is broader than a smoke alarm check.

What inspectors look for includes:

• House numbers visible from the street, minimum four inches
• Working smoke alarms in every sleeping room and on every level
• Carbon monoxide detectors where there are gas appliances or an attached garage
• A 2A10BC multi-purpose fire extinguisher on each level, serviced and tagged within the year
• Emergency lighting between bedrooms and exit doors, with battery backup
• Exit signage where an exit route is not obvious
• A second means of escape from each sleeping room, either a door or an openable window
• Posted evacuation information in a central location

Notably, extension cords used as permanent wiring will fail an inspection, which is a common finding in older downtown properties. Budget for electrical work before the inspector arrives rather than after.

Occupancy, Parking, and the Rules the City Enforces

Three operational limits shape how you can list a property, and all three are enforced through the annual inspection and the complaint hotline.

• Occupancy tops out at twelve people. Specifically, the formula is two persons per bedroom plus two additional children under eighteen. A three-bedroom therefore sleeps six adults plus two children, not eight adults.
• Parking requires at least one on-site space per bedroom. Spaces must be stabilised with concrete, asphalt, pavers or gravel, and grass, mulch and sand do not qualify. Off-site parking is possible but needs approval from the Planning and Zoning Board.
• Complaints go to a dedicated short-term rental hotline at 904-569-7077, with an online reporting form as an alternative. Meanwhile, noise complaints route to the St. Augustine Police Department under the City’s noise ordinance.

The City prints one disclaimer that most hosts skim past. Issuing a registration does not confirm a property complies with the Comprehensive Plan or land development regulations. Regardless, compliance stays the owner’s responsibility, and a registration certificate is not a defence.

Outside City Limits: Unincorporated St. Johns County

Most guides stop at the city line. That is a problem, because a large share of properties marketed as “St. Augustine” sit in unincorporated St. Johns County, where a separate ordinance applies and the numbers are different.

The County adopted its short-term vacation rental rules through Ordinance 2021-23, effective November 5, 2021. Registration is per dwelling unit, renewed every twelve months, with a registration fee of $300 on the County’s current schedule.

The Intracoastal Exemption Nobody Mentions

Importantly, the County ordinance does not apply everywhere. Four exemptions carve out a meaningful share of the housing stock:

• Unincorporated properties located west of the Intracoastal Waterway
• Owner-occupied single-family homes declared as homestead with the Property Appraiser
• Two-family dwellings under common ownership where one unit meets that homestead test
• Multi-family dwellings run by a condominium, homeowners or property owners association, or with on-site management

Geography, in other words, decides whether you register at all. Before assuming you are in scope, establish which side of the Intracoastal your parcel sits on.

Where County Rules Diverge From the City’s

Hosts who own on both sides of the line should not copy one playbook across both. In particular, the operating limits differ in ways that change guest capacity directly.

Rule	City of St. Augustine	Unincorporated St. Johns County
Maximum occupancy	12 (2 per bedroom + 2 children under 18)	10 (2 per sleeping room or common area, children 12 and under excluded)
Parking standard	1 space per bedroom	1 space per 3 transient occupants
Registration fee	$315.51 to $729.76 by bedroom count	$300
Renewal cycle	Fiscal year, due October 1	12 months from issuance

The County’s occupancy cap arrived in stages. Properties that vested under the ordinance started at twenty occupants, stepped to seventeen, then fourteen, and reached ten on May 4, 2024. That phase-down is complete, so ten is the operative number today.

County registration also demands a document set the City does not: a sample rental agreement, a St. Johns County Business Tax Receipt, a Florida Department of Revenue tourist development tax certificate, a Florida DBPR transient public lodging licence, and a notarised affidavit.

Worth noting as well, the City of St. Augustine Beach is a third jurisdiction with its own registration contact. If your address carries a Beach designation, confirm which authority you answer to before filing anything.

The Florida Licence Most Hosts Miss

A City registration is not a state licence, and the state wants one too. Florida defines vacation rentals under Section 509.242 of the Florida Statutes. The Department of Business and Professional Regulation licenses them through its Division of Hotels and Restaurants.

The licence generally applies to an entire dwelling or condominium unit rented to transient guests, meaning stays under thirty days. It also applies where a unit is advertised as regularly available for that purpose. Specifically, licences are issued by unit type, dwelling or condominium, and by structure. A structure can be a single property, a group within one complex, or a collective across several locations.

Renting a room while living on site usually falls outside it. Renting the whole house, however, does not. The St. Johns County ordinance treats the DBPR licence as a prerequisite for county registration, which tells you how seriously it is taken locally. Confirm your category directly with DBPR, since licence classes and fees are set at state level and change independently of anything the City does.

What You Actually Collect on a St. Augustine Booking

The tax question is where the most expensive misunderstanding lives. In fact, guides that quote a single 5% figure are describing one layer of three.

Tax	Rate	Applies to
Florida transient rental tax	6%	Stays of six months or less
St. Johns County discretionary sales surtax	0.5%	Same, through December 31, 2035
St. Johns County tourist development tax	5%	Stays of six months or less

Total collection on a standard St. Augustine booking therefore runs to 11.5%. Properties inside the World Golf Village tourist development district carry a 7% county tourist tax instead of 5%, pushing the stack to 13.5%.

Why the County Tax Is Your Job, Not Airbnb’s

Here is the fact that separates a compliant host from one carrying a quiet liability. Airbnb collects the Florida transient rental tax and the discretionary sales surtax, because those are state-administered. The county tourist development tax, by contrast, is a different matter.

St. Johns County does not appear on Airbnb’s published list of Florida jurisdictions where the platform collects and remits the county tourist development tax. The County administers its own, through the Tax Collector rather than the state. In practice that means the 5% is yours to register for, collect and file.

Check your own payout breakdown before assuming either way, and treat the platform’s tax summary as the thing to verify rather than the thing to trust.

Filing Mechanics, Penalties and the One Discount Available

Returns go to the St. Johns County Tax Collector monthly. Payment is due on the first of the month following collection and becomes delinquent if it is not postmarked by the twentieth.

A few mechanics are worth knowing in advance:

• File every month, including months with zero bookings, since missing a nil return triggers collection action.
• A collection allowance of 2.5% on the first $1,200 of tax due is available on correct, on-time filings, capped at $30.
• Late payments forfeit that allowance and attract 10% per thirty days, up to 50% of tax due, with a $50 minimum plus interest.

Before any of that, you need a Florida Department of Revenue sales tax number, a St. Johns County Business Tax Receipt, and a completed County tourist development tax application. None of them is optional, and none of them is handled by a booking platform. Further south, the stack gets heavier still. For comparison, our breakdown of tax on Airbnb income in Key West walks through that market.

Tax treatment of the income itself is a separate question from collection, and it belongs with a Florida accountant rather than a blog post.

How Florida’s Preemption Law Shapes All of This

Florida reserves most lodging regulations to the state. Under Section 509.032(7)(b) of the Florida Statutes, a local government may not prohibit vacation rentals outright, and may not regulate the duration or frequency of rental.

That paragraph carries one exception, and it is the one that matters here. It does not apply to any local law, ordinance or regulation adopted on or before June 1, 2011. Florida cities with rules predating that cut-off retain powers that newer ordinances cannot claim, which is why minimum-stay rules survive in some municipalities and not others.

Even so, statewide bills to rewrite this framework surface regularly. SB 280 passed both chambers in 2024 and was vetoed in June of that year, and no equivalent has since become law. For now the 2011 line still governs.

Practically speaking, treat the City’s published zoning rules as what will be enforced against you. Legal arguments about preemption belong to a Florida land-use attorney, not to a listing calendar.

Your St. Augustine Compliance Checklist

Run this before your first booking, and again every September.

• [ ] Confirm the zoning district on the City GIS map
• [ ] Match your minimum stay to the district, one week in RS-1 and RS-2, one month in HP-1
• [ ] Register each listing separately with the City, or with the County if unincorporated
• [ ] Pass the life safety inspection, then re-pass it annually
• [ ] Hold a current Florida DBPR vacation rental licence
• [ ] Register for a Florida DOR sales tax number and a St. Johns County Business Tax Receipt
• [ ] File the 5% county tourist development tax monthly, including nil months
• [ ] Diarise the October 1 City renewal date

St. Augustine rewards hosts who get the groundwork right. After all, the city draws visitors year-round and the historic core keeps rates firm. The framework itself is clear once you know which of the three authorities applies to your address. For a closer look at what the market itself supports, our guide to St. Augustine as an Airbnb investment covers demand and returns rather than paperwork.

A city registration, a state licence, a county tax account and twelve filings a year is the kind of calendar owners usually hand to a management team. MasterHost runs it for hosts across northeast Florida, including Jacksonville and Palm Coast.

Explore short-term rental rules in other American cities:

• Guide to Short-Term Rental Regulations in Miami and Miami Beach
• Panama City Beach Airbnb Regulation: A Comprehensive Guide
• Airbnb Regulations in Las Vegas: A Comprehensive Guide
• Understanding Airbnb Regulations in Los Angeles
• Airbnb Regulations in Greater Los Angeles Area
• Guide to San Diego’s STRO Rules
• A Guide to Airbnb Rules in Oceanside, CA
• Atlanta Airbnb Regulation
• Understanding Short-Term Rental Rules in Houston
• Austin, TX, Airbnb Rules and Regulations
• What Every Host Needs to Know About Kissimmee Airbnb Regulations
• Mastering Orlando Short-Term Rental Laws
• The Essential Guide to Davenport’s Short-Term Rental Regulations
• Airbnb Regulations in Tampa, Florida
• Saint Petersburg, Florida, Airbnb Regulations
• Daytona Beach Airbnb Regulations: A Comprehensive Guide
• Navigating Short-Term Rental Regulations Key West, Florida
• Airbnb Regulation in Tallahassee: Navigating the New Landscape