justme22

my friends and i want to hit the keys for a long weekend in january. I got an email from one of the rental agents that due to a county ordinance houses can only be rented for a week, no shorter period. is this true????

this seems really restrictive i can't believe a state that depends on tourism would allow local rule to do this. based on the maps all the keys are the same county, monroe and that means this is for all of the keys.

please tell me it isn't so. i did email the county for an anwer but who knows how long that will take.

Dick

I'm not sure about all of the keys....but it's true in Key West. The state wants the tourism ..but the local hotels want the tourists for themselves.

NeoPatrick

I think it's a little more complicated than that. Any good house rental will be taken by people wanting it for a week. There is a high demand in January at high prices. Why would any house owner want a three or four day turnaround, when he can easily rent it for a full week at a time?
And weekends are always big in Key West. So you rent in one Friday through Sunday and someone else rents in the following Friday through Sunday. Where is the owner supposed to find someone who wants it Monday through Thursday?

justme22

if the house is vacant they want to rent it, but it looks like they can't i rent a lot and have never run into a local ordinance stopping partial week rental. i understand if someone chooses not to rent for less than a week. that is owners privelege.

I happen to be looking for an exceptionally large house i need 5 bedrooms and those don't rent out so easy.... it seems wrong to make the landlord lose the business.

Dick

In order to rent a property for less than 30 days in the City of Key West, the property must have a transient rental license.

Several years back there was a big "battle" between owners' that wanted to rent condos, etc and licensed hotels and B&Bs

No_name

I believe it is true for all of Monroe (yes, all of the Keys). Its to protect the year round residents from have next door neighbors that change a few times a month. It keeps the peace.

Postal

Actually for several years it has been no rentals for less than 30 days so I'm surprised they're even offering week-long rentals.

We were able to rent a place on Big Pine Key for one week a few years back but it was no longer available for less than 30 days after that.

No_name

The way I understand it is that people who own a licence, which are very pricy and hard to get, are only allowed to do rentals under 30 days but even then there are some rules. Its the people who do not own a licence but still want to rent out their place who fall under the "not under 30 days" rule.

SusanCS

The policy in Key West has changed once again. An owner in Truman Annex sued - and won - over the necessity of a 30 day rental requirement. She/he argued that their condo had been purchased with the assurance it could be used for rentals. So basically we're back where we started: a regulation that's in place but not being enforced. I know there's a policy of 7-day rentals, but I'm not sure if it's a requirement, or just a policy.

No_name

This article was in todays Key West Paper.



City: Rental cases stalled


BY TIMOTHY O'HARA

Citizen Staff

KEY WEST — The mayor and several city commissioners want to know what the city manager is doing about transient-rental code violations since the head of the Code Enforcement Division was transferred to another department, and the senior officer was fired in October.

Assistant City Manager John Jones, who is the acting Code Enforcement Division director, said the city plans "to definitely prosecute" people who illegally rent homes to tourists.

City code prohibits rentals of less than 30 days without a license. Illegal transient rentals have long been a sore subject in the city, and have led to multiple lawsuits against the city.

At a Nov. 21 City Commission meeting, Mayor Morgan McPherson and several commissioners questioned Jones about the status of transient rentals cases. The city has 14 open transient rental investigations, and Jones assured the commissioners the city will continue to prosecute the cases.

Commissioner Mark Rossi said he plans to revisit the issue at tonight's meeting.

"We need to get a Code Enforcement director," Rossi said. "I can see that nothing is getting done."

In addition to overseeing the Code Enforcement Division, Jones supervised city operations for nearly a month while City Manager Julio Avael was on vacation in November.

Fired senior Code Enforcement officer Jim Young, a retired Broward County sheriff's deputy, took a new approach to investigating illegal transient rentals by having off-duty sheriff's deputies from Broward pose as tourists. In Young's absence, commissioners are questioning progress on those cases. Young handled many of the cases personally and knew the deputies from working with them in Broward County.

"We are picking up where we left off," Jones said. "There are some real interesting cases. ... The only way to catch them is by going undercover. He (Young) was very detailed in his reports."

The city may have to subpoena Young, Jones said. Young has been approached by the city to act as an "expert witness," he said.

"I would be willing to come back, but for a substantial fee," Young said.

Jones and the city manager are reorganizing the Code Enforcement Division and trying to make it more "customer friendly," Jones said. Among the changes, Building Inspector John Woodson has been named the director of the Building Department, of which Code Enforcement is a division.

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Kris1

My family and I are headed down to KW for the holidays this year and we've rented a 5-bedroom house down on South Street that looks absolutely divine. We're doing a weekly rental so it may not be of help to you but if you're interested, I can let you know how it turns out.