"Many vacation rental owners are not large corporations of wealthy investors, they're teachers, firefighters, retirees, veterans and working families who have invested their savings into a property as part of the American dream." That's what Bradenton's John McNaught told Manatee County commissioners this past June, arguing against a countywide short-term rental ordinance that still, as of late September 2026, does not exist.
Three miles south, inside Holmes Beach city limits, the debate McNaught was fighting is already over. It ended years ago. The city has a working registration system, a fee schedule, a zoning code that spells out minimum stays block by block, and software that checks every listing on the internet against city records every single day. The question for anyone buying, holding, or thinking about renting a vacation home on Anna Maria Island right now isn't whether short-term rentals get regulated. It's whether the address in question sits inside a system that's already running or one that's still being written.
What Holmes Beach Already Built
On Tuesday, July 21, the Holmes Beach Code Compliance Department held its annual vacation rental stakeholders meeting at city hall. The theme was "Preserving Paradise Through Partnership," and the two-hour session pulled in a room full of institutional weight: the Holmes Beach Police Department, the city's own Code Compliance Department, the Manatee County Property Appraiser's Office, the Manatee County Tax Collector's Office, West Manatee Fire Rescue, Waste Pro, and the Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring organization, alongside the rental operators and owners the meeting was built for.
Police Chief Bill Tokajer spoke. So did WMFR Fire Marshal Rodney Kwiatkowski, who told the room that short-term vacation rentals account for a large share of the emergency calls his district responds to. Development Services Director Chad Minor added a number that puts the island's rebuild in perspective: Holmes Beach has issued roughly 5,000 building permits since the 2024 hurricanes, and he was clear that storm repairs, including drywall replacement, still require a permit.
The most concrete number came from Code Compliance Officer Nate Brown, who walked through the program's decade of growth. When the registration system launched in 2016, Holmes Beach had 245 registered vacation rental units and staff tracked them by hand. Ten years later, the registry holds approximately 1,600 units, a volume Brown said made manual monitoring unworkable. The city now runs Rentalscape, software that scans more than 10,000 rental listing websites every day to flag properties operating without registration or otherwise out of compliance.
The Rules the Software Enforces
None of that infrastructure exists in a vacuum. Holmes Beach's own code lays out what a registered rental actually has to follow. The city no longer issues a separate Rental Business Tax Receipt for rental properties, but it requires a Vacation Rental Certificate for every weekly and monthly rental, with an initial application fee of $545 that includes inspection, a $545 renewal every two years, and re-inspection fees of $50 and $75 for a first and second follow-up visit.
Minimum stays are set by zoning district, not by owner preference. Properties in R-1AA carry a 30-day minimum. R-2 and R-3 districts carry a weekly minimum, with limited exceptions for certain grandfathered hotels renting daily. R-4 carries the same weekly floor. None of that is negotiable by listing platform or by how the previous owner used the house. It's tied to the parcel.
That's the part a lot of buyers miss. The registry number, the fee schedule, and the software are downstream of a zoning map that decided, years ago, what kind of rental income a given address can legally produce.
What Doesn't Exist Yet, Ten Minutes Inland
Unincorporated Manatee County has none of this. No dedicated registry. No inspection cadence. No Rentalscape equivalent. Florida law bars any city or county from banning short-term rentals outright or capping how often an owner can rent one out, and unincorporated Manatee has no local ordinance layered on top of that protection today. Owners there still need a Florida DBPR transient rental license and active tax accounts, same as anywhere in the state, but the county-specific enforcement layer that Holmes Beach spent a decade building simply isn't there.
That gap didn't happen by accident, and it's not permanent. The county commission has been circling this issue since January 2025, when Commission Chair Tal Siddique first got support to direct staff toward a registry and restrictions. Staff came back in May 2025 with a presentation instead of a draft ordinance, and a motion to actually write one failed on a 3-3 tie, with commissioners Jason Bearden, Carol Felts, and Bob McCann opposed.
The issue came back to life for a specific reason. A rental house in the Plantation Oaks neighborhood became the case study everyone in the county now points to. The Manatee County Property Appraiser lists the home as four bedrooms, two full baths, and a half bath. Its Airbnb listing, according to reporting from Your Observer, showed nine bedrooms, three full bathrooms, and space for up to 32 guests, with the two-car garage converted into two additional bedrooms and one of the three bathrooms lacking a sink.
That discrepancy, and months of resident complaints about a rental home sleeping far more people than county records suggested it should, pushed the board back to the table. On June 16, 2026, Commissioner Bob McCann, an attorney, brought his own drafted ordinance built with input from the County Attorney's Office and the Sheriff's Office. The board voted 5-0, with Bearden absent, to send it to staff for review and revision.
Staff returned on September 2, 2026 with two options. One simply tightens enforcement of existing noise and parking rules. The other creates a full registration and inspection program covering roughly 3,000 unincorporated rentals, with proof of state licensing and tax registration required up front. County estimates put the heavier option at 11 new staff positions and roughly $1.5 million in first-year cost, plus about $237,000 a year for software, a number that led Commissioner Amanda Ballard to say she was concerned about potential cost and staff's ability to actually enforce it without additional staffing.
The most recent movement is only a couple of weeks old. In mid-September, commissioners directed staff to draft an ordinance within 30 to 45 days, after residents specifically asked for an occupancy cap somewhere between eight and twelve guests per home.
"For 11 years I've enjoyed peace... I think this ordinance is a start but we can do more." A Manatee County resident, describing recent months of nightly basketball and pickleball noise from a nearby rental.
The pressure isn't abstract. In the Pine Meadow HOA, more than a quarter of roughly 100 homes are now short-term rentals, and while the association says most are well managed, five of them advertising space for 13 to 20 guests generate the bulk of its recurring complaints.
The Same Island, Two Different Realities
| Holmes Beach (city limits) | Unincorporated Manatee County | |
|---|---|---|
| Registered rentals | About 1,600, up from 245 in 2016 | No dedicated registry |
| Enforcement tool | Rentalscape, scanning 10,000+ sites daily | None specific to short-term rentals |
| Minimum stay | Set by zoning: 30 days in R-1AA, weekly in R-2 through R-4 | Not locally regulated; state law bars local caps on rental frequency |
| Registration cost | $545 initial with inspection, $545 renewal every two years | Not yet defined; a fee is part of the pending draft |
| Current status | Routine, decade-old program | Staff directed in mid-September 2026 to draft an ordinance within 30 to 45 days |
What This Means If You Own or Are Weighing One Here
If your property sits inside Holmes Beach, the risk isn't whether regulation exists. It already does, and it's actively enforced. The relevant question is which zoning district your parcel falls under, because that answer sets your legal minimum stay before you list a single night, and Rentalscape doesn't wait for a neighbor's complaint to flag a mismatch between your registration and your listing.
If your property sits in unincorporated Manatee County, closer to Cortez, Palma Sola, or Northwest Bradenton, the absence of a rule today is not the same as the absence of a rule soon. Staff has a 30 to 45 day drafting window that started in mid-September, aimed at a program that could cover about 3,000 properties. Anyone buying with a short-term rental business plan in that footprint should treat the current light-touch period as a window, not a permanent condition.
Bradenton Beach is weighing its own occupancy cap on a separate track, which is a reminder that Anna Maria Island runs on city-by-city rules even where cities sit side by side. Assuming one city's ordinance, or one city's silence, applies to a property a few blocks away is the single easiest mistake to make on this island.
A Few Direct Questions
If Manatee County doesn't have a short-term rental ordinance yet, can I still rent nightly in unincorporated areas? Yes, for now. State law prevents Florida cities and counties from banning short-term rentals or limiting rental frequency, and unincorporated Manatee County has no additional ordinance today. A state DBPR license and active tax accounts are still required regardless of what the county eventually adopts.
Would a county ordinance apply inside Holmes Beach or Anna Maria? No. Anything the county commission adopts governs unincorporated Manatee County only. Holmes Beach, Anna Maria, and Bradenton Beach each run separate registration systems inside their own city limits, and those keep applying regardless of the county's outcome.
How would I know if the county passes something before closing on a property? Watch for a commission vote. As of mid-September 2026, staff had been told to bring a draft back within 30 to 45 days, which puts a possible vote in the range of late October through year end.
Rules on a page only matter once someone is checking them. On Anna Maria Island right now, one government checks 10,000 listings a day and another is still deciding what to check for. If you're weighing a vacation rental purchase here, or you already own one and want to know exactly which system your address answers to, Flota'cal Real Estate & Property Management tracks these registrations, inspections, and pending ordinances property by property, so the paperwork never catches you after closing.
