Miami apartments & rentals: how to choose
A Miami apartment can be excellent value — a Brickell tower with a pool, a Wynwood loft, a Grove two-bedroom with a kitchen. But short-term-rental law here is written city by city, and the two cities most visitors book in have close to opposite rules. Getting this wrong is not a technicality: an unlicensed Miami Beach listing can be shut down while you are in it.
⚠︎ Miami Beach and the City of Miami are not the same rulebook
Miami Beach and the City of Miami are separate governments with separate rules, and the property’s address — not the word "Miami" in the listing title — decides which applies. MIAMI BEACH defines a short-term rental as any stay of less than six months and one day, and prohibits them in all single-family homes and in many multi-family buildings depending on the zoning district; the city publishes a short-term-rental zoning map and a list of the specific apartment buildings authorised for it. A legal Miami Beach operator must hold a city Business Tax Receipt and a Resort Tax certificate, and city code requires both numbers to be conspicuously displayed in every advertisement or listing. Miami Beach runs a public "Practice Safe Renting" lookup so you can check an address yourself before you pay, and enforcement is active with steep penalties for illegal operation. The CITY OF MIAMI (Brickell, Downtown, Wynwood, Little Havana, Coconut Grove) is the more permissive of the two: short-term rentals are allowed where zoning permits, subject to city registration and a Certificate of Use, alongside a Florida state vacation-rental licence and Miami-Dade County tourist-tax registration — with the tightest restrictions in low-density single-family areas. Verify the specific address with the relevant city before you pay.
Rules change — confirm the current requirements for the exact address: City of Miami Beach — vacation / short-term rentals, City of Miami — official city site, and Miami Beach’s own Practice Safe Renting address lookup, which tells you whether a specific Miami Beach property is authorised before you pay.
Who a rental suits
Rentals suit families and groups who want bedrooms and a kitchen, anyone staying a week or more, and travelers who’d rather be in Brickell, Wynwood or Coconut Grove than a hotel corridor. If your heart is set on sleeping on Miami Beach for two or three nights, a hotel is usually the simpler and safer call — the legal rental supply there is narrow and building-specific.
Verify before you book
- Which city the address is actually in — Miami Beach, City of Miami, Coral Gables, Surfside and Key Biscayne all write their own rules, and the listing map pin tells you more than the title does.
- For a Miami Beach address: run it through the city’s Practice Safe Renting lookup, confirm the building is in a zoning district that permits short-term rentals, and check that the listing displays both a Business Tax Receipt number and a Resort Tax certificate number. If either is missing, walk away.
- For a City of Miami address: that the host holds city registration and a Certificate of Use, plus a Florida state vacation-rental licence.
- Whether the building’s own condo or homeowners association permits short-term stays — an association ban overrides a city permission, and it is a frequent cause of last-minute cancellations.
- What parking actually costs and whether a space is included; "free parking" in a Brickell tower often means one space for the whole unit, and street parking may be residential-permit only.
- Hurricane-season cancellation terms if you’re travelling June–November, and whether the host will refund or rebook if a storm closes the airport.
Where to look for rentals
Brickell has the deepest legal supply — glass towers with pools, gyms and the free Metromover downstairs. Wynwood and the Edgewater/Midtown strip north of Downtown offer newer loft-style units close to the murals and restaurants. Coconut Grove and Coral Gables have more house-and-townhouse inventory, quieter and greener, with Metrorail into the centre. On Miami Beach itself, treat every listing as unverified until it proves its registration — the legal stock is real but small, and it sits in specific approved buildings rather than spread across the island.
Check live rentals & availability
Browse current Miami rentals on Vrbo — then check which city the address sits in and confirm the listing shows its registration numbers.
Check Miami rentals on Vrbo →Some booking links are affiliate links — if you book through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes which options we recommend.
Prefer a front desk and a pool deck? Compare hotels →