With the rise of Airbnb and other websites focusing on short-term rentals, community associations that wish to avoid unfettered nightly or weekly rentals to unvetted guests have been forced to take action in an effort to maintain order in their communities, whether by aggressively enforcing their existing rental restrictions or seeking to create new ones. Some Florida associations that do not have restrictions in place specifically prohibiting short-term rentals, or setting a minimum lease term, have sought to prevent these nontraditional rentals by taking action against their unit owners based upon the argument that such rentals are prohibited by the restrictions in their governing documents that limit the use of the dwellings to “residential” or “nonbusiness” purposes. Unfortunately for the associations that make this argument, a recent ruling by Florida’s First District Court of Appeal that appears to be the first decision focusing on the applicability of these residential or non-business occupancy restrictions upon short-term rentals by a Florida appellate court found that short-term rentals did not constitute a violation of these commonly-found restrictions.

In the case of Santa Monica Beach Property Owners Association v. David Acord, the association appealed a lower court’s order dismissing its action against the homeowners who rented their homes on a short-term basis. The association’s argument in both the lower court and the appellate court was that such short-term rentals constituted a violation of the community’s occupancy restrictions, which required that the homes be used for residential, non-business uses. Specifically, the association’s argument hinged on the community’s occupancy restrictions, which provided that the plots “shall be used only for residential purposes … nor shall any building on said land be used as a hospital, tenement house, sanitarium, charitable institution, or for business or manufacturing purposes nor as a dance hall or other place of public assemblage.”

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