Florida Cities With the Most Licensed Vacation Rentals
A ranking of Florida cities by vacation-rental licenses on file, with phone coverage and the house and condo split for each, from the state license data.
On this page
Panama City Beach has the most licensed vacation rentals of any Florida town in PermitPulse, with 3,877 licenses as of 2026-10-08, followed by Kissimmee (2,788) and Davenport (2,397). The counts come from Florida's DBPR vacation-rental license file, grouped by the town on each license after spelling variants are merged.
Florida licenses every vacation rental at the state level (the licensing guide explains the law), so a town-by-town count is possible here in a way it is not in most states. Below is the full ranking for every Florida town with at least 100 licenses, then what stands out in it.
The ranking
| # | Town | Licenses | With a phone | House share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Panama City Beach (market page) | 3,877 | 83% | see page |
| 2 | Kissimmee | 2,788 | 76% | 83% |
| 3 | Davenport | 2,397 | 75% | 91% |
| 4 | Fort Lauderdale (market page) | 1,956 | 74% | see page |
| 5 | Miami Beach (market page) | 1,795 | 71% | see page |
| 6 | Miami | 1,792 | 80% | 42% |
| 7 | Hollywood | 1,339 | 69% | 49% |
| 8 | Santa Rosa Beach | 1,132 | 81% | 82% |
| 9 | St. Augustine | 1,088 | 81% | 83% |
| 10 | Naples | 1,067 | 70% | 78% |
| 11 | Cape Coral | 1,050 | 72% | 97% |
| 12 | Sarasota | 1,033 | 76% | 85% |
| 13 | Bradenton | 1,004 | 76% | 84% |
| 14 | Destin | 900 | 74% | 53% |
| 15 | Miramar Beach | 781 | 80% | 60% |
| 16 | Indian Rocks Beach | 683 | 79% | 58% |
| 17 | Marathon | 655 | 80% | 85% |
| 18 | Orlando | 651 | 89% | 39% |
| 19 | Sunny Isles Beach | 585 | 72% | 5% |
| 20 | Pompano Beach | 540 | 74% | 88% |
| 21 | Pensacola | 526 | 82% | 86% |
| 22 | Inlet Beach | 521 | 82% | 88% |
| 23 | Tampa | 521 | 75% | 91% |
| 24 | Jacksonville | 497 | 75% | 94% |
| 25 | Palm Coast | 494 | 83% | 83% |
| 26 | Fort Myers Beach | 473 | 84% | 64% |
| 27 | Largo | 456 | 78% | 97% |
| 28 | West Palm Beach | 439 | 78% | 92% |
| 29 | Marco Island | 406 | 65% | 64% |
| 30 | Jacksonville Beach | 402 | 74% | 84% |
| 31 | Clearwater | 376 | 69% | 79% |
| 32 | Key West | 375 | 83% | 51% |
| 33 | Panama City | 360 | 86% | 72% |
| 34 | Port Charlotte | 350 | 75% | 94% |
| 35 | Port St. Joe | 328 | 86% | 95% |
| 36 | St. Petersburg | 327 | 78% | 76% |
| 37 | Punta Gorda | 319 | 79% | 79% |
| 38 | Englewood | 318 | 73% | 75% |
| 39 | Seminole | 317 | 73% | 99% |
| 40 | Cocoa Beach | 307 | 75% | 61% |
| 41 | Fernandina Beach | 300 | 77% | 37% |
| 42 | Holmes Beach | 287 | 82% | 64% |
| 43 | Deerfield Beach | 278 | 68% | 82% |
| 44 | Bradenton Beach | 273 | 77% | 47% |
| 45 | Key Largo | 268 | 81% | 52% |
| 46 | Clermont | 262 | 77% | 94% |
| 47 | Fort Walton Beach | 262 | 81% | 43% |
| 48 | Fort Myers | 250 | 74% | 71% |
| 49 | The Villages | 248 | 88% | 100% |
| 50 | Wilton Manors | 229 | 75% | 94% |
| 51 | Oakland Park | 225 | 71% | 88% |
| 52 | Navarre | 224 | 85% | 78% |
| 53 | Palm Harbor | 223 | 75% | 87% |
| 54 | Bonita Springs | 222 | 61% | 75% |
| 55 | Tallahassee | 215 | 82% | 91% |
| 56 | Rotonda West | 194 | 76% | 95% |
| 57 | Ocala | 182 | 88% | 96% |
| 58 | Islamorada | 171 | 80% | 80% |
| 59 | Haines City | 169 | 80% | 96% |
| 60 | Anna Maria | 165 | 76% | 93% |
| 61 | Madeira Beach | 165 | 70% | 21% |
| 62 | Gainesville | 159 | 73% | 81% |
| 63 | Key Colony Beach | 159 | 82% | 84% |
| 64 | Cape Canaveral | 158 | 80% | 53% |
| 65 | Boynton Beach | 155 | 86% | 70% |
| 66 | Ponte Vedra Beach | 153 | 72% | 84% |
| 67 | Aventura | 151 | 77% | 5% |
| 68 | Hallandale Beach | 144 | 73% | 62% |
| 69 | New Smyrna Beach | 144 | 72% | 37% |
| 70 | Wellington | 143 | 82% | 92% |
| 71 | Venice | 141 | 76% | 80% |
| 72 | Gulf Breeze | 139 | 87% | 79% |
| 73 | Crystal River | 134 | 87% | 93% |
| 74 | Delray Beach | 134 | 76% | 90% |
| 75 | Fort Pierce | 131 | 78% | 50% |
| 76 | Flagler Beach | 130 | 73% | 65% |
| 77 | Treasure Island | 124 | 65% | 31% |
| 78 | Vero Beach | 124 | 80% | 91% |
| 79 | Dunnellon | 116 | 81% | 93% |
| 80 | Lakeland | 111 | 73% | 96% |
| 81 | Dania Beach | 104 | 72% | 99% |
| 82 | Dunedin | 102 | 77% | 73% |
| 83 | Daytona Beach | 101 | 55% | 26% |
"House share" is the percentage of dwelling (DWEL) licenses against dwelling plus condominium (CNDO) licenses. Towns marked "market page" are counted on a market page that also includes their neighbors, so their house split is shown there.
How concentrated the market is
The 83 towns in the table hold 42,994 of the 52,029 Florida records, and the top ten alone hold 19,231. The rest is spread across hundreds of smaller towns, each under 100 licenses, which are still in the Florida file and can be pulled by city at export.
Three clusters show up again and again near the top of the list: the Disney corridor around Kissimmee, Davenport and Orlando; the Panhandle beaches from Pensacola to Port St. Joe, including Destin, Miramar Beach, Santa Rosa Beach and Panama City Beach; and the southeast coast from Miami to West Palm Beach. The Gulf coast from Clearwater down to Naples adds a long line of mid-sized towns.
Phone coverage by town
Statewide, 74% of Florida records list a phone. Coverage is fairly even from town to town because it comes from the same state file, but it is not identical: Orlando has the highest share of any Florida city page at 89%. Each city page compares its phone coverage with the state figure and shows it ZIP by ZIP.
Houses against condos
The house and condo split varies more than anything else in the file. Sunny Isles Beach is the most condo-heavy Florida city file, with 95% condominium licenses, while The Villages sits at the other end with 100% houses. The full comparison, town by town, is in vacation rental condos vs. houses in Florida.
Where the large operators are
Counting how many different property addresses each licensee name holds shows where management companies and larger investors cluster. These Florida towns have the most records under names that hold ten or more Florida properties:
| Town | Licenses | Under names with 10+ properties |
|---|---|---|
| Davenport | 2,397 | 108 |
| Destin | 900 | 60 |
| Santa Rosa Beach | 1,132 | 49 |
| Miramar Beach | 781 | 45 |
| Naples | 1,067 | 42 |
| Miami | 1,792 | 36 |
| Indian Rocks Beach | 683 | 36 |
| Inlet Beach | 521 | 28 |
In those towns a meaningful share of licenses sits with large operators, which matters if you are a property manager (those owners are taken) or a software vendor (those are your buyers). The multi-property owner guide explains the method.
How the ranking is built
- Source. Florida's DBPR vacation-rental license file, plus a small city-level license list for Orlando.
- Town. The city on the license. Spellings are merged ("St. Augustine", "St Augustine" and "Saint Augustine" count as one town), and rows whose ZIP code sits outside Florida are dropped.
- Unit. One license is one record. Florida lets one license cover several houses or units, so a license that covers several counts once.
- Freshness. Counts refresh from the live database every time this site is built; these are as of 2026-10-08.
Getting a town's list
Every Florida town is in the Florida file: $99 a month with exports you can filter by city, or $149 once for the whole state. Start from a town's page to see the count, the ZIP codes and the license mix before you buy.