You're reading this in the softest month of the Miami Beach short-term-rental year. September is, reliably, the bottom of our calendar — the quiet stretch between the summer families and the season that starts building in November. Which makes it the month owners actually open the statement and ask the question they skip in March: after everything, what did this business really pay me?
I get asked some version of that constantly, and the honest answer surprises people. The gross numbers on Miami Beach short-term rentals look great. The net numbers, for the average listing, are worse than doing nothing clever at all. I want to walk the whole waterfall — line by line — because the gap between gross and net here is wider than in almost any other rental market in Florida, and knowing exactly where it goes is the difference between running a business and subsidizing one.
Start with what the market actually produces
For the twelve months through July 2026, the typical Miami Beach short-term rental ran at roughly 40% occupancy with an average daily rate of about $393, producing RevPAR of around $154 and average annual revenue near $43,000. There are about 4,550 active listings in the city, and supply grew nearly 30% year over year — while rates still moved up, which tells you demand is genuinely absorbing the new inventory rather than getting diluted by it.
Notice the shape of that: a high nightly rate paired with a mediocre occupancy. Miami Beach is a strong-rate, soft-utilization market. That combination is exactly what makes the expense side so punishing, because most of the costs you're about to see scale with revenue, not with nights booked.
The 14% that was never yours
Before a single expense, understand the tax stack — because this is where I see otherwise sophisticated owners quietly destroy their own margin. A transient rental in Miami Beach carries four separate layers:
6% Florida state sales tax on transient rentals
1% Miami-Dade discretionary sales surtax
3% Miami-Dade Convention Development Tax — which does apply in Miami Beach (only Surfside and Bal Harbour are carved out)
4% City of Miami Beach Resort Tax on room rent for any stay of six months or less
Fourteen percent, all in. Miami Beach is spared the county's 2% Tourist Development Room Tax and 1% Professional Sports Franchise Tax — those are collected everywhere in Miami-Dade except here, Surfside and Bal Harbour — but the city replaces them with its own levy and its own filing obligation. Resort tax is remitted directly to the city, due by the 20th of the month for the prior month's collections, and Miami Beach does not participate in Airbnb's automatic remittance. That one is on you.
💡 The margin killer: that 14% is supposed to be collected from the guest, on top of your nightly rate. When an owner prices "all-in" to look competitive in search results, they're absorbing 14% of gross out of their own pocket — on a $43,000 year, roughly $6,000 handed over for nothing. It's the single most expensive unforced error I see, and it never shows up as a line item because it hides inside the rate.
The full waterfall, on an average unit
Here's the same $43,000 gross-rent year, carried all the way down. Taxes are excluded because they're collected on top and passed through — this is what happens to the money that's genuinely yours.
Gross booking revenue (rent only): $43,000
Airbnb host-only service fee @ 15.5% — −$6,665
Full-service management @ 20% of gross — −$8,600
Turnover cleaning not recovered from guests — −$1,800
Linens, consumables, restocking — −$1,200
Utilities + internet (owner-paid, hotel-level usage) — −$4,200
Short-term-rental insurance premium delta — −$1,500
DBPR license, city BTR, resort-tax filing & admin — −$700
Furniture & FF&E replacement reserve @ 5% — −$2,150
Net before HOA, property tax and debt: $16,185
Thirty-eight cents on the dollar. That's the average Miami Beach short-term rental. And notice what that $16,185 still has to cover: your monthly HOA — which in the buildings that actually permit transient rental tends to run $1,000 to $1,500 because those buildings carry hotel-grade services — plus non-homestead property taxes on a Miami Beach assessed value, plus your mortgage. On most units, the HOA alone eats the entire number.
Two of those lines deserve a footnote. The platform fee assumes Airbnb's host-only 15.5% structure, which is now the standard — the old 3%-host / ~15%-guest split fee is being retired through 2026, and software-connected hosts moved over in April. If you're still on the split fee, your migration date is coming, and it will change your economics by roughly twelve points of gross. Plan for it rather than discover it. Management, meanwhile, runs 20–35% of gross for full-service operators in South Florida; I used 20%, the friendly end.
The comparison almost nobody runs
Now put that against the boring alternative. A Miami Beach one-bedroom leases at roughly $2,500 a month — $30,000 a year. Strip out a realistic 4% vacancy allowance, 10% traditional management, a 3% maintenance reserve and a landlord policy, and you're left with about $23,700 before the same HOA, taxes and debt.
The annual lease nets roughly $7,500 more per year than the average short-term rental on a comparable unit — with no turnovers, no resort-tax filings, no 3 a.m. lockout calls, no furniture to replace, no review score to defend, and no regulatory exposure. That is the whole argument, in one sentence, and it is why I'm skeptical whenever someone tells me they're buying in Miami Beach "for the Airbnb income."
What separates the quarter of listings that make this worth it
Because the top of this market is a genuinely different business. The top 25% of Miami Beach listings clear $423 or more a night. Run that rate at 60% occupancy instead of 40% and gross goes to roughly $92,600. Carry it down through the same cost structure — the fixed lines barely move — and you net around $43,000. That's not 30% better than the annual lease. It's nearly double, and it's where the entire economic case for short-term renting in Miami Beach lives.
Four things move a listing from the average to that top quartile, and only four:
1. Occupancy, not rate
Miami Beach owners obsess over nightly rate because it's the visible number. But we're a 40%-occupancy market with a $393 rate — the scarce resource here is booked nights, not pricing power. Twenty points of occupancy is worth far more than twenty dollars of ADR, and September is precisely the month where the gap between a well-managed calendar and a passive one is widest.
2. The right building, not the right unit
Legal transient rental in Miami Beach is a zoning map, not a citywide permission — and at the parcel level the association is the real gatekeeper. The city won't even issue a Business Tax Receipt on a condo unit without a letter from the association confirming transient rental is permitted at that address, and a BTR is only issued to the owner, never to a tenant. Buy the building's rules, not the listing's photos.
3. Compliance as a competitive position
Roughly 87% of Miami Beach listings now show active registration. Compliance used to be an edge; it's now table stakes, and the cost of it is knowable and small — a DBPR vacation rental license runs about $230 a year for a single unit, plus the city BTR and resort-tax account. What's genuinely valuable now is the documentation: a clean license, filed resort-tax returns and a real revenue history.
4. Honest reserves
A short-term rental consumes a unit at four or five times the rate of an annual tenancy. Owners who don't reserve for furniture, mattresses, linens and paint aren't earning more — they're just deferring an expense and calling it profit, then wondering why the refresh year wipes out three good ones.
What I'd do with this, depending on who you are
If you already own one
Pull your last twelve months and run the waterfall above on your own numbers before season starts. Two questions decide everything: are you charging the 14% on top of your rate or absorbing it, and are you on the split fee or the host-only fee? Fix those two and you may find several thousand dollars without touching occupancy. If you land near the $16,000 line, that's not a failure — it's information, and it means the real decision is levers-or-lease, not tweak-and-hope.
If you're thinking about buying one
Underwrite the net, never the gross, and never the pro forma someone hands you. Ask for resort-tax filings and the association's written position on transient rental before you ask for anything else. If the deal only works at market-average performance, it doesn't work — the average unit here loses to a lease.
If you own one and you're wondering whether to sell
This is the quiet one. A compliant Miami Beach unit with a documented license, filed returns and real revenue history is a genuinely scarce asset, and it sells to a different, better-funded buyer than a plain residential resale does — one who will pay for the income stream rather than the square footage. If your unit is running at the market average, you may well be sitting on a property whose sale value reflects top-quartile potential you're not personally capturing. That's worth knowing before you commit to another season.
What I actually think
Miami Beach short-term rentals are not a passive income product and haven't been for years. They're a small hospitality business with a 62% cost load, a monthly tax filing, an association that can change the rules, and a supply base that grew 30% last year. Run well, in the right building, at the top of the market, it's one of the best income assets in South Florida — nearly double a lease, on the same four walls. Run at the average, it's more work than a lease for less money.
There's no shame in the second outcome. What there is, is a decision — and September, with the calendar empty and season not yet booked, is exactly the right month to make it deliberately rather than by drifting into another year.
Want the real numbers on your specific unit? Send me the address and I'll run the full waterfall on it — the building's transient-rental position, what comparable legal listings in that pocket are actually netting, and the honest side-by-side against an annual lease. If you're buying, I'll underwrite it the same way before you write an offer. No management pitch, just the math.
👉 Message me on WhatsApp | 🏖️ Own an STR and curious what it's worth today? I'll run a valuation that credits your rental history and compliance file | ✉️ silvana@carvalhoresidences.com
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a Miami Beach short-term rental actually net after expenses?
On average annual revenue of roughly $43,000, a typical Miami Beach short-term rental nets in the neighborhood of $16,000 before HOA fees, property taxes and mortgage payments — about 38 cents on the dollar. The main deductions are the platform service fee (15.5% under Airbnb's host-only structure), full-service management (20–35% of gross in South Florida), turnover cleaning and supplies, owner-paid utilities, short-term-rental insurance, licensing and filing costs, and a furniture replacement reserve. Top-quartile listings — those clearing $423+ a night at meaningfully higher occupancy — net far more, roughly $43,000 on the same cost structure.
What taxes do I pay on a short-term rental in Miami Beach?
Fourteen percent in total: 6% Florida state sales tax on transient rentals, 1% Miami-Dade discretionary sales surtax, 3% Miami-Dade Convention Development Tax, and 4% City of Miami Beach Resort Tax on room rent for stays of six months or less. Miami Beach is exempt from the county's 2% Tourist Development Room Tax and 1% Professional Sports Franchise Tax, which apply elsewhere in Miami-Dade. Resort tax is filed and remitted directly to the city by the 20th of the month for the prior month's collections — Miami Beach does not participate in Airbnb's automatic remittance program, so the owner is responsible for it.
Is a short-term rental better than an annual lease in Miami Beach?
At market-average performance, no. A Miami Beach one-bedroom leasing at roughly $2,500 a month grosses $30,000 and nets about $23,700 after vacancy, traditional management, maintenance reserve and landlord insurance — roughly $7,500 more than the average short-term rental on a comparable unit, with dramatically less work and regulatory exposure. The short-term rental wins decisively only in the top quartile, where the net roughly doubles the lease. The honest test is whether your specific unit and building can realistically operate above the market average, not whether the gross number looks bigger.
What does short-term rental management cost in Miami?
Full-service vacation rental management in South Florida generally runs 20–35% of gross booking revenue, with national operators clustering at the higher end and some regional managers closer to 18–20%. That's substantially more than the 8–12% typical of annual-lease property management, because it covers guest communication, dynamic pricing, turnover coordination and compliance. Many managers also charge a one-time onboarding fee of roughly $500–$2,000, and some retain a margin on the cleaning fee charged to guests — worth asking about directly, since it doesn't appear in the headline percentage.
What licenses do I need to run a short-term rental in Miami Beach?
Three things. A Florida DBPR vacation rental license — about $230 a year for a single unit, covering the license fee, application fee and Hospitality Education Program fee. A City of Miami Beach Business Tax Receipt, which is issued only to the unit owner, never to a tenant. And a City of Miami Beach Resort Tax account. For a condominium, the city also requires a letter from the association confirming that transient rental activity is permitted at that address — which makes the association, in practice, the real gatekeeper. Both the BTR and resort-tax numbers must appear in every listing and advertisement.
Is Airbnb changing its host fees in 2026?
Yes. Airbnb is retiring the old split-fee structure — roughly 3% charged to the host plus 14–16% charged to the guest — in favor of a single host-only service fee of 15.5% of the booking subtotal, deducted from the payout. Software-connected hosts migrated in April 2026, with remaining independent hosts moving country by country through late 2026. For an owner still on the split fee, the change is worth roughly twelve points of gross revenue, so it should be modeled into next season's budget rather than discovered on a statement.
Short-term-rental rules, tax rates and platform fee structures in Miami Beach all move — and the litigation over the city's enforcement scheme is still live. If you're reading this later, reach out and I'll pull the current rules, current market data and building-specific guidance for your address. 🔑
Sources: Miami Beach short-term-rental performance for the twelve months ending July 2026 per AirROI Miami Beach market report (approximately $43,169 average annual revenue, 40.1% occupancy, $393 ADR, $154 RevPAR, 4,553 active listings, supply +29.6% year over year, March strongest and September softest month, ~87% of listings showing active registration); top-quartile nightly rate of $423+ per Rabbu / AirROI Miami Beach data 2026. City of Miami Beach Finance Department, File/Pay Resort Tax: 4% resort tax on transient rentals of six months or less and 2% on food and beverage, governed by City Code Chapter 102, Article IV, §§ 102-246 through 102-254; monthly returns due by the 20th of the following month; Business Tax Receipt and Resort Tax account required, BTR issued only to unit owners, and a letter from the condominium association confirming transient rental is permitted required for individual condo units. Miami-Dade County Tourist and Restaurant Taxes: 3% Convention Development Tax collected countywide except Surfside and Bal Harbour; 2% Tourist Development Room Tax and 1% Professional Sports Facilities Franchise Tax collected countywide except Surfside, Bal Harbour and Miami Beach; Florida Statutes §§ 212.0305 and 125.0104. Florida state sales tax on transient rentals of 6% and Miami-Dade discretionary sales surtax of 1% per Florida Department of Revenue Form DR-15DSS (2026). Florida DBPR vacation rental license fees (approximately $230 annually for a single unit: $170 license, $50 application, $10 Hospitality Education Program) under Fla. Stat. §§ 509.241 and 509.242 and Fla. Admin. Code R. 61C-1.008. Airbnb host-only service fee of 15.5% and the 2026 retirement of the split-fee model per Airbnb host fee documentation and industry reporting (Hostfully, Hostaway, Lodgify); Vrbo 5% commission plus 3% payment processing. South Florida full-service vacation rental management fees of 20–35% of gross booking revenue per published operator pricing and 2026 industry fee surveys. Miami Beach average one-bedroom asking rent of approximately $2,500 per month per Zumper rent research, August 2026. Short-term-rental insurance ranges for Florida properties per Steadily and specialty carrier 2026 cost guides. The dollar waterfalls in this article are illustrations built on the stated assumptions, not a projection, appraisal or valuation of any specific property. Tax and licensing details are summarized for general information and are not tax or legal advice.
