You can run a short-term rental in both Satellite Beach and Indian Harbour Beach, Florida, but the rules are not the same. Satellite Beach requires a six month minimum stay for whole-home rentals, except in one designated beach area where the minimum is 30 days. Indian Harbour Beach has no minimum stay and requires every host to register with the city instead. Melbourne Beach and Cocoa Beach also have no minimum stay but regulate registration, occupancy and parking, while Cape Canaveral keeps a seven day minimum. Each city's rule comes down to whether it had a rental ordinance on the books before June 1, 2011.

Can You Airbnb in Satellite Beach or Indian Harbour Beach?

Yes in both cities, on different terms. Satellite Beach limits most whole-home short-term rentals to a six month minimum, while Indian Harbour Beach allows nightly stays and runs a registration program.

• Satellite Beach allows you to rent a room in your own home with no restriction, and requires a six month minimum for renting the whole home, dropping to 30 days in the city's designated beach area.

• Indian Harbour Beach allows whole-home short-term rentals with no minimum stay, with registration under Ordinance 2018-05, a $750 registration fee, a fire safety inspection, and paved parking for every vehicle.

• Both cities sit inside ZIP code 32937, and a rule in one does not carry over to the other.

• Melbourne Beach and Cocoa Beach set no minimum stay but require annual registration, and both limit parking to the property itself.

• Cape Canaveral enforces a seven consecutive day minimum.

Quick answer: Satellite Beach requires six months for whole-home rentals (30 days in the beach area). Indian Harbour Beach, Melbourne Beach and Cocoa Beach allow nightly rentals with registration. Cape Canaveral requires seven days. Confirm current rules with the city, and with any condo or homeowners association, before you buy or list.

Lourdes Sliwa is a real estate agent in Satellite Beach, Florida helping buyers find out what a property can actually be used for before an offer goes in, not after.

If you are shopping for a beachside home you plan to rent part of the year, or you already own one and keep getting different answers, this page lays out each city's rule side by side. Every rule below came from the city's own code or from the city directly. Rental compliance websites gave three different minimum stays for Satellite Beach alone during research, and all three were wrong, so none of their numbers appear here.

Space Coast Short-Term Rental Rules at a Glance

Why Do Space Coast Cities Have Different Airbnb Rules?

The cities on this stretch of coast did not each write their own rental rules from scratch. They kept whatever was already on their books on one specific date, and Florida law has treated that date as a line ever since.

June 1, 2011 is the dividing line. On that date the state took away most of a city's power to regulate how long or how often a home is rented. Cities that already had a rental ordinance kept it. Cities that did not cannot set a minimum stay at all.

Cape Canaveral spells it out in its own ordinance: "the City Council recognizes that the City's seven (7) consecutive day vacation rental restriction in residential areas is currently grandfathered and exempt from the state preemption set forth in Section 509.032(7)(b), Florida Statutes." That sentence explains every row in the table above.

Not grandfathered does not mean unregulated. Satellite Beach and Cape Canaveral were in place before 2011, so both still enforce a minimum stay. Indian Harbour Beach, Melbourne Beach and Cocoa Beach were not, so none of them can set one. Instead they regulate what they still can: registration, inspections, occupancy and parking.

Can You Airbnb in Satellite Beach?

Yes, with conditions. Renting a room in your own home is allowed with no minimum stay. Renting the whole home has a six month minimum everywhere in the city except the designated beach area, where the city allows a 30 day minimum because, in the city's own reasoning, buyers in that area "purchase units in them with this understanding."

The beach area is mostly condos, and condos add a second layer. Many of the properties in that 30 day area sit inside a condominium association, and an association can restrict rentals further than the city does. A unit can clear the city's 30 day rule and still be limited by its own association documents to longer leases or a set number of rentals per year. Read the declaration and rules before you count on rental income.

Satellite Beach can enforce its minimum because its ordinance predates the 2011 cutoff. Confirm the current boundary of the beach exception, and whether the city requires registration, directly with the city before you rely on it.

If you are coming from out of state and weighing more than rental rules, Relocating to Satellite Beach, Florida from Out of State: What to Know Before You Move covers insurance, flood zones and the causeway commute.

Can You Airbnb in Indian Harbor Beach?

Yes, with far fewer limits on how long a guest can stay. Indian Harbour Beach had no rental ordinance before June 1, 2011, so state law bars the city from setting a minimum rental period.

Registration is where the city does regulate. Ordinance 2018-05 created a Vacation Rental Registration Program effective October 1, 2018. It requires a $750 registration fee, a fire safety inspection, and parking for every vehicle on a paved space or driveway, not the street or the yard. A home that sits across the street from a Satellite Beach home can carry a completely different rental rule, which is why the city name on the tax bill matters more than the ZIP code on the mail.

Lourdes Sliwa is a real estate agent in Satellite Beach, Florida helping out-of-state buyers sort out Satellite Beach and Indian Harbour Beach addresses that look identical online but follow different rules.

Can You Airbnb in Melbourne Beach?

Yes. Melbourne Beach is not grandfathered, so it sets no minimum stay. The town's vacation rental chapter, Chapter 74, was adopted in 2020 under Ordinance 2020-02 and amended by Ordinance 2024-05, well after the 2011 cutoff, and the town's code states that the chapter does not restrict how long or how often a home is rented.

What the town does require: hosts register every year, keep a 24 hour contact number on file, and hold a state transient lodging license. The registration number has to appear in the listing itself, so an unregistered Melbourne Beach listing is easy to spot when you are shopping. Parking is capped at four vehicles, all on the driveway.

Current Melbourne Beach registration fees were not available from an official source at the time of writing. Call the town before you budget for one.

Can You Airbnb in Cocoa Beach?

Yes, and since March 2025 the city's rules apply everywhere in the city. Cocoa Beach is not grandfathered, and its vacation rental chapter, Chapter 26.5 of the city code, states that it does not regulate how long or how often a home is rented. There is no minimum stay.

The March 2025 change matters most for condo owners. Until then, Cocoa Beach's registration rules applied only in the RS-1 single-family zoning district. In March 2025 the city commission extended them city-wide, so condos and homes in every zoning district now fall under the same program.

Registration and inspections. Every vacation rental in Cocoa Beach needs an annual Vacation Rental Registration and a Business Tax Receipt, and has to pass fire and building inspections. The city raised its registration fees sharply in 2025 and sets them by resolution, so call Development Services for the current number before you run your projections.

Occupancy is capped by bedroom count. The limit is two guests per bedroom plus two more, or eight guests total, whichever is lower. A two-bedroom condo tops out at six guests, and a three-bedroom home or larger tops out at eight. The cap does not apply when the owner lives in the home. Some rentals outside the RS-1 district that were already operating on March 5, 2025 could apply to keep their prior occupancy for ten years, so ask the city whether a specific unit has that status.

Parking stays on the property. Guest vehicles must park on the paved driveway or inside a garage or carport. No street parking, no parking on grass, sand or shell, and no blocking the sidewalk. The maximum number of vehicles is set on each property's registration and posted inside the rental.

Cocoa Beach sits a few miles north of the barrier island towns this page starts with, but it comes up often with buyers comparing beachside condos, which is why it is included here.

What About Cape Canaveral and Indialantic?

Cape Canaveral is grandfathered. The city has enforced a seven consecutive day minimum since the late 1980s, and that sits underneath a registration program adopted in 2021 under Ordinance 10-2021. Hosts register every year by October 1, pass an inspection, and keep a three year log of every booking. The city resets its fees each October, so confirm the current schedule before you budget.

Indialantic is the one city this page could not confirm. The town's code lists vacation rentals among the uses prohibited in its commercial districts, and in early 2025 a property on South Miramar Avenue was rezoned specifically, in the town's own words, "to allow for the short-term rental of the residential units." That tells you the town treats short-term rental as something that needs special zoning, but it is not a town-wide rule. If a home you are considering is in Indialantic, call the Town Clerk before you write an offer. This page will be updated once the town confirms its rule.

What This Means If You Are Buying a Home to Rent

Check the rule before the offer, not after the inspection. The beachside towns run into each other with no obvious line on the ground, and two homes that look alike online can carry different rental rules a block apart.

A past client of mine called me from California. They had lived in Satellite Beach years before, moved out west, and wanted to come back to Satellite Beach when they retired.

We talked through their options, and one of them was renting the house seasonally until retirement. They come back to visit family at least once a year. The plan was to use the house during those visits and rent it the rest of the time, so it carries itself until they move back full time.

Now look at what a six month minimum does to that plan. If the whole house has to be rented for at least six months at a stretch, it is not a seasonal rental anymore. It is a long-term lease, and the owner is a landlord who can only use the house when a lease ends and it happens to be empty. There is no freedom to come down whenever you want.

That plan works in Indian Harbour Beach. In most Satellite Beach neighborhoods, it does not. That one rule is the reason they bought where they bought.

They ended up on a street right at the line between the two cities. If you dropped a stranger on that street, they could not tell you which city they were standing in. Honestly, for years I got that wrong too. On paper, though, the two sides of that line let you do completely different things with the house.

Confirm the city first. The mailing address and the ZIP code do not always tell you which city a home is in. The property appraiser's record does.

Then check the association. A condo or homeowners association can restrict rentals more tightly than the city allows, even in a city with no minimum stay. A property that clears the city's rule can still be blocked by its own documents.

Then run the numbers with the rules in them. An occupancy cap, a vehicle limit and a registration fee all change what a rental can earn. Add them before you decide what a property is worth to you, alongside insurance and flood zone costs, which carry more weight on the beachside than most out-of-state buyers expect.

For the full carrying cost picture, Moving to Satellite Beach, Florida: What It Really Costs in 2026 puts insurance, taxes and utilities in one place.

Lourdes Sliwa is a real estate agent in Satellite Beach, Florida helping buyers and owners across the Space Coast check city and association rental rules before they commit to a property.

Quick Signs You Can Legally Airbnb a Space Coast Home

Before you count on rental income from a beachside property, check for these.

• The city has confirmed in writing, not through a third-party website, whether its rental ordinance predates June 1, 2011.

• The seller or listing can produce a current registration number where the city requires one, as Melbourne Beach, Indian Harbour Beach and Cocoa Beach do.

• The minimum stay you are planning around matches what the city itself states.

• The condo or homeowners association documents have been read separately from the city rule.

• Occupancy, parking and inspection requirements are known before closing, not after the first guest arrives.

• The rules were confirmed within the last six months, since fees and ordinances change.

Key Takeaways

• Satellite Beach allows whole-home short-term rentals with a six month minimum stay, except in a designated beach area with a 30 day minimum.

• Many properties in the Satellite Beach beach area are condos with their own association rental restrictions, which can be stricter than the city's rule.

• Indian Harbour Beach allows short-term rentals with no minimum stay but requires registration, a $750 fee and a fire safety inspection.

• Melbourne Beach sets no minimum stay, requires annual registration with the number shown in the listing, and caps parking at four vehicles on the driveway.

• Cocoa Beach sets no minimum stay, has applied its vacation rental registration rules city-wide since March 2025, and caps occupancy at two guests per bedroom plus two, with a maximum of eight.

• Cape Canaveral is grandfathered and enforces a seven consecutive day minimum stay.

• Whether a Space Coast city can set a minimum stay depends on whether it had a vacation rental ordinance before Florida's June 1, 2011 preemption law.

• Indialantic's rental rules could not be confirmed from an official source and should be checked with the town before a purchase.

Thinking About Buying or Renting Out a Beachside Home?

Lourdes Sliwa is a real estate agent in Satellite Beach, Florida who has helped buyers and sellers across Satellite Beach, Indian Harbour Beach and the Space Coast for 18 years, with 317 homes sold, about 250 of them in the 32937 beachside ZIP code.

• Ask for the city's current rental ordinance and the association's rental rules in writing before you write an offer.

• Request a home value report on a property you already own, priced by city and property type rather than blended across the ZIP code.

• Book a relocation call to talk through which beachside city fits how you plan to use the home.

Start at lourdessliwa.com or call 321-425-8552.

No pressure, just a straight answer on what a specific address allows.

If you already own on the beachside and are weighing whether to rent it or sell it, Should I sell my home in Satellite Beach, Florida right now? walks through the timing.

Verified as of September 26, 2026. Rental ordinances, fees and registration requirements change. Confirm current rules with the city before relying on this article for a purchase or rental decision.