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Short term rental registration deadline draws near

By Staff | Jul 25, 2018

As the deadline looms for registering vacation rentals with the Town of Fort Myers Beach, just under 1,000 properties have made the list.

The Town Council passed the Short Term Rental Ordinance May 7 to set up a comprehensive registry of rentals on the island, complete with a 24/7 property manager contact for when problems arise.

It was a piece of legislation vehemently fought by some, especially those who have invested in property to rent on the island or those who manage rental properties on the island. Others saw it as a way to protect residential neighborhoods.

The ordinance passed 3-2; now, the deadline to register a short term rental property draws near. Property owners or managers have until Sunday, Aug. 5 to get their properties in compliance with the new law – or, that’s when the warning letters will start going out, said Town Manager Roger Hernstadt.

It’s $150 for units to register this year, and the registration is valid through Dec. 31 of 2019. Registrants will get a discount in 2019 if they renew by Dec. 15 for $50. New properties coming online for the vacation rental market will pay $100 to register after Jan. 1, 2019.

Registration includes a 24-hour, 7 days a week contact number for either the property owner or manager. Part of the ordinance includes language that says if a complaint is called in on a property, such as a loud party or other issue, the town will call that contact number and the person has one hour to take an action to resolve the problem.

“That’s the warning. If it’s not resolved, code enforcement goes out to write a violation,” Hernstadt said.

The 24-hour contact should document the action they’ve taken to mitigate the situation, such as calling the tenants, or the police, to prove to the town they did take action during the hour time limit.

“If the 24-hour contact does their job, it’s just us calling you to take care of it and it’s over,” Hernstadt said.

If a property gets a violation from code enforcement, it goes through the special magistrate, who gives the final say on if it was a violation of the ordinance or not. The penalty? Properties found in violation of the short term rental ordinance more than three times “or other relevant code provisions” within a year have to pay ten times the $100 registration rate for the next year; four or more violations will cost ten times the $100 registration for the next three years. Property owners can also get slapped by special magistrate with a $500 per day fine for violations to the Code of Conduct, failure to include the registration license number in advertising, or a host of other violations laid out in section 2 of the ordinance

The registration form can be found on the town’s website; property managers are supposed to be able to register online, but glitches in the system got in the way for some people.

“It was a little bit of a rough start,” said Amy Loughrey, co-owner of Distinctive Beach Rentals. “The online system wasn’t working. We hand-delivered all of ours.”

The delay was a source of stress, as Loughrey had to get the registration numbers to apply to the 300 properties she manages across more than 50 websites. The numbers allow code enforcement to verify if a property is in the town’s system; it must be included in all advertisement of that property.

“We’ve spent $40,000 on registration fees,” she said.

But besides the hassle with the website and some detail confusion, Loughrey said the registration process for her has gone pretty smoothly.

Judith Lee, owner of Sun Palace Vacations, would disagree.

“This whole thing has been mismanaged,” she said.

After passing the ordinance, the town set dates but “didn’t explain anything or tell anyone about it,” said Lee.

Information was posted to the town website, but Lee said that wasn’t enough. The town should have sent out a letter, or an email, containing more details and dates for property owners to know.

“We have property owners from all over the world,” she said. “They should have sent a letter to all the taxpayers on the island, saying ‘Hello, this is what happened.'”

Unless someone was a frequent visitor to the website, they wouldn’t have noticed. Lee didn’t find out until too late that properties registered before July 1 only had to pay $125.

“All of this stuff could have been put in a one-page letter,” she said. “It’s like they’re trying to make everything as difficult as possible.”

Judy Haataja of Century 21 TriPower Realty agrees: there was a lack of communication.

“I felt like they should have come to us and said there’s how you do it,” she said. “We didn’t get that. They passed the ordinance, and we were supposed to follow up.”

Even finding the information online was difficult – and then, the online registration, which was supposed to be “easy,” didn’t work. Haataja was trying to get all of her properties in for the July 1 deadline discount, so she had to scan in and email each individual form to the town.

“We were all willing to cooperate, but we needed help from the town…The communication from the town to us was very poor,” she said. “They have resources to give everyone a notice.”

Haataja thinks the property owners who are already in violation will probably slip through the cracks. Some property owners may not even know they’re supposed to register, and the ones who already avoid registering with the state probably won’t do it.

It’s the people who rent their properties out on their own, without using a property manager, who are the ones the town should be reaching out to, Haataja said.

“A lot of them do a great job on their own,” she said. “They’re not reaching those properties in violation. I don’t know if the ordinance is accomplishing what they wanted to accomplish.”

As of Friday, July 20, around 599 properties had been registered with the town; by Tuesday, it was close to 1,000. Loughrey estimates there are several thousand vacation rentals on Fort Myers Beach.

“What will the town do if they don’t register?” she said.

The town has hired Elsie Louis to be the point person for handling the short term rental registry; once the Aug. 5 deadline passes, then the town’s code enforcement will be monitoring rental advertisements to make sure properties on Fort Myers Beach have their registry license number contained in the ad. Those that don’t could be unregistered.

Louis said the online registration is fixed now. Applicants need to have the latest version of Adobe Acrobat to fill out the PDF form digitally and then can email it to str@fmbgov.com.