ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — After a long day of work, most people unwind at home, maybe watch some TV and get to some house chores. For Marley Price, she spends an hour or two a day searching for illegal short-term rentals to report to code compliance.
Depending on where you live, each city has its own short-term rental policy. Despite the city of St. Petersburg being a vacation destination, the city has a relatively strict short-term rental code ordinance.
In St. Pete, a short-term rental has to be rented out for at least 30 days. If you rent it out for less than 30 days, you can only do so three times within a 365-day period.
As Price has learned through her own investigating, many of the homes listed on sites like Airbnb and VRBO aren't legal.
"So I found that a lot of them have the front of the house on the listing, so then it's pretty easy, just reverse Google searching it," Price explained. "So it's just looking up the area it's in and then seeing what has sold recently."
When a listing has had multiple reviews that are all recent, it can become obvious the home is not following city code.
In the last two months, Price has reported 108 homes to the city of St. Pete's code compliance department. Of those complaints, 88 have resulted in violations being found.
Unsurprisingly, those listing the rentals aren't a big fan.
"It was mostly just landlords telling me how they should be able to do it, which-- I didn't write the codes or anything or make the zoning map," Price said when sharing some of the negative messages she's received.
According to the city of St. Pete, there isn't a designated staff member to investigate if short-term rentals are legal.
"Enforcement by City code investigators is triggered by complaints," the city shared in an email statement. "In 2016, City staff launched a more comprehensive tracking system for short-term rentals utilizing specific case types and violation codes for better data analysis. Since that time, we’ve had 1,012 complaints and issued 775 violation notices."
Marley Price doesn't think that's enough. It's why she has taken on reporting complaints herself.
"There's so much I can't do anything about like other than putting my time towards it," she shared. "But this is one thing that I can do. And it's also like not hard and it doesn't take me long. So I might as well I might as well do it."
Over the last few weeks, Price has been sharing her findings with city councilors. She said only one has responded to her emails.
Price does this because of the affordable housing crisis. She said many of the homes in her area sit empty, waiting for tourists to rent them out, instead of being made available to those in need of housing locally.
"I feel like there's not much else I can do to impact housing like that, but this is one thing I can," she said. "Otherwise [those homes] would have sat empty most of the year as like a vacation rental. So I think that's like the biggest impact I as an individual could have."
The city of St. Pete shared code compliance department receives complaints all the time, but never to the scope of what Marley Price sends in.
If a home has a complaint against it, code compliance investigates. The homeowner then has 20 days to right their wrong. If that doesn't happen, a hearing is scheduled with the codes compliance board with the possibility of daily $200 fines.
"At the hearing, the Board determines if the property is in violation and sets a daily fine to accrue for non-compliance," the city shared in an email statement. "If the property remains in violation, a Special Magistrate can certify any accrued fines as a lien against the property, which then cross attaches to any other properties within Pinellas County owned by the same individual/entity. If a property is brought into compliance and is found in violation again within one year of their first violation notice, they are immediately scheduled for a hearing."
Correction: When this story first aired, a video of a home listed for sale by Adsizzle Realty and real estate agent Tara Richter appeared in this story. That home has never been listed as a short-term rental and is not a home that has ever been reported for a short-term rental violation. We apologize for the error and removed that home in a new version of this story.
Malique Rankin is a general assignment reporter with 10 Tampa Bay. You can email her story ideas at mrankin@10tampabay.com and follow her Facebook, X, and Instagram pages.