Melody Rapier and her husband, both retired musicians, used to sit in their backyard in a quiet Bradenton neighborhood and listen to wind chimes. Now they hear pickleball volleys and basketball dribbles at odd hours, and she has found dead rats floating in her pool. She told Manatee County commissioners as much on July 28, 2026, her voice wavering. Her neighborhood, Pine Meadow, sits in unincorporated northwest Bradenton, a fifteen-minute drive from the beaches of Anna Maria Island. Roughly a quarter of Pine Meadow's hundred or so homes now operate as short-term rentals, and five of them, advertising space for thirteen to twenty guests, generate most of the complaints the HOA has fielded.
That distinction, unincorporated versus incorporated, is the one buyers shopping near Anna Maria Island for rental income need to understand before they fall in love with a listing. The island itself, made up of three separate cities, has operated under stable, well-documented vacation rental rules for years. Cross the bridge onto the mainland into Cortez, Palma Sola, or northwest Bradenton, and you are buying into a regulatory fight that is still being decided in real time, with a legal question hanging over it that nobody expected to still be open in 2026.
The island already answered this question
If you buy inside the City of Anna Maria, Holmes Beach, or Bradenton Beach, you know exactly what you are signing up for. Each city runs its own registration process, and the City of Anna Maria's ordinance spells out an occupancy formula tied to bedroom size, requires an active Florida transient public lodging license, and mandates an annual inspection before a property can legally advertise. Holmes Beach ties minimum stays to zoning, so a listing that looks like a weekly rental on paper can turn out to require a 30-day minimum depending on where it sits. Bradenton Beach runs its own registration and occupancy formula through the state's Division of Hotels and Restaurants.
None of that is new, and none of it is likely to move. These are settled municipal codes with years of enforcement history behind them. A buyer evaluating a condo or cottage inside one of these three cities can pull the current registration, the inspection record, and the occupancy cap, and know the rental math will look the same next year.
The unincorporated side is a different story
Step off the island into unincorporated Manatee County, where Cortez's fishing village charm and Palma Sola's mainland proximity to the beach have made both areas attractive to buyers who want island access without island prices, and there is no rental-specific ordinance at all. A 2011 state law protecting existing local rules from later restriction has meant Manatee County has operated in that gap for fifteen years, leaning on general noise and property maintenance codes to handle what is, in practice, a hospitality business running inside residential subdivisions.
The gap started drawing real attention after a house in the Plantation Oaks neighborhood, advertised for 32 guests, generated months of noise and parking complaints. County Commission Chair Tal Siddique first tried to move on a registry back in January 2025. Staff came back in May 2025 with a presentation instead of a draft ordinance, and when Siddique pushed for an actual vote to draft one, it died in a 3-3 tie, with commissioners Jason Bearden, Carol Felts, and Bob McCann opposed.
The issue came back to life in June 2026. McCann, who had voted against the original push, reintroduced a revised version at the June 16 meeting, and the board voted 5-0 (Bearden was absent) to send staff back to work on it. A revised draft returned July 7. By July 28, a resident group called Manatee Concerned Residents, formed that same June and already counting about 500 members, packed the chambers to describe what living next to an investor-owned rental had become for them. Founder Erin Davila, a mother of two in a deed-restricted community bordering rentals outside its boundaries, said it had become impossible to get her children through homework and asleep before the neighboring basketball games wrapped up around 2 a.m.
Two options on the table, and a legal wrinkle nobody saw coming
At the September 2 work session, county staff laid out two paths forward for the roughly 3,000 short-term rentals operating in unincorporated Manatee County. Option A simply tightens enforcement of the noise, parking, trash, and lighting rules the county already has. Option B builds a full registration and inspection program, requiring proof of state licensing and tax registration for every unincorporated rental in the county.
Here is the part that changes the calculation for anyone buying with rental income in mind. Manatee Concerned Residents didn't just ask for a new ordinance. The group presented commissioners with a legal brief arguing that short-term rentals may already be prohibited in Residential Single-Family zones under the county's existing code, tracing the definition of "dwelling" back to the 1990 land development code, which the group argues never contemplated transient lodging as a permitted use. If that reading holds, the question isn't whether a new ordinance will restrict rentals going forward. It's whether the ones operating today were already out of compliance the whole time.
Commissioner George Kruse pushed back hard on the practical side of that argument during the same meeting: "This had to do with 2011. It's 2026, and we've let 15 years go by with people actively investing in purchasing properties and investing in a business to do this." He argued the county can't retroactively shut down a business model it tacitly allowed for a decade and a half. Nobody on the board is treating a sudden shutdown as the likely outcome. But the county did send the zoning question to its attorney for review, which means the legal uncertainty is now a matter of record, not just a talking point at a podium.
Where the timeline actually sits this fall
County staff told commissioners on September 2 that a transition plan, covering what enforcement can look like in the near term, would come back within 30 to 45 days, putting that update sometime in October 2026. A full ordinance, whichever direction the board chooses, is still described as months away. Part of the delay is capacity. Code Enforcement is currently 250 inspections behind after a hiring freeze that began in February 2026, and one staffer put the practical reality plainly: "It takes us a week to get somewhere." A dedicated short-term rental program, staff estimated separately, could require as many as 11 new positions and roughly 1.5 million dollars in first-year staffing costs, plus close to 237,000 dollars annually for the software to run it.
That combination, real legal exposure on one side and a stretched enforcement budget on the other, is exactly why nothing has resolved cleanly yet, and why a buyer today can't simply wait a month for clarity.
| Anna Maria, Holmes Beach, Bradenton Beach (island cities) | Cortez, Palma Sola, NW Bradenton (unincorporated) | |
|---|---|---|
| Rental-specific ordinance | Yes, established and enforced for years | None as of September 2026 |
| Registration required | Yes, annual, city-specific | Not currently, under active debate |
| Occupancy rules | Defined by bedroom-size formula per city | General nuisance code only |
| Legal stability | Settled | Contested, subject to a pending zoning brief |
| Next milestone | None pending | County transition plan expected October 2026 |
What this means if you're shopping this fall
- Confirm incorporation status before you confirm anything else. A property a short walk from the same beach can sit on opposite sides of a regulatory line that a listing sheet will never mention.
- If the property is in Cortez, Palma Sola, or northwest Bradenton, ask the seller or manager for actual guest counts and any code enforcement history, not a projected income sheet built on optimistic occupancy.
- Understand that whichever option the county eventually adopts, registration fees, inspections, and occupancy caps are all on the table, and a rental pricing model built on today's light-touch environment may need revising within a year.
- Recognize that the zoning question raised by Manatee Concerned Residents is unresolved. It is not a reason to walk away from a purchase, but it is a reason to ask pointed questions and document what you find.
- If you're buying inside one of the island's three incorporated cities, request the current registration and inspection record. That structure has held for years and gives you a rental baseline you can actually plan around.
A few common questions
Does this affect a rental I already own on Anna Maria Island itself? No. The pending county process only applies to unincorporated Manatee County. Properties inside the City of Anna Maria, Holmes Beach, or Bradenton Beach operate under their own long-standing city ordinances, which this county debate does not touch.
When will the county actually vote on a final ordinance? No date has been set. Staff owed commissioners a transition plan sometime in October 2026, but a complete ordinance, along with the funding and staffing to enforce it, was still described as months out as of the September work session.
Should the zoning question stop me from buying a rental in Cortez or Palma Sola? It shouldn't stop a well-informed purchase, but it should shape how you underwrite it. Ask for code enforcement history on the specific parcel, keep your rental income projections conservative until the county's direction is clearer, and treat any current listing's income claims as a starting point for your own diligence rather than a guarantee.
Anna Maria Island's own rules aren't going anywhere, and that stability is worth something when you're running the numbers on a rental purchase. The mainland pockets that feed into the island's market are worth a longer look before you sign, not a shorter one.
If you're weighing a purchase near Anna Maria Island and want a clear read on which side of these lines a specific property sits, The Paxton Group can walk you through the current rules city by city and help you ask the right questions before you write an offer.
