Cape to raise rental registration fees
Those who own short-term rentals will pay an annual $350 registration fee to the city of Cape Coral starting next year.
It’s less than where the city started but still more than property owners and industry organizations wanted.
Royal Palm Coast Realtor Association Director of Public Policy Kevin Besserer said its issues revolved around housing affordability.
“Our job as Realtors is to make sure housing is affordable for everyone,” he said. “Any cost increase is going to be pushed off to the consumer. That is a fact.”
Mayor John Gunter and Councilmembers Joe Kilraine, and Rachel Kaduk voted against both ordinance 53-25, residential rental property verbiage, and resolution 279-25, which establishes the annual registration fee and penalties.
According to the resolutions approved by Cape Coral City Council Wednesday, the annual registration fee for short-term residential rental properties will be $350 with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2026. The annual registration fee for long-term residential rental properties — defined as those rented for a period of six months or longer — is $35.
Registrations are to be submitted with the City Clerk’s Department and will include contract information including the legal name of the owner, direct mailing address, email address and telephone number. Any changes to the registration information must be done within 30 days.
Besserer said the process started with a proposed fee of $600. A stakeholder’s group was then put together with many of his members serving on the panel of mostly homeowners and property managers.
“This is a committee of stakeholders. What is the point if the stakeholders come to an agreement and then the numbers change again? We would agree to a fee of $100 as discussed by the stakeholder’s group. If you are going to involve stakeholders, involve us,” he said.
The user fees are meant to recover the costs of police officers, code enforcement officers, software and the time put forth by the clerk’s office. The city put that cost to service a short-term rental at $441.
There was discussion from Kaduk to set up a committed fund for the registration fee, which received support from other council members, as it would be a legislative policy.
Councilmember Jennifer Nelson-Lastra was one who showed support, as she believes a specific fund made perfect sense as it would provide data to track in the future.
“About 12% of all registered renters, we have code violations on either repeatedly, or one time,” she said. “Our police department does not track their service calls specific to rentals. Maybe that is something we want to capture, the true idea of the cost. This was definitely the whole purpose of this – cost recovery and preserving the neighborhoods.”
Gunter disagreed with the concept of cost recovery.
“Just a little food for thought. When we call a police officer to our house no matter what the case may be, do we recover that cost in any other scenario? Do they say here is the bill for our service? Does that ever happen? I can call the police tomorrow and they are going to come out and provide that service,” he said.
City Manager Mike Ilczyszyn said right now there is a cost recovery that the city is not able to afford via its general fund. He said by getting the revenue from registrations the city is able to “buy up service” and have staff provide enforcement letters, and outsource some of the enforcement on rentals.
“This will allow us to do more,” he said.
Before the annual rate and penalties associated with various violations was approved, Councilmember Laurie Lehmann proposed a motion to make an amendment to short-term rental properties, which received no support. She proposed that short-term rental properties should be entitled to a 50% discount on the second and subsequent annual registrations as long as they do not have any code compliance violations.
Ilczyszyn said they would have records from the police and code, but any resident could initiate 9,000 complaints on Oct. 2 and say they are doing something illegal and officers would have to show up.
“I don’t know how it could be fool proof. It could be used against owners. I understand the intent. There is no way to give validity to someone’s complaint,” he said.
To reach MEGHAN BRADBURY, please email news@breezenewspapers.com