ADUs in Florida: What the Data Tells Us

An analysis of ADU permits in six Florida communities, neighborhood characteristics, and short-term rental use

From the data we could access, only 3% of permitted ADUs we looked at are used as short-term rentals. So why is this issue threatening to kill ADU legislation for the second year in a row?

Last year, Florida’s ADU bill didn’t make it through the gauntlet of the state lawmaking process. This year it came back with renewed momentum but has since stalled and is currently on life support as of this writing.

SB 48 and HB 313, if enacted, would require every local government, by December 1, 2026, to pass an ordinance allowing ADUs in all areas where single family homes are allowed. The legislation also prohibits rental bans, certain owner-occupancy requirements, parking requirements in limited circumstances, and discretionary approvals that don’t apply to other housing with the same zoning. We estimate these bills, if enacted, could lead to 58,000 new ADUs over the next ten years.

One major barrier to passage this year (and last year) is disagreement over whether ADUs should be regulated as short-term rentals (STRs). The Senate version of this year’s ADU bill would allow local governments to prohibit newly constructed ADUs from being rented for less than a month, while the House version doesn’t address STRs at all.

The last two years of state ADU bills have got us thinking: what do we actually know about ADU development and permitting trends in Florida?

In an effort to demystify the rarely studied topic in the state we decided to take a bit of a deep dive. While we knew ADU tracking has been largely scarce until recently in most jurisdictions, we wanted to answer some key questions:

• What are the actual trends in ADU building permits? How many ADUs are being permitted and where?

• What are the characteristics of neighborhoods where ADUs are being built?

• What share of ADUs are being used as short-term vacation rentals?

Our Data Sources

For this exploratory analysis, we partnered with six local governments that have liberalized their ADU policies in recent years and agreed to share data (with dates of the data in parenthesis):

• Pinellas County (unincorporated); (2022-2025)

• Polk County (unincorporated)

• City of Tampa; (1994-2025)

• City of Orlando

• City of Tallahassee; (2023-2025)

• Alachua County, excluding City of Gainesville; (2021-2025)

These local governments graciously either manually extracted data from their systems or had publicly available datasets we could use. Together, this allowed us to build a clearer picture of ADU development trends across different regions of Florida.

The resulting dataset includes approximately 1,400 issued ADU permits. It’s important to note that most jurisdictions studied either began tracking ADU permits only within the last four to five years or didn’t consistently track approval dates at all. This analysis should be viewed as an initial snapshot rather than a comprehensive historical record.

Permits by Jurisdiction

The breakdown of units by jurisdiction are as follows:

Here are high-level maps showing ADU permits in these jurisdictions.

High-level maps of ADU permits by locality studied.

What We Found

ADU Permit Trends: Still a Small Number

Permit trends varied widely across the communities that shared data with us. In many of the jurisdictions that were able to provide an issue date (all except the City of Orlando, Polk County, partial in City of Tallahassee), comprehensive tracking of ADU permits is a relatively recent development. That itself is an important finding—it underscores just how limited and uneven ADU data still is across Florida.

Permit totals shown for 2025 should also be treated as partial counts, since the data was pulled before the year was complete.

Overall, we see a relatively small number of ADUs permitted across the jurisdictions included in this analysis. Four of the communities were able to provide permit issue dates, which gives us a clearer picture of the pace and consistency of ADU development over time.

At first glance, these modest numbers raise an important question: at this rate, how much impact can ADUs really have on the housing crisis? On their own, probably not much. But as part of a broader strategy that includes allowing more housing types—duplexes, triplexes, and small-scale multifamily options—ADUs can still play a meaningful role in the housing toolkit. They expand flexibility and create space for more creativity in how families and small-scale builders invest in modest, attainable homes.

It’s also worth exploring these jurisdictions’ policies further to understand what local land use barriers might be preventing ADU development from reaching its potential.

Where Are ADUs Being Built?

To answer this, we used neighborhood-level Census data (block groups) from the UF GeoPlan Center Florida Geographic Data Library and compared places with ADU permits to the rest of their county. We first found the “typical” value in each county for things like income, education, housing characteristics, and household makeup. Then we measured whether ADU neighborhoods were generally above or below that local norm. We used a standardized score (z-score) so we could compare different measures using the same yardstick.

How to read this chart: Values near zero mean ADU neighborhoods look pretty average for their county. Positive values mean ADUs are happening more often in neighborhoods that are higher than average on that measure. Negative values mean the opposite. The overall pattern helps show whether ADUs are concentrated in certain types of neighborhoods or spread across many types.

Based on this analysis, we identified seven key trends that help distinguish the neighborhoods where ADUs have been permitted. While some patterns are consistent, the strength and direction of these trends vary across jurisdictions, reflecting local conditions and differences in how ADUs are developing in each community.

1. ADU neighborhoods tend to have moderately higher median incomes. Most counties show ADU neighborhoods have median incomes greater than the county average, with the strongest patterns in Orange, Alachua, and Polk counties. This suggests ADUs are emerging where homeowners have more financial capacity to undertake construction.

3. ADUs are more common in neighborhoods with fewer minority residents. Block groups with ADU permits have fewer minority residents than the countywide average, with the largest differences in Orange, Alachua, Pinellas, and Polk counties. This implies ADU uptake is occurring in less-diverse areas with limited use in high-minority neighborhoods.

4. ADUs appear in neighborhoods with lower multifamily shares. In the majority of represented jurisdictions, ADU neighborhoods have a lower share of multifamily units than their counties overall, apart from Tallahassee. This reinforces the idea that ADUs are not emerging in dense apartment-heavy areas, but in places where detached homes dominate.

4. ADU neighborhoods have higher single-family detached housing shares. Nearly all counties show strong patterns for detached housing. ADUs are appearing where the housing stock is already oriented toward single-family parcels, which physically support accessory units.

5. Educational attainment varies, but certain counties stand out. Orange County shows very high education levels where ADUs are occurring, while Hillsborough, Polk, and Leon are near the county average. Alachua and Pinellas are slightly lower. This suggests education isn’t a unified driver statewide.

6. Density differences are mixed: In some areas, ADUs are more common in lower-density neighborhoods (Alachua, Polk, Pinellas), while in others they show up more in higher-density neighborhoods (Tampa, Tallahassee, Orlando). This likely reflects differences in local context, especially whether the analysis focuses on rural/unincorporated county areas versus denser city jurisdictions.

7. ADU neighborhoods lean toward middle-aged adults and children. These trends indicate that ADUs are more commonly permitted in neighborhoods with a higher share of what would be considered mid- to late-career adults with families. These households are typically in their peak earning years, in a nesting life stage, which may correspond to greater financial stability, a tendency to invest in their homes and remain in place for longer periods.

The Short-Term Rental Question

The role of ADUs in short-term rental markets is a central issue in debates over expanding their use. However, accurately measuring this activity has been difficult due to a lack of transparent, address-level data on active short-term rentals. In Florida, for example, the tourist development tax system does not require public disclosure of specific rental units, forcing researchers to rely on fragmented and often costly third-party datasets.

For this analysis, we partnered with a Senior Housing Economist at Airbnb. This collaboration allowed us to merge Airbnb data with local ADU permit records from six local governments to identify trends. ¹Airbnb doesn’t officially categorize listings as ADUs, but we looked at properties with descriptions like “guest houses” or “backyard cottages” that closely match the typical ADU profile. This supplemental data provided a broader view of how ADU-like units are being used in the short-term rental market.

What We Found About Permitted ADUs

• Only 3% of permitted ADUs host an active STR listing.

• Another 10% matched to an inactive listing, meaning they were listed at one point but were currently not offered for rent in the last 12 months.

• Most of these listings were just casually or occasionally listed for less than 30 days per year rather than year-round aiding to the flexible nature of ADU supply.

Analysis of ADU-Like Short-Term Rentals (Airbnb Defined)

• 73% of ADU-type listings are inactive, suggesting that STR use in ADUs is temporary rather than permanent

• Three out of four of recently stayed ADU listings were not available year-round—indicating that STR use in ADUs is occasional and flexible or multi-use.

• Hosts of ADU listings throughout Florida earned about $100M over the past year, helping to offset the financing costs of constructing new housing. In Florida, 47% of hosts say hosting on Airbnb allows them to meet the rising cost of living.²

In summary: the data we have access to does not support the idea that permitted ADUs are being converted en masse into permanent short-term rental businesses. While ADUs may be more likely to be used as short-term rentals in some areas, the data we reviewed suggests that very few ADUs function as full-time short-term rentals. This is in line with what we posted on an earlier Substack summarizing evidence from other states suggesting that short-term rentals make up only a small fraction of ADUs.

The prevailing pattern is that few ADUs are used as short-term rentals and for the ones that are, don’t stay that way for long.

Closing Thoughts

Understanding how ADUs are actually used on the ground can help communities and policymakers make smarter, more grounded decisions. It also prevents potential overreacting on policy to concerns that may not be widespread, like the assumption that ADUs are primarily being built for short-term rentals. In reality, ADUs often serve multiple purposes over time, and a unit used one way today may serve a completely different household need a year from now.

Looking more closely at where ADUs are being built can also reveal where the market is working well, where it is leaving gaps, and what kinds of policies could expand access in a more equitable way. While higher-income households in more affluent areas may currently be more likely to develop ADUs, that pattern may have less to do with demand and more to do with who has the flexibility, property conditions, and financing options to move a project forward. In many communities, the biggest barrier may be access to small-scale loans, predictable permitting pathways, and the ability to manage upfront costs.

I hope this article helps demystify how ADUs are being permitted and used and what that means for policy.

Key takeaways:

• Incremental but important: ADUs won’t solve the housing crisis on their own, but they are a valuable tool in the housing toolkit.

• Short-term rental fears are smaller than they may seem: Very few ADUs are used as full-time short-term rentals, and even those rarely stay that way for long. Some neighborhoods may see a slightly higher share of ADUs used as short-term rentals, but that shouldn’t be a reason to slow down policies supporting ADU development.

• Barriers still exist: Regulatory and financial hurdles continue to limit ADU construction. Addressing these barriers is essential to expand this important housing option statewide.

1. Note: Airbnb is only one short-term rental platform. A fuller picture would require data from all short-term rental platforms.

2. Self-reported through a survey of Airbnb hosts from October 2024 to September 2025. The sample size is 1,700 and the margin of error is 2.4%.