When you rent a home in Miami, what are the laws and myths? Take a look

Renting a place in Miami is hard.

There’s the cost — among the highest in the country. And also the confusion — what rights do tenants have and how much can landlords get away with?

Here’s what to know if you are renting an apartment in South Florida:

Rent is high

A recent report from WalletHub, a personal finance website, showed that out of the 182 cities surveyed, Miami had the least affordable rent.
Of those renting in Miami, 60% are rent-burdened, meaning they are spending 30% or more of their income on housing.
A report by RentCafe, an online apartment hunting platform, says that $1,500 a month in Miami can now get you only 498 square feet, about the size of a two-car garage.
To make matters more difficult for renters, Florida ranks among the top six landlord-friendly states in the nation, according to LawDepot, a company that “provides legal documents for DIY use.”

There’s no ceiling for what landlords can charge

James Glover, a senior attorney with the Eviction Diversion Unit at the Legal Services of Greater Miami, says that Florida law allows landlords to get away with a lot, and “there are few to no tenant protections” in the state.

At the end of a lease term, there is no legal limit to how much a landlord can increase rent. There are also no laws around how much a landlord can charge for a security deposit, the money tenants pay landlords when they move in. A security deposit can be refunded, if a tenant has no unpaid rent or utilities, property damage or lease violations.

Fighting discrimination

State laws help prevent discriminatory evictions. Florida statutes define discrimination as treating a tenant differently “as to the rent charged, the services rendered, or the action being taken by the landlord.”

State law also says that it is illegal for a landlord to apply different lease terms, charge different rates or refuse to rent to a tenant “because of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, familial status, or religion.”

It’s not easy to prove that your landlord is discriminating against you, said Maria Llorens, the policy and research director at the Miami Workers Center, a community organization focused on building “power with working-class tenants, workers, women, and families.”

“It’s pretty challenging, because you would have to show evidence that you were specifically targeted and for that reason,” Llorens said.

She suggests keeping track of all communications between you and your landlord, and communicating in writing.

“It’s also very important to talk to your neighbors, get to know them, and talk about your rent and any issues you’re having with your housing,” Llorens said. “You can’t realize that a problem is widespread if you don’t know what it is.”

Notices for eviction

“A landlord can renew or non-renew your tenancy for any lawful reason,” Glover said. “If the landlord says, ‘You know what? You and I don’t get along. I don’t really feel like renting to you again.’ They’re allowed to do that for any lawful reason, as long as it’s not a prohibited reason.”

There are three different types of notices, and a tenant must receive one before an eviction lawsuit is filed:

30-day notice: If a landlord does not plan to renew a tenant’s lease after it expires, he or she must give 30 days’ notice. If tenants aren’t out of the unit within 30 days, they can be evicted.
Three-day notice: If your rent is overdue, your landlord can give you three days’ notice to pay. This notice excludes weekends and court holidays, and if it’s not fully paid in three days, a landlord may evict you.
Seven-day notice: This type of notice is for lease offenses, and it can either be fixable or not. If it’s fixable — for example, letting unauthorized tenants stay with you while they are not on the lease — you have seven days after receiving this notice to fix the issue, in this case the unauthorized tenants would leave the property. When it comes to unfixable offenses, including burning the apartment down, this notice would signify that you have seven days before you are evicted, Glover said.

Rent withholding and deposits

According to Glover, there are many myths Miami’s renters believe about their rights, and there are some laws they don’t know about altogether:

Myths

You can withhold your rent for any reason without notifying your landlord.
If you send your landlord a rent withholding letter after they refuse to repair something that is required under Florida law — such as pest infestations, broken locks or structural damage — that completely protects you from eviction.
If you withhold your rent, a judge will hear your case before you are forced to pay anything.

“The biggest myth is that you send that rent withholding letter and that protects you, but really what it does is it protects you up until an eviction is filed,” said Glover, the attorney for the Legal Services of Greater Miami. “The first thing you do when an eviction’s filed is you have to then put all the rent into the court registry.”

Laws

Tenants are allowed to withhold rent if their landlord refuses to repair something required by law, but they have to send a notice. The Florida Bar published , but this is only a partial protection.
If you are sued for not paying your rent, you must deposit all the past-due rent into the court’s registry — and you must do so within five days.

“You don’t run to the court to put your money in — you automatically lose the eviction,” Glover said. “Doesn’t matter if you have a winning eviction. Doesn’t matter if the landlord was wrong. If we put the rent into the court registry with that rent withholding letter, it is an absolute defense to the eviction.”

The death of the Miami-Dade Tenant’s Bill of Rights

In 2022, Miami-Dade County attempted to increase tenant protections by creating a Tenant’s Bill of Rights, which outlined some additional regulations around landlord-tenant relationships.

These regulations included requiring landlords to provide 60 days’ notice of rent increases of more than 5% and even further prohibiting discrimination by telling landlords they are not allowed to ask about prior eviction history. Tenants were even allowed to deduct the cost of repairs from their rent if a landlord did not fix issues promptly.

But a year later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1417 into law, preempting local regulations and invalidating county or municipal ordinances regulating landlord and tenant rights. The Miami-Dade Tenant’s Bill of Rights was no longer enforceable.

“The tenant’s bill of rights is dead,” Glover said. “It is entirely dead.”

“Local governments can’t increase the rights of tenants. It doesn’t allow localities to address pressing issues that impact their constituents,” said Llorens, the policy and research director at the Miami Workers Center. “That said, any right under the law isn’t worth the paper it’s written on unless you have power to enforce it.”

The harm of eviction lawsuits

When it comes to lawsuits, Glover said that “having an eviction filing against you is almost as bad as actually being evicted.”

“The eviction is just a lawsuit. It’s just like your Apple versus Google mega-billion-dollar lawsuit. It’s just like your car crash, your trip and fall,” Glover said. “It all looks the same in the public records down in Miami-Dade courthouse.”

And these lawsuits do “make it a lot harder for you,” Glover said.

“Especially in those first two to three years after having an eviction filing — it makes it a lot harder to find another apartment,” Glover said. “The good quality landlords are the ones that run the tenant screens, and the good quality landlord generally will not rent to somebody with an open eviction.”

But before the tenant even begins the challenge of finding new housing, they have to leave the house they had made a home, which is not easy.

“There’s a reason why it’s so hard to just up and move, especially on 30 days,” Glover said. “It’s your kids’ schools, it’s your church’s, it’s your entire sense of worth.”

“It’s a scary process, not knowing where you’re going to put your head, where you’re going to be able to sleep that night,” Glover said.

There’s always room to negotiate

If a tenant checks the mail and sees that the landlord is increasing rent to an unaffordable amount, Glover said the first thing you should do is “call the landlord.”

“Have a conversation,” Glover said. “The landlord’s running a business. You’re a customer. The tenant is a customer, and you can negotiate.”

As Glover puts it: “Landlords are in the business of making money. They’re not in the business of evicting tenants. They generally want to work things out with the tenants.

“It’s always best to try to have a phone call with a landlord if you’re a reasonable person, if you’re a reasonable tenant,” Glover said. “Unfortunately, if things are not working reasonably, then that’s where you may want to get somebody like our office involved. But beyond that, I always recommend to try to resolve things with a phone call.”