Code officer cracks down on rental violations

Longboat Key Code Enforcement Officer Chris Elbon spends one work day a week scouring beautiful vacation rental properties on Longboat Key.

But he’s not looking for an ideal vacation spot. He’s looking for Key property owners who are violating the town’s rental restriction ordinance.

When he became the town’s code officer in September, Elbon received four complaints from property owners complaining that homes near them were violating the ordinance.

The ordinance states that property owners are permitted once a year to rent their residential property for a period of less than 30 days. That same property owner can rent their property as often as they want, as long as the rental period is longer than 30 days. The ordinance's goal is to reduce frequent short-term rental visits on the island.

“The complaints were enough to investigate,” Elbon said.

For the last nine months, Elbon has crafted a system that involves spending eight hours a week perusing rental website vrbo.com because that site incorporates rentals from all of the rental websites.

“It tracks down all the rentals from other places and lists them all for me,” Elbon said.

It took Elbon months to click on every rental listing for the Key.

He began sifting through listings and seeing whether property owners or property management offices were listing the rentals properly.

“If I see an advertisement or a booking calendar that shows a Key property being rented for just a few days at a time, the property owner hears from me,” Elbon said.

To track down rental restriction offenders, Elbon uses Google Maps’ street view feature to pinpoint addresses of homes for rental listings that provide obscure location information. He then uses county property appraiser websites to verify the property owner.

So far, Elbon has uncovered 13 rental violators. But none of those cases has come before the town’s Code Enforcement Board because violators have agreed to comply after receiving a warning.

“If I see an advertisement or a booking calendar that shows a Key property being rented for just a few days at a time, the property owner hears from me."

— Longboat Key Code Enforcement Officer Chris Elbon

“Owners either say they didn’t know about the town’s ordinance or they had a property management company handle the listing and didn’t know it was listed nightly or for a minimum of three nights,” Elbon said.

Once property owners inform Elbon the violation has been corrected, he follows up on the website to make sure.

To date, Elbon said he’s checked on 601 Key rental properties. Out of those 601 rentals, 209 of them are single family home rentals. Single family home vacation rentals are the only complaints he’s received from neighbors.

Elbon now has a master list of the vacation rental homes that he monitors to make sure they are in compliance with the ordinance. He checks up on current rentals and also looks once a week for new rentals.

Elbon said his efforts have begun to pay off, noting that for the last two months he hasn’t received any complaints.

“The true test will be how many complaints we receive in season when visitors are looking for vacation rentals,” Elbon said.

The rental home website review is part of a two-pronged rental-restriction approach Elbon has undertaken since he became the town’s code officer.

In March, Elbon, who took graphic design courses during his nine years in the Army, designed a brochure explaining the rental ordinance in an easy-to-understand question-and-answer format. Elbon gives property owners in violation of the ordinance a copy of the brochure when he presents them with a warning.

The brochure is available at Town Hall, the Planning, Zoning and Building Department and the Public Safety Complex.

Since property owners need to obtain a business tax receipt before they can rent their homes, they can pick up a copy of the brochure when they complete the paperwork for the annual tax.