REALTORs should be advising all customers and clients to review these rules carefully, to ensure it meets the desired usage of the property.

If you want to your STR to perform well on the sale, the property should be located in a market that has strong demand for STR usage and be in a location where you can sell your property with the in place permitting/licensing, but restrictions prevent others from replicating the business model.

Basically, you got to use Excel to figure the usage (software is a royal pain, not user friendly and it sucks but the eager USA tech support is there every time to help you do it) , that part is hard every time I have to use the software.

This discrepancy often results in usage higher than what is reported by the meter.

Depending on your AGI levels, your usage may be limited.Passive Activity Loss RulesThe accelerated depreciation is considered a “passive activity loss.”

Is this legal in Tampa or do I need to just guesstimate water usage and include it in rent?

You can't compare it to the covid revenge boom after everyone ran to the first vacation they could take.It's like comparing zoom usage at the height of the pandemic vs now and saying there's a drop in usage. 

I'm not planning to charge for anything over the cap, but maybe it could be a gentle nudge for tenants to be more mindful about their utility usage.

I buy this property for both investment and future usage because my parent will move into this home 5 years from now.

I'm thinking about adding a clause like this to the standard lease contract:Renter pays $100 for the first 400kWH of actual usage (if actual usage less than 400KWh the electricity bill will be $100).