Milwaukee County, Wisconsin Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and no city or village in the county has the power to stop you outright. Wisconsin's right to rent law took that option away from local government back in 2017, and it still holds in 2026, so the question here isn't whether hosting is allowed. It's whose counter you apply at, and how much of each nightly rate ends up somewhere other than your account.

The catch is that Milwaukee County isn't one jurisdiction for any of this. The county issues no short-term rental license and zones nothing. Your permit comes from the state, or from whichever local health department holds agent status where the property sits, so Wauwatosa, Glendale and the city itself all answer differently. Tax is the one place the county behaves like a single unit, and even there a City of Milwaukee address costs you seven extra cents on every dollar of room rate.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly: which license you need and who hands it to you, what the application asks for, the stacked taxes a Milwaukee County stay carries in 2026, the July 2026 ordinance that puts a letter in your neighbors' mailboxes, and who to call when something doesn't add up. Every figure below was read on Wisconsin's or the relevant municipality's own pages in July 2026, and anything still in motion is flagged as such. Assuming you're weighing a Milwaukee County property against somewhere else, run the numbers on both through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin?

Three layers sit on top of any listing here, and pulling them apart explains almost everything that trips people up.

Start with state law, since that's the layer working in your favor. Under Wis. Stat. § 66.1014 no political subdivision, meaning any city, village, town or county, may enact or enforce an ordinance prohibiting the rental of a residential dwelling for 7 consecutive days or longer, and any ordinance that conflicted with that rule became void on September 23, 2017, the day the law took effect. Because a "residential dwelling" covers any building or part of a building used as a home, residence or sleeping place, there's no clever building type that escapes the protection and none that loses it either.

The protection has an edge to it, though, and the edge is where local rules live. For rentals of more than 6 but fewer than 30 consecutive days, § 66.1014(2)(d)1. lets a municipality limit how many days a year the dwelling can be rented, down to a floor of 180, and require those days to run consecutively, although it can't tell you which 180 to pick. It can also make you notify the local clerk in writing when the first rental of the year begins. Anything short of an outright ban on seven-night stays survives, so permits, noise rules, parking standards and safety inspections all stay fair game.

The middle layer is the state license, and it switches on at a night count: under § 66.1014(2)(d)2.a., anyone renting a residential dwelling for more than 10 nights in a year needs a tourist rooming house license. Wisconsin defines that term much the way you would, since the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection describes one as a lodging place with four or fewer individually keyed units, covering houses, duplexes, condominium units, cabins and cottages but not hotels or bed and breakfast establishments. Go past four, though, and you're in hotel territory, with a different license and a different fee.

Then comes whatever your own municipality adds on top, which is where Milwaukee County stops behaving like a single place, because what the county does is collect rather than regulate. Going through Milwaukee County's own legislative record, I couldn't find a single county board file on short-term rentals, and the county appears nowhere in the licensing chain, so treat "Milwaukee County" as a tax boundary rather than a regulator. That distinction is worth knowing early, since the tax boundary is drawn around the whole county while the license boundary is drawn around each municipality inside it.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Milwaukee County

Since the county runs no counter of its own, the first thing to settle is whose counter you'll be standing at, and the answer depends entirely on your address. Wisconsin lets a local health department take "agent status" and issue the state's lodging licenses itself, so inside Milwaukee County the same tourist rooming house license is handed out by at least three different offices at three different prices.

• In the City of Milwaukee, the Department of Neighborhood Services acts as the state's agent and both licenses and inspects tourist rooming houses. Its page uses "short term rental" and "tourist rooming house" interchangeably and names Airbnb and Vrbo directly, so there's no ambiguity about whether a platform listing counts.
• In Wauwatosa, every short-term rental is licensed through the city's own Health Department, on a license year that runs July 1 to June 30.
• Across the North Shore, the North Shore Health Department issues the license from its Glendale office for the seven communities that fund it, charging $110 a year plus a one-time $300 pre-inspection fee as of July 2026.

Now compare that last number with the state's. DATCP's own fee table charges $296 a year plus a one-time $592 pre-inspection fee for a single tourist rooming house, so a North Shore address gets the identical license for less than a third of the state's entry cost. Two properties changes the picture again, because DATCP moves to $450 a year plus $900 for two to four units, and $550 plus $1,100 for five to nine. Make sure you check which office covers your municipality before you budget anything, since the gap between offices is larger than most people expect.

One boundary matters more than any of the fees, since it decides whether you're in this system at all. Renting more than 10 nights a year puts you inside it. At the other end, DATCP's ATCP 72 guidance reads the rules alongside Wisconsin's residential rental practices code and treats a stay of 60 days or more as creating a tenant rather than a tourist, at which point landlord and tenant law takes over instead. Between those two markers, everything in this guide is yours to deal with.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Milwaukee County

Knowing which office to apply to is one thing, and knowing what the application does to your calendar is another, because the sequence is unusually front-loaded here. In every version of it, the inspection comes before the guests, not after the first complaint.

The City of Milwaukee runs the most opaque of the three, at least on paper. You download the permit form and the Business Plan of Operation checklist, send both to the Department of Neighborhood Services Environmental Division at 841 N. Broadway, Room 105, and then, in its own words, the department creates a record and contacts you with instructions to pay. Payment comes first, and only then does someone reach out to schedule the inspection. Be aware that the city publishes no fee on that page, so you won't know your number until staff tell you, and neither the permit form nor the relevant volume of the city ordinances would load for me from outside the city's own network.

Wauwatosa publishes its sequence more plainly, and it's stricter than it first sounds. The owner or a local representative must hold the Wauwatosa permit before occupancy or advertising, which catches anyone who lists first and licenses later. Review takes up to 30 business days assuming the application is complete, and the license only becomes usable once the pre-inspection is done, which you book yourself on (414) 479-8936. After that the rental is inspected annually against both Wisconsin statutes and the city's own public health ordinances.

The North Shore Health Department ties everything to a fixed calendar rather than to your start date. Licenses run July 1 to June 30 and all of them expire on June 30 whenever you were approved, with renewal fees due before that date. There's one piece of mercy in it, since a license granted after April 1 runs through to June 30 of the following year, so a spring approval buys fifteen months instead of three. Get approved in February and you pay for a year and use four months of it.

Whichever office issues the license, the standards it inspects against changed recently. Chapter ATCP 72 was repealed and rewritten with effect from January 25, 2026, so any advice you read from 2024 describes a code that no longer exists. DATCP's summary of the changes runs through what moved, and several items bite at a normal house: at least half the sleeping rooms need a seven-foot ceiling, every bed needs a two-foot egress aisle on some side, exiting requirements from sleeping rooms now vary by floor level, and building evacuation diagrams are required for all licenses rather than for hotels alone.

Then there's the newest layer, and it applies only inside the City of Milwaukee. On July 31, 2026 the Common Council passed a substitute ordinance creating section 105-80 of the city code, which the mayor signed on August 3 and the city published on August 19.

The ordinance text does three things, and the second is the one hosts should sit with. Within 30 days of receiving any tourist rooming house application, the Department of Neighborhood Services must mail written notice of it to the district's council member and to every residence within a 250-foot radius of the property. It must also keep a publicly available list of every short-term rental property in the city. And any citation, order or police report issued over activity arising from a property's use as a short-term rental has to go from the issuing department to the platforms listing that property, within 30 days.

Read that last piece carefully, because it changes what a noise complaint costs you. Before, an order from the city stayed between you and the city. Now it lands with Airbnb or Vrbo as well, which puts your listing's standing in their hands rather than in a municipal court's.

Required Documents for Milwaukee County Short-Term Rentals

Since the neighbors get told you applied, at least in the city, it's worth getting the application right the first time rather than resubmitting in public. The City of Milwaukee's Business Plan of Operation is the fullest of the county's forms, and because the other agent departments inspect against the same state code, it doubles as a decent checklist wherever you are.

• A floor plan sketch of each dwelling unit. The city asks for this explicitly, and the checklist isn't considered complete without it.
• Proof of liability insurance, plus confirmation of whether you hold a Wisconsin Department of Revenue seller's permit. Both are yes-or-no questions, which is fair warning that somebody will follow up on a no.
• Smoke and carbon monoxide detector counts and locations, room by room. DATCP's ATCP 72 FAQ adds that both must be UL listed, smoke alarms to UL 217 and carbon monoxide alarms to UL 2034, and it names common off-brand units that fail that test.
• The fire safety picture, meaning extinguishers, ventilation, exits, escape routes and the date of the most recent fire alarm test where one applies.
• Occupancy and layout details: proposed maximum renters per day, room square footage, restrooms per unit, and trash can counts and locations.
• A 24-hour emergency phone number for the building owner, plus the owner's address and a description of how renters get into the property.
• An acknowledgment of zoning compliance. The form makes you agree that maximum tourist occupancy will comply with the maximum family occupancy rules in the underlying zoning district, and that you carry responsibility for homeowners association bylaws, covenants and every other layer of law.

That last bullet deserves a second look if you're in the City of Milwaukee, because the city's zoning code contains no short-term rental use category at all, and the only comparable defined use is a bed and breakfast. So your zoning question isn't "is this use allowed", it's "how many people may lawfully occupy this dwelling", answered through the family occupancy rules of whichever district you're in.

Two operating documents matter after approval as much as the application did before it. Keep a guest register, since ATCP 72.24 requires a written or electronic record of each guest's full name, contact information, arrival and departure dates and party size, and booking through a platform doesn't excuse you from it. And post the evacuation diagram properly, because a QR code doesn't satisfy the rule: the diagram belongs in each sleeping room, or in the check-in materials handed to the guest.

Milwaukee County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Once the license is in hand and you're able to take bookings, there's still the tax stack to settle, and that's the one area where Milwaukee County behaves as a single unit. Two different governments administer the pieces, and the pieces don't share a boundary, so it pays to take them one at a time.

Charge	Rate	Collected by	Where it applies
Wisconsin sales and use tax	5%	Wisconsin Dept. of Revenue	Everywhere
Milwaukee County sales and use tax	0.9%	Wisconsin Dept. of Revenue	All of Milwaukee County
City of Milwaukee sales and use tax	2%	Wisconsin Dept. of Revenue	City of Milwaukee only
Basic room tax (local exposition district)	3%	Wisconsin Dept. of Revenue	All of Milwaukee County
Additional room tax (local exposition district)	7%	Wisconsin Dept. of Revenue	City of Milwaukee only
Municipal room tax	7% or 8%	The municipality	Suburbs that levy one

The sales tax layer changed recently, which is why older guidance runs low. Publication 219, the Department of Revenue's guide for lodging providers, records that Milwaukee County's rate rose from 0.5% to 0.9% on January 1, 2024 and that the City of Milwaukee imposed a 2% city tax the same day. So a stay inside the city carries 7.9% in state, county and city sales tax, while the same stay in Oak Creek or Greenfield carries 5.9%.

On top of that sits the exposition district, which is the piece almost nobody sees coming. Publication 410 explains that the City of Milwaukee created the Wisconsin Center Tax District, and that a 3% basic room tax applies to lodging furnished anywhere in Milwaukee County to a person for a continuous period of less than one month. A further 7% additional room tax lands on the same receipts where the lodging is furnished in the City of Milwaukee, and the department says plainly that the 7% stops at the city line while a suburb's own room tax carries on. Covered accommodations include tourist homes, lodging houses, rooming houses, cabins "and other accommodations available to the public", which is broad enough to reach a normal Airbnb.

Add it up and a City of Milwaukee guest pays 17.9% on the room rate, made of 7.9% sales tax, 3% basic room tax and 7% additional room tax. Cross into Oak Creek, though, and the arithmetic becomes 5.9% plus 3% plus that city's own 8% room tax, landing at 16.9%. Suburban rates vary, since the Department of Revenue's municipal room tax data puts Wauwatosa, Glendale, Greenfield, Cudahy and Brown Deer at 7%, with West Allis, Oak Creek, Franklin, St. Francis and West Milwaukee at 8%, all reported as of December 2024. Do check yours against the current file before you set a price.

Who hands the money over depends on how the booking arrives. Publication 219 puts the duty on the marketplace provider, a term that covers Airbnb and Vrbo, so the platform collects and pays the Wisconsin sales tax on lodging it facilitates, along with county and city sales tax, local exposition tax and municipal room tax. It files Form RT-200 with each municipality that levies one, and it has to tell you it's doing so. Take direct bookings, though, and every one of those layers becomes yours: you'll need a seller's permit, and you'll need to contact the municipality yourself about its room tax.

There's a trap sitting underneath that. Registering for the local exposition taxes is a separate step from getting a seller's permit, and Publication 410 says so in as many words, so a Wisconsin sales tax registration does not register you for the 3% and 7%. Returns fall due on the last day of the month after each reporting period, and missing one out of neglect brings a $20 late filing fee plus a negligence penalty of 5% of the tax due for every month or part month it's late, capping at 25%. Let tax go delinquent and it accrues 18% a year in interest, which is where a small oversight stops being small.

Wisconsin Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Milwaukee County's rules land differently once you notice how much of this framework belongs to the state rather than to any city hall, and how close the state came to scrapping it this year.

Section 66.1014 is the spine, and courts have tested it. In Wisconsin Realtors Association, Inc. v. City of Neenah, 2025 WI App 49, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals held that political subdivisions may not enact or enforce an ordinance prohibiting a rental of seven consecutive days or longer, so local ordinances that logically conflict with that protection are preempted and void.

The practical read on that comes from the Wisconsin Counties Association's April 2026 legal analysis, written by attorneys at Attolles Law: restrictions functioning as a ban, an owner-occupancy requirement being the standard example, are vulnerable to challenge, and counties are told to avoid them until the legislature says otherwise. I couldn't open the opinions themselves, since Wisconsin's court and legislature domains don't resolve from where I'm working, so treat both holdings as reported by the counties association rather than read first-hand.

A second 2025 case matters for how an ordinance gets adopted rather than what it says. In Wildwood Estate, LLC v. Village of Summit, 2025 WI App 47, a short-term rental ordinance passed as a general licensing ordinance was held void because it functioned as zoning, regulating where and when short-term rentals could happen without going through the zoning process. Keep that in mind if a municipality near you announces new rules, because the route it took to get there is itself a question.

The preemption nearly disappeared this year, though. 2025 Senate Bill 1080 and its companion Assembly Bill 1050 would've repealed the core of § 66.1014 and handed local government the power to ban short-term rentals outright. Yet the bill was introduced on February 27, 2026 and failed to pass on March 23, 2026 under the session's cutoff resolution. Nothing stops a similar bill next biennium, so this is the one piece of Wisconsin law I'd re-check before signing anything.

Outside Milwaukee County the same statute produces very different local weather, since each city, village and town writes its own permit and day rules underneath it. Our Wisconsin statewide guide maps the overall picture, the Waukesha County guide covers the suburbs immediately west, and the Dane County guide covers Madison, where the local overlay is heavier. If your interest is leisure demand rather than a metro market, the Wisconsin Dells guide covers the state's genuine vacation-rental economy, and the Racine and Kenosha guides cover the lakefront cities between Milwaukee and the Illinois line.

Does Milwaukee County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Since the state sets the standards and the municipalities do the inspecting, enforcement here doesn't look like the complaint-driven model people expect from bigger cities. It looks like a licensing regime, which is slower to arrive and harder to argue with once it does.

The lever that matters most is the license itself. ATCP 72 gives the department and its agents an explicit path to suspension or revocation, so a persistent problem doesn't produce an escalating series of fines, it produces a property that can no longer be lawfully rented for more than 10 nights a year. Wauwatosa adds annual inspections against both state statute and city ordinance, and publishes its inspection reports openly, so a guest or a neighbor can read your file without asking permission.

Then there's the City of Milwaukee's new ordinance, which does something more unusual than a fine. Sending every citation, order and police report tied to short-term rental activity to the listing platforms within 30 days moves the consequence out of the municipal system entirely, and Airbnb and Vrbo then decide what to do with it under their own policies.

A delisting doesn't come with an appeal to a judge.

The 250-foot notice works the other way round, giving neighbors a reason to pay attention on day one instead of discovering the rental from a suitcase on the sidewalk. Between the two, my read is that Milwaukee is building a reporting system rather than a penalty system, and reporting systems tend to catch the casual operator that penalties never reached.

Tax enforcement is separate, and it's the sharper of the two. The Department of Revenue's local exposition penalties run to a 5% monthly negligence charge capped at 25%, a 50% fraud penalty where there's intent to evade, and 18% annual interest on delinquent tax, and the department audits. Because the platforms now report and pay on the bookings they handle, a direct-booking host who never registered stands out against a paper trail that already exists.

What I can't give you is a number. Neither Milwaukee County nor the city publishes short-term rental enforcement statistics that I could find, and the city's public list of licensed properties is a brand-new requirement rather than an existing dataset. Watch out for anyone quoting you a Milwaukee compliance rate, because as far as I can tell there isn't a published one.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Milwaukee County

Given that enforcement here is front-loaded into licensing, the order of these steps still saves more money than any single one of them, since the early ones decide whether the later ones are worth starting.

1. Find out which office licenses your municipality. The City of Milwaukee goes to the Department of Neighborhood Services, Wauwatosa to its own Health Department, the North Shore communities to Glendale, and anywhere else, ask DATCP before assuming the state is your counter.
2. Check your own private restrictions first. Homeowners association bylaws, condominium declarations and deed covenants sit outside § 66.1014's protection entirely, and the city's application makes you sign an acknowledgment that you're responsible for all of them.
3. Count your nights. Ten or fewer in a year and the licensing regime doesn't reach you, while above that it does, and in Wauwatosa the license has to be in hand before you advertise.
4. Read the current ATCP 72 standards before you furnish. Ceiling heights, egress aisles beside beds, floor-level exit rules and UL-listed alarms are cheaper to get right during a renovation than during a re-inspection.
5. Complete the application and the business plan of operation, floor plan included, and expect to pay before anyone schedules the inspection.
6. Sit the inspection, then diary the renewal, remembering that North Shore licenses all expire on June 30 no matter when yours started.
7. Register for tax twice. A Wisconsin seller's permit covers state, county and city sales tax; local exposition tax registration is its own step through Business Tax Registration or Form BTR-101.
8. Confirm in writing what your platform collects, and contact your municipality about its room tax if you take any direct bookings.
9. Set up the guest register and the evacuation diagram on day one, since both are inspected and neither can be improvised later.

Once the paperwork is behind you the question turns commercial rather than legal, and that's a different exercise. Our Wisconsin market data is the place to see how nightly rates and occupancy in this part of the state compare with the rest of it before you decide what the license was worth.

Who to Contact in Milwaukee County about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

No matter where you get stuck, four offices cover nearly all of this between them, and working out which one owns your question saves an irritating amount of time.

Licensing and inspection in the City of Milwaukee

The Department of Neighborhood Services, Environmental Division licenses and inspects tourist rooming houses as the state's agent, and it's also the office that will mail your neighbors under section 105-80.

• Address: 841 N. Broadway, Room 105, Milwaukee, WI 53202
• Email: [email protected], with "Tourist Rooming House Application" in the subject line
• Complaints and general city service: 414-286-CITY (414-286-2489)
• Forms: the permit application and the business plan of operation checklist are both linked from the department's tourist rooming house page

Licensing in Wauwatosa

The Wauwatosa Health Department licenses every short-term rental in the city and inspects it annually.

• Address: 7725 W. North Avenue, Wauwatosa, WI 53213
• Pre-inspection scheduling: (414) 479-8936
• Email: [email protected], with "Short-Term Rental Pre-Inspection" in the subject line
• City switchboard: (414) 479-8900

Licensing across the North Shore

The North Shore Health Department issues tourist rooming house licenses for its seven member communities from its Glendale office.

• Address: 5901 N. Milwaukee River Parkway, Glendale, WI 53209
• Phone: (414) 371-2980, fax (414) 371-2988
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM

The state license, and the tax

Anywhere without an agent health department, the license comes from DATCP directly.

• Licensing specialist: (608) 224-4923, [email protected]
• Technical questions on the lodging rules: [email protected]
• Address: 2811 Agriculture Drive, PO Box 8911, Madison, WI 53708-8911, (608) 224-5012

Sales tax, the county tax and the exposition district room taxes all belong to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, not to your city.

• Business tax line: (608) 266-2776, fax (608) 267-1030
• Email: [email protected]
• Mail: Mail Stop 5-77, Wisconsin Department of Revenue, PO Box 8949, Madison, WI 53708-8949

Municipal room tax is the exception, because it goes to the municipality rather than the state. The department's municipal room tax page publishes a current clerk contact and rate for every Wisconsin municipality that levies one. That's the fastest way to reach the right person in Oak Creek, Franklin, West Allis or anywhere else in the county.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Milwaukee County on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those contact lists answer the "who", while host forums are where people work out how bad any of it really is, so it's worth saying up front what I could and couldn't read. Reddit blocks automated access from where I work, so I haven't quoted it, and everything below comes from BiggerPockets threads I opened and read in full plus my own reading of the pattern. None of it is a survey.

• The distance-to-owner rule generates more anxiety than the licensing does. In a 2022 thread on Wisconsin short-term rental regulations, a Madison-area investor lays out the ordinances they'd been reading, six or seven day minimums, requirements that the owner's residence or a management company sit 25 to 30 miles from the property, and permitting on top, then asks the question everyone asks: do people follow all this, or take the risk?
• The answer that thread settled on was practical rather than defiant. Its most-upvoted reply describes solving an identical distance requirement by finding a cleaning company willing to act as the local agent, then running that past the city and getting it confirmed before buying. Calling the department and coming with prepared questions is the recurring advice, and in Milwaukee County it's better advice than usual, because the answer legitimately differs by municipality.
• Confusing the city with the county is the single most common error. A Milwaukee-area agent, replying to a 2021 thread on the Milwaukee rental market, makes the point that someone saying "Milwaukee" might mean the city of roughly 600,000, the county around it, or the five-county metro of about 1.6 million, and that the suburbs are separate municipalities with their own rules. That's a market observation, but it's exactly the mistake that sends a host to the wrong licensing office.
• Nobody I've read is arguing that Wisconsin bans this. The debate in these threads is about day caps, agent requirements and inspections, never about whether hosting is permitted, which reflects what § 66.1014 settled in 2017.

There's one live development to keep an eye on if you own inside the city, though. A separate ordinance on residency requirements for short-term rental operators was introduced on July 31, 2026, the same day the notice ordinance passed, and it sits in the Licenses Committee with no text attached to it yet. Given how the Neenah decision treated owner-occupancy conditions, that one could turn out to be short-lived, so don't plan around it either way. A bill in committee isn't a rule.

Regulation in a place like this rewards the same habit good hosting does, which is checking the boundary you're standing on rather than the one you assumed. A county line, a city line and a health department's service area can all run down different streets, and the rules that follow you across each of them are different rules. Work out which side of each you're on before the money goes in, and most of what's left turns into paperwork.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin in 2026?

Yes. Wisconsin's right to rent law, Wis. Stat. § 66.1014, prohibits any city, village, town or county from banning the rental of a residential dwelling for seven consecutive days or longer, and that protection covers every municipality in Milwaukee County. Renting more than 10 nights a year requires a tourist rooming house license from the state or from a local health department with agent status. Municipalities may still impose permits, inspections and noise rules, and for stays of more than six but fewer than 30 days, a cap of no fewer than 180 rental days a year.

How much does a Milwaukee County short-term rental license cost?

It depends entirely on which office issues it. The North Shore Health Department in Glendale charges $110 a year plus a one-time $300 pre-inspection fee. The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection charges $296 a year plus a one-time $592 pre-inspection fee for a single tourist rooming house, rising to $450 plus $900 for two to four units. The City of Milwaukee does not publish its fee; the Department of Neighborhood Services tells you the amount after you submit the application.

What taxes do you pay on a short-term rental in Milwaukee County?

A stay inside the City of Milwaukee carries 17.9% in total: 7.9% in state, county and city sales tax, a 3% basic room tax and a 7% additional room tax, both from the local exposition district. Outside the city the sales tax layer drops to 5.9%, the 3% basic room tax still applies county-wide, and the municipality adds its own room tax of 7% or 8%. Airbnb and Vrbo collect and remit on bookings they facilitate; direct bookings are yours to handle.

Does the City of Milwaukee notify neighbors about a short-term rental application?

Yes, as of 2026. Section 105-80 of the city code was passed by the Common Council on July 31, 2026 and signed on August 3. It requires the Department of Neighborhood Services to mail written notice of any tourist rooming house application to the district's council member and to every residence within 250 feet of the property, within 30 days of receiving it. The same ordinance requires the department to publish a list of all short-term rental properties in the city.

Can a Milwaukee County municipality limit how many nights you rent?

For stays of more than six but fewer than 30 consecutive days, yes, within limits. Wis. Stat. § 66.1014(2)(d)1. lets a municipality cap the total rental days in a 365-day period at no fewer than 180 and require that those days run consecutively, but it cannot dictate which days you choose. Rentals of seven consecutive days or longer cannot be prohibited at all. Where a cap applies, you notify the local clerk in writing when the year's first rental begins.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.