Kent County, Michigan Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Kent County, Michigan and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that the county itself isn't going to stop you, because Kent County doesn't regulate short-term rentals at all. It takes a tax off your guests and otherwise leaves the entire question to whichever city or township your front door happens to sit in. The address decides everything.

Which is where it gets complicated, mind you, since Kent County isn't one jurisdiction so much as thirty-five of them. The county's own city, township and village directory lists nine cities, twenty-one townships and five villages, each writing its own zoning, and the biggest one is also the strictest. Grand Rapids permits exactly one shape of short-term rental, so what you get there is a single room inside the home you live in, rented to no more than two adult guests, under a cap of 200 licenses for the whole city. Whole houses don't qualify, and neither does the small unit above your garage.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in 2026: which address gets you a yes, what the license costs where one exists, the layers of tax that attach to every night your guest stays, how hard any of it gets enforced, and who to call when something doesn't add up. Every figure below comes from Kent County's, Grand Rapids' or Michigan's own pages, and where I couldn't pin something to an official source I've said so rather than filling the gap. Before you buy anything on the strength of a nightly rate, though, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Kent County, Michigan?

Before any of those numbers mean much, you need to know which layer of government is even allowed to tell you no. Three of them sit above your property here, though only two will ever have an opinion about your listing.

Michigan is the first layer, and it's the quietest, since there's no statewide short-term rental law, no state registry, and no preemption statute stopping a local government from banning nightly rentals outright. The Michigan Zoning Enabling Act (2006 PA 110) sets the outer limits of local zoning power and contains nothing at all about short-term rentals, which means every meaningful rule you'll live with is written closer to home.

Kent County is the second layer, and its only instrument is money. Under MCL 141.862, part of 1974 PA 263, a county of Kent's size may levy an excise tax on "all persons engaged in the business of providing rooms for dwelling, lodging, or sleeping purposes … to transient guests", and Kent County does. That's the whole of the county's involvement, since it issues no short-term rental permit, runs no registry, and sets no occupancy cap.

There's no county form to fill in.

The third layer is your city or township, and it decides everything that matters. Grand Rapids is the case worth understanding first, because roughly a third of the county's residents live there and the rule is unusually narrow. The city's own home occupation one-room rental license covers renting "a single room in your principal residence to no more than 2 adult guests for overnight use". It also requires that you own the home, live in it while the guest is there, and keep the rented room inside the main dwelling rather than a guest house or garage apartment. So the backyard unit is out on purpose.

Grand Rapids did loosen its rules on accessory dwelling units in 2024, dropping the owner-occupancy requirement for building one. Even so, WOOD TV8 reported, the city kept the short-term rental carve-out intact, so an ADU still can't go on Airbnb and a single room in an owner-occupied home remains the only permitted version.

Outside Grand Rapids, the more common situation is silence, and silence is not the same thing as permission. Reading through Cascade Charter Township's zoning ordinance, the phrase "short-term rental" doesn't appear anywhere in it, and that absence is the whole problem. Hotels and motels are defined there as transient accommodation uses belonging in commercial districts, while a dwelling is defined around a household of "continuing non-transient domestic character", so nothing in between gets spelled out at all.

So the live question in a township like that isn't whether you're breaking a short-term rental rule, since there isn't one to break. It's whether the zoning administrator reads a nightly rental as a residential use or as a hotel, and that reading can change with the administrator.

Kentwood sits in a third position again, which is worth knowing because plenty of Kent County communities look like this. The city's rental inspections page requires every rental dwelling to register and pass inspection under City Ordinances 7-17 and 3-22, against the 2015 International Property Maintenance Code, with the resulting Certificate of Compliance good for a minimum of two years. The page never mentions short-term rentals or Airbnb, so what you get in Kentwood is a general landlord obligation that a nightly rental almost certainly falls inside, without any nightly-specific rule sitting on top of it.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Kent County

Given that the address does all the work, the honest first step still isn't a business plan. It's a phone call to the city or township you're buying in, made before you sign anything. Ask first, then offer.

Unfortunately for most people reading this, the version of the business they came for doesn't exist inside the city of Grand Rapids. Buying a bungalow in Eastown, furnishing it, and renting the whole thing to weekend visitors is not a licensed activity there at any price, and no fee, entity structure or clever lease unlocks it. What the city licenses is a room in the house you sleep in, and the revenue you'd be modeling is a spare bedroom rather than a unit.

That's a different business.

There is a second route in Grand Rapids, though, and it's the one most people miss. Assuming you're prepared to run something closer to a small inn, the city's Home Occupation Class C license covers bed and breakfasts, rooming houses and boarding houses, and it comes with a Special Land Use Permit application that has to clear before you can even apply for the license.

The zoning standards behind that permit are demanding, mind you. Under the bed and breakfast provisions in the city's Article 9 use regulations, the dwelling has to be your principal residence and you have to be on the premises whenever the use is operating. Guest rooms are capped at one fewer than the total number of bedrooms and never more than five, occupancy runs to two adults per guest room, and no guest may stay beyond thirty consecutive days.

Then there's the rest of it. Separate cooking facilities are prohibited, you owe one extra on-site parking space per guest room that can't be met on the street, and no bed and breakfast may sit within 500 feet of another one. That last rule quietly rations the whole category in the neighborhoods where it would work best.

Outside the city, the calculation flips from "which license" to "will anyone object". A township with no short-term rental language gives you no permit to apply for and no protection either, so your exposure is a neighbor complaint that turns into a zoning interpretation. Do check the deed restrictions and any association bylaws at the same time, since a private covenant binds you whatever the township thinks, and in Grand Rapids a condominium association's approval letter is part of the license file anyway.

One more thing to weigh before you commit. Kent County's housing market is the political backdrop to all of this, and it's not sympathetic. WOOD TV8's coverage of the 2024 zoning changes carried the Housing Next finding that the county needs to add 35,000 housing units by 2027, about 14,000 of them inside Grand Rapids. Every conversation about loosening short-term rental rules here runs into that number, so plan on the direction of travel being contested rather than settled.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Kent County

Assuming your address clears that first hurdle and you're able to get as far as paperwork, there's still no county license to apply for, only a city or township one. Grand Rapids writes its requirements down more precisely than anywhere else in the county, so it's the useful worked example even if you're buying in Walker or Lowell.

As of July 2026 the one-room rental license runs $634 for a first issuance and $229 to renew, and the city's application page is explicit that every home occupation license lasts one year from issuance. To be granted one you'll need a valid driver's license, no outstanding debt to the City (court fees, property taxes, parking tickets and city income tax all count), and ownership of the property as sole owner, joint tenant, or joint tenant by the entireties.

You also have to live in the home while you're renting the room, and the home has to be your principal residence. Companies can't hold it, and an owner who lives across town can't either.

Two constraints inside that license catch people out more than the rest. The first is that all rooms you rent must be inside the main dwelling, so an accessory structure is off the table even if it's nicer than the house. The second is a tax consequence the city states on the application page itself: you won't be able to claim a 100% Principal Residence Exemption while you're renting out space in your home, which shifts your property tax bill. Make sure you price that in before you decide the room is worth listing.

Then there's the cap, and it's the reason to move early rather than late. The city limits itself to 200 one-room rental licenses a year across all of Grand Rapids. Zoning approval comes first, which is a call to the Planning Department, and the Fire Department inspects "as needed at the discretion of the Fire Department" rather than on a fixed schedule. Processing runs five to ten business days once the file is complete. So apply early.

The bed and breakfast route costs a little more and takes considerably longer. A Class C license is $646 new and $190 to renew, also for one year, also non-refundable, and it requires a floor plan of the entire home with the rooms for rent marked, a mandatory Fire Department inspection, and that Special Land Use Permit before the license application is even accepted. Between the public hearing on the land use permit and the license itself, treat this as a project measured in months.

Elsewhere in the county you're usually looking at a general rental registration rather than a short-term rental license. Kentwood's fee schedule, in effect since May 1, 2024, charges $80 for a single unit, $40 per unit for multiples, $100 for a duplex, $100 for a re-inspection and $50 if you miss the appointment. Remember that a registration like that is a housing-code instrument, not a permission to operate nightly, so clearing it tells you nothing about whether the zoning allows the use.

Required Documents for Kent County Short-Term Rentals

Since those fees are non-refundable whether or not you're approved, it's worth assembling the file properly the first time. Grand Rapids keeps the list short, though a couple of the items take longer to produce than they look.

• A floor plan of the entire home, with the room you intend to rent clearly marked. The city's zoning rules require an interior floor plan for every home occupation license, showing the total living area and the portion given over to the occupation.
• A letter of approval from your condominium association, where one exists. An association can prohibit short-term rentals in its building even where the city would allow them, so get this before you pay anything.
• Proof you own the property in one of the three accepted forms, plus a valid driver's license.
• A clean account with the City. Outstanding court fees, property taxes, parking tickets or city income tax will hold the application, so check all four rather than assuming.
• Your zoning confirmation, from the Planning Department, that the use is permitted at your specific address.

A Class C application adds the Special Land Use Permit file on top of all that, including the floor plan of the whole home with every rentable room shown. And on the county side, the only document you'll ever file is the excise tax return, which brings us to the part nobody enjoys.

Kent County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get the license and are able to start taking bookings, there's still tax to deal with, and the county layer is the one that moved most recently. Two charges attach to the stay itself, while a third attaches to what you earn from it.

Charge	Rate	Who you remit it to
Michigan use tax on lodging	6%	Michigan Department of Treasury
Kent County lodging excise tax	8%	Kent County Treasurer
Grand Rapids income tax on rental profit	1.5% resident, 0.75% nonresident	City of Grand Rapids

The state piece is settled and easy, since Michigan taxes short-term lodging under the Use Tax Act at 6% of the room charge and a stay rented for a continuous period of more than one month to the same tenant falls out of it entirely. Registration with Treasury costs nothing and runs through Michigan Treasury Online, so don't put it off.

The county piece is the one that moved. Kent County's hotel/motel tax page now sets the lodging excise tax at 8%, up from the 5% that had been in place since 1975. County voters approved the increase at the August 6, 2024 primary as the Sports and Entertainment Facilities proposal, after House Bill 5048 amended 1974 PA 263 to permit it, and the Board of Commissioners set it running on January 1, 2025.

That sequence wasn't optional, incidentally, because MCL 141.862 caps a county at 8% and forbids anything above 5% unless the electors approve it. Any guide or spreadsheet still quoting 5% for Kent County is a year and a half out of date.

Who hands the money over then depends on where the booking came from, and that split is where hosts lose money. Airbnb is the easy case, since its Michigan tax page confirms it collects and hands over both layers for you, listing the 6% use tax for stays of 30 nights and shorter, plus a Kent County Hotel-Motel Tax of "8% of the listing price including any cleaning fees, for reservations 29 nights and shorter". That same county page lists Airbnb by name among the lodging operators it services, alongside a scattering of individual addresses held in limited liability companies, which tells you the county has been treating houses as taxable accommodations for years.

Vrbo is the problem. Michigan doesn't appear on Vrbo's list of states where it collects stay taxes, so a Vrbo host, or anyone taking direct bookings, has to collect and hand over all 14 points personally.

Doing that yourself means a monthly return by default, and the county's page puts payment due on the 15th day of the following month, charges 1% per month on anything late, and offers quarterly filing by request only. Checks go to the Kent County Treasurer's Office at Post Office Box Y in Grand Rapids, card payments carry a 2.35% processing fee, and ACH can be arranged with the Treasurer's office directly. Don't forget that the 30-day exemption applies here too, so a guest who stays a full month drops out of the county tax the way they drop out of the state one.

There's one more layer people expect and don't owe. The 4% marketing assessment funding regional tourism promotion is levied under the Community Convention or Tourism Marketing Act, and MCL 141.872 defines the "transient facility" it applies to as a building or group of buildings under common ownership "that contains 10 or more rooms".

So a house or a spare bedroom doesn't reach that threshold, which is why the combined 18% figure you'll see quoted around Grand Rapids is a hotel number rather than a host number. I couldn't confirm the assessment's exact rate on a primary source, so treat the 10-room test as the fact and the rate as background.

Finally, don't overlook the income tax if your property sits inside Grand Rapids city limits. The city's income tax guide taxes residents at 1.5% and nonresidents at 0.75%, and it names "net profits from rental of real and tangible property located in city limits" as taxable to nonresidents. Returns are due April 30, and investors who live out in Ada or Rockford while owning in the city miss this one all the time.

Michigan-Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That patchwork of city and county rules exists because Michigan chose not to write a state one, and knowing why helps you predict what happens next. The state has no preemption statute, no statewide registration, and no floor under local authority, so a Michigan township can ban nightly rentals outright and has the law on its side.

Lawmakers have tried to change that and keep failing. House Bill 4722 of 2021 would've classified short-term rentals as a residential use permitted in every residential zone and barred outright bans, while leaving locals free to regulate noise, parking and unit caps. It passed the House 55 to 48 in October 2021, never got a Senate vote, and died with the session. Nothing equivalent has been enacted since, and the Michigan Townships Association continues to campaign against any bill that would preempt township zoning, which tells you where the resistance sits.

What is moving is tax rather than zoning. A tie-barred package of three bills, HB 5138, HB 5139 and HB 5140, was introduced on October 28, 2025 and would widen local authority to levy accommodation taxes and expand the marketplace-facilitator rules that decide when a platform has to collect. As of my last check in August 2026 the package was still sitting in the House Economic Competitiveness Committee, and legislature.mi.gov's bill pages wouldn't load for me directly, so verify the status yourself before planning around it. A bill in committee isn't a rule.

For the wider picture, our Michigan statewide guide maps how differently these rules land across the state. If you're comparing metros, the Wayne County guide covers Detroit, the Oakland County guide covers the northern suburbs, and the Genesee County guide covers the one other Michigan county where Airbnb collects a local accommodation tax on your behalf.

Does Kent County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Since the county writes no rules about your listing, there's nothing for it to enforce beyond the tax, and that part it does mechanically: the return is due on the 15th and 1% a month accrues on whatever you're short. It adds up. Enforcement of the rules that decide whether you can operate at all happens in city hall, and in Grand Rapids the answer is that the rules are real but the gap between them and reality is enormous.

Crain's Grand Rapids Business reported in February 2026 that a search of Airbnb and Vrbo that week turned up more than 1,000 short-term rental listings inside the city, five times what the ordinance allows, and that not all 200 licenses are even in circulation. The city's response has been graduated rather than aggressive. Crain's describes several warnings first, escalating to fines of $265 to $370 per violation plus court costs if they go unanswered, which is a meaningful annoyance and not a business-ending one.

So plenty of owners risk it.

That gap is closing, though, and it's the part to take seriously if you're operating unlicensed today. Planning Director Kristin Turkelson told Crain's her department intends to buy software that scrapes the booking platforms to work out where short-term rentals are running and whether they comply. Cities that have bought that kind of tooling elsewhere tend to go from a handful of complaint-driven cases a year to hundreds of letters in a quarter, because the bottleneck was never the ordinance, it was finding the addresses.

Be aware that a listing which has been quietly profitable for three years is exactly what an address-matching pass surfaces first.

The bigger news, though, is that the whole policy is up for review, and the timeline on it is long. Turkelson also told Crain's the short-term rental rules will be reconsidered inside a citywide zoning ordinance rewrite that started in late 2025 and should take effect in summer 2027, with planning commission and city commission votes and public comment along the way.

Meanwhile Mayor David LaGrand wants the restrictions loosened, and he's floated dropping the owner-occupancy requirement, allowing larger groups per booking, and letting newly built ADUs hold licenses. None of that is law yet. It does mean anyone buying in Grand Rapids in 2026 is buying into a rule that's being renegotiated in public, which cuts both ways.

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

Knowing all that, the order you do things in matters more than it usually would, because the first two steps decide whether the rest is worth attempting. Working through them backwards is how people end up with a furnished house and no lawful way to rent it.

1. Pin down which municipality the property is in, exactly. A Grand Rapids mailing address doesn't mean the city of Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids Charter Township, Walker, Wyoming, Kentwood and East Grand Rapids all share postal geography with the city and none of them share its ordinance.
2. Call that municipality's planning or zoning office before you make an offer, and ask the question in plain terms: is renting this dwelling to guests for fewer than 30 days a permitted use at this address, and what license does it need. Get the answer by email if you can.
3. Read the deed restrictions and any association bylaws. A private covenant can prohibit what the zoning permits, and no city license overrides it.
4. Design the stay so it matches what the address allows. In Grand Rapids that means one room, you living in the house, two adult guests, and nothing in a garage apartment. Anywhere else it means whatever the zoning office told you in step two.
5. Apply for the license and pay the fee. Budget $634 for a Grand Rapids one-room rental or $646 for the Class C route, allow five to ten business days for processing, and add months if a Special Land Use Permit is involved.
6. Register for Michigan use tax through Michigan Treasury Online. Registration is free, and you'll need it whether or not a platform collects on your behalf.
7. Sort out the county lodging tax before your first guest. Airbnb hosts are covered automatically. Everyone else needs to contact the Kent County Treasurer's office and start filing monthly.
8. Set a calendar reminder for the renewal. These licenses run one year from issuance, not to a fixed date, and letting one lapse in a city with a 200-license cap means rejoining a queue.
9. Run the numbers against comparable markets before you commit. Kent County's rules are tight enough that a neighboring county can be the better buy, and the Michigan market data is worth an hour of your time before the earnest money goes down.

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

Whichever step you get stuck on, four offices handle nearly everything between them, and calling the right one first saves you an afternoon.

Zoning, and whether the use is allowed at your address

The Grand Rapids Planning Department answers the use question for city properties, and it's the call to make before you spend anything.

• Address: 1120 Monroe Ave NW, Grand Rapids, MI 49503
• Phone: 616.456.4100
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 4pm

Outside the city, the equivalent office is your township or city hall, and Kent County's city, township and village directory lists all thirty-five of them with links.

Licensing, the application and the fee

The Grand Rapids City Clerk's Office issues home occupation licenses, including the one-room rental and the Class C bed and breakfast.

• Address: 300 Monroe Ave NW, Second Floor, Grand Rapids, MI 49503
• Phone: 616-456-3016
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm

The county lodging tax

The Kent County Treasurer's Office administers the 8% lodging excise tax and is who you register with if a platform isn't collecting for you.

• Payments: Kent County Treasurer's Office, P.O. Box Y, Grand Rapids, MI 49501
• In person: Kent County Administration Building, 300 Monroe Avenue NW, Grand Rapids, 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday
• Phone: (616) 632-7500
• ACH setup: 616-632-7496

Rental registration and inspections

Registration and property-maintenance inspection sit with your own city. In Kentwood that means the Inspections Department. It takes registrations at Post Office Box 8848, Kentwood, MI 49518-8848, and books inspections on 616-554-0701. Keep in mind that most Kent County cities run something similar under a different name, so ask about rental registration separately from zoning even when you're already on the phone.

For state use tax, registration and filing both run through Michigan Treasury Online, and the Department of Treasury's use tax page carries the current guidance on what lodging is taxable.

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

Those official channels tell you what the rules are; they don't tell you how operators feel about living inside them, and on that the local record is unusually clear. I should say up front that Reddit and BiggerPockets both blocked automated access from my research environment, so what follows is my read of the public conversation rather than a survey of threads, built mainly on named West Michigan operators speaking on the record to Crain's in February 2026.

• Investors think the cap is arbitrary and want it multiplied. Ryan Ogle, a broker and investor with Blu House Properties, told Crain's the current rules are "way too restrictive" and that the cap should rise to roughly 1,000, since that's about the number of listings the market has produced anyway. His specific complaint is a familiar one: clients who want to buy a condo they can rent out occasionally while they travel can't do it lawfully.
• Licensed hoteliers are the loudest voice for keeping things as they are. Brad Veneklase of Urban Soil Realty, who runs three licensed boutique properties downtown, called the city's zoning "spot-on" and pointed out that he cleared a stricter licensing process, with higher safety standards, than a short-term rental would face. That tension between people who went through the hotel route and people who want an easier one runs through every version of this argument.
• Operators are voting with their capital and going elsewhere. Jordan Painter, a Cascade Township broker whose management company works mainly in the lakeshore towns, said he'd consider investing in Grand Rapids if more short-term rentals were allowed. Meanwhile his firm has been selling its own short-term rental properties across Michigan and buying commercially zoned motels to convert instead, which is a rational response to tightening residential rules in a lot of Michigan towns.
• Nobody seriously argues the current rule reflects what's happening. More than 1,000 listings against 200 licenses isn't a compliance debate, it's an acknowledgment that the ordinance dates from 2014 and the market doesn't. Even the mayor described it as a black market in Crain's, which is not language a city usually uses about its own ordinance.

Take the enforcement point seriously all the same. Sentiment doesn't protect you from a fine, and the same reporting that documents 1,000 listings also documents a planning department about to start matching them against addresses. Watch out for the temptation to read a low enforcement rate as permission, because the thing that changes it is a software purchase rather than a vote.

The pattern worth carrying out of all this is that the smallest unit of government is usually the one that decides. A state can stay silent, a county can take its cut and shrug, and what finally settles whether you're running a business or a code violation is a licensing desk on the second floor of somebody's city hall. So wherever you're weighing a property, find that desk first and ask the question in the address's own terms. It's a much cheaper way to learn the answer than buying the house and finding out.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you run an Airbnb in Kent County, Michigan in 2026?

It depends entirely on the municipality. Kent County has no short-term rental ordinance of its own, so the rule comes from your city or township. Grand Rapids permits only a single room in an owner-occupied principal residence, with a maximum of two adult guests, under a license capped at 200 citywide. Many Kent County townships have no short-term rental language at all, which leaves the decision to the local zoning administrator. Confirm the position at your specific address before buying.

How much does a Grand Rapids short-term rental license cost?

A home occupation one-room rental license costs $634 for a first issuance and $229 to renew, and it runs one year from the date it's issued. The bed and breakfast route, licensed as Home Occupation Class C, costs $646 new and $190 to renew, and it also requires a Special Land Use Permit before you can apply. Fees are non-refundable whether or not the application succeeds, so confirm zoning first.

What is the Kent County lodging tax on a short-term rental?

Kent County levies an 8% lodging excise tax on stays of fewer than 30 consecutive days, up from 5% since January 1, 2025 after voters approved the increase in August 2024. Michigan's 6% use tax applies on top of it. Airbnb collects and remits both automatically. Vrbo doesn't collect Michigan taxes, so Vrbo and direct-booking hosts remit the full amount themselves, monthly, by the 15th of the following month.

Can you rent a whole house on Airbnb in Grand Rapids?

Not as a short-term rental. The city licenses single rooms in owner-occupied homes only, and it excludes entire houses and accessory dwelling units. The nearest lawful equivalent is a bed and breakfast or rooming house under a Class C license, which still requires you to live on the premises and to hold a Special Land Use Permit. Whole-property nightly rental in the city otherwise means operating as a licensed hotel.

Do Kent County townships allow short-term rentals?

There's no single answer, because each of the twenty-one townships zones for itself and most have never written a short-term rental rule. Cascade Charter Township's zoning ordinance, for example, doesn't use the phrase anywhere, which leaves the zoning administrator to classify a nightly rental as either a residential use or a transient one. Ask the township in writing, and keep the answer.

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