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

Do you own a place in Oakland County, Michigan and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that the county itself won't stand in your way, since Oakland County has never written a short-term rental ordinance, doesn't issue a permit, and couldn't levy a lodging tax even if the commissioners wanted one. The awkward part, and there's rather a lot of it, is that this county is a patchwork of separately governed cities, villages and townships, and they've landed in wildly different places on the same question. Bloomfield Township treats any let under 30 days as a prohibited commercial use, while Waterford will hear you out, though only at a public hearing in front of its Planning Commission. Ferndale and Royal Oak, meanwhile, will license you and take your money, and Rochester Hills never got around to writing anything at all.

2026 is also the year the mood here turned. After a shooting at a short-term rental on East Lincoln Street in Birmingham on April 11, the city's Building Department page records a six-month moratorium on issuing licences for renting a dwelling for 30 days or less, effective April 27, 2026. The Planning Board is due to bring zoning recommendations back by the fall. Two months after that, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald published ten best practices for short-term rentals on June 18, 2026, saying the county had seen two shootings at short-term rentals in a single year. Those recommendations aren't law, and she said so plainly, though when a county prosecutor starts publishing rules of thumb for a use the county doesn't regulate, local ordinances tend to follow.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in Oakland County: how to work out which rulebook your address falls under, what a licence costs where one exists, the tax you'll be collecting, how hard any of it gets enforced, and who to call when you get stuck. Every figure below comes from a city, township, state or court document I opened myself, and where a source wouldn't load I've said so rather than guessing. Before you spend a dollar on furniture, run the property through BNBCalc first.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Oakland County

Working out which rulebook applies to you is the whole game here, so it helps to understand why the county drops out of the picture completely. Michigan hands zoning power to local governments through the Michigan Zoning Enabling Act. Its section 125.3102(w) puts a county's zoning jurisdiction outside the incorporated cities and villages, then adds that it "does not include the areas subject to a township zoning ordinance". Now, every city, village and township in Oakland County zones its own land. So subtract them all and the county has nothing left to zone, which is why there's no county permit to apply for and no county office that can tell you yes or no.

The same thing happens on tax. Michigan does let counties levy a lodging excise tax under MCL 141.862, but only "a county that has a population of less than 600,000 and that has a city with a population of not less than 40,000", and the Census Bureau's QuickFacts page for Oakland County puts the July 2024 estimate at 1,296,888 people. That's more than double the ceiling, so the county is locked out by statute rather than by choice. It's the reason Kent County can charge 8% and Genesee County 5% while Oakland charges nothing, and Airbnb's own Michigan tax page backs that up, listing exactly three Michigan line items with no Oakland County row among them.

Your first job, then, isn't paperwork at all. It's finding out which of four situations your specific address sits in, because they lead to completely different outcomes. Some communities prohibit the use outright, others allow it only with discretionary approval granted case by case, others again license it as a matter of course, and the rest have never mentioned it in their code, which leaves you arguing about what a residential zoning district written decades ago was meant to permit. Make sure you settle that before you make an offer on a property, since in Oakland County the answer can change across a single street.

There's a second rulebook too, and it has nothing to do with city hall. On July 9, 2025 the Michigan Supreme Court decided Berlin Trust v Rubin and affirmed the Court of Appeals "by equal division of the Court", which left standing a holding that a covenant limiting lots to single family residence purposes bars short-term rentals on its own terms. Because the justices split evenly there's no majority opinion and no new statewide precedent, yet Oakland County is full of platted subdivisions and lake associations whose declarations were recorded in the 1950s through the 1970s carrying exactly that language. Do check your deed and your subdivision's declaration before you treat a city licence as the final word.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Oakland County

Assuming the deed comes back clean and your community permits the use at all, there's still the licence to get, and that's where those four situations stop being abstract and start costing money. Here's how the communities I was able to source directly line up in 2026.

Community	Where it stands in 2026	The requirement that bites
Bloomfield Township	Prohibited	Any let under 30 days is a commercial use, banned in R-1, R-2, R-3, RM and PRD districts
Birmingham	Paused	No new licences issued during the six-month moratorium effective April 27, 2026
Waterford Township	Case by case	Planning Commission special approval at a public hearing, with conditions attached to each one
Ferndale	Licensed	Annual licence, plus a 5% cap per block on units that aren't the owner's home
Royal Oak	Registered	A $1,000,000 liability policy filed with the city and a responsible party living within 30 miles
Rochester Hills	Unregulated	No ordinance at all, so older home-occupation rules are the only thing in play

Bloomfield Township is the shortest conversation, and it's been settled since Ordinance No. 653 was adopted on January 14, 2019. It amended Chapter 42 to define renting as offering occupancy of a dwelling for thirty days or more where the owner doesn't live there. Anything shorter got one line, and the line is blunt: a let "for a term less than thirty (30) days, also known as a short term rental, is considered a commercial use and shall be expressly prohibited." That prohibition was written into R-1, R-2 and R-3 One-Family Residential, RM Multiple-Family and PRD Planned Residential Development, which between them cover the township's housing. Unfortunately for anyone holding a Bloomfield Township property with a nightly rental in mind, no permit unlocks it. There isn't one.

Ferndale's Ordinance 1258, adopted March 22, 2021, is the most fully worked-out scheme in the county, and I'd read it first even if you're hosting elsewhere, because later Oakland County drafts keep borrowing from it. No unit may be "advertised, operated, or offered to the public" without a licence, each property needs its own, and renewal comes round every year before any rental activity starts. The Community and Economic Development Department then has 60 days to issue or deny; a denial buys you 10 days to appeal to the City Manager, who has 30 days to rule. Owe the city back property taxes or an unpaid water bill, though, and the application isn't accepted at all.

Two of Ferndale's provisions do the heavy lifting. Overnight occupancy runs at one person per bedroom, or two where the bedroom measures at least 120 square feet, with a hard ceiling of eight people however large the house is. And units that aren't the owner's principal residence are capped at 5% of the single-family, duplex and multi-family units on a block, which is a supply cap wearing a density rule's clothes. The city grandfathered whatever was already operating when the ordinance took effect, provided it licensed within 90 days, so on a block already sitting at 5% there's no way in at any price.

Fees, though, are set by City Council resolution rather than in the ordinance text, and the city doesn't publish them on its short-term rental page. Call the Building Department for the current figure rather than budgeting from a number you read somewhere.

Royal Oak went the other way and folded short-term rentals into its ordinary rental registration rather than writing a separate law. Near the top of the city's rental registration application sits a checkbox asking whether the property will be used as a short-term rental of less than 30 days at any point in the registration cycle. Tick that box and two duties get added. First, you carry liability insurance of $1,000,000.00 or more and file a copy of the policy with the city; second, every renter gets the city's Good Neighbor Policy with the trash pickup times, property boundaries, on-site parking spots, visitor limits, common areas and the noise and nuisance ordinances filled in.

Registration itself costs $90 for a condominium unit, $145 for a single-family home and $230 for a duplex as of August 2026, while multi-family properties of three or more units pay $30 per unit plus a $230 administrative fee.

The Royal Oak requirement people trip over is the responsible party. Unless you live within 30 miles of the city yourself, you have to name a real individual who does, supply a copy of their driver's licence, and have them sign an acknowledgment that they can personally be ticketed over the property. That kicks in automatically where the house is held by an LLC, a corporation or a trust, which is how most investors hold them, so don't forget to line up that person before you fill in the form.

Waterford is where it turns genuinely discretionary. The township first pulled short-term rentals into its rental certification programme in October 2022, when the Township Board adopted Ordinance 2022-002 unanimously and widened the definition of a residential rental unit to take in owner-occupied homes let on an occasional seasonal basis. That's the certification half, and it's the easy half. The zoning half is separate and it's the one that decides whether you operate at all, because a short-term dwelling in a single-family residential district needs special approval from the Planning Commission, granted case by case at a public hearing with your neighbours in the room.

The Commission's October 28, 2025 minutes tell you more about how that goes than any ordinance summary could, because three short-term dwelling cases were heard that night and only one survived. That one carried 4-3 with ten conditions attached, among them a six-guest cap, no parties, driveway-only parking, no motorised watercraft for renters, quiet hours from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., a noise monitoring programme, a four-night minimum stay, an approval that dies if the property changes hands, and an expiry date of 12/31/2038. The other two were denied outright, and when a commissioner asked how many short-term rentals the Commission had approved since the rules came in, the planning director's answer was five.

Birmingham, meanwhile, isn't issuing licences to anyone at present. Its own building department page records the City Commission placing a six-month moratorium on issuing licences for renting a dwelling for 30 days or less, effective April 27, 2026, after what the city calls "the recent incident on Lincoln". Roughly 100 short-term rentals were already licensed there, Michigan Public reported in May 2026, and those licences stand, since the city says it can't retroactively revoke one that was lawfully issued. The Planning Board is working through zoning, density, owner-occupancy and minimum-stay questions, and owes the Commission its recommendations by fall 2026. Keep in mind that a moratorium is a pause with a deadline rather than a decision, so if you own in Birmingham, what that board brings back is the thing to watch.

Then there are the communities that never wrote anything down. Rochester Hills has no short-term rental ordinance, permit or fee, while Southfield runs hosts through a general rental registration at $340 with an inspection every three years. Silence sounds like permission and mostly behaves like it, although it also means nobody at city hall can hand you a written yes. The Rochester Hills guide and the Southfield guide work through what fills the gap in each.

Required Documents for Oakland County Short-Term Rentals

Since the paperwork changes from one community to the next, assemble what nearly every Oakland County application asks for and then chase down the local extras. The list below comes from the Royal Oak and Ferndale applications, the two most detailed in the county.

• Photo ID for the owner. Royal Oak wants a copy of the owner's driver's licence attached to the form, and won't accept an electronic signature on either the owner's line or the agent's.
• A named local contact, with their own ID. Royal Oak needs a responsible party resident within 30 miles. Ferndale needs an authorised agent reachable 24 hours a day, seven days a week, who answers a guest complaint within one hour.
• Bedroom count and bedroom dimensions. Royal Oak asks for the size of each room and the maximum occupants you intend to rent to, with a separate spreadsheet for anything over four bedrooms, and Ferndale sets its occupancy cap from the same measurements.
• A count of off-street parking spaces on the property.
• Proof of insurance. In Royal Oak that means a policy of $1,000,000.00 or more, with the copy filed at the Building Division.
• Proof you're square with the city. Ferndale won't accept an initial or renewal application while property taxes, water bills or any other debt to the city is outstanding.
• A principal residence exemption affidavit, or equivalent evidence, wherever the licence class depends on the house being your own home. Ferndale asks for it by name.
• Safety attestations. Carbon monoxide detection, code-compliant smoke detectors, one extinguisher per occupied floor, and the street address posted in two prominent places inside so a guest can direct an ambulance.
• Your recorded deed and subdivision declaration. No city asks for these, and they're still the documents most likely to end the project, so read them before you file anything.

Oakland County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through the local paperwork and are able to open the calendar, there's still tax to deal with, though this is the one part of the guide where Oakland County's answer comes out refreshingly short.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Michigan use tax on lodging of 30 days or less	6%	Airbnb collects and remits it; Vrbo hosts and direct bookings remit it themselves
County accommodations tax	None	Oakland County is barred from levying one under MCL 141.862
Local accommodation tax	None listed	Airbnb's Michigan tax page carries no Oakland County or Oakland city line item

Michigan taxes lodging under the Use Tax Act rather than the sales tax, so the charge is a 6% use tax on "rooms or lodging furnished by hotelkeepers, motel operators, and other persons furnishing accommodations" under MCL 205.93a. It applies to stays of 30 days or less, and a room rented continuously for more than a month to the same tenant is exempt, which is the escape hatch behind Michigan's furnished mid-term market.

Airbnb collects the 6% for you. Vrbo doesn't, so if you list there or take direct bookings, registration and filing land on you through Michigan Treasury Online, where opening a use tax account costs nothing. Treasury then assigns your filing frequency once the account exists, so be aware that monthly, quarterly and annual are all possible and you don't get to pick.

One local tax deserves a mention, because it catches people who assume Michigan cities can't tax income. Pontiac is the only Oakland County city on Michigan Treasury's list of twenty-four municipalities levying an income tax, and it administers its own rather than routing through the state. That's a tax on income rather than on the stay itself, so it's a filing question for a Pontiac property rather than something you add to a guest's bill.

Beyond that, your rental income is ordinary taxable income at both federal and state level, and the usual deductions apply: mortgage interest, insurance, utilities, cleaning, supplies, repairs and depreciation. Renting out only part of a home means apportioning most of those, which is fiddlier than it looks on a spreadsheet, so get an accountant who has handled a Michigan short-term rental to set the method up in year one.

Michigan Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That 6% is close to the only short-term rental rule Michigan writes for you, and the absence of everything else is the through-line of this entire county. There is no statewide preemption statute in Michigan governing short-term rental zoning, licensing or occupancy, so a city or township keeps full home-rule authority to zone, license, cap or ban the use as it likes. The Michigan Zoning Enabling Act sets the outer bounds of local zoning power and contains no short-term rental provision anywhere in it.

The legislature has tried and failed to change that. House Bill 4722 of 2021 set out to classify short-term rentals as a residential use permitted in every residential zone and to bar outright bans, while still letting locals regulate noise, parking, advertising and unit caps. It passed the House 55 to 48 in October 2021, yet it never got a Senate vote and died with the session. Nothing equivalent has been enacted since, and there's no statewide registry, licence or permit for a short-term rental either, so the only state registration most hosts need is the free use tax account.

One package is worth tracking rather than planning around. HB 5138, HB 5139 and HB 5140 of 2025 are tie-barred, so all three must pass together, and between them they'd widen local authority under the 1974 accommodations tax act and let a local government put a voter-approved lodging tax on the ballot. They were introduced on October 28, 2025 and referred to the House Economic Competitiveness Committee, and as of my last verified check in August 2026 they hadn't cleared it. No rate, no effective date, no structure exists in statute yet. A bill in committee isn't a rule, so treat Oakland County's zero county lodging tax as the current position and revisit it if that package moves.

Where Michigan law has moved is in the courts, and it moved on private covenants rather than on zoning. Berlin Trust v Rubin came out of Swift Estates, a small lakeside subdivision whose 1977 Declaration limited each lot to single family residence purposes. The Court of Appeals held in July 2023 that the covenant barred short-term rentals, and the Supreme Court's July 2025 order affirmed that judgment by equal division, with Justice Welch concurring and Justice Thomas dissenting on the ground that the phrase was ambiguous.

So an evenly split court makes no new precedent, and nobody should read it as settling the question statewide. What it does mean, in a county with this much platted subdivision housing, is that a neighbour holding a copy of the declaration and a lawyer's phone number has a live theory whatever your city says. For the wider picture, the Michigan statewide guide maps the state framework, while the Macomb County guide and Wayne County guide cover the two counties next door, where several cities have gone considerably further than anything in Oakland.

Does Oakland County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Since none of that state framework arrives with an enforcer attached, enforcement here is a purely local business, and it has grown teeth over the past year. The county has no inspectors for this and no complaint line for it, whereas your city or township has both.

Waterford shows what that looks like when a community means it. Of the three short-term dwelling cases heard on October 28, 2025, the two that were denied had something in common, since township staff had already found both properties listed on Airbnb, one with guest reviews running from August through October 2025 and the other with reviews going back to April 2024. One applicant explained that he held a Waterford rental certification and hadn't realised it covered only long-term tenancies.

So the planning director corrected that on the record, telling the Commission that "the rental certification is only for long-term rentals, the short-term rentals is separate", and adding that a refusal would send a code enforcement violation letter out the next day. Meanwhile a commissioner had driven past one of the houses over the weekend and reported the out-of-state plates in the driveway. Nobody had to complain.

The penalty ladders in the licensing cities escalate quickly and each day counts separately, so Ferndale runs a $100 civil infraction for a first offence and $200 for a second, then a misdemeanour carrying up to $500 or 90 days in jail for a third inside the same calendar year. On top of that, three substantiated complaints in one calendar year put the licence itself in front of the City Manager for revocation, and a revoked Ferndale licence can't be reissued for a year. Royal Oak's ladder starts higher still, at a civil fine of at least $200 plus costs, then at least $350 plus costs, then a misdemeanour with a fine up to $500, up to 90 days in jail, or both, with the registration revocable on top.

Birmingham, though, shows how fast a single incident can rewrite the posture. The licence on the East Lincoln Street property was revoked, and on May 5 the Commission approved a package of tougher measures: licences now terminate annually on April 15, owners file a fresh annual application naming a responsible party for code violations and emergencies, and staff meet monthly with police and code enforcement to review which rentals generated calls. Mayor Clinton Baller described the shift as moving "from a customer service approach to an enforcement approach", which is about as clear a statement of direction as a host will get.

Sitting above all of it, without any legal force of its own, is the prosecutor's June 2026 list. Karen McDonald's ten best practices ask for renters aged 21 and over with verified identity, no parties or events, and occupancy at two guests per bedroom plus two per finished storey. The rest cover disclosed exterior cameras with no recording inside, noise monitoring, a 24-hour local contact, decent lighting and locks with a visible address, screening for high-risk reservations, written house rules before check-in, and cooperation with police. None of that binds you today. Watch out for it appearing almost verbatim in your community's next ordinance draft, though, because that list is now the off-the-shelf template every Oakland County council has in front of it.

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

Given how much of the risk sits in the first two steps, the order below matters more than it looks, and working through it in sequence tells you early whether the rest is worth paying for.

1. Pin down the exact municipality. Mailing addresses lie in this county, and a Bloomfield Hills or Royal Oak postal address can sit in a different township entirely. Use the parcel, not the envelope.
2. Pull the recorded deed and the subdivision declaration. After Berlin Trust v Rubin, a single family residence purposes covenant is a live obstacle even where the city is happy. This is a records search, not a phone call, and it's cheaper than a lawsuit.
3. Call the building or planning department and ask the direct question. Does this community permit a short-term rental in my zoning district, and if so, by right or by special approval? Get the answer in writing where you can.
4. Where approval is discretionary, budget the time as well as the fee. A Waterford special approval means published notice, a public hearing with neighbours in the room, and conditions that can cap guests, set a minimum stay, and expire.
5. Fix the property before you apply, not after. Detectors, an extinguisher on each occupied floor, the address posted inside, permitted bedrooms only, and off-street parking you can count.
6. Buy the insurance the ordinance actually names. Royal Oak wants $1,000,000.00 or more in liability cover with a copy filed at the city, and a homeowner's policy usually isn't it.
7. Line up the responsible party. A named individual within 30 miles in Royal Oak, an agent answering within an hour in Ferndale. Out of state, this is a real appointment rather than a formality.
8. Register for use tax through Michigan Treasury Online. It costs nothing, and it matters most if you're on Vrbo or booking direct, because nobody is collecting the 6% for you there.
9. Put the renewal and the local politics in your calendar. Ferndale and Royal Oak run annual cycles, Birmingham's licences now end every April 15, and the Birmingham Planning Board reports back in fall 2026.

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

That last step is easier when you know who picks up the phone, and in this county there's no single number. Oakland County has no short-term rental office, registry or enforcement role, so every question about whether you can operate belongs to your municipality.

Your city or township, which is the only office that can answer

• Birmingham Building Department, 151 Martin Street, Birmingham, MI 48009. Phone (248) 530-1850, Monday to Friday 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Rental complaints route through the GovAlert app or bhamgov.org/citizenrequests under "Rental Property Complaint".
• Ferndale Building Department, 300 E. Nine Mile Rd, Ferndale, MI 48220. Applications go in by post or in person; call 248-546-2525 ext. 115 to book the inspection, or email [email protected].
• Royal Oak Community Development, Building Division, 203 S Troy Street, Royal Oak, MI 48067. Phone 248-246-3210, email [email protected], open Monday to Thursday 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Friday 8:00 a.m. to noon.
• Waterford Community Planning and Zoning, 5200 Civic Center Drive, Waterford, MI 48329. Phone 248-674-6238, email [email protected]. Zoning Administrator Justin Daymon takes special approval questions on 248-618-7471.

Deeds, covenants and subdivision declarations

The Oakland County Clerk/Register of Deeds, currently Lisa Brown, holds the recorded declarations that decide the covenant question, at 1200 North Telegraph Road, Building 12E, Pontiac, MI 48341, on 248-858-0581 or [email protected]. Those details come from the county's own Clerk/Register of Deeds page as it stood on August 3, 2026, read through an Internet Archive snapshot, because oakgov.com blocked every automated request I made to it while researching this guide.

State tax registration

Use tax registration and filing both run through Michigan Treasury Online, and there's no charge to open the account. Set it up before your first booking, since the liability starts with the first night whether or not the account exists.

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

Contacting the right office turns out to be most of what hosts here argue about, and I should be straight about what follows: Reddit blocked automated access from my research environment and BiggerPockets served only category shells, so this is my read of the public record rather than any kind of survey. Do weigh it accordingly.

The recurring theme, and the one the public record supports, is confusion between two different permissions, since both Waterford applicants denied in October 2025 had been operating already and one said outright that he thought his rental certification covered nightly stays. That isn't a fringe misunderstanding either. A township can hand you a rental certificate, inspect your smoke detectors, take your money, and still treat your Airbnb listing as an unapproved use, because the certificate answers a housing-code question while the zoning ordinance answers a land-use one. Read that certificate as a green light and you're reading a document that never claimed to be one.

The second theme is a split between owner-occupiers and investors, and it shows up plainly in the hearing record. The applicant who was approved lives in his Waterford house part of the year and wanted the flexibility to let it while he's away, whereas the one denied unanimously told the Commission he owns seven properties, doesn't intend to live there, and agreed with a commissioner's description of the use as commercial. Same ordinance, same night, opposite outcomes. So hosts describing Oakland County as arbitrary are often comparing two cases a planning commission saw as entirely different animals.

The third theme is that the compliance burden is resented, and openly so. Birmingham owners called the moratorium burdensome to reporters even as one host conceded stricter policy was coming regardless, while the Michigan Short Term Rental Association points out that the state has over 1,700 defined localities and every township, city and village may or may not have its own rules. The real cost here isn't the fee, then. It's that a portfolio spread across four Oakland County communities sits under four different regimes with four renewal calendars.

What nobody argues any more is that the rules go unenforced, because that case got harder the moment planning staff started opening Airbnb and reading the review dates, and it collapsed once a shooting turned one city's licensing desk into an enforcement desk inside three weeks. If you're weighing Oakland County against the rest of the state before deciding where to buy, the Michigan market page is where the revenue side of that comparison lives.

Rules like these tend to arrive after an incident rather than before one, which is why the map of what's allowed keeps redrawing itself faster than any guide can settle. The habit worth building isn't memorising your community's current ordinance. It's knowing which meeting agenda the next version will appear on, and reading it while it's still a draft.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Oakland County, Michigan in 2026?

In much of the county, yes, but the county itself has no say in it. Oakland County has no short-term rental ordinance, registry or permit, so the answer comes from your city or township. Bloomfield Township prohibits any let under 30 days in its residential districts, Waterford allows them only with Planning Commission special approval granted case by case, and Ferndale and Royal Oak license them. Birmingham stopped issuing new licences in April 2026, while Rochester Hills has never regulated them at all.

Does Oakland County charge a hotel or lodging tax on short-term rentals?

No county accommodations tax applies. Michigan's county lodging tax under MCL 141.862 is available only to counties with a population below 600,000, and the Census Bureau estimated Oakland County at 1,296,888 people in July 2024, so the county is excluded by statute. That's why Kent County's 8% and Genesee County's 5% have no Oakland equivalent, and Airbnb's Michigan tax page lists no Oakland line item. Michigan's 6% state use tax still applies to every stay of 30 days or less.

How much does it cost to register a short-term rental in Royal Oak?

Registration costs $90 for a condominium unit, $145 for a single-family home and $230 for a duplex, with multi-family properties of three or more units charged $30 per unit plus a $230 administrative fee. Short-term rentals carry two extra conditions on the same form: liability insurance of $1,000,000.00 or more with a copy filed at the city, and the city's Good Neighbor Policy given to every renter. A responsible party living within 30 miles of Royal Oak is required whenever the owner lives further out or the property is held by an LLC, corporation or trust.

Can Birmingham still issue short-term rental licences in 2026?

Not during the moratorium. Effective April 27, 2026, the Birmingham City Commission placed a six-month hold on issuing licences for renting a dwelling for 30 days or less, following a shooting at a short-term rental on East Lincoln Street. Licences already lawfully issued stay valid, since the city says it can't revoke them retroactively, and roughly 100 short-term rentals were operating there. The Planning Board is due to bring zoning recommendations to the Commission by fall 2026.

Can a subdivision's deed restrictions stop a short-term rental in Michigan?

They can. In Berlin Trust v Rubin the Michigan Court of Appeals held that a covenant limiting lots to single family residence purposes barred short-term rentals, and on July 9, 2025 the Michigan Supreme Court affirmed that judgment by equal division. An evenly split court sets no binding statewide precedent, so the question isn't settled, though the Court of Appeals holding stands. Given how many Oakland County subdivisions carry mid-century covenants, pull your recorded declaration from the Register of Deeds before relying on a licence.

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