Michigan's statewide short-term rental bills would not override a single HOA rule
Michigan's statewide short-term rental bills would not override a single HOA rule
2026-09-12 · Michigan · Legislation · Pending — not yet law
What happened. Two bills introduced on 2 June 2026 would give Michigan its first statewide short-term rental framework. House Bill 6026 (Rep. Joey Andrews, D-38) and House Bill 6027 (Rep. Matt Bierlein, R-97) are tie-barred — neither takes effect without the other — and both were referred to House Government Operations, where they remain with no hearing.1
The co-sponsor lists are identical and bipartisan: Andrews, Bierlein, Noah Arbit (D-20), Natalie Price (D-6), Samantha Steckloff (D-19) and Will Snyder (D-87).
HB 6026 — the Short-Term Rental Act
- LARA must build and operate a statewide short-term rental database, updated annually, free to local governments, with ongoing monitoring of listings, an activity dashboard and map, and direct communication with owners.
- Annual registration. Each year a property is offered, the owner files a certificate with LARA and receives a registration number. It must include owner contact details, the rental address including unit designation, emergency contact information, and certification of $1,000,000 or more in liability insurance (or that the platform carries equal or greater).
- A new statewide 6% excise tax on the occupancy charge, collected and remitted by the hosting platform, in addition to existing hotel and convention taxes, and passable through to guests.
- A $100 annual per-listing platform registration fee, capped at $50,000, and safety requirements including a fire extinguisher on each floor and carbon monoxide detectors.
The definition reaches condominiums explicitly
A “short-term rental” is the rental for not more than 30 consecutive days of a single-family dwelling, a unit in a one-to-four-unit building, “or any dwelling unit or group of units in a condominium project.” Excluded: hotels, motels, “hotel condominiums” rented through a common rental-management company, resort-managed units, and bed-and-breakfasts.
HB 6027 — no local total ban
Amends section 207 of the Michigan Zoning Enabling Act, MCL 125.3207, to add that a local unit of government “shall not adopt or enforce any ordinance, rule, regulation, or decision, including, but not limited to, a zoning ordinance or decision, that has the effect of totally prohibiting short-term rentals within that local unit of government.”
Local governments could still regulate. They could not ban outright.
What the bills do not say, and it is worth being precise
The text of HB 6026 contains no provision overriding, preserving, or mentioning private restrictive covenants, condominium bylaws, master deeds or homeowners associations. It regulates three relationships: state and owner, state and platform, and state and local government. HB 6027 binds “a local unit of government” and nothing else.
So an association's short-term rental prohibition — whether in a declaration, in bylaws, or arrived at through the covenant-interpretation cases — would be entirely untouched by either bill.
Where that leaves a Michigan association
Exactly where it is now, which is on unsettled ground of a different kind. The Michigan Supreme Court split 3–3 in July 2025 on whether a “single family residence purposes” covenant bars short-term rentals, affirming an unpublished Court of Appeals decision and creating no binding rule. Two months later a different panel held that even a nine-month lease was a prohibited commercial use under a differently worded covenant.
Nothing in HB 6026 or HB 6027 resolves any of that. If anything, a statewide registry makes association enforcement easier — a registration number and a public database are evidence a board currently has to assemble from listing screenshots.
Two things to watch out for in the coverage
Do not conflate this with the 2021–2022 fight. Searches for Michigan short-term rental preemption surface HB 4722 and reporting on a 55–47 House vote and a stalled Senate. That is the 2021–2022 session. The current-session HB 4722 is an unrelated biodiesel tax credit bill.
There is a competing tax track. HB 5138 to 5140 and SB 965 would equalise short-term rental and hotel taxes; SB 983 would let local governments levy a 3% excise tax on stays, excluding areas with tourism bureaus. The Mackinac Center supports the equalisation bills and SB 983 and opposes HB 6026's registry and what it characterises as a 12% effective rate.
What to watch next
Whether House Government Operations schedules either bill. The committee is also holding the entire fourteen-bill zoning package and the six-bill manufactured-housing package that passed the Senate in May. It is the bottleneck for essentially all Michigan housing legislation this session, and the session ends in December.
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