A Wisconsin condo may bar an owner from living there past 29 days
A Wisconsin condo may bar an owner from living there past 29 days
2026-09-21 · Wisconsin · Courts
A Wisconsin condominium declaration can forbid an owner from continuously occupying their own unit for more than 29 days, and a court will enforce it without ever asking whether the rule is fair. That is the published holding of Munnik v. Blue Harbor Resort Condominium Association, Inc., Appeal No. 2024AP1901, decided June 3, 2026 by District II of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals and ordered for publication as 2026 WI App 39.1
The opinion was authored by Judge Lazar, on a panel with Presiding Judge Neubauer and Judge Grogan. Five owners of units in a 64-unit water-park resort condominium in Sheboygan lost on every argument, and the circuit court’s summary and declaratory judgment for the association was affirmed in full.
The restriction
Section 12.1 of the Blue Harbor declaration subjects every owner to the use restrictions in the condominium documents, “including, without limitation, (i) the restriction imposed by the City’s building code in effect on the date of this Declaration that no individual may continuously occupy a Unit for a period exceeding 29 days, and (ii) the restriction that the Building and Units are intended for and restricted exclusively to residential uses.”
A separate recorded instrument, the Amended Restrictive Covenant, carried the same limit and explained it: “The condominium units have been constructed to comply with the City of Sheboygan’s building codes applicable to transient lodging. In order to comply with the City of Sheboygan’s building codes, no individual may continuously occupy any particular condominium unit for a period exceeding 29 days.”
The owners argued the limit was ambiguous, void under Wisconsin condominium law, and in any event extinguished by later events. The court rejected all three.
Why the restriction survived
The statutory footing took two sentences. Wisconsin’s Condominium Ownership Act requires a declaration to contain a “[s]tatement of the purposes for which the building and each of the units are intended and restricted as to use” — Wis. Stat. § 703.09(1)(g) — and § 703.10(1) provides that “Every unit owner shall comply strictly with the bylaws and with the rules adopted under the bylaws … and with the covenants, conditions and restrictions set forth in the declaration or in the deed to the unit.”2
On ambiguity, the court was blunt:
“Based upon its plain language, the terms of the 29-day occupancy restriction are not fairly susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation; to the contrary the restriction is clear and unambiguous. It is, thus, valid and enforceable. The parties entered into their condominium purchase agreement contracts with their eyes wide open and with a full understanding that they were limited in how long they could continuously occupy their units so as to encourage visitors to the resort.” (¶19)
And on the owners’ reading of the clause, at ¶31: “The Unit Owners hang their ambiguity hat on a far-flung tree branch.”
The part that changes how these cases are argued
Wisconsin law says restrictions on the free use of land are construed narrowly. ¶29 repeats it: “[R]estrictive covenants are strictly construed to favor the unencumbered use of property.” Owners have won Wisconsin covenant cases on exactly that principle — Forshee v. Neuschwander, 2018 WI 62, is the best-known example.
What Munnik establishes is where that principle stops. Strict construction operates only on ambiguous language, and ambiguity means language “fairly susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation” — not language a party dislikes. The court found the owners conceded the point: “reasonableness of a restrictive covenant only comes into play when that covenant is ambiguous” (¶28, citing Solowicz v. Forward Geneva National, LLC, 2010 WI 20, ¶41).
The consequence is stated at ¶44:
“If the Unit Owners now regret the bargain they entered into, they have remedies: they can sell their units, or they can elect a friendly majority to the Board and alter or amend the terms of the restriction. They cannot avoid their freely-entered into bargain by claiming unreasonableness of a reasonable restriction. Simply put, if the terms of a condominium declaration are unambiguous, ‘its terms need not pass a test as to their reasonableness in order to be enforceable.’”
So in Wisconsin an unambiguous recorded restriction never reaches a fairness inquiry at all. The fight is over whether the words admit of two readings, and nothing else.
What that does to the standard arguments
“The rule is unreasonable.” This argument has no work to do against clear language. It is available only once ambiguity is established, which makes it the second argument, never the first.
“I did not know about it.” ¶26 forecloses it: “A condominium owner is bound by the declaration, bylaws, and other legal documents creating their ownership… A prospective owner is obligated to carefully read all of the terms and conditions that are contained within the condominium documents.” The court quotes Apple Valley Gardens for the framing that “[c]ondominium ownership is a statutory creation that obligates individual owners to relinquish rights they might otherwise enjoy in other types of real property ownership.”
“The restriction has no sensible purpose.” The court found one on the face of the documents — “to encourage visitors to the Blue Harbor resort and to support an investment-owner strategy” (¶30) — and treated a purpose discernible from the words as sufficient. A declaration that states why a restriction exists is harder to attack than one that does not.
“The ordinance behind it changed.” The restriction was written to track a city building code, and the owners argued that made it conditional on the code. ¶31 treats the code reference as explanatory rather than qualifying, and asks “why that matters” given that the words of the restriction are themselves plain.
Where this lands for occupancy and rental limits generally
Wisconsin owners increasingly cite the state’s run of short-term-rental preemption wins — municipalities losing the power to cap or condition rentals under Wis. Stat. § 66.1014 — as though the same logic reached association documents. Munnik is the answer to that. Section 66.1014 constrains political subdivisions. A condominium declaration is a recorded private instrument, and the Condominium Ownership Act expressly contemplates that it will restrict use. Our Wisconsin short-term rentals page covers how the two regimes sit side by side.
Note also the intervenor. West Bend Mutual Insurance Company intervened and moved for summary judgment on coverage; the circuit court found a duty to defend and denied that motion. A declaratory action over a use restriction became a coverage dispute for the association’s carrier, which is the ordinary trajectory of these cases in Wisconsin.
What to watch next
The opinion was ordered for final publication on August 24, 2026, which makes it binding precedent statewide rather than persuasive material. Whether a petition for review follows is the open question; the published cover page as issued carries no petition notation. Until the Supreme Court says otherwise, ¶44 is the Wisconsin rule, and the “elect a friendly majority to the Board and alter or amend the terms” sentence is the court’s own description of the remedy that remains.
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