Sterling Heights, MI Home Business: Signage Rules (2026)

01: an activity traditionally or customarily carried on within the walls of a dwelling unit that stays clearly incidental and secondary to the use of the dwelling. The ordinance attaches six conditions to that permitted-accessory-use status, and the sign rule is the strictest of them: condition 5 requires that no sign of any nature is displayed, with no allowance for a small nameplate, window sticker, or vehicle-mounted advertisement while parked at the residence. The other five conditions work alongside the sign ban to keep the use invisible from the street: the operator must be a permanent resident of the dwelling (condition 1); the business must be wholly confined inside the dwelling itself, not a garage or outbuilding (condition 2); it cannot require alterations, equipment or machinery uncommon to a house (condition 3); it cannot occupy more than 20 percent of the principal building's floor area (condition 4); and it cannot generate traffic or parking demand beyond what the dwelling itself would need, or any other external effect atypical of a single-family home (condition 6).

Because the sign ban is written as a condition of the permitted-use status itself rather than a separate sign-code section, a home business that puts up a sign is not simply cited for an illegal sign, it loses its home-occupation status altogether and becomes an unpermitted commercial use in a residential district.