Farmington Hills, MI Short-Term Rentals: Host Presence Rule (2026)

The Farmington Hills September 2023 ordinance does not codify a continuous-host-presence requirement (the host need not be physically inside the dwelling at every moment of every rental), but the owner-occupied / primary-residence requirement functions as an effective host-presence rule for all newly initiated STRs. Under Chapter 34 (Zoning) as amended by Zoning Text Amendment 3, 2023, lawful new STR operation requires the dwelling to be the host's permanent primary residence; the host's residence at the property is verified at initial registration through documentation including Michigan driver's license at the property address, two or more utility bills in the host's name, voter registration, and vehicle registration, and is re-verified at each 3-year Certificate of Compliance renewal through reinspection and updated documentation. The framework permits two primary operating models. First, hosted home-share operation: the host occupies the dwelling as their primary residence and rents one or more bedrooms (or an accessory dwelling unit if the property has one) to paying guests while the host remains in the dwelling. This is the classic 'spare room Airbnb' model and is fully consistent with the owner-occupied designation. Second, short hosted-absence operation: the host occupies the dwelling as their primary residence but takes occasional short absences (a vacation, business trip, family visit) during which paying guests occupy the whole dwelling. Provided these absences are genuinely short and infrequent, and the host's primary-residence indicia (driver's license, utility bills, voter registration, vehicle registration, mailing address) remain at the property, this pattern is consistent with the owner-occupied designation. What the framework does not permit is the absentee-investor model: a property owner who genuinely resides elsewhere (a separate home or a different rented apartment) using the Farmington Hills dwelling exclusively as a paid rental, even if the owner occasionally visits or 'check-ins.' That pattern is non-owner-occupied STR operation, prohibited in residential districts as a 'Motel' use under the revised Chapter 34 Article 2 Section 2.2 definition. The September 2023 ordinance does separately require designation of a local contact (24-hour reachable, with name and phone number) if the host is away from the property during any rental period; the local contact requirement is a complementary control rather than a true host-presence rule, allowing the city to reach a responsible party for emergencies, noise complaints, or code issues. Pre-September-2023 registered non-owner-occupied STRs operating under the 5-year amortization window (through approximately September 2028) do not have a host-presence requirement; they may operate as full absentee-investor STRs through the sunset. After the sunset they too must convert to owner-occupied (and thus to the implicit host-presence framework) or cease. House Bill 4722 of 2021, which would have preempted host-presence-style requirements, never passed the Michigan Senate; successor HB 5438 of 2024 remains in committee as of 2026.