For investors
West Michigan is one of the Midwest's strongest short-term rental markets, if you buy in the right zip code, with the right layout, under the right ordinance. We help with all three, before you're under contract.
Submarkets
"The lakeshore" isn't one market. It's a string of towns that behave differently, cash-flow differently, and attract different guests. Where you buy sets the shape of your year before you pick a paint color.
The resort-season towns
Summer does almost all the work. Weekly stays at peak rates, booked months out by guests who come back the same week every year. A strong home here earns the bulk of its annual revenue in the fourteen weeks of summer. Shoulder season rewards good design and aggressive pricing; winters are quiet and honest about it. Entry prices are the highest on the shoreline, and so are peak nightly rates.
The year-round harbor towns
Real downtowns: restaurants, festivals, a winter calendar, keep these towns booking after the beach closes. Summer is still the peak, but fall weekends, holiday stays, and off-season events fill in the shoulders. The revenue curve is flatter, which makes financing and reserves easier to plan around.
The value markets
Lower entry prices for the same shoreline, with demand that keeps climbing as the southern towns price buyers out. Nightly rates run lower, so returns live and die on buying right and pricing well, which happens to be the part we're best at.
One market we don't cover: the City of Grand Rapids doesn't allow the kind of non-owner-occupied short-term rentals we co-host, so we don't operate there. It's worth knowing before you buy, and it's exactly the sort of thing we check in every municipality before you write an offer.
What to look for
Square footage and zip code matter less than you'd think. The homes that outperform share a short list of traits:
The regulatory reality
Short-term rental ordinances along the lakeshore vary a lot: one municipality caps licenses with a waitlist, the next township over requires a permit and an inspection, and a third effectively bans non-owner-occupied rentals. These rules change, and they change at the township level, not the county.
So before you write an offer, we check: current ordinance, pending amendments, permit costs, occupancy limits, and how enforcement actually works on that street. It's part of working with us, and it has killed deals, happily.
We will tell you not to buy a house. It happens all the time. That's the point of asking early.
Our team researches and maintains a city-by-city chart of short-term rental rules across fifteen West Michigan municipalities: permit requirements, license caps and waitlists, annual costs, and lodging taxes, verified from municipal ordinances and clerk offices.
Returns, in plain English
Gross revenue is the number everyone quotes. Net is the number that matters. Between the two sit platform fees, cleaning pass-throughs, utilities, supplies, maintenance, and the co-hosting fee, and any pro forma that skips them is a brochure, not a projection.
Seasonality is real: a lakeshore home might do half its annual revenue in a single quarter. That's fine, as long as your offer price, your reserves, and your expectations are built around it.
When we run a projection for a property you're considering, we show three cases: conservative, likely, and strong, with the comps behind each. Here's the shape of one:
Illustrative pro forma, 3BD lakeshore cottage
Annual estimates based on a typical Ludington or Grand Haven 3BD/2BA
| Gross booking revenue | $85,000 |
|---|---|
| Cleaning fees (pass-through from guests) | $7,200 |
| Platform + payment fees | ($2,550) |
| Co-hosting fee (20%) | ($17,000) |
| Utilities, supplies, linens | ($6,800) |
| Maintenance reserve | ($2,500) |
| Net to owner | $63,350 |
Working with your agent
We partner with buyer's agents across West Michigan all the time, especially with out-of-state clients who can't walk a property themselves. Send us a listing and we'll come back with a revenue read, a design budget, and an ordinance check.
If you're an agent, this makes you look good: your client gets a second set of local eyes, and you get a cleaner close with fewer post-purchase surprises. If you're a buyer, it costs you nothing. It's how we meet the owners we end up working with.
Thirty minutes, real numbers, and an honest read on the property you're considering, including "don't."
Book a free 20-minute call