Picture a buyer who found a cottage a few blocks off Spring Lake, charmed by the porch and the walk to Savidge Street, already running the math on booking-platform income to help cover the mortgage. The listing says Spring Lake. The tax bill says Spring Lake Township. The buyer assumes those are the same thing, and that a lake town this popular with visitors must welcome short-term rentals the way it welcomes boats in July.

That assumption would have cost this hypothetical buyer the rental income entirely. As of a May 2025 zoning amendment, Spring Lake Township only allows new short-term rentals inside a single overlay district, a roughly six-block pocket known locally as Strawberry Point. Out of about 4,000 dwellings in the township, only 221 are currently eligible to register. The rest of the township, including plenty of homes that sit closer to the water than anything in Strawberry Point, is off the table.

This is the kind of detail that never shows up on a property listing and rarely comes up until a buyer is already deep into a purchase agreement. If short-term rental income is part of your plan for a Spring Lake property, the map matters more than the address.

Zoning Follows the Parcel, Not the Postcard

Spring Lake the place is actually two separate governments layered on top of each other. The Village of Spring Lake sits inside Spring Lake Township, and each runs its own zoning ordinance, its own short-term rental overlay, and its own registration process. A property with a Spring Lake mailing address could fall under either one, or under neighboring Fruitport Township, depending on which side of a line the parcel sits.

That split matters because the rules are not identical. The Village has its own overlay map and made its own cuts, removing three additional streets from eligibility after its own six-month moratorium on new permits expired. The Township, in a separate vote, narrowed its overlay to Strawberry Point alone. A buyer who checks "Spring Lake" against a general sense of the town's rental friendliness is checking the wrong thing. The only reliable check is the parcel's specific zoning jurisdiction and district, which is a matter of public record through the township or county, not something a listing description settles.

What Changed in 2025, and Why It's Getting Smaller

For years, short-term rentals were a permitted use across the Township's R-3 "cottage" residential zone, a much wider swath of the community than Strawberry Point alone. That changed in two steps. First, the Township Board voted in December 2024 to remove short-term rentals from every zoning district except R-3. Then, in May 2025, the board voted unanimously to shrink even that R-3 allowance down to the current overlay, eliminating short-term rentals from the Minetta Avenue neighborhood and from Benjamin Avenue, Rhoda Street, View Drive, and North Lake Avenue. That single vote removed about 60 homes from eligibility in one motion.

What's left is Strawberry Point, a neighborhood that Township Manager Gordon Gallagher has described as historically carrying a high concentration of second homes and vacation rentals already, representing less than 10 percent of the township's land area and about 5.5 percent of its housing stock. Of the roughly 4,000 dwellings in the township, only 221 can currently apply for a new short-term rental permit. As of May 2025, only 22 homes in Strawberry Point were actually registered, which means there was still room in the eligible zone even as the eligible zone itself kept getting smaller.

The direction of travel is the part worth sitting with. This wasn't a one-time cleanup. Township officials have described the short-term rental question as one that continues to evolve, and the pattern since the first vote in December 2024 has been contraction, not expansion. A buyer weighing a Spring Lake property for rental income should plan around the current map, not a hoped-for future one.

The Legal Reasoning Behind the Squeeze

The Township's position traces back to a 2020 Michigan Supreme Court decision, Reaume v. Township of Spring Lake, which upheld a lower court ruling that short-term rentals in residential zones amount to a commercial use, effectively a form of motel operation, and therefore fall outside what residential zoning permits by default. That reasoning gave the Township, and other Ottawa County communities like Park Township, legal cover to treat short-term rentals as something that has to be specifically zoned in rather than something residential owners can assume as a right.

That's a meaningfully different starting point than many buyers bring to a lakeshore purchase. In a lot of vacation markets, the default assumption runs the other way: you can rent short-term unless a rule specifically stops you. In Spring Lake Township, the legal default is the opposite. You cannot, unless your parcel sits inside a mapped overlay district that says otherwise.

Village vs. Township: What Actually Differs

The takeaway isn't that one jurisdiction is more generous than the other. It's that both maps are actively shrinking, on independent timelines, which means an eligibility check done a year ago may already be out of date.

The One Piece of Leverage a Buyer Actually Has

There's a detail in the Township's ordinance that changes the math for anyone shopping specifically for rental potential. Legally registered short-term rentals operating outside the current overlay were not shut down when the map changed. They were grandfathered as nonconforming uses, meaning they can keep operating, and that status transfers with a sale.

In practical terms, that makes an active, transferable short-term rental registration a distinct feature of a specific property, separate from whether that property happens to sit inside today's overlay. A home with a currently registered permit outside Strawberry Point may be the only realistic way to buy rental-eligible inventory beyond that one small neighborhood, since new registrations outside the overlay are no longer possible under the current ordinance.

That also means the reverse is true. A charming lake-adjacent cottage with no existing registration, sitting outside Strawberry Point, cannot be turned into a legal short-term rental after closing no matter how well it would perform on a booking platform. The zoning doesn't care about the property's appeal. It cares about the map.

What This Means If You're Evaluating a Spring Lake Property

Before assuming rental income is part of the deal, three things are worth confirming directly with the Township or Village building department rather than relying on a listing description:

• Which jurisdiction actually holds the parcel, Village, Township, or Fruitport, since the answer determines which overlay and which rules apply
• Whether the specific parcel sits inside the current overlay district, using the Township's or Village's own map rather than a general sense of the neighborhood
• If the property already carries an active short-term rental registration, whether that registration is transferable and current, since an expired or lapsed registration doesn't automatically renew for a new owner

None of this is a reason to avoid Spring Lake. It's a reason to build your offer and your expectations around the specific parcel, not the town's overall reputation as lakeshore-friendly.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly

Can a homeowner apply for a variance if their property sits outside the overlay? Zoning variances exist as a general process in Michigan municipal law, but the Township's recent votes suggest little appetite for expanding short-term rental eligibility case by case. Any variance question belongs in a direct conversation with the Township's Building & Planning Department before a buyer counts on it.

Does this affect long-term rentals too? No. The overlay restrictions specifically target short-term rentals as defined by length of stay. Long-term leasing follows separate registration rules and isn't limited to Strawberry Point.

Could the overlay expand again in the future? Possibly, but the pattern since late 2024 points toward further tightening rather than expansion, based on the Township's own description of the issue as still evolving.

If you're weighing a Spring Lake property with rental income in mind, or trying to figure out what a specific parcel's zoning actually allows, the Sandi Gentry Team can walk the parcel record with you before you write an offer, not after. Start with a look at current Spring Lake homes for sale or request a free home valuation to see where your property, or the one you're considering, actually stands.