Port Huron STR Rules: Two Halls, Two Very Different Codes

Two separate governments regulate short-term rentals within a few miles of each other along the St. Clair River near Port Huron, Michigan, and they are not interchangeable. The City of Port Huron runs its own rental certification program out of city desk. Burtchville Township, just north along the shoreline, enforces a completely different ordinance, §154.135, out of its own township hall a few miles away. A host who assumes "Port Huron rules" cover any address with a Port Huron mailing address is already working from the wrong document, and that mistake shows up later as a canceled booking or a compliance letter, not as a minor paperwork gap.

This distinction matters for more than legal tidiness — it changes what a listing calendar is allowed to look like. AirROI's extract for the broader Port Huron short-term rental market, vintage August 2025 through July 2026, shows a typical year of $12,482 across 54 listings, a $185 average daily rate, 31.5 percent occupancy, and a $59 RevPAR, alongside a year-over-year change of minus 25.9 percent. Those figures describe market performance across the sample. They say nothing about which hall has jurisdiction over any specific parcel, and they should never be used as a substitute for confirming zoning or minimum-stay rules with the correct desk.

This page walks through what each hall actually requires, where the two codes diverge in ways that change a booking calendar, and how to confirm which one applies to a given address before building a listing, a house-rules page, or an availability calendar around the wrong rulebook entirely. None of the market figures cited here should be read as a substitute for that confirmation call — they describe what the broader market is doing, not what any single parcel is legally permitted to do. This is not legal advice.

Confirm Which Hall Owns the Parcel First

Before reading either code closely, a host needs to establish the boundary line for their specific parcel. City of Port Huron addresses fall under the city's own rental certification ordinance, administered through city desk. Parcels inside Burtchville Township — including addresses that carry a "Port Huron" mailing city for postal purposes — fall under the township's §154.135 instead. The two jurisdictional boundaries do not track ZIP codes or the city name printed on a piece of mail, so a parcel lookup or a direct call to the correct hall is the only reliable way to confirm which set of rules actually governs a given driveway.

Getting this wrong is an easy and genuinely common mistake, mostly because Michigan mailing conventions regularly use the nearest recognized city name regardless of which municipality holds actual jurisdiction over that parcel. A property with a Port Huron, Michigan mailing address can sit entirely inside Burtchville Township's boundary, subject to a materially different ordinance than the one posted on the city's own website. Hosts who skip this step and build their calendar off the city's rules, when the township's rules actually apply, are operating outside the code without realizing it, and the gap often doesn't surface until a complaint or a routine inspection forces the question. The safest default for a host who hasn't yet confirmed the boundary is to assume the more restrictive township rules apply until city desk or the township hall says otherwise, rather than defaulting to whichever ordinance is easier to meet.

City of Port Huron Runs Rental Certification

The City of Port Huron administers its rental program out of city desk at 100 McMorran Boulevard. The city clerk's desk handles registration and certification questions at 810-984-9725, and rental inspection — a related but separate function, housed in the same building — can be reached directly at 810-984-2465. A host inside city limits should expect certification to run through both of these desks rather than a single point of contact.

Rental certification in the city is not a one-time filing that a host completes and forgets. It is tied to an inspection process, and the requirements a host confirms today should be reconfirmed periodically rather than assumed to carry forward unchanged year after year. A host who has not called the inspection line to confirm current 2026 requirements for their specific property type is operating on assumption rather than documentation, and assumption is not a defense if a complaint or an inspection surfaces a gap.

Burtchville Township's §154.135 Sets a Seven-Night Floor

Burtchville Township Hall sits at 4000 Burtch Road, and its short-term rental ordinance, codified at §154.135, works on an entirely different logic than the city's certification model. Under §154.135, a rental stay must run seven nights or longer to qualify. Stays of six nights or less are barred outright under the ordinance as written — not discouraged, not subject to a special exception, simply not permitted for a property inside township boundaries.

This is the single most consequential difference between the two jurisdictions for a host building a booking calendar. A listing configured for the typical three- and four-night weekend stays common on most short-term rental platforms would be operating outside the ordinance if that specific parcel sits inside Burtchville Township. The seven-night floor has to be built directly into the minimum-stay setting on every platform the listing runs on — Airbnb, Vrbo, and any direct-booking site alike — not treated as a soft guideline a guest can talk their way around at check-in.

Occupancy Limits and the Twenty-Five-Mile Manager Rule

Burtchville's ordinance also sets an occupancy standard of two persons per bedroom, a figure hosts should use as a hard cap on listing capacity rather than something to round up for a larger group booking. That standard applies regardless of how many people a property could technically sleep with additional air mattresses or pull-out furniture — the ordinance measures by bedroom count, not by square footage or guest preference.

Beyond occupancy, the township requires a responsible manager or local contact who lives within twenty-five miles of the property. That requirement effectively rules out purely remote, out-of-state ownership without a genuinely local arrangement in place — a co-host, a property manager, or a nearby relative with authority to respond in person. Neither the two-person-per-bedroom standard nor the twenty-five-mile manager requirement appears in the city's certification process in quite the same form, which is one more reason the two halls cannot be treated as offering the same rulebook under two different phone numbers.

Six Nights or Less Shall Not: Reading the Line Correctly

It is worth restating plainly, because it is the rule most likely to get missed by a host copying a house-rules template built for a different market: under Burtchville's §154.135, six nights or fewer is not a shorter, slightly-discouraged version of a short-term rental stay. It falls outside the ordinance entirely. A township parcel configured to accept ordinary weekend bookings is not operating in a legal gray area open to interpretation — it is not operating within the code as it is currently written, full stop.

Hosts weighing whether a seven-night minimum makes financial sense for a specific property should treat that as a separate business question layered on top of a legal floor, not as an alternative to meeting that floor. The ordinance sets where the calendar can start; the host decides how to price and market a booking that clears it. Trying to negotiate around the floor with a guest, rather than adjusting the platform settings to enforce it automatically, invites exactly the kind of complaint that triggers township attention.

AirROI Numbers Are Not the Ordinance

The $12,482 typical year, the 31.5 percent occupancy figure, and the $59 RevPAR describe market-wide performance across the Port Huron sample — none of those AirROI figures say anything about which hall governs a given parcel or what its minimum-stay requirement has to be. A host should never read a strong or weak market number as evidence about legal status one way or the other; a listing can sit in a market posting solid numbers and still be running an illegal minimum-stay configuration under the local ordinance.

Lexington, a different Thumb-area market roughly an hour up the shoreline, prints a stronger $24,664 typical year on the same data vintage — and that performance gap is a market difference, not a signal about compliance requirements in either Port Huron or Burtchville. Reading market performance and confirming legal status are two entirely separate exercises, and blending them into a single "is this a good rental market" judgment is how hosts end up chasing a strong number while missing a mandatory ordinance requirement underneath it.

Call the Desk That Matches the Driveway

The practical takeaway is simple to state and easy to skip in practice: find the parcel boundary first, then call the desk that actually matches it — city clerk at 810-984-9725 or rental inspection at 810-984-2465 for a city parcel, or Burtchville Township Hall directly for anything sitting inside the township — before finalizing a minimum-stay setting, an occupancy cap, or a manager arrangement for a new or existing listing.

A compliance file built on a confirmed parcel boundary and a documented call to the correct hall holds up under scrutiny. One built on a mailing address, a neighbor's assumption, or a template copied from a different Michigan market does not. The two-halls structure around Port Huron is unusual enough that it deserves its own line item in every new listing's setup checklist, not a single generic "check local rules" box that gets ticked without a phone call actually happening.

Building a Compliance File the First Time

New hosts setting up a listing near Port Huron for the first time should treat the jurisdiction question as step one, not an afterthought handled after photos and pricing are already in place. Confirm the parcel boundary, document the call to the correct hall with a date and the name of who was spoken with, and keep that documentation somewhere it can be produced quickly if a question comes up later. A verbal confirmation from a hall employee, written down with a date attached, is worth far more months later than a memory of "someone said it was fine."

The same discipline applies to existing listings that have been operating for a while without ever confirming which hall's ordinance actually governs the parcel. Rules change, addresses get reassigned between jurisdictions during boundary adjustments, and a listing that was compliant three years ago is not automatically compliant today. A short phone call to city desk or Burtchville Township Hall costs a host almost nothing next to the cost of a canceled booking, a fine, or a forced calendar change made after guests have already reserved dates the ordinance never actually allowed.

It is also worth keeping the two halls' documentation separate rather than filed together, since a host who owns or manages more than one property in the area may find one parcel sits under the city and another sits a few streets over under the township. Treating both properties as subject to the same rules because they're geographically close is exactly the assumption that causes trouble — proximity is not jurisdiction, and only a confirmed parcel lookup settles the question for each address individually. A multi-property host juggling both a city-certified listing and a township listing under §154.135 is effectively running two separate compliance programs at once, and conflating the two, even informally in a shared spreadsheet or calendar tool, is how a seven-night floor meant for one property quietly disappears from the other.

Related Reading

More Port Huron and Lakeport, Michigan reading already live on Crest & Cove.

• Port Huron STR Market Report 2026: $12,482, 54 listings

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• Port Huron Shoulder Season: August Peak, February Hole

• Port Huron Remote Stays: Seventeen listings Set 30-Plus

• DIY vs Hire in Port Huron: Kirstyn-Scale, Not Vacasa

• Who Books a Port Huron Rental: Race, Light, and Shore

• Buying a Port Huron Rental: $12,482, Not a Lexington blend

• Port Huron Tourism Data: Race Week Is Not Occupancy

• Complete Visitor's Guide to Port Huron and Lakeport

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• Financing a Port Huron Rental Without a Costume Year

• Port Huron Clerk, Rental Inspection, Burtchville Hall

• Port Huron vs Lakeport vs Lexington: Three Shore Desks

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the City of Port Huron's rental certification apply to a property with a Port Huron mailing address?

Not necessarily. Michigan mailing conventions often use the nearest recognized city name regardless of which government actually has jurisdiction, so a Port Huron mailing address can still sit inside Burtchville Township's boundary rather than the city's own limits. The only reliable way to confirm which set of rules applies is a parcel lookup or a direct call to the appropriate hall. Hosts who assume city rules automatically apply based on the mailing address alone risk building a listing calendar around the wrong ordinance from day one.

What is the minimum stay under Burtchville Township's §154.135?

Seven nights. Under §154.135, stays of six nights or less are barred outright for properties inside Burtchville Township, with no exception process built into the ordinance as written. That floor has to be configured directly into the minimum-stay setting on every booking platform a host uses, since a guest asking for a shorter stay at check-in doesn't change what the ordinance permits. This is the single biggest calendar difference between operating inside the township versus inside city limits.

Who handles rental certification questions for the City of Port Huron?

City Desk, at 100 McMorran Boulevard. The city clerk's desk takes registration and certification questions at 810-984-9725, while rental inspection, a related but separate function housed in the same building, is reached at 810-984-2465. A host should expect to work with both desks rather than a single point of contact, since certification is tied to an inspection process rather than a one-time filing.

What occupancy limit applies under Burtchville's ordinance?

Two persons per bedroom, applied as a hard cap rather than a suggestion. The standard is measured by bedroom count, not by how many guests a property could technically sleep with extra air mattresses or pull-out furniture. Hosts listing a property inside the township should set platform occupancy limits to match this standard directly, since exceeding it puts the listing outside the ordinance regardless of how the space is physically configured or marketed.

Does Burtchville Township require a local property manager?

Yes. The ordinance requires a responsible manager or contact who lives within twenty-five miles of the property, which effectively rules out purely remote, out-of-state ownership without a genuine local arrangement such as a co-host or property manager in place. This requirement doesn't appear in the same form under the city's certification process, which is one more reason the two jurisdictions can't be treated as interchangeable versions of the same rulebook.

Does a strong AirROI market number mean a listing is operating legally?

No. Market performance figures like the $12,482 typical year, 31.5 percent occupancy, and $59 RevPAR describe revenue and demand across the sample, not legal status for any individual parcel. A listing can sit in a market posting healthy numbers and still be running a minimum-stay configuration that violates the local ordinance. Confirming compliance is a separate exercise from reading market data, and the two should never be blended into a single judgment about whether a rental is sound.

How does Lexington's market data relate to Port Huron's rules?

It doesn't, directly. Lexington is a separate Thumb-area market that posts a stronger $24,664 typical year on the same AirROI data vintage, but that performance gap reflects market differences, not anything about compliance requirements in Port Huron or Burtchville Township. Hosts shouldn't use one market's revenue figure to infer anything about another market's zoning, occupancy, or minimum-stay rules — each town's ordinance has to be confirmed on its own terms.

What happens if a Burtchville property is listed for stays shorter than seven nights?

It's operating outside §154.135 as written. The ordinance doesn't treat shorter stays as a discouraged gray area open to interpretation — six nights or less simply falls outside what the code permits for a township parcel. Hosts should treat the seven-night floor as a hard platform setting rather than something negotiable with an individual guest, since a booking that violates the ordinance can draw township attention regardless of how the stay was originally marketed.

Where is Burtchville Township Hall located?

4000 Burtch Road. That's the correct desk for any parcel confirmed to sit inside the township, separate from the City of Port Huron's city desk at 100 McMorran Boulevard. Because the two halls sit only a few miles apart but enforce genuinely different codes, hosts should keep the two addresses and their respective requirements clearly separated in their own compliance files rather than treating one town's process as a stand-in for the other.

Should a host use the same house rules across a Port Huron listing and a Burtchville listing?

No. Because the two jurisdictions set different minimum stays, different occupancy standards, and different manager requirements, a single house-rules template copied across both types of listings will almost certainly misstate at least one requirement. Each listing's house rules should reflect the confirmed ordinance for its specific parcel, built after a call to the correct hall, rather than a generic template pulled from a different market or from the other jurisdiction just a few miles away.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Two halls, two codes, one shoreline — a Port Huron listing built on the wrong hall's rules is a compliance problem waiting on a complaint. Name the failure mode the guest can check on the listing.

We help hosts confirm which set of rules actually governs their parcel and build listings around it correctly. Start at crestcove.co or call (256) 998-7502. Send the live listing draft and the facts you can actually cite.

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