Vermilion, OH vs. Bay St. Louis, MS: Two Desks, Two Years

Thomas Garner
Aug 20
10 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Lodging interior or exterior, Vermilion stay 13

Vermilion, Ohio and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi both get pulled into the same small-town-waterfront conversation, but they don't share a lake, a state, or a permitting desk. Vermilion sits on Lake Erie in Erie and Lorain Counties, Ohio. Bay St. Louis sits on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Hancock County. Different water, different climate, different regulatory office entirely - and different, independently sourced numbers worth keeping on their own lines.

Both towns have real trailing-twelve-month data worth citing directly: Vermilion shows 78 active listings and $29,012 typical annual revenue; Bay St. Louis shows 340 active listings and $25,594 typical annual revenue. Bay St. Louis runs a much larger listing count on a lower typical revenue figure - a genuinely different market shape, not a rounding difference, and a reason on its own not to blend the two towns into one composite small-waterfront-town number.

This page covers what each town's own numbers say, what each town's permitting desk actually wants from a host, why the 30-night-minimum stay figure reported here belongs specifically to Vermilion's own listing base, and what genuinely belongs in each town's listing copy versus what's just noise from a comparison that shouldn't be blended in the first place. This is not legal advice.

Vermilion's Real Numbers

Vermilion's short-term rental market has a specific, sourced trailing-twelve-month figure: AirROI puts typical annual revenue at $29,012 across 78 active listings for the period running August 2025 through July 2026, last updated August 8, 2026. The average daily rate over that period was $264, occupancy came in at 38.4%, and revenue per available night worked out to $111. Year over year, that revenue figure moved down 7.6%, while active listing supply grew 16.4% - more competition chasing a somewhat softer per-listing payout than the year before.

The three strongest months in this data are August, June, and July, with January the clear slowest month - a classic Lake Erie summer-driven pattern. Guests book an average of 4.2 nights, arrive booking about 57 days ahead of the stay, and the largest single origin market is Columbus, followed by Cleveland. Superhost status covers 70.5% of the active listing base, a useful benchmark for a new Vermilion host gauging how much guest-experience investment it takes to be competitive in this specific market.

A recurring figure in this market's research is that 33.3% of Vermilion's 78 listings - 26 of them - operate with a 30-night minimum stay requirement. That's a host stay-length choice, not a measurement of occupancy or demand, and it's worth keeping that distinction clear in any packet that cites the figure: it describes how a third of Vermilion's host base has chosen to structure their calendars, not how busy the town is overall.

That 16.4% supply growth figure is worth its own read alongside the 7.6% revenue decline. A host entering the Vermilion market today is competing against a meaningfully larger pool of active listings than existed a year earlier, and the revenue decline suggests that new supply hasn't been fully absorbed by proportional demand growth. That doesn't make Vermilion a bad market - it means a new or existing listing needs to work harder on differentiation than it would have needed to a year ago, when the competitive field was smaller.

What Vermilion's Building Clerk Actually Wants

Vermilion's rental compliance runs through the building clerk's office, reachable at 440-204-2410. The requirement is a transient rental permit under Chapter 1484.01 of the city code, with a biennial fee of $300 and a required inspection - a specific ordinance citation and a two-year renewal cycle worth having on hand before calling, since it lets the desk confirm exactly which requirements apply to a given property.

The biennial structure is worth noting specifically because it changes how a host should budget compared to a market with an annual fee: $300 covers two years rather than one, which works out to $150 per year on average - a modest ongoing cost relative to the market's $29,012 typical annual revenue, but one that still needs to land on the right renewal calendar rather than being forgotten between cycles.

The required inspection is a real compliance step, not a formality - a host should confirm with the building clerk what the inspection actually checks (life-safety systems, occupancy limits, general property condition) and schedule it with enough lead time before a listing goes live or a permit renewal comes due, rather than assuming a quick self-certification will satisfy the requirement.

Because the fee is biennial rather than annual, it's easy for a busy host to lose track of exactly when the two-year clock resets, especially compared to markets with a simpler annual renewal cadence that lines up with a calendar year. Setting a specific reminder tied to the actual permit issue date, rather than relying on memory or an assumption that renewal happens "sometime next year," is a small operational habit that prevents an accidental lapse into unpermitted operation.

Bay St. Louis's Real Numbers

Bay St. Louis's own trailing-twelve-month figure, same AirROI window: $25,594 typical annual revenue across 340 active listings, with a $279 average daily rate, 31.5% occupancy, and $92 in revenue per available night. Year over year, that revenue figure moved down 4.5%, a smaller decline than Vermilion's but still a market showing some softening rather than growth.

The listing-count gap between the two towns is the single most important structural difference to keep in mind: Bay St. Louis's 340 active listings are more than four times Vermilion's 78, on a lower typical annual revenue per listing. That combination - many more listings, lower typical revenue - describes a market with a much larger, more saturated supply base relative to demand than Vermilion's smaller, tighter sample.

Sales tax can still apply to a Bay St. Louis stay even when it runs under the 30-day mark typically associated with longer-term rental exemptions - a detail worth confirming directly with the relevant Mississippi tax authority rather than assuming short stays are automatically exempt from state and local lodging tax obligations.

The strongest months for Bay St. Louis in the seasonal data available skew differently than Vermilion's summer-only pattern, with meaningful activity showing up outside the pure June-through-August window - a reflection of the Gulf Coast's longer warm season and its own distinct events calendar. A host pricing a Bay St. Louis property around only a June-August peak, borrowing the same seasonal assumption that works for a Lake Erie town, risks underpricing months that this market's own data treats as legitimately active.

What Bay St. Louis's Planning Desk Actually Wants

Bay St. Louis's rental compliance runs through the planning office, reachable at 228-466-5516. The permit is published as a $100 form - a specific figure worth confirming as the current live fee at the desk directly, since a published form fee can lag behind what's actually charged if the town has updated its schedule since the source was last checked.

As with Vermilion, a host should treat the phone call to the planning desk as the authoritative source rather than any secondhand summary, including this one. Ask specifically whether the $100 figure is the full cost of compliance or just the application form fee, since some municipalities separate an application fee from a separate inspection or annual renewal charge that isn't always bundled into the headline number a host finds first.

Given that Bay St. Louis's confirmed permitting detail here is thinner than Vermilion's - a single form-fee figure versus a specific code citation, fee cadence, and inspection requirement - a Bay St. Louis host has more homework to do directly with the planning desk before assuming they understand the full compliance picture. That gap in available detail is itself useful information: it signals where a packet or a new host needs to invest time confirming specifics rather than treating this page as a complete regulatory summary for that town.

Why Listing-Count Size Changes How Each Market Should Be Read

A 78-listing market and a 340-listing market don't just differ in scale - they behave differently in how much any single listing's performance can move the reported average. In Vermilion's smaller sample, a handful of unusually strong or weak listings can shift the town-wide $29,012 figure more than a similar handful would move Bay St. Louis's $25,594 average, since that figure is spread across more than four times as many properties. A host in Vermilion should treat the town average as a slightly less stable benchmark for any individual property than a host in Bay St. Louis should for theirs.

That same size difference cuts the other way for competitive intensity. Bay St. Louis's much larger listing count means a new host entering that market is one of many more comparable options in front of a prospective guest, which raises the bar for differentiation through photography, pricing, and listing copy. Vermilion's smaller field means a well-executed listing has more room to stand out against fewer direct competitors, even though the overall market itself is smaller in absolute size.

Occupancy tells a related but separate story. Vermilion's 38.4% is meaningfully higher than Bay St. Louis's 31.5%, even though Bay St. Louis has the higher ADR at $279 versus Vermilion's $264. Read together, that means Vermilion is filling more nights at a lower nightly rate while Bay St. Louis charges more per night but sits empty more often - two different paths to a broadly comparable revenue outcome, and two different operating problems for a host to solve depending on which town they're in. A Vermilion host has more room to test rate increases before occupancy suffers; a Bay St. Louis host likely has more room to chase incremental bookings on the calendar's softer stretches before touching rate at all.

None of this is a case for choosing one market over the other in the abstract. It's a case for reading each town's own numbers on their own terms, confirming the current fee and inspection requirements directly with each town's own desk before listing, and building a pricing and booking strategy around the specific occupancy-and-rate mix that each market's data actually shows - rather than assuming a script that works in one lake town or one Gulf Coast town will translate cleanly to the other. A host comparing the two on paper should treat both towns' figures as a starting point for their own research, not a substitute for it.

Keeping the Two Towns - and a Third - on Separate Lines

The practical rule for any packet covering both towns: cite $29,012 from Vermilion's 78 listings on one line, and $25,594 from Bay St. Louis's 340 listings on a separate line, each labeled with its own state, permitting desk, and fee structure. A third town, St. Joseph, Michigan, shows up in some of this same research with $27,986 from 76 listings - also a different market entirely, and also not to be blended with either Vermilion or Bay St. Louis just because all three sit near water.

This matters most at the moment a host or investor is comparing markets side by side. Vermilion's smaller, tighter listing sample and higher typical revenue per listing describe a genuinely different investment profile than Bay St. Louis's larger, more saturated market with a lower typical payout per listing. Neither is automatically the better market - a lower typical revenue on a much larger listing count could still represent a viable entry point for the right property, but that's a different question than the one a blended, averaged number would answer.

What Belongs in Each Town's Listing Copy

Vermilion's genuine landmarks are specific and worth naming directly: Main Street Beach, Vermilion Harbor, Lighthouse Beach, and the town's downtown shops. A listing that names these gives a guest searching specifically for Vermilion a concrete reason to choose it over a generic "Lake Erie getaway" listing that could describe a dozen other lakefront towns in the region.

None of Vermilion's landmark or guest-origin detail applies to a Bay St. Louis listing, and the reverse is equally true - a Gulf Coast property shouldn't borrow Lake Erie language, and a Lake Erie property shouldn't borrow Gulf Coast tax or seasonal framing. Keep every fee, phone number, landmark, and performance figure attributed to its own town in any packet, listing description, or marketing document that touches both markets, since the two towns share only a loose "small waterfront town" category and little else.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Vermilion, Ohio's typical annual short-term rental revenue?

AirROI's trailing-twelve-month data through July 2026 puts typical annual revenue at $29,012 across 78 active listings, with a $264 average daily rate and 38.4% occupancy. Revenue moved down 7.6% year over year while active supply grew 16.4%, suggesting new competition is pulling the per-listing average down somewhat.

What is Bay St. Louis, Mississippi's typical annual short-term rental revenue?

The same AirROI window puts Bay St. Louis's typical annual revenue at $25,594 across 340 active listings, with a $279 average daily rate and 31.5% occupancy. That's a much larger listing count than Vermilion's on a lower typical per-listing revenue - a genuinely different market shape, not a smaller version of the same market.

Who do I call about Vermilion's transient rental permit?

Vermilion's building clerk handles transient rental permitting at 440-204-2410. The requirement is a permit under Chapter 1484.01 of the city code, with a biennial fee of $300 and a required inspection. Confirm current inspection requirements and timing directly with the clerk before listing or renewing.

Who do I call about Bay St. Louis's short-term rental permit?

Bay St. Louis's planning office handles permitting at 228-466-5516. The permit is published as a $100 form - confirm that figure as the current live fee directly with the desk, and ask whether it covers the full compliance cost or just the initial application.

Can I use Bay St. Louis's or St. Joseph's numbers to describe Vermilion?

No. Bay St. Louis's $25,594 from 340 listings and St. Joseph, Michigan's $27,986 from 76 listings are both separate, independently sourced markets. Vermilion's own confirmed figure is $29,012 from 78 listings. Blending any of these together, or citing one town's number while describing another, misrepresents all three markets.

Does a 30-night minimum stay mean Vermilion has lower occupancy?

No - those are separate measurements. About 33.3% of Vermilion's 78 listings, or 26 properties, use a 30-night minimum stay structure, which reflects a host's own choice about stay length, not a measurement of the town's overall demand or occupancy. Vermilion's occupancy figure, 38.4%, is reported separately and independently of that stay-length choice.

Does sales tax apply to short-term stays under 30 days in Bay St. Louis?

It can. Sales tax obligations don't automatically disappear just because a stay runs under the 30-day mark sometimes associated with longer-term rental exemptions. Confirm current tax treatment directly with the relevant Mississippi tax authority rather than assuming a short stay is exempt by default.

Which town has more short-term rental listings, Vermilion or Bay St. Louis?

Bay St. Louis, by a wide margin - 340 active listings compared to Vermilion's 78. That larger supply base sits alongside a lower typical annual revenue per listing, $25,594 versus Vermilion's $29,012, describing a more saturated market rather than simply a bigger version of the same opportunity.

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Bay St. Louis has more than four times Vermilion's listing count on a lower typical revenue per listing - a different market shape entirely, not a smaller or bigger version of the same one.

We help hosts compare markets like these on each town's own confirmed numbers and permitting desk, not a blended guess. Reach out at crestcove.co or (256) 998-7502. Send the live listing draft and the facts you can actually cite.

Reach out at crestcove.co or (256) 998-7502.