On the night of August 25, 2026, the Empire Village Council voted 6-1 to require every short-term rental operator in the village to register annually, pay a fee, and provide emergency contact information. A companion zoning amendment clarifying what counts as short-term occupancy passed by a narrower 5-2 margin, with council members Meg Walton and March Dye voting no on that piece. Neither vote set a limit on how many rental properties the village will allow. That omission was deliberate, and it is the part worth understanding if you are looking at property in Empire with rental income in mind.
The vote closed out more than two years of village debate. A four-member committee formed in late 2023 to draft rental rules split almost immediately over how far to go, with some members wanting a simple registration system and others pushing for a licensing structure that could cap the number of rentals outright. The disagreement outlasted multiple drafts and missed deadlines. Earlier this year, village council member Ella Skrocki resigned her seat after housing pressure in Empire forced her to relocate outside the village, and she urged the remaining council to move forward with some form of regulation before leaving.
Registration Is Not the Same as a Limit
The ordinance that finally passed does three things. It requires short-term rental owners to register with the village every year. It requires a fee. It requires emergency contact information so someone can respond if a problem comes up at the property. It does not cap the total number of rentals, and the related zoning amendment goes further than that: by adding a formal definition of a short-term rental (a dwelling or accessory dwelling rented for less than 30 days, excluding bed and breakfasts, hotels, motels, or inns) and stating that this use is allowed in single-family, two-family, multi-family, and accessory dwelling units anywhere in the village, the amendment effectively confirms that a short-term rental is a permitted use village-wide, with registration as the only condition attached.
Before this year, Empire's zoning code did not mention short-term rentals at all. Council member Maggie Bacon, defending the narrower scope of the ordinance, told the council, "our residents spoke loud and clear to us," framing the vote as a starting point rather than a settled answer. Public comment before the vote ran in both directions. Some residents argued that rental conversions are shrinking the village's year-round housing stock. Others pushed back on the registration requirement itself, arguing that a data collection system with no defined end use was an unreasonable ask. The council did not resolve that argument. It postponed it.
The Two-Year Number Worth Watching
The postponement has a specific shape. Village planning commissioners have said they want at least two years of registration data before they take up the cap question again. That is not a vague future promise. It is a stated evaluation window, and it means the regulatory environment an Empire buyer sees today is not the environment that will necessarily exist in 2028.
The reason this matters becomes clearer with the numbers the committee gathered when it first surveyed the village in early 2024. At that point, Empire had 63 residences operating as short-term rentals, alongside 147 full-time residences, 131 seasonal residences, and 22 long-term rentals. That put short-term rental density in the village at 17.3 percent, reportedly the highest of any community in Leelanau County. A village that small carrying that concentration of rentals is exactly the kind of situation where a wait-and-see registration period tends to end with a cap, not a shrug. Nothing in the new ordinance guarantees that outcome, but the two-year data window exists precisely so the village can make that decision with numbers in hand instead of guessing.
Other Leelanau villages got here first. The Village of Northport already requires any dwelling renting for less than 21 days to register with its administrative coordinator, and Suttons Bay already requires both registration and a license. Empire's registration-only ordinance puts it roughly where its neighbors were a few years ago, not ahead of them.
Which Empire a Property Actually Sits In
The August ordinance applies inside the Village of Empire. It does not apply in Empire Township, the much larger surrounding jurisdiction where most of the acreage, cottages, and near-Lakeshore parcels actually sit. Empire Township has its own, considerably older definition of a short-term rental under Article 5, Section 5.10 of its zoning ordinance, covering single-family dwellings rented to individuals for a fee for between one and 21 days. That framework predates the village's debate by years and was never part of this year's vote.
For a buyer comparing two listings that both say "Empire, MI," the distinction is not cosmetic. A property inside the village is now subject to annual registration, a fee, and the two-year cap uncertainty described above. A property in the township next door answers to a separate ordinance with its own history and its own path if the township ever revisits it. Confirming which side of that line a specific parcel falls on is a five-minute check with the township or village office, and it is worth doing before assuming a listing's stated rental history will carry forward under the same rules.
What the Township Line Adds Near the Water
Township parcels near Lake Michigan or an inland lake carry an additional layer that has nothing to do with rentals directly but affects what a rental property can physically become. Empire Township's zoning ordinance includes a shoreline protection section that keeps new structures, including driveways, septic fields, and parking areas, at least 40 feet back from the ordinary high-water mark, limits vegetation removal within 25 feet of that line, and restricts site work on slopes of 30 degrees or steeper. A waterfront lot that looks generous on a plat map can have a buildable envelope far smaller than the acreage suggests once those setbacks are applied, which matters directly for guest parking, an added bunkhouse, or a septic system sized for rental turnover rather than a single household.
Any property on a well and septic system, whether in the village or the township, also needs a time-of-transfer evaluation through the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department before a sale can close. For a rental property, that evaluation is worth asking about early, since a system sized for a family of four does not always hold up under weekly guest turnover, and replacement costs on an older system are the kind of number that should be known before an offer, not after.
Empire's location is a large part of why this debate exists in the first place. The Philip A. Hart Visitor Center and the headquarters of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore sit in the village, and the National Park Service reports roughly 1.59 million visits a year to a park that spans 71,318 acres and 65 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline. A village of Empire's size sitting at the entrance to that much annual visitation is exactly the setting where short-term rental demand runs high and the debate over regulating it runs longer than almost anywhere else in the county.
Before You Count on the Rental Income
A few questions are worth asking before treating an Empire listing's past rental income as a fixed number. Is the parcel inside the Village of Empire or in Empire Township, since that determines which ordinance actually applies. If it is in the village, is the current owner registered, and what fee and renewal terms come with that registration. If the property sits on well and septic, are time-of-transfer records available, and does the system's rated capacity match rental-level usage rather than single-family usage. If the lot is near water, what does the buildable envelope look like once the 40-foot setback and 25-foot vegetation buffer are applied.
None of these questions have a wrong answer. They are simply the specifics that separate a rental estimate from a rental fact, and in a village that just spent two years arguing about its own rules, those specifics carry more weight than they would somewhere the rules have been settled for a decade.
If you are comparing an Empire property against something in Northport, Suttons Bay, or elsewhere in Leelanau County with rental potential in mind, it helps to have someone confirm the actual ordinance status and jurisdiction line before you write an offer around a number that might not hold. Blue Lakes Real Estate Group works these details out with clients every week, and we're glad to walk through a specific Empire parcel with you before you decide what it's really worth to you.
