Within the past five years, 3 surveys have been conducted that offered insights related to short term rentals.
Two were done by the township, and one was done by the Realtors associations. All three had similar results regarding short term rentals.
Details on those surveys are below, with the most recent surveys listed first. Keep in mind that the two most recent surveys were conducted after:
- a significant number of negative comments were posted on social media (in many cases from a former Michigan resident) regarding short term rental owners
- the township began announcing in meetings and in the press that short term rentals have “been illegal since 1974”. (See have short term rentals always been illegal for details on that.)
It’s natural for people to be upset if they think people have been getting away with something illegal, so those activities may have biased opinions against short term rentals before those surveys took place.
Now on to information about the surveys.
The Park Township Master Plan Community Survey
In 2023, Park Township conducted a Master Plan community survey. According to information included in the 10/26/23 Planning Commission packet, 289 members of the community responded to the survey, which closed on September 30th, 2023.
While the survey did not directly ask anything about short term rentals, people chose to respond to some of the questions it did ask with comments about short term rentals anyway. Here are the questions and a sampling of responses the elicited those types of responses.
Question 27 asked, “If you would like to see more commercial in Park Township, describe where it should be and what it looks like.”
Responses included:
- Park Township has a major access to Lake Macatawa and Lake Michigan. Its where visitors and families have come year after year, generations after generations. Where can visitors stay along the shoreline?
- No more STR. Stick to your final decision. They are not in the best interest of residents and harm our residential areas.
- Allow short term rentals in Macatawa.
Question 28 asked “What do you LOVE about Park Township?”
Among other things, people responded with comments like:
- I love the small town feel and summer tourism that it draws. Having short term rentals/camping and boat/jet ski rentals, a beach and marinas, local bars and restaurants are all a part of what is special and attractive in Part Township.
- It is a nice township to live in. And no more short rental
Question 29 asked “What CHANGE would you like to see in Park Township?”
Responses included things like:
- We need a reasonable policy around short-term rentals. Find something between a free for all and outright ban. 280 rentals out of 9000 homes is a small percentage and allows for tourism and retail dollars to stay within the area. Rules and good policy can help prevent some of the issues that were brought about in the 32ish complaints over the last couple of years.
- Allow short term rentals but regulate with permits
- Allow short term rentals again, especially in Macatawa Park which has historically been a summer tourist destination. It’s sad a small number of residents stir the pot just to make others angry and upset. But that seems to be way most citizens want to live now.
- Less short-term rentals.
- Revert on the decision to stop short term rentals.
- I think it is a mistake to ban all short-term rentals. We need tourism and people who don’t live here need a place to stay. I agree that no regulation made too many neighborhoods into rental communities. I believe there is a way to zone certain already commercial areas for rentals, or limit rentals to a certain % of the houses in an area. Banning all, is too drastic.
- Str regulation but not banned
- Open mindedness towards short term rentals. This has been a big part of our ability to stay in park township.
And question 30 asked “What do you consider the most important issue facing Park Township in the next 10 years?”
Answers included:
- Figure out a reasonable policy for short term rentals.
- The shortfall for short term rental options for those visitors that have been coming to the lakeshore for years
- Short term rentals. They should be limited or banned.
- Short-term rentals ban will continue to be problematical
- Anti-business and anti-tourism mindset from park township. Very tunnel-visioned policy making.
Overall, how did the numbers check out?
Overall, 88 of the comments listed in the Master Plan survey results related to the short term rental ban, and at least 80 responses directly mentioned short term rentals.
- 55% were in favor of short term rentals,
- 19% were neutral or unclear (those were responses that mostly could not be categorized because they only said things like “STR”, “vrbo”, etc.)
- and 26% were against
It’s clear that the small number of vocal anti-STR people — most from just 2 neighborhoods — do not represent the opinions of most Park Township residents.
A independent survey
In August of 2023, a national public opinion research firm was hired to conduct an independent survey on short term rentals in Park Township.
The survey was done in partnership with the local, state, and national association of Realtors. They paid a professional company (American Strategies) to administer it to registered voters throughout the township.
No one from PTN (or the Realtors’ associations for that matter) was involved in pushing out the survey.
The goal was to have an unbiased, independent organization obtain the real opinions of residents township-wide.
Who took the survey?
The survey reached 412 adults (375 weighted) age 18 or older, who indicated they were registered to vote in Park Township, Michigan. The survey was conducted August 14-21, 2023, and the overall margin of error was +/- 5.1%.
Note that in August of 2023, Park Township had 15,988 registered voters. So 412 adults is a statistically significant number of people taking the survey. In fact, it’s more than the number required to have a statistically significant sample:
(You can learn more about sample size here.)
Survey methodologies
PTN recently got in touch with American Strategies to learn more about how it was conducted. They responded that, as far as methodological parameters go:
- Only registered voters in Park Township were contacted, using a third-party list that is derived from the state voter file.
- Voters were contacted by phone (by live callers) and text messages (providing a link to take the survey online).
- Voters who completed the poll on the phone were not contacted again by phone or by text.
- Voters who completed the poll online were only able to take the poll once, which was verified by the respondent’s cell phone number.
- Final responses were matched back to the voter list at the individual level. If an individual found a way to take the poll more than once, only their first response would be counted, and any additional responses would be removed from the data.
- If an online respondent provided a cell phone number that did not match the number listed on that individual’s voter record, that response would be removed from the data.
- Quotas are assigned for demographic categories, and final data was weighted to ensure the sample was representative of the community’s profile (by age, gender, etc.)
From their perspective, it was basically impossible for multiple responses from a single person to be included in the final data.
The independent survey results
PTN has obtained permission to share all of the survey questions and results, and we’ll provide a link to that below. But out of the 13 survey questions asked, the ones pertaining directly to Park Township’s ban on short term rentals were:
How familiar are you with the Park Township Board of Trustees’ decision to ban vacation rentals from operating in Park Township? Are you very familiar, somewhat familiar, not too familiar, or not familiar at all?
73% were familiar with the Board’s decision to ban.
And:
As you may know, the Park Township Board of Trustees recently voted to ban property owners from renting out their homes on a short-term basis to vacationers. This includes a ban on using short-term rental companies like Air B&B, VRBO, or local real estate offices or individuals to rent a property. The ban goes into effect in October of this year.
Overall, do you favor or oppose the Board of Trustees’ decision to ban residential property owners from renting out their property as vacation rentals for short-term stays? Is that strongly FAVOR/OPPOSE or somewhat FAVOR/OPPOSE?
58% of respondents opposed the Board’s decision to ban residential property owners from renting out their property as vacation rentals for short-term stays.
Note that the 58% of people opposed to the ban is very close to the 55%% of people who commented in favor of having short term rentals in the township’s Master Plan survey.
It seems that people are consistent in their responses, no matter who conducted the survey. The majority of residents want a small number of short term rentals in Park Township.
And finally:
Still thinking about short-term and vacation rentals in Park Township, would you favor or oppose a different policy that would allow some residential property owners to rent their home for short-term stays, but would also limit the total number of vacation rental units allowed in Park Township? Is that strongly FAVOR/OPPOSE or somewhat FAVOR/OPPOSE?
64% of respondents favored a different policy.
You can read all of the survey questions and the response percentage breakdowns here for yourself.
The Ottawa Beach neighborhood survey
In August of 2018, “in an effort to understand the challenges facing the residents of the Ottawa Beach Neighborhood” Park Township conducted interviews with several neighborhood stakeholders in order to identify key issues.
(It’s unclear how those stakeholders were identified or who they were, other than that they were from the Ottawa Beach neighborhood.)
Fourth on the list of issues identified by the stakeholders in that closely-built neighborhood that sees lots of tourists was “Rentals, short-term, Air B&B”.
Next, the township held a public workshop to the entire neighborhood. The stated goal of the workshop was to “further analyze the extent of those issues and to capture additional challenges to the area.”
Out of the 10 issues identified by the key stakeholders and by the neighborhood members in the workshop, “rentals, short-term, Air B&Bs” came in 7th in the list. (After traffic back-ups, “traffic, pedestrian safety, parking”, traffic enforcement, land use, fire safety, and neighborhood character/historic preservation.)
This is a neighborhood that has been home to large numbers of vacation rentals for decade after decade. Despite that, vacation rentals did not even make the top 5 on the list of issues experienced by the neighborhood.
Workshop participants were then broken down into small groups, and “participants were asked to provide a voice vote on certain issues to better understand the magnitude of interest in a particular position.”
The results regarding short term rentals?
When asked “Restrict short-term rentals?”
70% said no, do not restrict them.
When asked, “Should the WMPA regulate short-term rentals prior to the township regulating?”
80% said yes, the WMPA (West Michigan Park Association) should regulate them prior to the township doing so.
(“Should the WMPA regulate short-term rentals?” does not appear to have been asked. Only if they should regulate them prior to the township doing so.)
Survey results are clear
The survey results are clear.
All three of the surveys that contained results or questions related to short term rentals show the same thing.
The majority of Park Township residents want the long history of vacation rentals to continue.