Vicksburg
Short-term & long-term rental regulations, fees, and investor resources for Kalamazoo County, Michigan.
Area Overview
Vicksburg is a village in southern Kalamazoo County, Michigan, a compact residential community with a walkable historic downtown.[1] For a rental investor, or a homeowner weighing whether to lease out a property, the draw here is a traditional small-town housing stock – mostly single-family homes, with a modest number of multi-family buildings – within commuting distance of the larger Kalamazoo and Portage job market. That same small-town character shapes how the Village regulates rentals: Vicksburg governs property use almost entirely through its zoning code rather than through a separate rental-licensing department.
The most important thing to understand before buying a rental in Vicksburg is what the Village does not have. There is no dedicated short-term rental ordinance and no Airbnb-style registration program,[2] and there is no Village-run long-term rental registration or periodic inspection scheme either.[3] Rentals are instead governed by the Village’s zoning ordinance, Chapter 475, first adopted in 1976 and amended many times since.[4] What is and is not allowed on a given parcel comes down to that parcel’s zoning district and how the code defines the use you have in mind.
Vicksburg’s zoning code is also a moving target right now, which matters for anyone underwriting a deal. The Village adopted a new Master Plan in 2024 and has been amending its zoning ordinance in stages to match it.[14] Because the rules that govern lodging-for-compensation and other uses can shift from one Planning Commission cycle to the next,[5] every fact in this guide should be confirmed against the current code and with the Village’s zoning staff before you commit capital.[6]
Quick Status Summary
Vicksburg has no dedicated short-term rental ordinance and no Airbnb-style registration or permit program.[2] Whether you can legally run a short-term or vacation rental depends on your parcel’s zoning district and how Chapter 475 treats lodging-for-compensation, which the code handles as a bed-and-breakfast or guest-house use.[4] Because that treatment can change as the Village updates its zoning ordinance, confirm the current rules for your specific parcel with the Village’s zoning staff before you buy or list.
Long-term residential rentals are allowed in Vicksburg’s residential zoning districts, and the Village does not run a rental-registration or recurring rental-inspection program.[3] Landlords must meet the State of Michigan building and property-maintenance codes the Village has adopted, and Chapter 475 requires a certificate of occupancy before a dwelling is occupied.[7] Standard Michigan landlord-tenant law governs leases, deposits, and evictions.
Rental Regulations
Are Short-Term Rentals Allowed in Vicksburg?
There is no Vicksburg ordinance that specifically permits, bans, registers, or caps short-term rentals. The Village runs no STR program at all, and the codified ordinances contain no short-term rental chapter.[2] That absence does not automatically make a whole-house Airbnb legal, though. When a community has no STR ordinance, a short-term rental is governed by the zoning code like any other use of land, and the closest category Vicksburg’s zoning recognizes is a bed-and-breakfast or guest-house use, meaning lodging furnished to paying guests.[4]
In practical terms, the legality of a short-term rental on a given property is a zoning question, decided district by district and parcel by parcel, rather than a licensing question answered at a permit counter. The person who can give you a definitive answer is the Village’s zoning authority, where the Village Manager fields zoning inquiries.[6] Before you buy a property intending to operate it as a short-term rental, ask for a written zoning determination on that specific parcel. A verbal "should be fine" is not something you can underwrite a purchase on.
Where Short-Term Rentals and B&Bs Are Allowed (Zoning)
This is a parcel-level question, and here is exactly how to answer it. Whether transient lodging is allowed on a specific Vicksburg property depends on that parcel’s zoning district under Chapter 475, the Village zoning ordinance first adopted in 1976 and amended many times since.[4] Vicksburg is divided into districts that include an AG-1 Agricultural-Preservation district, a set of residential districts ranging from single-family to multiple-family, an R-5 Mobile Home Park district, C-1 through C-3 commercial districts, industrial districts, and a CP Conservation-Preservation district.[8]
A bed-and-breakfast or guest-house use is not permitted by right in every district. In communities structured like Vicksburg it is typically allowed only in named districts, and often only as a special land use, which means it requires Planning Commission review and a public hearing rather than an over-the-counter approval.[9] To pin down a specific property, work in this order: find the parcel’s district on the official Village Zoning Map, confirm what that district allows in the current text of Chapter 475 on eCode360, and then email the Village Manager, who handles zoning questions, to confirm before you rely on it.[6]
What Permits and Approvals an STR Operator Needs
There is no short-term rental permit to apply for, because Vicksburg runs no STR program – so the approvals you need depend on what you are actually doing to the property.[2] If your parcel’s district treats bed-and-breakfast or guest-house use as a special land use, the path is a Special Land Use application, filed with the Village office at 126 N. Kalamazoo Ave. and reviewed by the Planning Commission at a public hearing, usually alongside a site plan review.[9][10]
If you are renovating to support guests – adding bedrooms, finishing a basement, changing egress – the building, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing permits do not go through the Village at all. Vicksburg contracts construction-code enforcement to South Central Michigan Construction Code Inspections (SCMCCI), and you pull those permits and schedule those inspections through SCMCCI.[11] Before the dwelling is occupied in its new use, Chapter 475 requires a certificate of occupancy, the Village’s sign-off that the building is fit for the use.[7] If you are simply listing an existing, conforming home for short stays and changing nothing physical, there may be no Village paperwork at all – but the word "may" is carrying real weight there, which is why a written zoning determination is step one, not step three.
Operating Rules: Noise, Parking, and Nuisance
Vicksburg’s noise ordinance – Chapter 308 of the Village code, on the books since 1975 – prohibits excessive, unnecessary, or unusually loud sound within the village, and it applies to a rental guest exactly as it applies to a year-round resident.[12] This is the single rule most likely to generate a complaint against a short-term rental, and a pattern of noise complaints is the most common way a problem rental draws Village and police attention.
Vicksburg’s zoning code also sets off-street parking requirements that every dwelling must meet, so a rental that routinely pushes guest vehicles onto the street can run into both the parking standard and predictable neighbor friction.[13] There is no Village occupancy cap written specifically for short-term rentals; instead, how many people a dwelling can hold is bounded by the building code, the dwelling’s certificate of occupancy, and septic or sewer capacity.[7] The honest summary is this: Vicksburg does not micromanage short-term rentals with STR-specific quiet-hours or guest-count rules, but its general noise, parking, and property-maintenance rules are fully enforceable, and a short-term rental that generates complaints has no special protection from them.
Recent and Pending Zoning Changes to Watch
Vicksburg’s zoning rules are actively in motion, and that is the strongest single reason to verify before you buy. The Village adopted a new Master Plan in 2024 – the long-range document the zoning ordinance is meant to carry out – and has been amending Chapter 475 in stages to bring the code into line with it.[14][4]
Recent stand-alone ordinances have added or revised mixed-use and planned-unit-development provisions, stormwater rules, and site-plan-review procedures, and the Village has continued to revisit how lodging-type uses are categorized in the code.[5] For a rental investor, two consequences follow. First, a zoning answer that is true today may not hold twelve months from now, so a time-sensitive deal deserves a fresh check rather than a recycled one. Second, the direction of travel – a new master plan, mixed-use zoning, visible downtown investment – generally signals a community paying close attention to land use, and that usually means more process around a new rental use, not less. Watch the Planning Commission agendas and confirm the current code text directly on eCode360 before you rely on anything.
Are Long-Term Rentals Allowed in Vicksburg?
Yes. Long-term residential rentals are allowed in Vicksburg’s residential zoning districts, and the Village does not operate a rental-registration program or a recurring rental-inspection program.[3] For a landlord, that is genuinely favorable: there is no annual rental license to renew, no per-unit registration fee paid to the Village, and no scheduled Village inspection cycle to plan around.
What governs a long-term rental instead is ordinary zoning – the dwelling has to be a permitted residential use in its district – together with the building and property-maintenance codes the Village has adopted and the standard body of Michigan landlord-tenant law.[4] One Village requirement does apply at the front end: Chapter 475 requires a certificate of occupancy before a building or premises is occupied, which is the Village’s checkpoint that a dwelling is fit for use.[7] Beyond that front-end sign-off, Vicksburg leaves the landlord-tenant relationship itself to state law.
Where Long-Term Rentals Are Allowed (Zoning)
Long-term rental of a dwelling is allowed wherever that dwelling type is itself a permitted residential use, which you confirm by checking the parcel’s zoning district under Chapter 475.[4] Vicksburg’s districts include an AG-1 Agricultural-Preservation district, a range of residential districts covering single-family, two-family, and multiple-family housing, an R-5 Mobile Home Park district, and commercial and industrial districts where residential use is limited or not allowed.[8]
Renting out a single-family house that sits in a single-family district, or leasing units in a legally established multi-family building, is straightforward and needs no special approval. The situations that genuinely need verification are the unusual ones: a would-be rental in a commercial or mixed-use district, a legally non-conforming structure, or a conversion that adds dwelling units. To check a specific property, find its district on the official Village Zoning Map, confirm that district’s residential rules in the current text of Chapter 475 on eCode360, and email the Village Manager, who handles zoning questions, if anything is ambiguous.[6]
Registration and Inspections: What's Required
There is no Village of Vicksburg rental registration to file and no routine rental inspection to pass, because the Village operates neither program.[3] The inspections that do exist are construction-triggered rather than rental-triggered: when work is done on a property, the building, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing permits and their inspections run through South Central Michigan Construction Code Inspections (SCMCCI), the agency Vicksburg contracts for construction-code enforcement, not through the Village office.[11]
The Village adopts the State Construction Code through its Building Code chapter, which sets the standard any rental dwelling must meet whenever permitted work is done.[15] And Chapter 475 requires a certificate of occupancy before a dwelling is occupied – the one Village sign-off a landlord should make sure is in place before a tenant moves in.[7] If a tenant or neighbor reports an unsafe or blighted condition, the Village can act on it as a municipal-code matter, but that is complaint-driven enforcement, not a scheduled inspection regime. Because operating with no rental-registration program is unusual enough to be worth one phone call, confirm directly with the Village office that nothing has changed before you close.[10]
Fees, Penalties, and Code Enforcement
There is no rental-registration fee in Vicksburg, because there is no rental-registration program – a landlord pays the Village nothing simply to hold and operate a long-term rental.[3] The fees a landlord does encounter are transactional and tied to specific actions: construction permit fees, charged by SCMCCI when you do permitted work, and zoning-application fees – for a variance, a special land use, or a site plan review – set in the Village fee schedule when one of those approvals is needed.[16]
Penalties work the same way: they are code-enforcement-driven rather than rental-specific. The noise ordinance carries enforcement consequences for a property that generates repeated disturbances, and the Village can pursue unsafe or nuisance conditions as municipal-code violations.[12] For a landlord, the practical point is that cost and penalty exposure in Vicksburg is predictable. You are not exposed to annual license fees or registration penalties, but you are fully exposed to construction-code requirements and to ordinary nuisance and property-maintenance enforcement. Because fee amounts change, confirm current zoning and permit fees on the Village fee schedule, which the Village updates periodically.[16]
Tenant Rights and Eviction Resources
Because Vicksburg has no local landlord-tenant ordinance, the rules that govern leases, security deposits, repairs, and evictions for a Vicksburg rental are set entirely by Michigan state law. A security deposit is capped by statute at no more than one and one-half months’ rent, and the same law sets strict deadlines for returning the deposit or itemizing deductions after a tenant moves out.[17]
Eviction in Michigan can be carried out only through the court’s summary-proceedings process. A landlord cannot lawfully change the locks, remove a tenant’s belongings, or shut off utilities to force a tenant out; doing so is an illegal self-help eviction and exposes the landlord to liability.[18] Eviction cases are filed in the district court that serves Kalamazoo County. Both tenants trying to understand their rights and landlords who want to run the process correctly can use Michigan Legal Help, the state court system’s free self-help service, which publishes plain-language guides and court-ready forms for both sides of a rental dispute.[18] Getting the lease, the deposit handling, and any eviction aligned with state law from the start is the most effective way a Vicksburg landlord can avoid a costly dispute.
Official Resources
Property Tax Treatment
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Thinking about a rental in Vicksburg?
Vicksburg's rental rules live almost entirely in its zoning code, and that code is being rewritten in stages – exactly the kind of moving target that decides whether a deal pencils out. I help investors and homeowners read the zoning, reach the right Village staff, and underwrite Kalamazoo County rentals with eyes open.
Sources & Downloads
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1Village of Vicksburg – Village Info https://vicksburgmi.org/about-vicksburg/Official Village page describing Vicksburg's location and community character in southern Kalamazoo County.Verified: 2026-05-21
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2Village of Vicksburg Code of Ordinances – Full Code (eCode360) https://ecode360.com/VI3775Complete codified ordinances; the code contains no short-term rental chapter, confirming the Village has no STR ordinance or permit program.Verified: 2026-05-21
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3Village of Vicksburg – Forms & Downloads https://vicksburgmi.org/vicksburg-village-forms/Lists every downloadable Village application; no rental-registration or rental-inspection form appears, consistent with the absence of a rental-registration program.Verified: 2026-05-21
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4Chapter 475 – Zoning Ordinance (eCode360) https://ecode360.com/32528303The Village zoning ordinance, first adopted in 1976; governs which uses, including rentals and bed-and-breakfast use, are allowed in each district.Verified: 2026-05-21
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5Village of Vicksburg – Ordinances https://vicksburgmi.org/about-vicksburg/ordinances/Lists recent stand-alone ordinances adopted since 2024, including mixed-use, planned-unit-development, stormwater, and site-plan-review changes.Verified: 2026-05-21
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6Village of Vicksburg – Planning & Zoning https://vicksburgmi.org/government/planning-zoning/Village planning and zoning page; identifies zoning-application materials and the Village Manager as the contact for zoning questions.Verified: 2026-05-21
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7Certificate of Occupancy Required – Zoning § 475-11 (eCode360) https://ecode360.com/32528398Requires a certificate of occupancy before a building or premises is occupied.Verified: 2026-05-21
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8Zoning Districts – Zoning § 475-38 (eCode360) https://ecode360.com/32528567Establishes the zoning districts into which the Village is divided, as shown on the official Zoning Map.Verified: 2026-05-21
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9Special Land Uses – Zoning Ordinance (eCode360) https://ecode360.com/32528468Sets the Planning Commission special-land-use review and public-hearing process applicable to uses not permitted by right.Verified: 2026-05-21
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10Village of Vicksburg – Contact Us https://vicksburgmi.org/contact-us/Confirms the Village office address (126 N. Kalamazoo Ave.), phone number, and office hours.Verified: 2026-05-21
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11SCMCCI – Building & Trade Permit Applications http://www.scmcci.org/applications.shtmlSouth Central Michigan Construction Code Inspections handles building, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing permits for Vicksburg.Verified: 2026-05-21
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12Chapter 308 – Noise Ordinance (eCode360) https://ecode360.com/32524086Prohibits excessive, unnecessary, or unusually loud noise within the Village; adopted 1975.Verified: 2026-05-21
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13Off-Street Parking – Zoning Ordinance (eCode360) https://ecode360.com/46067011Sets off-street parking requirements that dwellings must meet.Verified: 2026-05-21
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142024 Vicksburg Master Plan (PDF) https://vicksburgmi.org/wp-content/uploads/Master-Plan_Vicksburg_061124.pdfThe Village's long-range land-use plan, adopted 2024, that current zoning amendments are intended to implement.Verified: 2026-05-21
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15Building Code – Village Code (eCode360) https://ecode360.com/32523719Adopts the State Construction Code as the standard for construction and alteration of buildings in the Village.Verified: 2026-05-21
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16Village of Vicksburg – Fee Schedule (PDF) https://vicksburgmi.org/wp-content/uploads/Fee-Schedule-3.18.24-2.pdfVillage fee schedule listing zoning and permit application fees; updated periodically.Verified: 2026-05-21
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17Michigan Security Deposit Law – MCL 554.602 https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-554-602State statute capping a residential security deposit at no more than 1.5 months' rent.Verified: 2026-05-21
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18Michigan Legal Help – Eviction https://michiganlegalhelp.org/resources/evictionState court system's free self-help resource explaining Michigan's legal eviction process and prohibiting self-help eviction.Verified: 2026-05-21