What Green Bay's 400-Plus Short-Term Rentals Mean for Rents, Jobs and Taxes

Green Bay had about 120 registered short-term rentals in 2022. By fall 2025 it had more than 430, and the count passed 500 around the 2025 NFL Draft, according to an advisory report from the city's Equal Rights Commission. Along East Shore Drive, the commission counted at least 11 rentals among roughly 150 homes, about 7%. The Common Council answered in March with house rules, a public rental map and clearer grounds for pulling permits, after dropping the 180-day annual cap and seven-night minimum stay the commission had sought.

Rental owners say the industry brings visitors, jobs and tax money to the city. A decade of economic research, Wisconsin's own tax laws and the experience of Door County, where rentals now outnumber hotel rooms, put each of those claims to the test. On housing costs, the findings point mostly one way.

More Rentals, Higher Rents and Prices

The most-cited U.S. study, published in Marketing Science in 2021, matched Airbnb listings nationwide against Zillow price and rent data from 2012 through 2016. In a typical ZIP code, a 1% rise in listings pushed rents up 0.018% and home prices up 0.026%, and the effect grew where fewer residents owned their homes. Listings moved homes from the long-term market to the short-term one without adding to total housing supply, according to the journal's publisher.

Those percentages look small until listings triple, as Green Bay's did. In Barcelona, University of Barcelona economists found Airbnb raised rents about 1.9% and sale prices about 5.3% in the average neighborhood, and about 7% and 19% in the neighborhoods with the most listings. The reverse holds too. When 18 cities in Los Angeles County passed home-sharing ordinances, listings fell by about half and rents and home prices each dropped about 2%, according to a 2021 Journal of Urban Economics study.

A 2022 McGill University study, commissioned by the neighborhood group Better Neighbors LA, estimated short-term rentals raised Los Angeles rents 2.4%, about $810 a year for the average renter household. Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute has called the loss of long-term units "the single biggest cost Airbnb imposes on communities." Because people need housing whatever it costs, he argued, small cuts in supply can push prices up sharply.

Nobody has measured that effect in Green Bay, and the commission's report relied on the national studies without local rent or price data. The city's 2025 housing needs study found median rent rose 29% from 2018 to 2023, to $904, and projected the city needs 2,100 to 4,575 new rental units by 2040. Renter Jeanne Biebel told NBC 26 her rent has doubled in a few years, which she blamed on rentals driving up property values.

Next door, the Ashwaubenon Village Board voted unanimously in 2023 to require six-night minimum stays at rentals whose owners don't live on site. Village Manager Joel Gregozeski told NBC 26 the rule was meant partly to preserve ordinary housing near Lambeau Field. In the same story, a Realtor pointed to a home near the stadium listed just under $500,000, while a similar one three blocks farther away was listed under $300,000.

Where the Money Goes

Part of every booking leaves town before a guest arrives. Airbnb, based in San Francisco, now takes about 15.5% of most hosts' payouts under the single-fee structure it's moving home hosts onto.

Most of the rest goes to the owner, and many of Green Bay's owners aren't local. The commission found about one-fifth of registered rentals belong to out-of-state investors and about a third to LLCs or other corporations. NBC 26 reported entities own 49.1%, and that many individual owners live outside the city. Only 20% of the city's rentals are owner-occupied, per the commission.

The pattern holds for any rental whose landlord lives elsewhere: the rent and the profit leave with the owner. Short-term rentals also charge more. Door County's cottage, cabin and house rentals averaged about $303 a night in 2021, more than double the hotel and motel average. In Door County, Door County Knock found only about three in 10 owners of cottage, cabin and house rentals had Door County mailing addresses, and the share of new owners from the county fell two years running. Those rentals took in more than $40 million in 2021, 40% more than the county's hotels and motels. Knock noted the records don't show how much of that money left the county.

Where visitors do spend, they can change what's on the block. A 2023 study of Madrid by Alberto Hidalgo, Massimo Riccaboni and Francisco Velazquez found Airbnb shifted business activity toward tourist-oriented shops at the expense of those serving residents, and concluded rentals push out local businesses along with residents. Bivens noted the gains flow mostly to the well-off, since investment and second-home property is concentrated among high-wealth households.

Tourism Mostly Moves Around

Airbnb pitches its guests as an economic engine. The company says they spent about $200 per person per day beyond lodging in 2025, and that hosts earned nearly 40% of U.S. host income in areas without hotels.

Independent research finds most of those guests would have come anyway. Two surveys cited by EPI found only 2% to 4% of Airbnb users wouldn't have taken the trip without it, and about three in four would otherwise have stayed in a hotel. Bivens found little evidence that cities with more listings draw many more travelers. He also noted that lodging is about 1% of household spending, while housing is more than 15%, so any savings on lodging can be quickly offset by higher housing costs.

Rentals matter most when hotels fill up. Boston University researchers studying Texas found Airbnb cut into hotels' pricing power during peak events like South by Southwest, because hosts could add rooms quickly when demand spiked. Across the state, a 10% rise in listings cut hotel room revenue only about 0.39%. That's Green Bay's situation on Packers weekends and during the Draft. Owner Jason Fischer, who has 11 rentals, told WBAY most of his bookings are two- or three-night stays and that he built his rental for game-day fans.

Tourism here is already setting records. Wisconsin posted its fourth straight record year in 2025, with $17 billion in direct visitor spending, $4.6 billion of it on lodging, and Brown County's tourism impact grew 6.9%.

The Jobs Claim

Green Bay owners argued last fall that tighter rules would eliminate jobs maintaining their properties. Airbnb makes the same claim nationally, crediting hosts and guests with more than 1.1 million U.S. jobs in 2025, an estimate it built by running guest spending through the IMPLAN economic model. By EPI's reasoning, if most guests would have traveled anyway, much of that spending and the jobs tied to it would exist without rentals.

When a stay moves from a hotel to a house, the jobs question turns on which one needs more workers. Bivens argued hotels are more labor-intensive, and he called an Airbnb-commissioned 2017 jobs study implausible enough that policymakers should ignore it. Hotel housekeeping is also more likely to be union work. In 10 major cities, 23.2% of maids and cleaners in hotels and other lodging were unionized, compared with 12.1% in other industries, EPI found.

The McGill study estimated rental platforms may have cost Los Angeles more than 400 permanent hotel jobs and cut annual pay $400 to $1,300 per hotel worker. A 2015 study commissioned by the Hotel Association of New York City estimated New York's direct hotel job losses at about 2,800.

The research isn't unanimous. A 2020 Tourism Management study by Boston University's Makarand Mody found Airbnb growth in 12 large metro areas went along with higher employment across hospitality, hotels included. Another study cited by EPI tied more Airbnb activity to more restaurant jobs, though not in neighborhoods with a large share of Black residents. Green Bay's rentals do need cleaners and repair crews, but neither the commission's report nor the owners who testified offered a count of those jobs.

What the City Actually Collects

Owners also point to taxes. Rental guests pay room tax on top of sales tax, and Airbnb has collected Green Bay's room tax from its guests since 2017. State law decides where most of it goes. Since 2017, at least 70% of local room tax must go to tourism promotion and development through a tourism commission, and a municipality can keep no more than 30% for other uses like police or streets.

Rising home values don't add to the city's budget either. A Wisconsin city's levy can grow each year only by the percentage of value added through net new construction, so climbing prices on existing homes don't bring City Hall another dollar. When values rise unevenly, the Wisconsin Policy Forum has explained, the tax bill shifts between owners. If rentals push up prices in neighborhoods like East Shore Drive or near Lambeau, homeowners there would carry a bigger share of the same levy.

A house run as a rental pays its full property tax, and slightly more than an identical owner-occupied home, since the state's lottery and gaming credit applies only to a primary residence. Rentals also create work the city has to cover, from permit reviews to complaint follow-up and the enforcement the council just expanded. Green Bay charges $500 for a first-year permit and $250 to renew, per the commission report, which suggested raising them pending a study of what the program costs.

Elsewhere, collection itself has been a problem. The McGill study estimated Los Angeles may have missed up to $14.2 million in occupancy tax in 2021. EPI cited a 2016 projection that unpaid Airbnb taxes could cost U.S. local governments $440 million, and noted that when rentals pull guests from hotels at lower prices, cities can collect less even at the same tax rate.

Why Neighbors Object

Green Bay's complaints track what researchers have found elsewhere. The commission heard about noise and weekend party houses, and residents described four or five cars arriving with some rental groups on game weekends. Lynn VandeWalle told WPR a house near her sold to a family that later turned it into a rental without neighbors knowing, and she wants notice when that happens.

The commission said police data showed relatively few rental-related calls, and some residents told WPR they've had no problems. Researchers say a quieter cost is losing neighbors. A 2021 Northeastern University study of Boston found fights, robberies and other violent incidents rose a year or more after rentals spread, with the share of buildings holding a rental mattering more than the number of tourists. The authors linked the rise to weakened ties among neighbors. Airbnb disputed the study's methods.

In Door County, where cottage, cabin and house rental units now outnumber hotel and motel rooms, employers have bought homes just to house their own workers, and homes that might have been rented year-round have become tourist rentals, Wisconsin Watch reported in 2021. A 2019 study for Door County's economic development agency found the county 470 rental units short.

What Green Bay Can and Can't Do

The state sets the limits. Under a statute created by the 2017 state budget, Wisconsin municipalities can ban rentals shorter than seven days and cap rentals of seven to 29 days at 180 days a year, but can't ban longer stays. The city attorney's office told the commission Green Bay has no control over the number of licenses, and cities can't restrict rentals by zone.

Green Bay's council passed its rules March 3 without the cap or the minimum stay. Mayor Eric Genrich said the city was "at a good spot given the constraints our council gave us" and state law. Ald. Joey Prestley, who sits on the commission, called the result a watered-down version of the original proposal, WPR reported. Owner Larry Kuciemba had urged the council to go after problem properties rather than every rental.

Ashwaubenon took the stricter path state law allows, and the Wisconsin Realtors Association threatened to sue in 2024, though no suit advanced, according to the commission's report. The Realtors and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty have challenged rental ordinances in other communities, and Wisconsin case law on the statute remains thin.