Colorado mountain towns cracking down on Airbnb

[James Carlson]

Any Colorado vacation rental owners out there in the ski-town areas?

Sounds like many of the bigger names are curbing Airbnbs and short-term rentals with various rules and regulations. The urban cities have been doing this for years. Denver and nearly the entire metro area are out for Airbnb investors. (There are still two Denver-area cities that allow it.) Colorado Springs allows non-owner occupied STRs but only in small pockets in the city. But it's interesting to see the ski towns that rely so heavily on tourists taking action.

Breckenridge passed a cap on short-term rentals, a cap that is already lower than the existing Airbnb stock. Summit County has temporarily stopped accepting new STR license applications. Frisco might consider a ballot measure to outright ban them. Dillon considered a moratorium. (It failed, but still.) And then several other cities are considering increasing taxes and other measures.

Anyone out there in these areas? What are you seeing on the ground? 

I still like the Denver-area cities that allow Airbnb investments. And what I call the middle mountain towns like Evergreen and Conifer near Denver and Woodland Park and Divide near Colorado Springs are still open for STR business and can do well.

[Ryan Moyer]

Originally posted by @Josh C.:

I never understood this. Why in tourist areas do you restrict more people coming or larger groups? Not to mention personal property rights and free markets. But that’s another subject. Lol

 I live in a ski area so I kind of understand it.  Hate it but at least understand where they're coming from.

I don't think the issue is people coming in larger groups, the issue is housing for lower wage workers. These ski areas have insane property values (mine in Utah isn't as bad as those Colorado towns but same idea) so there's no way someone working for $7-15/hr at a ski resort or working restaurant wages or store clerk wages can afford to live there. In the past that meant they would just rent, but now every investor in the area isn't stupid enough to rent their properties as a LTR for $1500/mo when they could list it as an STR and make double/triple that even with a property manager. Originally people could just move a little further out of town but now even those areas are popular for STRs.

So there's nowhere for lifties and store clerks and restaurant staff to live so they go somewhere else. Then the restaurants and ski resorts and whatnot are understaffed and complain. Now the city is stuck choosing whether to side with the STR owners that they did fine without for the last 50 years or the ski resorts/restaurants/shops that actually bring all the tourists into town.

It's why I'll probably never own a ski property, even though I love to ski and could manage them much easier since they'd only be 30 minutes away instead of 2000 miles like the places I do own for STR. I'd rather just make my money somewhere more STR friendly and use those profits to pay for a sweet ski vacation.

I'm sure Colorado isn't very STR friendly in general like said but we have bans and regulations out the wazzoo in the ski areas here in Utah as well, and Utah is about as conservative as it gets. It's just a micro-economy that doesn't work in the current climate with STRs so lucrative.