Denver's Airbnb advisory committee met on Tuesday

[James Carlson]

For those Denver Airbnb hosts (or VRBO hosts or short-term rental hosts of all stripes), I thought I'd leave a brief update here. I attended the Denver Short Term Rental Advisory Committee on Tuesday, and they had some more information about how compliance with and enforcement of the new Denver Airbnb law is going.

As background, the city council in June passed the new ordinance, which legalized certain short-term rentals but also prohibited anyone from using a second home or investment property to do STRs. The law goes into full effect Jan. 1, 2017. The advisory committee was set up to help implement the law.

Here are the highlights:

• 80 to 85 licenses have been issued so far, a mere fraction of what are likely thousands of listings
• 200 or so compliance letters have been sent to hosts
• 2 inspectors will be dedicated to Airbnb compliance (though what exactly "dedicated" means is unclear)
• a Short Term Rental Coordinator position has been created in the excise and licenses division

I am very interested to see how compliance with this law pans out. Portland passed a similar measure in early 2015, and as of August of this year, less than a quarter of hosts have complied.