These six markets have a dedicated page with local licensing rules, revenue ranges and neighborhood coverage. They are our most-documented markets, not our only ones — the full town list further down covers more than forty Colorado towns. Denver Metro is our largest market, with 100+ properties under management.
Colorado’s short-term rental markets differ more in what they ask of an owner than in what they pay. The table below compares our six documented markets, starting with Denver Metro, our largest. These are not the full footprint — the complete town list appears further down this page. Every figure is carried from that market’s own page, where the sources and verification dates are listed.
| Market | Towns covered | Peak demand | Market ADR | Typical annual gross | Stay tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Denver Metro | Denver Metro & Front Range: RiNo, LoDo, Highlands, Cherry Creek, Golden, Lakewood, Arvada, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, Evergreen | Year-round; conventions, events, business travel | $160–$187 | $43,000+ | 14.75% combined (10.75% lodger’s tax + state/RTD/CFD) |
| Boulder & Boulder County | Boulder County: Boulder, Longmont, Louisville, Lafayette, Superior, Niwot, Nederland, Lyons | Year-round; university events, summer, Sundance from 2027 | $355–$393 | ~$49,300 (2BR) to ~$119,600 (4BR) | 4.24% – 12.835% combined |
| Breckenridge & Summit County | Summit County: Breckenridge, Frisco, Silverthorne, Dillon, Blue River, Keystone, Copper Mountain | Ski season, plus a strong summer | $300–$430 | $60,000+, top quartile $90,000+ | ~12.275% combined |
| Steamboat Springs & Routt County | Routt County: Steamboat Springs, Stagecoach, Oak Creek, Hayden | Ski season and summer | $353–$534 | $70,000+ | 20.4% combined (includes a 9% STR tax); 22.4% in the marketing district |
| Vail & the Vail Valley | Eagle County: Vail Village, Lionshead, West Vail, East Vail, Cascade Village, Avon, Beaver Creek, Edwards, Eagle, Wolcott | Ski season, with a high-rate peak | ~$563 | $67,500–$75,000+ | ~10.8% combined |
| Winter Park & Grand County | Grand County: Winter Park, Fraser, Tabernash, Granby, Grand Lake, Hot Sulphur Springs | Ski season, with growing summer | $300–$420 | $45,000+ | 13.2% combined |
Stay tax is the full combined rate a guest pays, including state, county, town and any special district. Steamboat Springs is the outlier because its 9% short-term rental tax applies to short-term rentals only — a hotel guest there pays 11.4%. Rates verified against each issuing jurisdiction in September 2026. Rules change, so confirm current requirements before purchasing or listing.
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Effortless Rental Group manages short-term rentals in more than forty Colorado towns, from Denver Metro and the Front Range through the Clear Creek corridor to the Summit, Eagle, Routt and Grand County ski markets. Denver Metro is our largest market, with 100+ properties under management. Each jurisdiction has its own licensing authority, its own tax stack and its own demand calendar.
Six of those markets have a dedicated page above with local rules, revenue ranges and neighborhood coverage. They are not the whole footprint. If your town appears in the full list further down this page and not in those six, we still manage there under the same teams.
That footprint is deliberate. A Denver condo and a Steamboat six-bedroom are different businesses: one fills on weeknight business travel and event weekends, the other lives or dies on a twelve-week ski window and a shoulder-season strategy. We stay in markets where we already have cleaning, maintenance and guest-response teams on the ground, and we say no where we do not.
What stays the same everywhere is the performance work: dynamic pricing against the local demand calendar, distribution across Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com, and a direct booking channel run alongside them. Start with what full-service management covers, or read how we built the company.
Front Range and mountain calendars move on different signals, and we review booking pace weekly in all of them. What we learn from one market informs how we price the others, which is not something a single-market manager or a remote national platform can do.
Colorado regulates short-term rentals at the municipal and county level, and the rules move often. A team that prepares licenses and remits lodging tax across more than forty Colorado towns follows ordinance changes as a matter of routine rather than at renewal time.
Own a Denver condo and a Breckenridge townhome and you run both on one statement instead of two managers and two systems. Every market is still staffed locally: cleaning, maintenance and guest response are handled by teams in that market, not dispatched from Denver.
The market changes the calendar, the climate and the jurisdiction. It does not change the fee structure, the operating standard or who answers the phone.
Our focus is helping owners increase net revenue, not just reduce management costs. We also run small multi-unit portfolios and manage boutique hotel and hospitality assets. See owner results, or if you are an agent or broker, our referral program.
See the Full Services BreakdownManaging in both city and ski markets surfaces patterns a single-market operator never sees. Four we act on.
Boulder County bookings are made about sixty-five days out and run about 8.9 nights. Ski-market peak weeks commit far earlier than that, which is why we run a different pricing cadence in each market rather than one calendar across all six.
Breckenridge properties typically gross $60,000 or more, and top-quartile ski-in/ski-out homes clear $90,000. The gap is not peak ski weeks, which sell at almost any rate. It is what happens in late spring and late autumn, and that is a length-of-stay and minimum-night problem rather than a rate problem.
A Denver property at $160 to $187 a night looks unremarkable beside Vail’s $563 until you set it against Denver’s 71 to 72% year-round market occupancy. Owners who bought in Denver expecting ski-town nightly rates are the ones most likely to underprice their way into a worse annual number.
The most common reason a Colorado property cannot be listed is not that the numbers fail. It is Denver’s primary-residence rule, a closed overlay zone in Steamboat, a full zone cap in Breckenridge, or a $1,000 septic change-of-use permit in unincorporated Boulder County. We check eligibility before we talk about revenue.
Effortless Rental Group manages short-term rentals in more than forty Colorado towns, from the Denver Metro and the Clear Creek corridor to the Summit, Eagle, Routt and Grand County ski markets. Six of these markets have a dedicated page with local rules and revenue ranges; the rest are covered by the same local teams.
Do not see your town? We take properties outside this list case by case, and only where we can staff them locally. Ask and we will tell you straight.
Check Your TownColorado has no statewide short-term rental license. Every town and county issues its own, and requirements differ sharply between neighbors. Here is what we take off your desk in each jurisdiction we operate in.
We prepare, file and renew the local short-term rental license, including the supporting documents each jurisdiction asks for: affidavits, life-safety and fire inspections, local-representative designations and, in unincorporated areas, septic documentation. Boulder County alone contains eight separate licensing authorities.
We register the property for state and local lodging tax, collect it on every booking and remit it on the jurisdiction’s schedule. The stacks differ sharply: unincorporated Boulder County combines to 4.24%, Winter Park to 13.2%, the City of Boulder to 12.835%, Denver to 14.75%, and Steamboat Springs to 20.4% once its 9% short-term rental tax is added to state and local sales and lodging tax.
Denver and the Town of Vail both require proof of liability coverage at $1 million or more, and Vail adds a fire inspection and strict occupancy and parking compliance. We confirm a property meets those thresholds before the first booking rather than at renewal.
Association rules often bind tighter than the town ordinance, and overlay zoning in Steamboat Springs decides eligibility outright: Zone A is unrestricted, Zone B is capped by subzone with a waiting list, and Zone C is closed to new licenses. We review the governing documents and the zoning map during onboarding and tell you early if a property will not qualify.
Regulations verified September 2026 against each jurisdiction. Rules change, so confirm current requirements with the issuing jurisdiction before purchasing or listing.
Effortless Rental Group manages short-term rentals in more than forty Colorado towns, covering Denver Metro and the Front Range, Boulder County, the Clear Creek and Gilpin corridor, Summit County, Eagle County and the Vail Valley, Routt County, and Grand County. Six of those markets — Denver, Boulder County, Breckenridge, Steamboat Springs, Vail and Winter Park — have a dedicated page with local rules and revenue ranges.
Yes. A dedicated market page means we have documented that jurisdiction’s rules and revenue ranges in depth, not that it is the only place we operate. Towns such as Broomfield, Westminster, Centennial, Morrison, Golden, Idaho Springs, Georgetown, Black Hawk, Dillon, Keystone, Beaver Creek and Fraser are covered by the same local teams. Check the full town list on this page, and if your town is not on it, ask — we take properties outside the list case by case, and only where we can staff them locally.
Management is commission-based and all-inclusive: a single percentage of revenue with no à-la-carte add-ons. Rates start at 20% of revenue for qualifying new properties and are the same structure in every market we operate in. The starting rate is set against your property’s specifications and revenue projection rather than by market.
Yes, provided each market is staffed separately, which is how we run it. Cleaning, maintenance and guest response are handled by teams in that market, while pricing, compliance and owner reporting are centralized. What a ski property and a city property share is the back office, not the operations.
The difference is where the work happens. National platforms centralize everything and cover a market remotely; we keep cleaning, maintenance and guest response staffed inside each Colorado market while centralizing pricing, compliance and owner reporting. Owners who come to us from national platforms most often cite slow on-the-ground response and pricing that ignores local demand.
We price dynamically against each market’s demand calendar and review booking pace regularly, then distribute the same calendar across Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com and our own direct booking channel. Distribution decides how many people see the listing; pricing and minimum-stay rules decide what those nights are worth.
We build and market a direct booking channel alongside Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com rather than instead of them, using social and paid media to generate demand that does not depend on an OTA ranking. Direct reservations do not carry the platform service fee that comes out of an OTA booking.
Yes. Colorado has no statewide short-term rental license, so the license is issued by the town or county the property sits in, and requirements differ sharply between neighbors. Boulder County alone contains eight separate licensing authorities. We prepare applications and handle renewals in every jurisdiction we operate in.
The highest figures we publish are in Boulder County and Summit County: a four-bedroom Boulder County home runs roughly $119,600 a year, and top-quartile ski-in/ski-out properties in Breckenridge clear $90,000. Steamboat Springs typically grosses $70,000 and up, and Vail $67,500 to $75,000. Per-property revenue tracks bedroom count and license eligibility far more closely than it tracks market.
Denver Metro runs the highest year-round occupancy of our markets, at roughly 71% to 72% market-wide, because its demand comes from business travel, conventions and events rather than a ski season. Mountain markets concentrate their nights into a narrower window at much higher nightly rates.
Each mountain market has its own cleaning and maintenance crews on standing schedules, with winterization, snow management and freeze protection built into the preventive calendar. Mountain properties break differently than city properties, and the turnover windows between ski-week checkouts are far tighter.
Onboarding runs about two weeks once licensing and photography are confirmed, and covers the license application, tax registration, photography, listing builds and channel setup. Pricing performance shows up first, usually within the first full booking cycle; a fair read on annual revenue takes a complete season in the mountain markets.
Yes. Alongside single-property short-term rental management we run small multi-unit portfolios and manage boutique hotel and hospitality assets, including conversions. Multi-unit and developer projects are priced and operated at the portfolio level rather than unit by unit.
We manage in HOA buildings regularly, and we review the association’s short-term rental rules before onboarding because covenants often bind tighter than the town ordinance. Deed-restricted and affordable-housing units are generally ineligible for short-term rental, and we flag that before any agreement is signed.
Request a free property revenue analysis and we will model your specific property against comparable listings in its market, factoring in bedroom count, license eligibility and the local demand calendar. It is built for your address rather than a market average.
Tell us where your property is and we will tell you what it can do, and whether it can be licensed at all.
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