#colorado #breckenridge #realestate #shorttermrentals
Tommy Jefferies has had more than 220 guests this year rent rooms in the four-bedroom home he has converted into a hostel in a neighborhood north of Breckenridge.
He does all the cleaning and reservation work on top of his gigs as a snowcat driver, ski shop manager and dog walker. The 35-year-old who scraped up just enough to buy the home six years ago calls Airbnb “my full-time job.”
“Without income from my guests, I could not live in this town,” he said.
When Summit County’s new regulations on short-term rentals land next month, Jefferies will be limited to 35 reservations a year. He’s certain he will not make enough to pay his mortgage with a nearly 90% annual reduction in bookings.
He pleaded with county commissioners to help him protect the only way he’s found to stay a resident in the county.
“It’s so frustrating,” he said. “I went to so many meetings where all this was being discussed and we were literally laughed off the speaking podium. I’ve never experienced such a gross display of not being heard. They are not counting me as a local. They have shown this dark light over everyone who is a short-term renter and they want us to all look like absentee owners. I’ve lived in this valley for 13 years and they are forcing me to leave. They treat me like an outsider in my own home.”
Last month a group of more than 100 homeowners sued the Summit County commissioners in federal court, calling a recently adopted rule that limits property owners to 35 bookings a year and a 2% tax “a blunderbuss response” of “successively more severe, wide-ranging, misguided and unlawful regulations.”
A group in Breckenridge “is picking up momentum” with plans to challenge the town of Breckenridge’s new caps on short-term licenses and zoning that curtails rentals in residential neighborhoods, said Bill Ray with the newly formed Colorado Property Owners for Property Rights. The Breckenridge town council in 2021 approved a $400 per-bedroom annual fee on short-term rentals in the town after a housing assessment survey showed 14.5% of renters in Summit County had had their lease terminated because the owner was converting the property to short-term rentals. The annual short-term rental fee climbed to $756 per bedroom this year.
Courtesy of the Colorado Sun
