Update by Kate – Summit County Town Manager’s Meeting – February 2018

The Barr TeamAbout Summit County, Breckenridge & Blue River, Dillon & Summit Cove, Frisco & Copper Mountain, Keystone, A-Basin & Montezuma Leave a Comment

In this video Kate catches us up on the Summit County Town Manager meeting in which all the Town Managers attend and talk about a lot of interesting topics effecting Summit County like taxation, residential and commercial development, cost of healthcare, cost of child care, availability of child care, recycling, parking issues, traffic concerns, etc.

Two main topics that they discussed this year include affordable housing for locals and short term rental regulations for second homeowners who choose to rent out their properties. As far as affordable housing goes there is a lot planned for the few years with both rental units and units that will be for sale. There are a few different properties in Keystone, a very large property in Silverthorne at the Smith Ranch site, Copper Mountain has finished a project is looking at a huge area in Frisco at the Lake Hill site, Breckenridge has been working hard and has already established a few affordable housing locations, they have got one more large location between Frisco and Breckenridge that they are looking at for 2019. So lots of affordable housing options coming up for locals. If you are thinking about buying in the next couple of years please get in touch with us so that we can keep you posted as a lot of these affordable housing options go very quickly.

And then regarding short term rentals, at the HOA level there have always been some HOA’s that have prohibited short term rentals and there are some HOA’s that have prohibited short term rentals for along time that the owners have petitioned to remove that prohibition to allow them more flexibility with their ownership and then there are some groups that have never restricted short term rentals that are considering putting a prohibition in place.  At the town and county level, what they are looking at regarding he airbnb’s and the vrbo’s is how it is effecting the community. A lot of that involves safety and making sure that there are not too many people in any particular units or people sleeping in spaces that don’t have egress or a way to safely get out of the property, making sure that people are sleeping in what are considered real bedrooms.  Another aspect of that are the things that impact neighbors and the surroundings like noise complaints related to people in hot tubs at night, trash complaints – for renters who put the trash out too early in the week and wildlife gets into the trash, picking up after dogs, etc.

So right now no need to be concerned with short term rentals asfar as larger restrictions but something to conscious of in being respectful to neighbors so they don’t impose any stricter future regulations.  Other mountain towns in Colorado and across the West have been having discussions about restricting short term rentals further, some towns have restricted up to a certain number of short term rentals on each street or a certain percentage of each area.  Our area is not talking about that at this time but they are talking about some of those comfort issues related to the community and the neighbors. That’s what we currently need to be aware so that we can preserve our opportunity to rent our properties if we choose to do so.

If you have any questions about these topics or anything else regarding real estate please contact us, thanks!