When Summit Count lost hundreds of neighborhood homes to AirBnB and VRBO, a seismic shift left many locals with no place to live.
Now some of these short-term rentals are returning to the local rental market. But it comes with a dark side.
“The owners are still trying to capture the same type or amount of revenue,” county commissioner Nina Water tells Krystal 93 news director Phil Lindeman. “What does that mean? High rents.”
A quick browse of rentals on Facebook today shows rents ranging from $1,350 for one bedroom in a shared condo in Breckenridge to $3300 for two bedrooms in a Silverthorne lock-off. The Breck bedroom is considered affordable, according to the latest AMI table, but only because it is shared. The Silverthorne lock-off is not.
“A decent amount of rentals show up on the market, but what we don’t see is that they affordable for the average Summit County resident,” Waters says. “The problem here in summit is that we do make more, because we live in a rural resort community, but it’s still not enough to close that gap where you are only spending 30-percent of your wage on living. Some people are spending 70-percent on housing. When that happens, what else do you have cash for?”
Meanwhile, the county remains locked in a lawsuit with vacation rental owners who claim the county’s STR laws violate their rights as property owners. They disagree with caps on nights per rental, and especially zones that limit the number of licenses in a neighborhood.
“It’s not lost on us that Summit County has short term rentals and that we will always need short-term rentals,” Waters says. “What we’re trying to do is created a balance between short and long-term rentals.”