Colorado Springs, Colorado Short-Term Rental Regulation: A Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Colorado Springs, Colorado and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that the city allows it, and has for years, through a permit system that stayed open even as some of its Front Range neighbors clamped down hard. Colorado Springs sits in El Paso County, and unlike home-rule Denver an hour north, it has never required you to live in the unit you rent out. You need a Short Term Rental permit from the city's Planning & Community Development Department first, and which type you qualify for depends on whether you live there.

There's a catch, mind you, and it lands hardest if you don't. Non-owner-occupied rentals got shut out of every single-family zone back in December 2019, and since June 30, 2025, a property with an accessory dwelling unit can't hold an STR permit at all, full stop. Those two changes alone rule out a lot of the buy-and-flip-to-Airbnb plans that used to work here, so it's worth checking your zone and your lot before you get attached to a property.

So this guide walks through what applies in 2026: who qualifies for which permit type, what the paperwork and the $124.95 fee involve, the taxes that stack on top of a booking, and who at the city picks up the phone when something goes wrong. Every figure below comes from Colorado Springs' or Colorado's own pages and documents, checked in July 2026, and where the ordinance itself was unreachable, I've said so and worked from the city's own plain-English forms instead. If you're weighing this property against other markets, run it through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations Colorado Springs, Colorado?

That research starts with the permit ordinance itself, and the short answer is permitted, with conditions that split hard along one line: whether you actually live there. Since a December 2019 amendment, the city recognizes two distinct permit types, and Colorado Springs' own short-term rental page lays out exactly what separates them.

An owner-occupied short-term rental is one where you physically occupy the property for at least 185 days a year. That permit type is allowed in any lawful dwelling unit, in any zone where residential use is permitted at all, no exceptions by zone. A non-owner-occupied rental is everything else, and it carries real restrictions. Applications submitted after December 26, 2019 can't operate in single-family zoning districts (R-E, R-1 6, R-1 9, or Single-Family PDZs), and everywhere else, a non-owner-occupied STR has to sit at least 500 feet from another one. There's no waiting list right now. The city does field regular questions about the density rule, though, and will check a specific address if you email the STR program directly.

Zoning also caps how many listings a single property can carry. A single-family zoned property gets one listing, whether that's the whole house or a single room. R-2 zoning allows two. Multi-family zoning, the kind that would support an apartment building, allows up to four. Condos and similarly held buildings cap each owner at two units within the complex, even if they own more. None of this is a citywide cap, mind you: the city states plainly that there's no limit on the total number of STR permits it will issue, just on how the non-owner-occupied ones get distributed.

The newest wrinkle is accessory dwelling units. As of June 30, 2025, under Ordinance 25-45, a property with an ADU can't hold an STR permit on any structure on that lot, principal house included. The ordinance grandfathers what already existed. If a property had a legally permitted ADU and a legally permitted STR before that date, both can continue as nonconforming uses under Section 7.5.804 until the STR permit lapses, gets withdrawn, or is otherwise terminated. One other carve-out exists for active-duty military: an owner-occupant stationed in El Paso County who gets orders elsewhere can get the 185-day occupancy requirement waived for up to a year, with a copy of the orders as proof.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Colorado Springs, Colorado

That ADU rule and the military waiver both assume you already own the property, so the more useful question for anyone still shopping is which properties work. Since single-family zones lock non-owner-occupied rentals out entirely, a buy-to-rent plan on a typical suburban house here only works if you intend to live in it yourself for at least 185 days a year. That's a real commitment, not a technicality. It rules out the classic "buy a house across town, furnish it, run it as a pure investment" model that's still legal in parts of unincorporated El Paso County.

What does still work as a genuine investment play is a multi-family or R-2 property, where non-owner-occupancy is allowed and you can hold up to four listings on one lot, or two on an R-2 lot. A condo works too, up to two units per owner, provided the building itself and your HOA don't forbid it separately, which is worth checking before you buy since Colorado Springs doesn't override an HOA's own rules. Denver's approach is stricter across the board: our Denver County guide covers a city that requires owner-occupancy on every single STR, no exceptions, so Colorado Springs is the more flexible market if a pure investment property is what you're after.

Whatever you buy has to clear the basics before a permit will even issue. The unit needs a valid Certificate of Occupancy, since Section 7.5.1704.F bars a permit for a vacant or non-compliant property, so you can't apply just to "hold your spot" on a lot you haven't finished. Sleeping quarters have to sit in genuinely finished living space, too. A shed, a tent, an RV, or a converted garage without finished space won't qualify. Neither will a commercial office or warehouse unit. Clear those hurdles, and you're ready for the permit itself.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Colorado Springs, Colorado

Getting that permit is the next real gate, and it runs entirely through the city's Accela portal, where you'll create an account before you can submit anything. The permit fee is $124.95 a year, as of July 2026, payable by cash, credit card, or electronic check, and once a complete application lands, city staff has 10 business days to review it. An incomplete application isn't accepted at all. It's worth having every document ready before you start the clock.

A granted permit runs for one year with no grace period on renewal. You'll get a reminder email about 30 days before expiration, but failing to renew on time can trigger a Code Enforcement notice, and for a non-owner-occupied permit, potential forfeiture of the whole thing. The permit is also non-transferable under Section 7.5.1702: it's issued to a specific owner, not to the property, so selling the house doesn't hand the buyer your permit. If you're listing two separate units on one property, say a room in the house plus a unit in the backyard, that's two permits and two separate fees, not one.

Once you're operating, a handful of ongoing duties come with the permit:

• Keep a 24-hour local contact on file who can respond to an emergency within one hour.
• Put your permit number in every listing and every piece of marketing material.
• Post the permit itself and the Good Neighbor Guidelines inside the unit, near the front door.
• Maintain weekly residential trash collection, with bins screened from public view.
• Notify the city within three days of any change that could affect the permit, and let the city know immediately if you stop operating so staff can void it.

No weddings or large commercial events, either, and the owner or an agent can't prepare or serve meals to guests, since that starts to look like a different kind of business under city code.

Required Documents for Colorado Springs, Colorado Short-Term Rentals

Since none of that paperwork can wait until after you apply, it's worth assembling it up front. The Planning Department's own checklist lays out exactly what a complete application needs:

• Completed Short-Term Rental Checklist and Owner Acknowledgment, a four-page form covering the standards you're agreeing to meet.
• Two proofs of primary residence, for owner-occupied permits, from two different categories: a valid driver's license or state ID, vehicle registration, voter registration, or a dependent's school registration. Mail doesn't count, and the city can ask for more if what you submit isn't convincing.
• A signed, notarized Short-Term Rental Annual Affidavit, in either the owner-occupied or non-owner-occupied version.
• Proof of at least $500,000 in liability insurance, which can come from your own policy or from a hosting platform's contract acknowledging coverage at that level.
• Proof of listing on a hosting platform, a direct link or listing ID for Airbnb, VRBO, or wherever you plan to book.

Beyond the paperwork, you'll self-certify against a safety checklist before the city will approve you. Watch out for the details here, since they're specific: a fire extinguisher rated ABC 2.5 lb within six feet of any gas stove, certified annually; smoke alarms in and just outside every sleeping room; a carbon monoxide detector within 15 feet of sleeping rooms; and if a bedroom is in a basement, a window well with an escape ladder and an operable window for a second way out. Bathroom and kitchen outlets need GFI protection, extension cords can't stand in for permanent wiring, and the unit needs at least one fully working bathroom. Keep those in mind even if the house already looks guest-ready, because they're what gets checked if a complaint ever brings an inspector to the door.

Colorado Springs, Colorado Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and in Colorado Springs it comes in five separate layers. Three ride on the state's coattails through the Colorado Department of Revenue, and two belong entirely to the city, since Colorado Springs is a home-rule municipality that collects its own sales and lodging tax rather than routing it through the state.

Tax	Rate	Collected by
State sales tax	2.90%	Colorado Department of Revenue
El Paso County sales tax	1.23%	Colorado Department of Revenue
Pikes Peak Rural Transit Authority (PPRTA) tax	1.00%	Colorado Department of Revenue
City of Colorado Springs sales tax	3.07%	City of Colorado Springs (self-collected)
City Lodgers Tax (LART)	2.00%	City of Colorado Springs
Combined rate on a short-term stay	10.20%	Split between the state and the city

The city's own 3.07% breaks down further into a 2.0% General Fund piece, 0.57% for road repair, 0.4% for public safety, and 0.1% for trails, parks, and open space, though you'll only ever see the combined figure on a bill. The 2% Lodgers Tax sits inside the city's Lodgers and Automobile Rental Tax fund. The city's own December 2024 revenue report confirms it directly: "the 2.0% Lodgers Tax and 1.0% Auto Rental Tax (LART) are used to attract visitors." That auto rental piece is for car rentals, not lodging. It doesn't touch a short-term rental stay at all.

All of this rides on the same base: the entire rent charged, cleaning fee included, for any stay under 30 consecutive days. A written agreement for 30 days or longer is exempt from every layer, per the city's own Hotel and Motel Tax Guide. Who actually collects it depends on how you book. Airbnb's own Colorado Springs tax page confirms it collects both the 3.07% city sales tax and the 2% lodging tax automatically on stays of 29 nights or fewer, matching the city's rates exactly, and it separately collects the state's 2.9% sales tax as part of its general Colorado coverage. If you book only through a platform like that, the city says the marketplace facilitator remits the city's own sales tax under its own license, per Ordinance 19-49. Book independently, though, and you'll need your own City Sales Tax License, which is free and issued entirely online, on top of a state sales tax license from the Colorado Department of Revenue. All city taxes owed have to be settled before your STR permit can even issue, so this isn't something to leave until your first guest checks in.

Colorado Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That home-rule setup is exactly why Colorado Springs' tax rules look different from the county right next door, and it's worth understanding the layer above the city before you assume anything carries over from elsewhere in the state. Colorado has no statewide short-term rental preemption at all. The legislature's own nonpartisan research staff put it bluntly: "there are no statewide regulations regarding STRs," and every city or county sets its own rules, our Colorado statewide guide covers that landscape in full.

What the state has done is hand counties more explicit authority rather than restrict them. House Bill 20-1093, effective September 2020, let county boards license and regulate STR owners directly and pull a listing once a county-issued license is suspended. House Bill 23-1287, effective August 2023, standardized definitions of "lodging unit," "short-term rental," and "vacation rental service" across counties. Neither bill caps a fee or blocks a city from doing what Colorado Springs has done with zoning and the ADU rule. On the tax side, a host who books independently anywhere in Colorado needs a state sales tax license from the Department of Revenue, which runs a $16 fee plus a refundable $50 deposit and expires at the end of every odd-numbered year, unless a marketplace facilitator handles all the collection on their behalf.

One recent change is worth flagging even though it doesn't touch the city directly: House Bill 25-1247, signed in May 2025, raised the voter-approvable county lodging tax cap from 2% to 6%. That affects unincorporated El Paso County, where several counties put the higher rate to voters in November 2025, but Colorado Springs itself sits outside it, since the city collects its own Lodgers Tax rather than the county's. If you're weighing a Colorado Springs property against somewhere further up the Front Range, our Jefferson County guide covers a market where the mountain-foothills zoning plays out quite differently.

Does Colorado Springs Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Given how much of that framework is self-reported, the honest answer is that enforcement here is real but complaint-driven rather than proactive. The city doesn't patrol for unpermitted rentals. Instead, anyone, a neighbor especially, can check SpringsView's mapping tool for a specific address by turning on the "Short Term Rentals" layer under "Planning-Administration." If nothing shows up for a property that's clearly listed on Airbnb, the next step is a report to Neighborhood Services, the city's Code Enforcement division.

The consequences that follow are genuinely material, even without a dramatic citation. Operating without a permit at all risks a Code Enforcement notice. Missing a renewal deadline does the same, and for a non-owner-occupied permit specifically, it can mean forfeiting the permit outright, since there's no grace period once it lapses. A permit that becomes a documented nuisance, whether through noise, safety issues, or genuinely interfering with a neighbor's quiet enjoyment of their own property, can be revoked, and the city's own application form has hosts acknowledge that risk in writing before they're ever approved. Providing false information anywhere on the application is itself a violation, and grounds to deny, void, or revoke a permit later even if it was initially approved.

I couldn't find a published count of how many permits Colorado Springs has actually revoked or how many citations it issues in a given year, so I won't invent a number here. What is verifiable is the structure: a public map anyone can check, a specific division that handles complaints, and a permit that's genuinely revocable rather than theoretical. That's enough to make ignoring the rule a real risk rather than a paperwork inconvenience, even in a city that isn't out patrolling neighborhoods for you. Before you commit to a specific address, the Colorado Springs market data on BNBCalc is worth pulling up too, since it's a faster way to see whether the numbers hold up once you've priced in the permit and the tax layers above.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Colorado Springs, Colorado

Given all of that, the order you tackle these steps in matters, since the early ones tell you whether the later ones are worth the effort at all.

1. Confirm your zone and your ADU status first. Check whether your property sits in a single-family zone, since that locks out non-owner-occupied permits entirely, and confirm you don't have an ADU that would block the permit under the 2025 rule.
2. Decide whether you can commit to owner-occupancy. If you can't live there at least 185 days a year, you need a zone that actually allows non-owner-occupied STRs, and you need to check the 500-foot buffer against existing permits.
3. Get the property to code first. Make sure you have a valid Certificate of Occupancy and that sleeping quarters sit in finished living space, since neither can be fixed after the fact during review.
4. Assemble your documents. Gather your two proofs of residence, arrange at least $500,000 in liability insurance, and get your STR affidavit notarized.
5. Run the safety self-inspection. Fire extinguisher, smoke alarms, CO detector, GFI outlets, clear egress. Fix what's missing before you submit, not after.
6. Apply through Accela and pay the $124.95 fee. Expect a 10-business-day review, and remember an incomplete application won't even get looked at.
7. Sort out your tax registrations. Get a state sales tax license from the Colorado Department of Revenue and, if you're not booking exclusively through a marketplace facilitator, a free City Sales Tax License too.
8. List the property and post everything required. Permit number in every listing, permit and Good Neighbor Guidelines inside the unit, 24-hour contact info on hand.
9. Diarize your renewal date. There's no grace period, and for non-owner-occupied permits, a lapse can mean starting over from zero.

Who to Contact in Colorado Springs, Colorado about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever of those steps trips you up, a handful of city offices handle almost everything between them, so it's worth knowing which one to call before you're stuck on hold.

The Short Term Rental Program, inside Planning & Community Development, handles the permit itself: applications, renewals, and questions about the 500-foot buffer or your specific zone.

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 719-385-5982
• In person: Development Review Enterprise, 2880 International Circle, Suite 200-7, Colorado Springs, CO 80910

Planning & Community Development handles general zoning questions and accessibility requests related to the SpringsView map.

• Phone: 719-385-5905
• Email: [email protected]

The Sales Tax Office handles the City Sales Tax License and general city sales tax questions.

• Phone: 719-385-5903
• Email: [email protected]
• Address: 30 S. Nevada Ave., Suite 203, Colorado Springs, CO 80903
• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Neighborhood Services, the city's Code Enforcement division, is who a neighbor calls, and who you'll deal with if a complaint gets filed against your rental.

• Phone: 719-444-7891
• Address: 30 S Nevada Ave., Colorado Springs, CO 80903
• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

For anything genuinely urgent, non-emergency police line at 719-444-7000, or 911 for an actual emergency.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Colorado Springs in 2026?

Yes, with a permit from the city's Planning & Community Development Department. If you live in the unit at least 185 days a year, you qualify for an owner-occupied permit in any residential zone. If you don't, you need a non-owner-occupied permit, which is barred from every single-family zone and needs 500 feet of separation from another non-owner-occupied rental everywhere else. Properties with an accessory dwelling unit can't get a permit at all as of June 30, 2025, unless the ADU and the STR were both already permitted before that date.

How much does a Colorado Springs short-term rental permit cost?

The permit costs $124.95 a year, paid by cash, credit card, or electronic check, and it's valid for exactly one year with no grace period on renewal. A reminder email goes out about 30 days before expiration. The permit is tied to a specific owner rather than the property, so it doesn't transfer with a sale, and listing two separate units on one property requires two permits and two separate fees.

What taxes do you pay on a Colorado Springs Airbnb?

Five layers combine to about 10.2% on the full rental charge for any stay under 30 days: 2.9% state sales tax, 1.23% El Paso County sales tax, 1% PPRTA tax, 3.07% city sales tax, and a 2% city Lodgers Tax. Airbnb collects the city's 3.07% and 2% portions automatically on Colorado Springs listings, along with the state's 2.9%. Booking independently means registering for both a state sales tax license and a free City Sales Tax License yourself.

Can a non-owner-occupied Airbnb operate in a single-family neighborhood in Colorado Springs?

No, not since December 26, 2019. Non-owner-occupied short-term rental applications submitted after that date are barred from every single-family zoning district (R-E, R-1 6, R-1 9, and Single-Family PDZs). An owner-occupied rental, where you live there at least 185 days a year, is still allowed in those zones, since the restriction applies only to the non-owner-occupied permit type.

What happens if you operate an unpermitted short-term rental in Colorado Springs?

The city relies on complaint-driven enforcement rather than active patrols: a neighbor can check the SpringsView map for your address and report you to Neighborhood Services if no permit shows. Operating without one risks a Code Enforcement notice, and once you do have a permit, a documented nuisance or a false statement on your application are both grounds for revocation. Missing a renewal deadline can mean losing a non-owner-occupied permit outright, since there's no grace period once it lapses.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.