The Colorado Short-Term Rental Property Tax Rule That Does Not Exist
Here is the short answer, because it is the one most people are looking for. Colorado has no rule that reclassifies your home to lodging after a certain number of short-term rental nights. There is no 90-day test, no 30-day test, and no annual day count anywhere in the property tax classification statutes. A Colorado home that is designed and used as a residence generally keeps its residential classification regardless of how many nights it was booked.
I am writing this page because the opposite claim is everywhere. It appears in investor forums, in mortgage blogs, and in AI-generated search summaries, usually phrased with real confidence and a real-sounding effective date of January 1, 2026. Investors have brought it to me as settled fact.
It is not settled fact. It is language from legislation that failed.
Two Colorado Bills Died in 2024 and Became Internet Law Anyway
The claim traces to a pair of 2024 measures, and both of them lost.
| Bill | What It Would Have Done | What Happened |
|---|---|---|
| SB24-033, Lodging Property Tax Treatment | Moved a short-term rental leased more than 90 days in a year into a lodging classification, starting with property tax year 2026 | Postponed indefinitely in Senate Finance on April 16, 2024, by a vote of 6 to 1. Status: Lost |
| HB24-1299, Short-Term Rental Unit Property Tax Classification | Classified non-owner-occupied, commercial short-term rental units as lodging property, with an annual owner affidavit | Postponed indefinitely in House Finance on April 22, 2024, by a vote of 10 to 0. Status: Lost |
A 10 to 0 committee vote is not a close call. Both bills stopped there, and no equivalent measure has passed in the sessions since. The Legislative Council Staff issue brief on short-term rentals published in January 2026 states plainly that there are no statewide regulations governing short-term rentals in Colorado.
The proposed effective date is what makes the false version so durable. Articles written while SB24-033 was still moving described a rule taking effect in 2026, those articles were never updated, and the date has since arrived. So the claim reads current even though the bill behind it has been dead for two years. You can verify both outcomes yourself at leg.colorado.gov by looking up the bill numbers.
The Correction in One Line
No number of short-term rental nights reclassifies a Colorado home to lodging, because the bills that would have created that test were postponed indefinitely in 2024 and never became law. Classification questions for a specific property belong with your county assessor.
What Actually Decides Property Classification in Colorado
Colorado Revised Statutes 39-1-102 defines residential property around design and use. The question the statute asks is whether the improvement is designed for use predominantly as a place of residence and is used that way. It is a question about the building and its function as a dwelling.
Notice what the test does not include. It does not ask who occupies the home. It does not ask for how long. It does not ask whether money changed hands nightly, monthly, or annually. A long-term tenant does not change the classification, and neither does a weekend guest.
There is one 30-day rule in the Division of Property Taxation guidance, and it is worth knowing because it is frequently cited backwards. That provision sits in the assessor reference material on classification, and it runs the other direction: it allows a property already operating as a hotel to claim a residential carve-out for portions occupied under stays of 30 consecutive days or longer. It is a path from lodging toward residential, not from residential toward lodging. Seeing "30 days" and "Colorado" in the same sentence has caused a lot of confusion.
One caveat I want to be honest about. Classification is determined by your county assessor on the facts of your particular property, and unusual structures, mixed-use buildings, and purpose-built lodging can land differently. The general rule above is the general rule. Your parcel is your assessor's call.
How Colorado Property Taxes Are Actually Calculated in 2026
With the myth out of the way, here is the arithmetic that does apply, because this is the part that belongs in an investor's spreadsheet.
Two steps. Actual value multiplied by the assessment rate gives you assessed value. Assessed value multiplied by the mill levy and divided by 1,000 gives you the tax. Actual value is the assessor's determination of what the property is worth, assessed value is the fraction of that number the levy applies to, and a mill is one dollar of tax per thousand dollars of assessed value.
Where it gets interesting is the assessment rate, because Colorado no longer has just one for residential property.
One Colorado Home, Two Assessed Values
From 2025 forward, a single Colorado home produces two assessed values. Which one applies depends on which taxing entity is levying.
| Levy Type | 2026 Residential Assessment Rate | Applied How |
|---|---|---|
| School district levies | 7.05% | Straight against actual value |
| Local government levies | 6.8% | Applied after subtracting 10% of the first $700,000 of actual value, a subtraction capped at $70,000 |
That structure has two consequences investors keep missing.
The first is mechanical. If your model uses a single blended residential rate, it is describing a system Colorado no longer runs. The two calculations produce two different assessed values for the same house, and they meet two different sets of mills.
The second consequence is a correction to a comfortable assumption. The local government residential rate did not fall in 2026. It rose, from 6.25% to 6.8%. What softens the outcome is the new subtraction on the first $700,000 of actual value, and that relief is proportionally larger on a modest home than on an expensive one. So the honest summary is that Colorado's residential assessment structure got more complicated, not uniformly lighter. Anyone telling you Colorado assessment rates simply keep going down is not reading the rate sheets.
Not Tax Advice
I am a mortgage lender, not a CPA and not an assessor. Everything on this page is general information about how Colorado classification and assessment work, and none of it is tax advice or a statement about what any particular property will owe. For your property, work with your CPA and your county assessor's office. For Broomfield County parcels, the assessor is the office of record on actual value, classification, and appeals.
Running Numbers on a Colorado Rental?
Send me the property you are looking at and how you plan to operate it. I will walk through what the carrying costs look like on a real file and which financing paths fit. Property tax specifics go to your CPA and the county assessor, and I will tell you plainly where that line sits.
What the 2025 Colorado Reappraisal Means for a 2026 Pro Forma
Colorado reappraises real property on a two-year cycle, in odd-numbered years. 2025 was a reappraisal year. 2026 is the intervening year, which means the actual value set in 2025 generally carries forward rather than being reset.
The detail that surprises people is the level of value. Tax years 2025 and 2026 both use a June 30, 2024 level of value, established from a data-gathering period running January 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024. So the value behind a 2026 bill reflects a market snapshot from mid-2024, not from today. Residential property is valued using the market approach, and the assessment date is January 1.
For an investor, that produces a specific planning point. The next reappraisal is 2027, at a June 30, 2026 level of value. If values in your submarket moved meaningfully between mid-2024 and mid-2026, that movement shows up in your tax line in 2027 rather than gradually. A pro forma that holds property taxes flat across a five-year hold is quietly assuming something the calendar does not support. If you are sizing that risk, my Broomfield housing market trends page is the place I would start on the value side.
What This Means for a Short-Term Rental Investor in Broomfield County
Being right about this cuts both ways, and I would rather say so than sell the good half.
The good half is real. If you were holding off on a short-term rental strategy because you believed a day count would push your property into a commercial classification at a much higher assessment rate, that concern is based on a bill that lost. The classification risk you were pricing in does not exist in current law.
The other half matters more in this county. Property tax classification is a state question, but whether you may legally operate a short-term rental at all is a city question, and the cities across the north Denver metro answer it very differently. Broomfield prohibits short-term rental of a residence that is not the owner's principal residence. Several neighboring municipalities take a similar position, and one is notably more permissive. I am preparing a detailed city-by-city comparison of short-term rental rules across the north Denver metro, and until it publishes, please call me before you build a purchase around nightly rental income in any of these six cities.
That distinction is the practical takeaway. Colorado will not tax you out of a short-term rental. Your city may simply not let you run one. And on the financing side, a loan underwritten on short-term rental projections depends on an operation the owner is actually permitted to run, which is why I check the municipality before a file is structured. My guide to DSCR loans in Broomfield covers how rental income underwriting works when the property qualifies rather than the borrower.
Where to Get a Real Colorado Property Tax Number
I will not tell you what your bill will be, and I would be skeptical of anyone who does from a blog post. Mill levies vary by taxing district, they change annually, and actual value is parcel-specific. Here is the order I suggest instead.
- Pull the parcel record from your county assessor. Why it matters: actual value and current classification are both there, and they are the two inputs everything else depends on.
- Get the mill levies for that specific parcel's districts. Why it matters: two homes a mile apart can sit in different districts and carry different levies.
- Run both assessment rates, not one. Why it matters: school mills meet the 7.05% value and local government mills meet the 6.8% value after the subtraction.
- Have your CPA review the operating and reporting side. Why it matters: how short-term rental income is treated for income tax purposes is a separate question from property tax classification, and it is genuinely their lane rather than mine.
- Check the city's rental licensing rules before anything else. Why it matters: a tax model for an operation you cannot legally run is time spent on the wrong question.
- Then build the full carrying cost. Why it matters: taxes are one line. Insurance, association dues, vacancy, and maintenance decide whether a property carries itself, and I walk through the whole picture in what it costs to own a rental in Broomfield County.
If you want a sense of how a housing payment is put together before you get that far, my Broomfield home affordability guide covers the owner-occupied version of the same arithmetic, and the structure translates cleanly to a rental.
One last note on why I bothered writing this. A number that is wrong in your favor is still wrong, and it will find you at underwriting. I would rather correct a comfortable myth early than have it fall apart while you are under contract.