If you buy a condo in Vail and want to rent it out on Airbnb, the process starts with a number. You apply for a license through the town's online portal, wait for a fire inspection, post that license number on your listing, and renew it every February. The rules are public, searchable, and enforced by a government office with a phone line.
If you buy the equivalent unit fifteen minutes away in Beaver Creek, none of that exists. There is no license to apply for. No portal to search. No town hall to call. For a buyer used to thinking of regulation as something you look up, that absence can read as good news: fewer hoops, less friction, an easier path to renting the place out. It is actually the opposite kind of signal, and understanding why matters before you write an offer on anything you plan to rent short-term.
The Search That Comes Up Empty
Beaver Creek isn't a town. It's an unincorporated resort area inside Eagle County, which means it has no municipal government of its own to pass an ordinance in the first place. Vail, Avon, and a handful of other Eagle County towns have their own STR codes because they're incorporated municipalities with the authority to write them. Beaver Creek, along with Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead, sits outside that structure entirely.
That distinction sat unresolved for years while Eagle County debated whether to step in. In May 2025, the county's Board of Commissioners settled it: they decided against creating a county-level short-term rental ordinance, directing staff to simply collect data on rental activity rather than license or regulate it. The reasoning wasn't neglect. Beaver Creek alone accounts for 87 percent of all short-term rentals in unincorporated Eagle County, and the commissioners concluded that a county ordinance would mostly duplicate rules that resort HOAs and metro districts already enforce, while opening the county to legal challenges over treating property owners differently depending on which subdivision they happened to own in.
Beaver Creek Resort Company's leadership treated the outcome as confirmation of how the resort was designed to work in the first place, not a gap that needed closing. Beaver Creek and Arrowhead were master planned from the start to include short-term rental units as part of the resort economy, which is a different starting point than a residential town retrofitting rules onto a rental market that grew up around it.
Down the Valley, a Completely Different Rulebook
The Town of Vail took the opposite path, and the contrast is the clearest way to see what "no ordinance" actually means in Beaver Creek.
| Vail (incorporated town) | Beaver Creek (unincorporated county) | |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing authority | Town of Vail, three license types | None at the county level |
| Insurance requirement | $1 million liability minimum | Set by individual HOA or building, if at all |
| Local representative rule | Must respond within 60 minutes, 30 minutes overnight | Not government-mandated |
| License transfers at sale | No, buyer must reapply | No license exists to transfer |
| Enforcement | Town STR hotline and inspections | HOA board and metro district, if adopted |
| Lodging tax (as of Jan. 2026) | Set by the town, part of a combined stack near 10.8 percent | 4 percent, doubled from 2 percent under a 2026 county ballot measure |
Vail's system is detailed enough that it shapes underwriting decisions. Owners choose between an Individual Property Owner license, a Professional Property Manager license, or an On-Site 24/7 Front Desk Managed license, each with different fees and inspection requirements. A property without full-time on-site staff needs a fire and life-safety inspection before licensing and every three years after. Occupancy is capped using a formula of two guests per bedroom plus two, with a hard ceiling of one person per 200 square feet. None of it transfers when you buy: the seller's license dies at closing, and the buyer has to start the application over, which matters if you're counting on rental income in your first season.
Vail's town council has also spent two years trying to add a per-bedroom regulatory fee on top of all this. A proposal for $1,200 per bedroom annually passed a first reading in late 2024, which would run $3,600 a year on a three-bedroom property before cleaning or management costs. As of the most recent public reporting, the council still hadn't taken final action on it. Separately, Vail voters rejected a proposed 6 percent excise tax on STR income in the November 2025 election by a margin of just 35 ballots, 916 to 881. Whichever way that kind of vote breaks next time, it shows how contested the cost of renting short-term inside Vail's town limits has become.
None of that debate touches Beaver Creek, because there's no ordinance there to amend.
The Tax Changed. The Licensing Requirement Didn't.
The one place where unincorporated Eagle County did move in 2026 was tax, not licensing. Under Ballot Issue 1A, voters approved doubling the lodging tax on short-term rentals in unincorporated areas from 2 percent to 4 percent, effective January 1, 2026. That tax applies in Beaver Creek, Bachelor Gulch, and Arrowhead specifically because they sit outside incorporated towns that set their own rates.
It's a useful data point on its own, and it's also a reminder that the absence of a licensing ordinance doesn't mean the county has stepped back from short-term rentals entirely. It means the county chose to collect revenue through tax policy while leaving day-to-day regulation of who can rent, and under what terms, to private governing documents instead of public code.
So Where Do the Rules Actually Live?
In Colorado's common-interest communities, a condo or homeowners association's declaration functions as a binding contract among owners, and it can restrict or prohibit short-term rentals even where no government does. Colorado law generally requires sellers in these communities to provide the association's governing documents to a buyer, along with a review period to look them over before closing.
That packet is where a Beaver Creek buyer's actual rental rules sit: whether short-term rentals are permitted at all, whether the building runs its own rental program with revenue splits and owner-obligation terms, whether there's a minimum stay length, and how violations get enforced. The Charter at Beaver Creek is one example of a building that operates its own rental management program, and getting into it requires HOA approval and compliance with the building's specific rental policies, not a town license. Every building in Beaver Creek can set its own answer to these questions, which is why two units a hundred yards apart can have completely different rental terms even though neither one answers to a town.
What This Changes About Your Due Diligence
If you're evaluating a Beaver Creek property with rental income in the underwriting, the checklist looks different than it would in Vail. There's no license number to verify against a town database. The verification happens inside the declaration, the bylaws, and the rules and regulations for that specific building or metro district, plus any separate rental program agreement if one exists.
Ask for that packet early, not during your review period after you're already under contract with a clock running. Confirm whether the association allows short-term rentals outright, restricts them to a licensed rental program, or bans them for certain unit types. Confirm who enforces violations and what the penalties look like, since there's no town hotline standing behind you if a neighbor complains. And confirm the lodging tax treatment for the specific parcel, since 4 percent now applies across unincorporated Eagle County regardless of what any individual HOA decides about rentals themselves.
A Few Questions Worth Asking
Does no ordinance mean anyone can run a short-term rental in Beaver Creek? No. It means the permission comes from the building's declaration and HOA rules rather than from a town code. Some associations allow it freely, some require participation in a managed rental program, and some restrict or prohibit it outright.
Does the same rule apply in Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead? Both are also unincorporated Eagle County, so neither has a county-level STR license requirement either. The same due diligence into governing documents applies there.
Could the county revisit this later? The commissioners chose data collection over regulation in 2025, which keeps the door open to revisit the question once they have more information. Nothing currently on the books suggests a licensing ordinance is imminent, but it's worth checking again before you close if regulatory certainty matters to your plans.
Buying with rental income in mind in Beaver Creek, Bachelor Gulch, or Arrowhead means reading the building's documents as closely as you'd read a town ordinance anywhere else, because in these communities, the documents are the ordinance. If you want help pulling the right paperwork before you write an offer, or want a second opinion on what a specific building's rental terms actually allow, Michelle Rampelt has spent years working these exact HOA structures across the Vail Valley. Let's Connect.
