Anecdotal evidence abounds regarding Snowmass Village’s short-term rental landscape. And there was no shortage at a meeting of Snowmass Village Town Council on January 3, which ushered in the new year with an hour and a half of discussion on the town’s short-term rental market. as managers try to figure out what the issues are and how they would like to address those issues.
There are members of council who say they are worried about the character of the city; the director of housing who noted that there seems to be less shared housing and much higher rents; landlords who say they have seen the impacts of short-term rentals on the infrastructure and ambience of their neighborhoods.
Staff and elected officials agreed that it would be helpful to first know how many short-term rentals exist in Snowmass Village. But throughout discussions on the subject this winter, city staff stressed that it would not be easy or feasible to get an accurate and complete picture of Snowmass Village’s short-term rental inventory.
Some tourism officials tried to delete data in October by removing websites like AirBnB and VRBO for listings, but “it didn’t help,” Snowmass tourism director Rose Abello told the board. and “there’s quite a bit of difficulty getting good data from this”. .”
For one thing, some homes are renting almost every day of the year and would be easy to check online, but other properties are only renting during peak holiday weeks or when owners are out of town. ; mining data on these properties could skew rental rate and availability averages, Abello noted. There’s also the issue of duplicate listings across multiple sites, though Abello said the wrinkles were largely eliminated.
Still, some data is already available, according to a “White Paper” report compiled for the January 3 council discussion.
The city knows, based on a construction chart tracking all units in the village, that there are 966 single-family homes, 2,820 multi-family units like duplexes and apartments, and 982 accommodation units (including hotels) within city limits, give or take some as the chart is being updated.
Of that total number of 4,768 units, a 2018 housing inventory study counts 1,699 units are rented on the short-term market – again give or take, with the caveat that there are discrepancies due to the way officials count some short term. rentals. About half of short-term rentals (880 by the 2018 study count) are hotel rooms, 735 are condos and 84 are private homes.
The study was conducted by data tracking firm Inntopia DestiMetrics on behalf of central reservations agency Stay Aspen Snowmass and covered Aspen, Snowmass, Basalt and Carbondale. Similar studies took place in 2009, 2012, 2015 and 2015; another round is planned for 2022.
The white sheet notes that the discrepancy of approximately 100 units between the construction graph’s accommodation unit count and the inventory study’s hotel room count is “likely” due to the way whose condo-hotels are classified and other changes such as the purchase of the Snowmass Inn, a hotel which now serves as company accommodation.
Snowmass Village does not have a specific licensing or permitting process for people renting their homes on the short-term market – people just need a business license when renting their homes for 30 days or less at a time – so the city doesn’t have an accurate count of the number of units actively part of the short-term market.
Going forward, Abello said she would like to see collaboration between the City of Aspen and the Aspen Chamber and Resort Association on additional study specific to short-term rentals (rather than transient inventory in her together, which previous studies have examined), so that officials can obtain “apples to apples” statistics.
Getting more data is a “slam dunk” action item for city staff, City Manager Clint Kinney said at the meeting this week. But there are still many more issues to consider before the board takes any sort of action.
The white paper report in this week’s council package includes 17 items related only to the first step, defining the problem. The second stage – consider possible actions – has 12 other possible topics to explore; the third step, focused on implementing best practices, has its own list of seven points, each with more breakout steps.
Everyone has the workforce housing impacts in mind, but with only anecdotal evidence there is no clear consensus on how or if this relates to the market in the near term. at Snowmass Village. And council members aren’t all on the same page with what they see as the crux of the matter.
Councilor Bob Sirkus maintained from the outset that he was concerned about the impact on the character of the community; Councilman Tom Fridstein expressed concerns about people operating homes as hotels in residential neighborhoods, which Sirkus also identified as a concern. Councilman Tom Goode and Councilwoman Alyssa Shenk have focused more on ensuring owners of short-term rentals contribute their due to the city.
“It’s an emotionally charged question, but it’s important to all of us,” Mayor Bill Madsen said.
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