Short-Term Rental Permits in Grand County, Colorado

Unincorporated Grand County: an annual Short Term Rental Permit, priced per occupant

Any property owner who wants to rent a home in unincorporated Grand County for fewer than 30 days at a time -- even a single such rental in a calendar year -- must register it with the county's Short Term Rental program through the Department of Community Development. The permit is issued annually and expires exactly one year from the date it's approved, so this is a recurring compliance obligation, not a one-time approval. Fees are calculated per occupant at $100 per person of the home's maximum advertised occupancy, and the county caps any single short-term rental at 16 occupants regardless of a home's actual bedroom count or size.

Beyond the fee, the application requires two local emergency contacts who are full-time Grand County residents (not simply reachable by phone from out of state), a completed STR safety checklist, proof of liability insurance, and proof of bear-proof trash disposal -- a genuinely local requirement given the county's wildlife-adjacent mountain terrain. Since August 1, 2025, every registration and renewal has also required proof of a fire and life-safety inspection completed by the East Grand Fire Protection District within the prior 12 months, a meaningfully newer requirement than most secondhand summaries of the county's rules reflect.

Enforcement escalates to revocation, and the county has a real compliance backlog

Grand County enforces short-term rental violations on a defined, escalating schedule rather than a single flat fine: a first violation draws a warning, a second draws a $500 fine, a third draws a $1,000 fine, and a fourth results in revocation or suspension of the rental permit itself. That structure means holding a permit isn't a one-time hurdle -- ongoing violations of occupancy limits, trash storage, parking, or any other permit condition can end in losing the ability to rent the property at all, not just paying a fine.

This enforcement effort exists against a real compliance gap: county reporting has put the number of active short-term rentals in unincorporated Grand County at roughly 915, with close to 493 of those units operating unregistered. County commissioners weighed a moratorium on new short-term rental registrations in response, but ultimately decided against one, opting instead to tighten enforcement and compliance procedures. If short-term rental income is central to your purchase, ask Community Development directly about current enforcement priorities and whether any new registration restrictions have been adopted since this review, since the county has shown it revisits this policy regularly.

Winter Park, Fraser, Granby, and Grand Lake each run their own, separate rulebook

Everything above applies only to unincorporated Grand County -- it does not apply inside any of the county's incorporated towns, each of which administers its own short-term rental program with its own fees and requirements. Fraser requires a Short-Term Rental Permit with a one-time $100 application fee and a steep annual renewal fee of $728 per bedroom. Granby rolled out an updated online STR registration portal in January 2026 and, through Grand Fire Protection District No. 1, requires a Knox Box and an annual fire inspection on every rental. Winter Park requires both a business license and separate STR registration, with a strong emphasis on sales-tax compliance. A parcel's proximity to one of these towns, or even a town-adjacent mailing address, says nothing about which rulebook actually governs it -- confirm whether a specific parcel sits inside incorporated town limits or in the surrounding unincorporated county with the Grand County Assessor or GIS parcel viewer before assuming either set of rules applies.