Commerce City, CO Rental Inspections: Inspection Programs (2026)

Sec. 9-3907(a) of the Commerce City Revised Municipal Code requires every applicant for a short-term rental unit license, on both the initial application and every renewal, to complete a self-inspection checklist on a city-approved form confirming the unit's safety and habitability before the city will approve the license. That self-certification is the baseline compliance mechanism for the entire short-term rental program; there is no separate mandatory in-person city inspection for every unit. Sec. 9-3907(b) gives the city manager or a designee discretion to require a city-performed or city-approved inspection instead when the self-inspection looks insufficient, and the code sets out objective triggers for that discretion: a property cited with more than one code violation, or the subject of more than three complaints to the city, in the twelve months before the application, or any other good cause the city manager identifies.

When the city imposes an additional inspection, it must tell the applicant in writing why the requirement was triggered. Sec. 9-3907(c) preserves the city's separate authority to inspect any short-term rental at any time for suspected violations of state law, regulations or the Code, independent of the licensing self-inspection cycle. Because the self-inspection and any required follow-up inspection are conditions of licensure under Sec. 9-3902, a unit that has not passed the applicable inspection cannot receive or renew its license, and operating without a valid license is itself unlawful under Sec. 9-3902(a).