Commerce City, CO Short-Term Rentals: Primary-Residence-Only Rule (2026)

Land Development Code section 21-5263(2) makes short-term rental use strictly accessory: it must be clearly incidental and subordinate to the principal use of a single-family attached or detached dwelling, cannot become the dwelling's primary use, and the unit must otherwise be occupied and utilized as a residential dwelling unit for the majority of the year. In practice, that bars converting a home into a full-time, investor-owned short-term rental with no genuine residential occupancy. Subsection (6) closes a workaround for properties with an accessory dwelling unit: where a lot has both a principal single-family home and an accessory dwelling unit, short-term rentals are allowed in either dwelling, but the principal home cannot be short-term rented by someone who actually lives full-time in the accessory dwelling, because the principal dwelling must be occupied as a long-term residence whenever it is not being used as a short-term rental.

Subsection (7) reinforces the same primary-residence intent by barring simultaneous short-term rental of both the principal dwelling and its accessory dwelling under separate contracts at the same time. Together these subsections keep short-term rentals tied to a genuinely occupied home rather than a stand-alone rental property, and a short-term rental license under municipal code section 9-3902 cannot substitute for meeting the majority-of-the-year occupancy standard.