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

Littleton's Chapter 23 licenses are built around the primary residence concept defined in Section 3-23-2: the dwelling unit where a person lives nine or more months of the calendar year, with only one primary residence recognized per person at a time. Section 3-23-7(a) requires the Finance Director to deny a short-term primary license if the property is not the applicant's primary residence, and the section lists the factors used to test that, including whether the applicant claims another address for domestic, legal, billing, voting or tax purposes, how often the applicant actually returns to the unit during the year, whether the applicant's business, employment or vehicle registration point elsewhere, and how much of the year the unit has been or will be rented out.

Active military deployment is listed as a factor that can explain an owner's absence without defeating primary-residence status. Section 3-23-10(a)(2) restates the rule as an ongoing license condition: a residence licensed as a short-term primary rental must remain the owner's primary residence for the life of the license, not just at the time of application. A narrow exception in Section 3-23-2's definition lets one unit of a connected duplex be licensed as a short-term primary rental even if it is not itself the primary residence, so long as the other, connected unit on the same lot is the owner's primary residence.