Commerce City, CO Short-Term Rentals: Repeat Violator Strikes (2026)

Sec. 9-3907(b) of the Commerce City Revised Municipal Code is the closest thing the city has to a repeat-violator mechanism for short-term rentals, and it works through licensing, not a numbered strike system. Ordinarily, an owner satisfies the inspection requirement with a self-certified checklist under Sec. 9-3907(a). But the city manager or a designee can override that self-certification and require the property to pass an inspection performed by a city employee or a city-approved inspector whenever, in the twelve months before the initial or renewal application, the property has been cited with more than one code violation or has been the subject of more than three complaints to the city.

The same escalation applies if the city manager has any other good cause to doubt that a self-inspection would confirm the unit's safety, security and habitability. When the additional inspection is imposed, the city must tell the applicant in writing why. Because this happens at the licensing stage under Sec. 9-3902, a property that cannot pass the required inspection cannot get its license renewed, and Sec. 9-3909 separately allows the city to deny, suspend or revoke a license outright whenever any division provision has been violated, without needing a set number of prior strikes.

In practice, repeated code violations or complaints convert a rubber-stamp self-inspection into a mandatory city inspection, and a pattern of violations can support outright non-renewal or revocation under Sec. 9-3909 rather than triggering an automatic point count.