The county has sought to make sure short-term or nightly rentals like Airbnbs or VRBOs comply with existing rules before it makes new ones.
It crowd-sourced that effort in January with a short-term rental helpline, for owners, neighbors and renters alike. It’s been used mostly for complaints.
Summit County staff have recorded 18 calls: seven noise complaints, four reports of unpermitted STRs, five calls about trash complaints, one parking issue and one described as “other.”
Staff are also using software to contact Airbnb or VRBO owners to get them licensed. According to Deputy County Manager Janna Young, there are about 2,000 STRs in unincorporated Summit County.
She said staff contacted 653 unlicensed operators last October, received 448 responses and issued permits for 113 of those. Several respondents had taken their property off the market or no longer rented it short-term.
“We're working with the code enforcement official assigned to this to better understand what data we have, and if it's time to meet again as an internal working group to look at additional regulations,” Young told the county council April 1.
Councilmember Roger Armstrong says the time to reconvene is now.
“If housing is the challenge and affordable housing is the challenge, we know that nightly rentals take housing off the market,” he said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” April 2. “It becomes a boutique hotel, for lack of a better term.”
He expressed worry about the incentives for developers and companies to buy housing and convert it into short-term rentals.
“The economics are better, right?” Armstrong added. “A nightly rental generates a lot more income for the owner than a long-term rental does. So I think we need to start having that really difficult conversation sooner rather than later.”
Cities and towns may take their cues from what Summit County decides to do with STRs. For example, Kamas put a moratorium on STR licenses last spring, waiting to see what regulations the county subcommittee would propose.
The real estate community has been most vocal in its concerns about overregulation. After all, a more profitable property is a more valuable one.
As of April 2025, the Summit County Economic Development and Housing Department estimated 38.3% of all homes in the county were “vacant.” That means they’re not occupied by their owner or a long-term tenant, as in the case of nightly rentals.
In Park City proper, more than half the housing is vacant.
Summit County is a financial supporter of KPCW.
