In Aspen and surrounding Pitkin County, large homes worth millions of dollars often lie empty for all but a few weeks of the year. Meanwhile, Aspen’s available affordable housing serves fewer than one-fifth of the city’s workforce, forcing most workers to commute for hours a day from up to 90 miles away.
Many—if not all—of Colorado’s mountain resort communities face a similar problem, with residential vacancy rates often hovering around 40 percent. In Aspen, the vacancy rate is 42.9 percent according to the latest census data.
To help address the issue, State Reps. Elizabeth Velasco and Brianna Titone, both Democrats, introduced a bill last month that would authorize local governments to impose a new “vacancy” tax on unoccupied homes.
The goal is to incentivize second homeowners to rent out their otherwise empty properties, or face an additional property tax whose revenue could contribute to affordable housing development.
But at their meeting on Tuesday, Pitkin County commissioners had mixed reactions to the proposal.
Commissioner Francie Jacober said she would support it, but only reluctantly. “The libertarian streak in me has a bit of a problem with it,” she said. “But I guess it's just a penalty, not a prohibition.”
Commissioner and board chair Jeffrey Woodruff was more definitive. “We already have a vacant home tax,” he said. “We have residences that are unoccupied throughout the year … and for that, they're paying the full boat of taxes.”
Unlike full-time residents, he added, those homeowners are not actually enjoying many of the services their taxes pay for, such as public schools.
Commissioner Kelly McNicholas Kury disagreed. “I would say it's a tax on a different impact,” she said. “These vacant homes are inflating real estate prices to a degree that has very significant local impact.”
It’s not the first time mountain towns have considered taxing empty homes. The Colorado Association of Ski Towns, or CAST, pushed state lawmakers to pass legislation last year that would have enabled local governments to tax homes that are vacant for most of the year.
That effort came up short.
Meanwhile, a long-running debate in Steamboat Springs over a proposed vacancy tax ended last summer when the city council voted against sending the measure to voters. The proposed $3,100 tax would have been paid by homeowners whose property sits vacant for 183 days or more per year.
In South Lake Tahoe, a proposed vacancy tax also failed in 2024 after voters rejected a proposal to tax second homeowners as much as $6,000 per year. According to a report compiled by the city, more than 7,700 houses in South Lake Tahoe are empty most of the year, representing about 48% of the city’s total housing stock.
So-called “empty home” taxes have not been widely implemented in the U.S., but Vancouver, Canada has had one in place since 2017. Experts, though, are divided on its benefits. While the number of unoccupied homes in the city has fallen, it’s hard to disentangle the tax’s exact impact from other market forces and policies that affect housing stock.
If the Colorado bill passes, any vacancy tax would still have to be approved by local governments and voters.
Speaking in favor of the tax, McNicholas Kury said that homeowners who choose to live in Pitkin County only two weeks of the year have chosen to forgo the benefits they pay for through their taxes.
At the very least, the vacancy tax would be “a new tool,” she said. “This is getting at how their [second homeowners’] individual decision impacts the broader community around them.”
