Teton County weighs $11,000 to $90,000 a year to crack down on short-term rentals

Teton County commissioners will weigh how aggressively to police short-term rentals operating outside the county's approved zones, after a Planning Department report priced out tougher enforcement: $11,000 to $90,000 a year in new department costs for an active enforcement approach that uses third-party software to scrape rental listings and match them to physical addresses. The county currently investigates complaints only: two Code Compliance Officers have logged 39 short-term rental violation cases since 2020, and 2026 has already reached seven cases with three months left, putting the year on pace for the highest total on record. Staff flag a loophole some local property managers already lean on: a lease of 31 days or more has been read to satisfy the county's short-term rental ban no matter how few nights a guest actually stays, so renting a unit to one short-term guest one time every 31 days has been treated as compliant. No county registration, permit or licensing system exists for short-term rentals, so enforcement has no master list of which units to check against. The record shows no earlier Teton County Board of County Commissioners action on this specific enforcement-cost question.