Mountain Village Property Management: 2026 Owner Guide

Mountain Village is not just a neighborhood near Telluride. It is its own incorporated town, its own tax jurisdiction, and its own regulatory environment, which means mountain village property management requires a fundamentally different approach than managing a property on the other side of the gondola.

Aerial view of Mountain Village, Telluride, Colorado in winter with ski slopes and resort buildings | Photo by TROY ALLEN on Unsplash

If you own a condo, townhome, or single-family residence in Mountain Village and you're weighing whether to manage it yourself or hand it off to a professional, this guide covers what you actually need to know: the governance structure, the tax obligations, the HOA layer on top of all of it, and what competent local management looks like here specifically.

Mountain Village Is Its Own World

A lot of owners who purchase in Mountain Village assume they're operating under Telluride's rules. They're not, at least not entirely. Mountain Village is a separate municipality with its own municipal code, its own business licensing requirements, and its own sales tax collection system.

The Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association (TMVOA), formed in 1984, governs the community as a non-profit corporation elected by property owners. One of its most significant responsibilities is funding the gondola, which it does through Real Estate Transfer Assessments and Annual Real Estate Assessments collected from property owners. When you buy or sell property in Mountain Village, you or your title company must complete a RETA Information Worksheet and submit it along with payment and a copy of the deed after closing.

Below the TMVOA level, individual buildings and complexes often have their own HOAs with their own short-term rental rules. Those rules can restrict nightly minimums, limit owner rentals, or require specific check-in procedures. A property manager who doesn't know the specific rules for your building is a liability, not an asset.

The Tax Picture in Mountain Village

This is where things get specific and where getting it wrong is expensive.

Luxury vacation rental living room interior in a Mountain Village Telluride ski condominium | Photo by Point3D Commercial Imaging Ltd. on Unsplash

Mountain Village self-collects its own sales and lodging taxes through the MUNIRevs platform. As a property owner renting short-term, you are responsible for collecting and remitting these taxes, and no third-party booking platform is going to do it for you automatically under a collection agreement with the town.

Here's what the research confirms from the Town of Mountain Village's official site:

The combined sales tax rate in Mountain Village is 9.47%, broken down as: 4.5% town tax, 2.9% Colorado state sales tax, 1% San Miguel County, and 1.07% SMART (San Miguel Authority for Regional Transportation).
There is an additional 4% short-term rental tax on top of that.
There is also a 2% restaurant tax that applies to food and beverage sales.

Don't Confuse Mountain Village Taxes with Telluride's

For comparison, the Town of Telluride has its own distinct tax structure. Per the official Telluride town website, the total tax rate on short-term rentals in the Town of Telluride is 17.22%, and it's collected through Rentalscape, not MUNIRevs. If your property is in Mountain Village, you are on a completely different platform with a different set of line items. Confusing the two is a common and costly mistake.

We won't publish a specific combined Mountain Village STR tax total here because the full figure wasn't confirmed from the town's official source in a way we'd stake our name to. Check townofmountainvillage.com directly, or ask a local property manager who files these returns regularly.

STR Licensing: Two Jurisdictions, Two Sets of Rules

Both the Town of Telluride and the Town of Mountain Village require short-term rental licenses and business licenses for any property operating as a short-term rental. If your property is in Mountain Village, you need Mountain Village's license, not Telluride's.

Regarding permit fees: for the Town of Telluride, the Colorado Sun reported that the town planned to impose a $857 annual per-bedroom regulatory fee after allowing its STR moratorium to expire. That figure is specific to the Town of Telluride. The corresponding Mountain Village STR permit fee structure was not confirmed from the town's official website at the time of this writing, so we're not going to quote a number. Contact the Town of Mountain Village directly or visit their site for current licensing fees and requirements.

The Mountain Village Municipal Code is current through Ordinance 2024-18, passed December 12, 2024, so it's worth reading if you're managing your own property.

What the Mountain Village Rental Market Actually Looks Like

!Mountain Village Telluride Colorado ski resort aerial winter

According to third-party data aggregator Airbtics (through September 2024), Mountain Village has approximately 229 active Airbnb listings. A typical listing is booked roughly 215 nights per year, with a median occupancy rate around 59% and an average daily rate of $728. The same data suggests a typical host annual revenue in 2023 was approximately $128K.

Those are directional figures, not guarantees, and they come from a third-party aggregator rather than official sources. Individual property performance varies significantly based on property type, location within Mountain Village, quality of photos and listing copy, pricing strategy, and how well the property is maintained and reviewed.

What the data does illustrate is that Mountain Village is a genuine high-demand rental market, not a secondary one. The gondola connection to the historic Town of Telluride, direct ski access, and the resort infrastructure make it a year-round destination with strong winter peaks and growing summer demand.

Why Mountain Village Property Management Is Its Own Specialty

Property types in Mountain Village range from slopeside condominiums in managed complexes to larger townhomes and single-family residences further up the mountain. Each has different HOA regimes, different maintenance needs, and often different rental dynamics.

Here's what good mountain village property management actually involves:

HOA Compliance at the Building Level

Every building in Mountain Village has its own rules. Some limit the number of rental nights per year. Others require owner notification for each booking or have specific rules about guest parking, common area access, and check-in timing. A manager who doesn't know your specific building's CC&Rs is going to create friction with your HOA board and potentially put your rental license at risk.

Tax Filing and Remittance Through MUNIRevs

Filing through MUNIRevs on the correct schedule, with the correct line items for sales tax, lodging tax, and any applicable restaurant tax, is not complicated once you know the system. But if you're not doing it correctly and on time, the exposure adds up. A competent property manager handles this as a standard part of the service, not an add-on.

Maintenance That Accounts for Mountain Conditions

At altitude, in a ski resort environment, things break differently and more expensively than in lower-elevation markets. Pipes freeze. Roofs accumulate snowpack. Heating systems run hard for months at a time. A local team that has vendor relationships in the area, not a call center routing work orders from out of state, is the difference between a guest-ready property and a problem that costs you a booking.

TMVOA and RETA Coordination

If your property changes hands, or if you're managing the logistics of an investment property, understanding the TMVOA's assessment structure matters. RETA obligations don't disappear because a management company is in the picture; they stay with the property and the owner.

Who Owns in Mountain Village, and Why It Matters

Ownership in Mountain Village skews toward second-home buyers and investors who purchased for the ski access and the long-term value of a well-run resort community. Many owners are not Colorado residents. Some visit only a few weeks per year and rent for the remainder. Others are primarily investment-focused and rarely visit.

That ownership profile shapes what property management here needs to be. Owners aren't around to do a visual check after a bad storm or respond when a guest locks themselves out at midnight. They need a management team that's actually on the mountain, not one operating remotely from a regional office.

Our Telluride property management operation is built around that reality. We're not routing calls through a national support center. The people managing your property in Mountain Village know the gondola schedule, have relationships with the local HOA managers, and file the right tax returns in the right jurisdiction.

If you're comparing what different approaches look like operationally, our vacation rental management services page covers the full scope of what we handle, and our owner success stories give a clearer picture of how that plays out in practice.

For context on how this compares to other markets we operate in, including Park City property management and Breckenridge property management, the underlying framework is similar, but the local details always differ. Mountain Village's dual-jurisdiction structure and TMVOA layer make it one of the more nuanced markets we work in.

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FAQ

Is Mountain Village the same as Telluride for property management purposes?

No. Mountain Village and the Town of Telluride are two separate incorporated municipalities. They have different STR licensing requirements, different tax rates, different tax collection platforms (MUNIRevs vs. Rentalscape), and different municipal codes. A property manager or owner who treats them as interchangeable will run into compliance problems.

Does TMVOA affect my ability to rent my Mountain Village property short-term?

TMVOA itself doesn't typically prohibit short-term rentals, but it does impose assessments on property owners and oversees community standards. More directly relevant to rentals are the individual building HOAs, which may have their own restrictions on short-term rental activity. You need to review your specific building's CC&Rs, not just TMVOA's governing documents.

Do I need to collect and remit taxes myself if I list on Airbnb or Vrbo?

For Mountain Village, yes. Mountain Village self-collects its local taxes and uses the MUNIRevs platform. Unlike some jurisdictions where Airbnb has a marketplace facilitator agreement that covers local taxes automatically, Mountain Village requires owners or their property managers to file and remit locally. Verify current requirements directly at townofmountainvillage.com.

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If you own property in Mountain Village and want to talk through what professional management looks like for your specific unit or home, contact our team and we'll give you a straight answer, not a sales pitch.