Pull two closing statements side by side, one from a condo sale in Vail Village and one from a comparable unit in Beaver Creek, and a line item appears on the second that has no equivalent on the first: a real estate transfer assessment equal to 2.375 percent of fair market value, payable not to the county, not to the state, but to a private company. Buyers who've done their homework on Colorado transfer taxes are often caught off guard here, because everything they read about those taxes points to a legal explanation that doesn't actually apply to Beaver Creek at all.
Here's the paradox. Colorado's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, passed in 1992, froze real estate transfer taxes in place and barred any local government from creating a new one. A dozen mountain towns that already had a transfer tax on the books, Vail and Avon among them, got to keep theirs. Everyone else has been locked out since. That's the story most closing-cost guides tell, and it's accurate as far as it goes. But it only covers municipalities. Beaver Creek was never a town to begin with, so the law that protects Vail's transfer tax and blocks anyone else from creating a new one has nothing to say about Beaver Creek's assessment, because Beaver Creek's assessment isn't a government tax in the first place.
A Resort Company, Not A Town
Beaver Creek sits in unincorporated Eagle County. It has never incorporated as a municipality, which means it has no town council, no mayor, and no seat at the table when the state legislature writes rules for how cities and counties can tax property. What it has instead is the Beaver Creek Resort Company, a Colorado nonprofit incorporated on April 30, 1979, built to function as an HOA, a resort marketing arm, and a quasi-municipal services provider all at once. BCRC runs security, maintains common areas, funds village marketing, and oversees a design review board, and it pays for all of it through a set of assessments written into the community's governing documents rather than into any tax code.
That distinction is what makes the 2.375 percent transfer assessment possible at all. It isn't grandfathered under TABOR because it never needed to be. It's a private, contractual obligation that runs with the land, collected the way an HOA collects a transfer fee, just priced like a small-town transfer tax. Nothing in Colorado's constitution stops a private association from doing that, which is exactly why Beaver Creek's rate can sit well above the roughly 1 to 3 percent range that municipal RETTs across Colorado's mountain towns typically charge.
The practical consequence for a buyer is that this assessment won't turn up in a routine county tax search the way a municipal transfer tax would. It lives in BCRC's own records and its own remittance forms, which means confirming the payoff amount and any exemption paperwork is a step that has to happen with the Resort Company directly, not just through the title company's standard county pull.
What It Actually Adds Up To
On a $2 million purchase, the RETA alone runs $47,500. On a $4 million purchase, it's $95,000. Neither number replaces the state's documentary fee, which still applies on top, at its own trivially small rate. The RETA is additive, not a substitute, and it's due at the time the deed transfers.
There is one carve-out worth knowing before an offer gets written. BCRC exempts transfers made for zero consideration, quit claim deeds and special warranty deeds included, but only if the party filing the deed submits a RETA Exemption Form. That covers situations like a transfer between family members or into a trust, but it has to be requested. Nobody grants the exemption automatically.
Colorado convention around transfer taxes generally has the buyer covering the cost, with sellers sometimes agreeing to absorb it to keep a deal moving in a slower market. Nothing in BCRC's governing documents dictates who pays the RETA either way, which means it's a term to raise explicitly in the purchase contract rather than assume follows the pattern of a tax buyers have already budgeted for.
The Rental Side Stacks Another Layer
For a buyer weighing a Beaver Creek property against its rental income, the closing-day assessment is only half the picture. BCRC also collects a Civic Assessment of 5.35 percent on total sales and short-term rental revenue, plus a separate Lodging Civic Assessment of 0.96 percent on that same short-term rental revenue, for a combined 6.31 percent on top of whatever county and state lodging taxes already apply. Rent a home or condo out for more than four days in a given month and the owner also needs a Lodging Beaver Creek Business License, applied for through BCRC's own registration portal, with a monitoring company under contract to track compliance across the resort.
None of that is optional paperwork an owner can quietly skip. BCRC's own site is explicit that owners remain responsible for these assessments even when a management company is the one collecting rent on their behalf, and that a rental of 30 days or more to the same tenant is treated as long-term and falls outside the short-term assessments entirely. For a buyer modeling out rental income before making an offer, that 6.31 percent belongs in the spreadsheet from the start, not discovered after the first season of bookings.
Why This Almost Became A Bigger Fight
In 2025, Eagle County commissioners considered asking voters to raise the county's existing 2 percent lodging tax by as much as 4 additional points. Because Beaver Creek generates roughly 58 percent of that tax's current revenue, and holds something like 87 percent of all short-term rental units in unincorporated Eagle County, the resort had the most to lose from any increase. BCRC's executive director, Jim Clancy, pushed back publicly, telling reporters:
"We believe that this tax would be an additional headwind."
The county ultimately chose a lighter path on regulation broadly, deciding earlier that year to leave short-term rental oversight to metro districts and homeowners associations rather than layer a countywide licensing ordinance on top of what BCRC already runs. That decision is itself confirmation of how the community works: even Eagle County's own commissioners concluded that Beaver Creek's private governance structure was already doing the job a municipal ordinance would otherwise have to do.
The Practical Takeaway
None of this should scare a buyer away from Beaver Creek. It should change what gets asked, and when. Before writing an offer, confirm the RETA payoff estimate directly with BCRC rather than relying on a standard title search to surface it. If the purchase is rental-minded, build the combined 6.31 percent assessment into the income model before comparing cap rates against a property in Vail or Avon, where the fee stack looks different because the underlying governance does too. And if the plan includes short-term rental from day one, confirm with BCRC whether the unit already carries a business license or whether that application starts fresh with new ownership.
The comparison that matters isn't Beaver Creek against some national average. It's Beaver Creek against Vail and Avon, ten minutes down the valley, where a familiar municipal transfer tax makes the process feel predictable. Beaver Creek's version looks similar on a spreadsheet and works on entirely different legal footing, and that gap is exactly where an unprepared buyer feels the surprise at the closing table instead of before it.
A Few Questions Buyers Ask
Does the RETA apply to land purchases, not just built homes? Yes. The assessment applies to real estate sales generally, including land, and the only carve-out is the zero-consideration exemption filed through BCRC's own form.
Is the RETA the same thing as Colorado's transfer tax? No. Colorado's transfer taxes are municipal and grandfathered under TABOR. Beaver Creek's RETA is a private assessment tied to BCRC's governing documents, since Beaver Creek has never been an incorporated town.
Do the short-term rental assessments apply if I rent to the same tenant for a full season? No. BCRC treats any rental of 30 days or more to the same person or entity as long-term, which falls outside the Civic and Lodging Civic assessments entirely.
If you're weighing a Beaver Creek purchase against options elsewhere in the valley and want the real math before you write an offer, Tricia Gould has spent nearly two decades on this side of the negotiation. Let's Connect.
