Most short-term rental advice in ski towns optimizes one number: your nightly rate. The comparison that decides what you actually keep is a different arithmetic problem, and it includes the annual license and regulatory fees, the lodging-tax returns, the turnover labor, the management percentage, the insurance your homeowners policy probably doesn't extend to, and the ten or twelve weeks a year when nobody books at any price. What follows is that comparison against one tenant on a five- or six-month lease, with every fee and tax figure taken from the towns' and counties' own published schedules.
Yes, nightly usually grosses more
Over a strong winter, a permitted nightly rental in a good location generally grosses more than a seasonal lease on the same unit. Holiday weeks and powder cycles produce rates no monthly rent from a lift mechanic or a line cook will match. A comparison that opens by denying that isn't worth your time.
Gross is not what you keep. The two columns have completely different cost structures: nightly income is variable and carries a fixed regulatory overhead that arrives on January 1 regardless of how the season went, while a seasonal lease is one contract, one payment schedule, and almost no compliance surface. In some towns the nightly column isn't legally available to you at all, which changes the question entirely.
Fixed costs that arrive whether or not you book
These are the numbers to get on paper first, because they don't scale down in a bad snow year.
In Breckenridge, the annual accommodation unit regulatory fee is $756 per bedroom or studio with no cap on the number of bedrooms charged, on top of an annual accommodation unit license that runs $75 for a studio to $175 for four bedrooms or more. A three-bedroom starts the year $2,418 down before a single guest arrives. The town waives the regulatory fee only where the unit is the license holder's primary residence and is rented no more than 21 days a year. The town also requires a responsible agent available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, who responds to a complaint within 60 minutes, which is either your phone or somebody you pay.
In South Lake Tahoe, the city's FAQ lists a $535 application fee for a new vacation home rental permit, permits renew annually, and properties outside the Tourist Core have to pass an inspection. Fines are the part owners underestimate: the council raised them to the state maximum in 2024, and violations now run $1,500 for a first occurrence, $3,000 for a second within the year, and $5,000 after that, with both the owner and the occupants subject to citation. Residential zones are also capped at 900 permits under the ordinance effective April 2026, so a permit you drop is not necessarily a permit you get back. We walk through that permit line in detail in South Lake Tahoe's rental permit rules and why a seasonal lease isn't one.
In Teton County, Wyoming, there may be no nightly column to price. Renting for fewer than 31 days is a lodging use permitted only in specific approved developments, and county enforcement notes that Wyoming statutes authorize fines of up to $750 per offense with each day of continuation counted separately. Accessory residential units in the county carry a 90-day minimum rental period and limit occupancy to people employed in Teton County, which is a rule written specifically around the workforce. For most Jackson-area owners outside the lodging overlay, the real comparison is a seasonal lease against an empty house.
Lodging taxes and the paperwork attached
Lodging tax is collected from the guest, so it isn't your money. It is your liability, your registration, and your filing calendar.
South Lake Tahoe's transient occupancy tax is 14%, or 12% at specific redevelopment properties, and the Tourism Improvement District fee adds $5.50 per night for agent-managed vacation home rentals and $4.00 per night for hotels and motels. The city's own return instructions are worth reading closely on two points: all cleaning fees, pet fees included, are subject to the tax, and vacation home rental owners report quarterly while everyone else reports monthly. Breckenridge layers a 3.4% public accommodation tax on top of the 2.5% town sales tax and requires both a town license and a Colorado sales tax license. Airbnb and Vrbo remit on bookings made through them; anything you book directly is your return to file. In Wyoming, short-term stays carry a 5% lodging tax, 3% administered by the state and 2% staying in Teton County.
Cross the 30-day line and this layer disappears. California's enabling statute lets cities and counties tax occupancy "unless the occupancy is for a period of more than 30 days". Colorado exempts rooms and accommodations rented to a permanent resident under a written agreement for at least 30 consecutive days, with conditions worth reading in the Department of Revenue's publication rather than taking on faith. A seasonal lease means no lodging-tax registration, no monthly or quarterly returns, and no exposure to a late filing. Income tax still applies, obviously; the lodging layer is what goes away.
The costs that move with every turnover
Turnover is where nightly revenue quietly leaks, and where the cleaning fee on the listing misleads you. The guest pays the fee and South Lake Tahoe taxes it, but the work behind that fee — laundry, consumables, restocking, and finding a cleaner who will take a holiday changeover — is an operating cost that scales with the number of arrivals rather than the number of dollars.
Management is the other percentage. Full-service vacation-rental management is quoted as a share of gross booking revenue, and long-term management as a share of monthly rent collected; the first is much larger than the second because the work is much larger. Two questions decide what the number really means in your case: is the percentage calculated on gross bookings or on what lands after platform fees, and what sits outside the fee entirely, such as linens, restocking, maintenance markups, or permit compliance work. Get both answers in writing before you compare columns.
Furnishings behave differently too. A nightly rental churns linens, cookware, and hot-tub chemistry across dozens of households a season. A seasonal tenant is one household living in the place for five or six months, which produces steadier wear rather than acute breakage, and no restocking cycle.
Insurance is where owners find out their use didn't match their policy
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners is blunt that most homeowners and dwelling policies were not designed to cover short-term rental activity, that policies usually exclude or sharply limit coverage for a business run out of the home, and that a carrier may deny a claim even where no explicit home-sharing exclusion appears. The Insurance Information Institute adds that in two-unit and multi-unit buildings, nightly rental activity reaches the shared master policy covering roofs, stairwells, and common areas, which is how an owner's use becomes an HOA's problem. A long-term lease is a landlord or dwelling policy conversation. Nightly is a specialty or commercial one. Either way, describe your actual use to your agent in writing and keep the reply.
Run both columns on your own unit
Fill this in with your numbers. The published figures are the only ones anybody can hand you honestly.
| Line item | Nightly rental | Seasonal lease, five to six months |
|---|---|---|
| Gross | Your average rate times nights actually booked | Monthly rent times months, signed |
| Lodging tax | Collected and remitted; returns quarterly or monthly | None |
| License and regulatory fees | $756 per bedroom plus $75–$175 in Breckenridge; $535 application in South Lake Tahoe | None |
| Management | Share of gross bookings | Share of monthly rent, or self-managed |
| Cleaning and turnover | Per arrival, plus laundry and consumables | One clean at each end |
| Furnishings and replacements | Ongoing | Deposit-backed, one household |
| Insurance | Specialty or commercial | Landlord or dwelling |
| Utilities, trash, snow removal | Yours | Yours or the tenant's, by lease |
| Your hours | Guest messaging, complaint calls, filings | Screening once, then rent collection |
Two lines do most of the work in this table, and neither is the nightly rate.
The occupancy assumption that decides it
A ski season is roughly five months. Summit County and Breckenridge treat that as the definition, setting a five-month minimum lease in their conversion program. April through June and October through November are not a discount period in most mountain towns; they are weeks with very little demand at any rate, when your fixed fees keep accruing and your insurance keeps billing. A seasonal lease pays through those weeks. Build your nightly column on booked nights from your last twelve months of returns, not on a projection, and price the empty shoulder honestly on both sides.
The conversion incentives most owners leave out of the math
Several mountain communities pay owners to make this switch, and the payment often exceeds a season's worth of the fees discussed above.
Summit County and the Town of Breckenridge run Lease to Locals, which offers up to $20,000 per property for a lease of at least five months to tenants working 30 or more hours a week for a Summit County employer. Notably, participating owners are not required to give up their short-term rental license, which removes the argument that converting for a season forfeits your place in a capped market. On the California side, Placer County's version of the program has run on seasonal leases of five months or more with employment verification for at least one tenant. South Lake Tahoe's program moved in-house in September 2025 as the city's Long Term Rental Incentive Program. These programs pause and re-fund on local budget cycles, so confirm current amounts and availability with the town or county before you count the money.
Around Lake Tahoe there's a second incentive worth knowing: the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency awards workforce housing bonus units at no cost where tenants meet income or employment eligibility, tied to a deed restriction that prohibits vacation rental use. That is a permanent trade rather than a seasonal one, but it tells you which direction the regional rules are pushing.
What changes when you become a landlord
This is the honest cost of the lease column, and it deserves more than a footnote.
A stay over 30 days in California is a tenancy, not a booking. The Civil Code defines transient occupancy by reference to the same occupancy that would be subject to transient occupancy tax, so the line that ends your tax filing also begins your tenant's rights. Removing someone becomes a court process, not a cancelled reservation. Security deposits tightened too: AB 12 caps most California residential deposits at one month's rent as of July 2024, with a narrow exception allowing two months for natural-person owners of no more than two properties totaling four units, and the old three-months-for-furnished allowance is gone. That matters when the unit you're leasing is a fully furnished former nightly rental. Just-cause protections under Civil Code 1946.2 attach after twelve months of continuous occupancy, so a fixed five- or six-month term generally ends on its own terms, but renewing the same tenant past a year changes the analysis. That question is genuinely fact-dependent, and it's one for a local attorney rather than a blog post.
Advertising and screening change as well. The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability, and California adds a longer list including source of income, marital status, military or veteran status, age, citizenship, primary language, and immigration status, enforced by the Civil Rights Department. In practice: you can require income documentation, references, employment verification, and a credit check, as long as you apply the same criteria to every applicant in the same order. You cannot advertise for "students only" or "young professionals," refuse a housing voucher in California, or use an occupancy limit as a way to screen out families with children. The reasoning matters more than the list, because it covers situations no list enumerates: the standard has to be about the tenancy, not about who the applicant is.
And you lose the house. Six months of a signed lease means you aren't skiing off your own deck over Presidents' Day weekend. For some owners that alone settles it, which is a legitimate answer as long as it's the actual reason rather than a revenue argument in disguise.
Three numbers turn this from a debate into a decision: your town's current fee schedule, your last twelve months of net rather than gross, and a real monthly rent quote from a tenant who would sign. If the third number is the one you don't have, that's the one to go get. You can list a seasonal unit on TurnSeasons and see what local workers are actually paying in the towns we cover before you commit to another winter of turnovers.