Frisco's Short-Term Rental Waitlist Keeps Changing. Here's the Number That Actually Matters.

How many names are ahead of you on Frisco's short-term rental license waitlist right now?

It's the first question most buyers ask when they start looking at Frisco as a rental investment, and it's the wrong one. The count moves every month, it depends on exactly when you check, and three licensed brokers checking in the same season have reported wildly different totals. What actually predicts your wait isn't the snapshot number. It's a date on the calendar and a line on a map, both of which get far less attention than they deserve.

The Cap Nobody Reads the Fine Print On

The Town of Frisco adopted Ordinance 22-10 on October 11, 2022, capping short-term rental licenses at 25 percent of the town's residential housing stock. With roughly 3,600 residential units in Frisco, that works out to a hard ceiling of 900 licenses. The ordinance took effect October 17, 2022, and by February 2023 the town had issued its 900th license and opened a waitlist for everyone after that. There is no mechanism written into the ordinance to raise the cap. A license only becomes available when an existing one goes away, through a sale or a non-renewal.

That single fact, a fixed ceiling with no automatic expansion, is what makes the waitlist behave the way it does.

A Number That Won't Sit Still

If you search for "Frisco STR waitlist" you'll find a different count almost every time, even within the same month. Here's what that actually looks like when you line up the checkpoints:

Two of those checks happened in the same month and landed 31 applicants apart. The town updates its official list monthly, but the third-party sites and brokers who track it are pulling numbers on different days, sometimes weeks apart, and reporting them as if they were current. None of them are wrong exactly. They're just measuring a number that was already stale by the time it got published.

Planning a purchase around whatever count you happen to find in a search result is planning around noise.

The Date That Actually Moves the Line

Frisco STR licenses expire April 30 every year, with a renewal window that opens in late February. That deadline, not the passage of time, is what clears space on the waitlist. When a license holder decides not to renew, whether they sold the property, switched to a long-term rental, or simply stepped back from the STR business, that slot opens up and the next name on the list gets an offer. The town then gives that applicant just 14 days to submit a complete application before the spot passes to the next person in line.

This is why the wait estimate swings between roughly 6 and 14 months depending on when you ask. If a meaningful batch of owners lets their license lapse in a given spring, the list moves fast that year. If renewal rates stay high, it barely moves at all. The April 30 date is the mechanism. The applicant count is just where things stood on the day someone happened to look.

The License Stays With the Town, Not the House

Here's the part that catches buyers who are working from a listing that advertises strong rental history: the STR license does not transfer when a property sells. The seller's license is closed out at closing, and the new owner starts at the back of the same waitlist as anyone else, regardless of how long the home has operated as a nightly rental or how good its historical booking numbers look.

That means a listing's trailing twelve months of Airbnb or Vrbo income tells you what the property earned for its previous owner. It tells you nothing about what you'll be permitted to earn in your first year of ownership, because you may not have a license yet.

Once a license is in hand, the math still needs a second look. Every booking in Frisco carries a combined sales and lodging tax of 15.725 percent, which has to come off the top of any gross revenue projection before you compare it to your carrying costs. Occupancy is capped at two guests per bedroom plus four additional guests, which matters if your investment thesis depends on larger group bookings.

Check the Map Before You Check the Listing

A property with a Frisco mailing address is not automatically inside the Town of Frisco's jurisdiction, and that distinction changes every rule discussed above. Some nearby parcels, including those in the Frisco Terrace and Evergreen areas, sit in unincorporated Summit County's Ten Mile Basin instead. That basin runs its own separate STR system with its own cap, and it's already in worse shape than the town's:

A listing description will not flag which system governs a specific parcel, and the mailing address on the deed won't tell you either. The only way to know for certain is to check the parcel against Summit County's short-term rental program before writing an offer, not after.

What This Means If You're Buying to Rent

If a short-term rental income stream is part of why you're buying in Frisco, a few things are worth confirming before you go under contract:

• Whether the parcel sits inside Town of Frisco limits or unincorporated Summit County, since the rules and the waitlist are entirely separate
• Whether the property already carries an active, in-good-standing license, since that license closes out at sale and does not come with the deed
• What your carrying costs look like for a gap that has run anywhere from 6 to 14 months depending on the year, rather than budgeting to whatever number you saw most recently
• Whether a 30-day-or-longer rental makes sense as bridge income while you wait, since Frisco's STR license requirement only applies to stays under 30 consecutive days
• What your net revenue actually looks like after the 15.725 percent combined tax, once a license is in place

None of this makes Frisco a bad market for rental income. It makes it a market where the paperwork is part of the purchase decision, not something to sort out afterward.

A Few Questions Buyers Ask Us Directly

If I buy a property that's currently an active short-term rental, do I inherit the license? No. The Town of Frisco closes the seller's license at closing. You submit a new waitlist application under your own name and the specific address, and it cannot be pre-reserved or transferred ahead of the closing.

Can I earn any rental income while I wait for a license? Yes, through a rental of 30 consecutive days or longer, which falls outside the STR licensing requirement entirely. It's a different tenant profile and a different income level than nightly rentals, but it's a legitimate way to offset carrying costs during the wait.

How do I find out if my target property is actually inside Town of Frisco limits? Check the parcel directly against Summit County's property and STR mapping tools before you write an offer. A Frisco mailing address is not proof of jurisdiction, and the difference determines which set of rules, caps, and waitlists apply to the property.

The Part a Waitlist Number Can't Tell You

The count you find in a search result is a snapshot. The rules that actually govern your timeline, the cap, the April 30 renewal cliff, the non-transferability, and the jurisdiction line, are fixed and knowable well before you make an offer. That's the work worth doing first.

If you're evaluating a Frisco property with rental income in mind, Ryan Greff and the team at Majestic can check the parcel's jurisdiction, confirm its licensing status, and help you build a realistic timeline before you're under contract, not after. Let's Connect.