Buyers comparing Divide to Woodland Park usually land on the same conclusion: Woodland Park cracked down on short-term rentals, so Divide, sitting in unincorporated Teller County with none of that history, must be the safer place to buy if rental income is part of the plan. That read isn't wrong about Woodland Park. It's wrong about what "no rules yet" actually means in Divide.
Woodland Park's fight over short-term rentals is finished. The county that governs Divide is in the middle of writing its own version of the same fight. County commissioners said in May 2026 that a draft ordinance was coming within weeks. As of this writing in August 2026, no draft has been publicly confirmed, which tells you the process is still open, not that it has stalled.
The Case Woodland Park Already Closed
Woodland Park voters passed Ordinance 1469 in a special election on December 12, 2023, with nearly 60% approval. The rule is specific: short-term rentals are only allowed in residential zones if the owner lives there as a primary residence. Everyone else gets pushed to commercial zones, which are limited in the city.
Owners who had built a business on non-owner-occupied rentals sued. The Teller County Short-Term Rental Alliance and property owner Mary Sekowski argued the city had already permitted the use for years by licensing and taxing it, and that revoking it violated their property rights. Sekowski told KRDO she'd put roughly $350,000 into her property as a short-term rental and stood to lose about $48,000 a year in income if the ordinance held. At the time, the city said more than 150 short-term rentals were operating inside its limits, and most weren't owner-occupied.
The case didn't go the plaintiffs' way. Teller County District Judge William Moller denied a preliminary injunction in March 2025, and the case was dismissed outright that April. The city's public statement after the ruling put it plainly: "there is no legal right to operate a short-term rental in areas where zoning laws do not permit it."
That's a closed file. Anyone buying in Woodland Park today for short-term rental income needs an owner-occupied primary residence in a residential zone, or a property in one of the city's smaller commercial districts. There's no ambiguity left to price around.
Divide Was Never Actually Exempt, Just Unwritten
Divide doesn't have its own city government. It's unincorporated Teller County, which means the rules that apply are whatever the county's Board of County Commissioners decides for the entire unincorporated area, not just Divide. And through most of the past several years, the county hadn't written specific short-term rental rules at all. That absence gets misread as permission. It's closer to a placeholder.
That placeholder started moving in 2025. The county held a series of public meetings that summer, including sessions in Florissant and Cripple Creek, to gather input on what short-term rental rules should look like countywide. An online survey ran through September 30, 2025, open to residents, business owners, and anyone with a stake in the outcome, according to the county's own announcement.
By May 2026, the process had moved from listening to drafting. Commissioner Erik Stone told the board at its May 19 meeting that a draft ordinance was coming in late May or early June, after what he called a long public process. His stated goal wasn't subtle: "we want to ensure that we don't lose our neighborhoods, the community sense of our neighborhoods." That's the same language that preceded Woodland Park's ordinance, just a few years earlier in the cycle.
Here's how the two timelines actually line up:
| Date | Woodland Park | Teller County (unincorporated, includes Divide) |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 2023 | Voters pass Ordinance 1469 | No countywide STR rule |
| Jan 2025 | City attempts to enforce owner-occupied rule | No countywide STR rule |
| Mar 2025 | Judge denies injunction against the ordinance | No countywide STR rule |
| Apr 2025 | Lawsuit dismissed, ordinance upheld | No countywide STR rule |
| Jul-Sep 2025 | Ordinance in force, settled | County holds public meetings, opens survey |
| May 2026 | Ordinance in force, settled | Commissioners announce draft ordinance is coming |
Woodland Park spent about two years going from ballot measure to settled law. Teller County is roughly a year into the same arc. The draft commissioners pointed to in May 2026 was expected within weeks of that announcement, and by August 2026 there is no newer public update confirming whether it was released on that schedule or is still being finalized.
What the Gap Is Actually Worth
The gap between "settled restriction" and "rules still being written" is where a lot of buyer assumptions live, and it's worth being specific about what that gap does and doesn't guarantee.
It doesn't guarantee that Divide will end up with rules as strict as Woodland Park's. County commissioners could land somewhere looser, tighter, or shaped entirely differently, since unincorporated land use and city zoning don't have to mirror each other. What the gap does guarantee is that a buyer purchasing in Divide today for short-term rental income is pricing that income against a set of rules that don't exist yet. Sekowski's numbers from Woodland Park are useful here not because they'll repeat exactly, but because they show the scale of what changes when a rule finally lands: hundreds of thousands in improvements, tens of thousands in annual income, contingent on a zoning classification that can shift with a single vote.
The pattern that produced Woodland Park's ordinance wasn't unique to that city. Non-owner-occupied rentals concentrate in residential neighborhoods, neighbors organize around the change in character, and elected officials respond. Divide isn't insulated from that pattern by virtue of being unincorporated. It's simply a step behind it.
The Draft Nobody Has Seen Yet
What we know about the county's direction comes from Commissioner Stone's public comments, not from ordinance text, because the text itself hadn't been released as of the county's last public update in May 2026. He's framed the goal around neighborhood character and guest safety, saying the county wants "them to know the residences where they are staying are safe." That's consistent with how a lot of short-term rental ordinances start: safety and licensing first, occupancy and zoning specifics worked out through public hearings before adoption.
What isn't yet known, and won't be until the county publishes something, is whether it will mirror Woodland Park's owner-occupied requirement, adopt a licensing cap, or take a lighter touch that focuses on life-safety inspections rather than zoning restrictions. Commissioners have said public hearings will happen before anything is adopted, which means there's still a window for input, and still time before any rule takes effect. A buyer reading this in August 2026 should assume the timeline described here may have already moved. What won't have moved is the underlying fact that unincorporated Teller County is actively writing a rule it didn't have before, not sitting still.
What This Means If You're Choosing Between the Two Towns
If short-term rental income is part of why Divide looks more attractive than Woodland Park, the honest version of that comparison isn't "Divide has no rules." It's "Divide's rules are being written right now, and you don't know what they'll say yet." That's a different kind of bet. It might still be the right one, especially if your timeline is long enough to absorb whatever the county lands on, or if your plan works fine as a long-term rental if the short-term option narrows.
Before writing an offer around projected short-term rental income in Divide, it's worth checking the Teller County short-term rental information page directly for the current draft status, since that page is where the county is posting survey results and supporting documents as the process moves forward. It's also worth asking whether the property you're looking at would even qualify as owner-occupied under a rule modeled on Woodland Park's, since that single distinction determined the outcome of an entire lawsuit.
Divide still offers acreage, privacy, and a different cost basis than Woodland Park. Those things aren't going anywhere. What's changing is the assumption that the absence of a rule is the same as a guarantee.
If you're weighing a purchase in Divide, Woodland Park, or elsewhere along the Pikes Peak corridor and want a straight read on how a specific parcel's zoning and current permitted uses actually stack up, Gold District Realty can walk through what's confirmed, what's still in draft, and what that means for your numbers. Get an Instant Property Valuation to start the conversation with real figures in hand.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Teller County's draft ordinance affect properties inside Woodland Park city limits? No. Woodland Park is a home rule city with its own zoning code and its own short-term rental ordinance, already settled through the courts. The county's draft applies to unincorporated areas, which includes Divide, Florissant, and the unincorporated parts of the county outside city boundaries.
If I already own a short-term rental in Divide, will it be grandfathered in? That isn't something anyone can answer yet, because as of this writing the ordinance hasn't been made public or adopted. Woodland Park's fight shows that existing licensing and tax payments don't automatically create a protected legal use once a new ordinance takes effect. The safest move is to track the county's public hearings once a draft is confirmed.
Where can I follow the draft ordinance as it develops? Teller County posts survey results, supporting documents, and updates on its short-term rental information page. Commissioners have said public hearings will happen before any ordinance is adopted, which is where the specific terms will become public.
