Can I Airbnb My ADU in Colorado Springs?

No. Colorado Springs does not allow a structure, or a portion of one, to be used as both an ADU and a short-term rental. Under Ordinance #25-45, a property with an ADU cannot receive a new short-term rental permit; only combinations that already existed before June 30, 2025 were grandfathered. If your plan for a new backyard cottage is nightly rentals, the ordinance closes that door on purpose: the city legalized ADUs as long-term housing, not hospitality inventory.

Building or converting one anyway and quietly listing it is a bad bet. Short-term rentals in the city require a permit, the affidavit and recorded covenant in every ADU permit file tell the city exactly which properties have ADUs, and the city's stated remedy for unpermitted accessory use is a code-enforcement case that ends with compliance or termination of the use.

What the numbers look like instead

The legal play is a long-term tenant, and it is worth running with real figures rather than Airbnb daydreams: Colorado Springs 1-bedroom rents currently run roughly $1,100 to $1,450 per month (median asking and HUD fair-market data bracket that range). Against a detached build that likely costs $200,000 or more, that is a long payback as pure yield, which is exactly why the strongest ADU cases combine rent with something else: housing a parent or adult child, offsetting a mortgage, or the property-value effect. The cost guide walks through that math honestly, including what the best federal data says about ADUs and home value.

For planning purposes, HUD's fiscal-2026 fair market rents for the Colorado Springs metro put a studio at $1,196 and a one-bedroom at $1,464 per month including utilities, while median asking rents run somewhat lower. A well-finished ADU in a good location sits inside that band, rented to one tenant on a lease, with none of the turnover, furnishing, and permit exposure of the nightly-rental model the ordinance rules out anyway.

One adjacent nuance from the state law: none of this is about renting your main house or a room in it; those follow the city's normal short-term rental permit rules. The ADU-specific restriction, and the rest of the ordinance's surprises, are in the ordinance guide.