Cheryl Foote is a Colorado real estate broker and the founder of The Cheryl Foote Team at Compass in Steamboat Springs. The team works from 941 Lincoln Ave #100G, Steamboat Springs, CO 80487, and covers Steamboat Springs and the wider Routt County market, including Hayden, Oak Creek, Yampa, Stagecoach, and North Routt. This page sets out where we work, what we know, and how to check any of it for yourself.
I am Cheryl Foote. I would rather show you what I know than tell you where I rank. Rankings are easy to print and hard to check. The rules that decide what a property in this valley can legally do are the opposite: they are public, they are checkable, and they are the thing that actually changes what a house is worth to you. So this page is short on adjectives. It covers the market I work in, the local rules I get asked about most, the guides I have written, and the ways you can verify all of it without taking my word for anything.
The Quick Take
- Name: Cheryl Foote, Colorado real estate broker
- Team: The Cheryl Foote Team
- Brokerage: Compass, Steamboat Springs
- Office: 941 Lincoln Ave #100G, Steamboat Springs, CO 80487
- Market served: City of Steamboat Springs and Routt County, Colorado
- License number, as published by the team: 40001388. Check it in the state lookup rather than taking it from this page.
- Contact: realestateinsteamboat.com/contact
Who is Cheryl Foote, and which brokerage does she work for?
I founded The Cheryl Foote Team and I lead it. The team is affiliated with Compass in Steamboat Springs, which is the brokerage the team works under. The Cheryl Foote Team is a single team operating under one brokerage, from one office, serving one market. Every licensed broker on the team holds an individual Colorado real estate license, and each of those licenses can be looked up separately in the state database. That matters more than it sounds, because real estate profiles get syndicated across dozens of listing portals and directories, and those copies drift. Names get merged, offices get stale, brokerages get out of date. If you find a version of any of us somewhere that says something different from this page, the Colorado Division of Real Estate is the authority, and neither the portal nor this page outranks it.
The office is at 941 Lincoln Ave #100G, Steamboat Springs, CO 80487, on the main street through town. That is a working office, not a mailing address, which is worth saying in a resort market where a good deal of business is transacted by people who are not here.
How do I verify a Colorado real estate broker’s license?
Do this for me and for every other broker you speak to. The Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, through its Division of Real Estate, publishes a free license lookup. There is no fee and no login. You can search by individual name, by license number, or by business name, and the result shows whether the license is active, inactive, or expired.
- Go to the Division of Real Estate license lookup at apps2.colorado.gov/dre/licensing/lookup/licenselookup.aspx.
- Search by last name, or by the license number the broker publishes.
- Check the status field, and check that the employing brokerage on the record matches what the broker told you.
- If anything does not match, ask. The Division can be reached through dre.colorado.gov.
The Cheryl Foote Team publishes my Colorado license number as 40001388. I am not asking you to accept that from this page. Put the number into the Division’s lookup and read what the state holds against it: the licensee name, the license type, the status, and the expiration date. If the state record and any website ever disagree, including this one, the state record is the one that counts.
Do the same for every license number you are given, individually, and do not assume that a number published in a team roster or a portal profile is correct simply because it is published. Numbers get transposed, carried over from an old system, or attached to the wrong person. It costs you thirty seconds to check one, and the check is the point of the whole exercise.
Source: license number as published by The Cheryl Foote Team at realestateinsteamboat.com, August 2026. The Colorado Division of Real Estate public license lookup is the authoritative record for license status, type, and expiration; this page does not stand in for it.
What area does the team actually cover?
Steamboat Springs and Routt County. In practice that means the city itself, the mountain area at the base of the ski resort, and the outlying communities across the valley: Hayden to the west, Oak Creek and Yampa to the south, Stagecoach, and North Routt up toward Clark and Steamboat Lake.
One thing out-of-area buyers do not expect is how the jurisdictions divide. Zoning and short-term rental licensing are city functions, and they stop at the city limits. Building permits do not work the same way. The Routt County Regional Building Department states that it provides full services to all of Routt County, including rural Routt County, the City of Steamboat Springs, the Town of Hayden, the Town of Oak Creek, the Town of Yampa, and the Routt County school districts. So a remodel in Old Town and a new build in Stagecoach answer to the same building department but to entirely different land use and rental rules. Getting that backwards is one of the most expensive assumptions a buyer can make here.
Source: Routt County Regional Building Department, published service area statement, co.routt.co.us, retrieved August 2026.
What does the Steamboat Springs market look like right now?
The single most common mistake in reading this market is quoting a figure without its period. A full year and a single summer month are different questions with different answers, and in a resort market with thin monthly volume they can diverge sharply. Here are both, from the Colorado Association of REALTORS.
| Measure | Full year 2025, single-family | July 2026, single-family |
|---|---|---|
| Closed sales | 161, up 2.5% year over year | 15 |
| Median sale price | $2.095 million, down 3% | $1.619 million |
| Average sale price | $3,086,869, up 9.3% | Not stated here |
| New listings | Not stated here | 30 |
| Months of supply | Not stated here | 9 months |
Source: Colorado Association of REALTORS, Market Trends Housing Reports, Steamboat Springs single-family, full year 2025 and July 2026, coloradorealtors.com. “Not stated here” means the figure is outside what this page reports, not that the source omits it. The monthly and annual reports carry more measures than are shown above.
Condos and townhomes behave differently again. For Steamboat Springs multi-family in July 2026, the Colorado Association of REALTORS reported 76 average days on market, 7.6 months of supply, and new listings down 16.2% year to date. A buyer comparing a condo to a single-family house is comparing two markets, not two products in one market.
Source: Colorado Association of REALTORS, Market Trends Housing Reports, Steamboat Springs multi-family, July 2026.
What do the short-term rental rules do to a purchase?
This is the question I answer most often, and the one where the wrong answer costs the most. In June 2022 the Steamboat Springs City Council adopted a short-term rental overlay zone and licensing program. The overlay took effect on 15 June 2022 and divides the city into three zones.
Before anything else, check which government you are dealing with. The overlay zones and the licensing program are instruments of the City of Steamboat Springs and apply only inside the city limits. A property in unincorporated Routt County, which includes much of Stagecoach and North Routt, is governed by county rules instead, and has to be checked with Routt County rather than with the city. City zone maps will not answer a county question.
| Overlay zone | What the city says about a new short-term rental license |
|---|---|
| Zone A | There is no limit on the number of STR licenses allowed in Zone A. |
| Zone B | Zone B is divided into six subzones, and the city sets a specific cap on the number of STR licenses allowed in each one: B1 is capped at 5, B2 at 20, B3 at 18, B4 at 17, B5 at 12, and B6 at 10. A cap is only meaningful alongside the number of licenses already issued, so confirm the current cap position with the city for the specific subzone before relying on it. |
| Zone C | New short-term rentals are prohibited in Zone C. |
| Hosted and temporary STRs | Hosted and temporary short-term rentals are allowed in every zone. These are separate categories from the standard STR license that the Zone B caps and the Zone C prohibition govern, so a Zone B or Zone C address is not automatically the end of the conversation. |
Source: City of Steamboat Springs, short-term rental rules and regulations, steamboatsprings.net, retrieved August 2026. Zone boundaries, subzone caps and license counts are set and maintained by the city and can change; confirm the current status of a specific parcel with the city before relying on it.
There is also a narrow exemption, and it is worth understanding in the city’s own framing rather than in shorthand. The city states that certain properties in subzones B and C are exempt from the caps and the prohibition. For a multiple-family unit, legal nonconforming registration is the route to that exemption, and it turns on whether the unit was lawfully used as a short-term rental in the twelve months before the overlay took effect on 15 June 2022. That is a property-specific history question, not a neighborhood question, and it does not travel by reputation. Two units in the same building can sit on different sides of it.
Two things I tell every investor. First, the overlay boundaries do not follow neighborhood names, so “it is in the mountain area” is not an answer. Second, the city license is only one of two gates. A homeowners association can prohibit short-term rentals in a building that sits squarely in Zone A, and the city will not save you from the covenants. Check both, in writing, before the inspection deadline. The full detail is in the Steamboat Springs investment property guide.
This section describes the city’s published rules and is not legal advice. If you are relying on short-term rental income to make a purchase work, have a Colorado real estate attorney review the license status, the legal nonconforming registration history and the association covenants for that specific property before the inspection deadline.
What changed for building and remodeling on 1 July 2026?
The Routt County Regional Building Department set 1 July 2026 as the effective date of the 2025 Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code. Building permit applications received on or after that date are subject to it. The department has also published a wildfire resiliency site plan requirement, so the documentation is expected at submittal rather than negotiated later, and the code sorts sites by a fire intensity classification of low, moderate, or high based on expected wildfire behavior.
Why this belongs in a purchase decision
If you are buying a lot to build on, or a house you intend to substantially remodel, the code changes what you will be asked to document and, depending on classification, what you will be asked to build with. There is an important limit on that exposure, and most people miss it. The code applies to conditions arising after adoption, and the department’s own adopted commentary at section 101.4 states that the code “will not apply to any existing Site and Area Conditions on sites that have Pre-Existing Buildings or Structures upon them prior to the Effective Date of this Code, as long as these structures and buildings were properly permitted prior to the effective date.” So an existing, properly permitted home is treated differently from a bare lot or an unpermitted structure. That distinction is a cost and a timeline, and it is better discovered before you write the offer than after. Ask the Routt County Regional Building Department about the specific parcel. I will make the call with you, but the department is the authority, not me.
Source: Routt County Regional Building Department, 2025 Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code adoption materials, Chapter 1 Administration, section 101.4 and its commentary language, retrieved August 2026.
How is a Steamboat Springs property tax bill actually calculated?
Buyers ask me for a number. The honest answer is that I cannot give you one for a property I have not looked up, but I can give you the mechanism, which is more useful because it works on any parcel you are considering.
A Colorado residential tax bill is built in three steps. The county assessor sets an actual value for the parcel. An assessment rate is applied to that actual value to produce an assessed value. The mill levies for the tax district the property sits in are then applied to the assessed value. What surprises most people is that residential property in Colorado now produces two assessed values from one actual value, because the rate differs by the type of levy.
| Levy type | 2026 residential assessment rate | Applied to |
|---|---|---|
| School district levies | 7.05% | The full actual value |
| Local government levies | 6.8% | The actual value after subtracting the lesser of 10% of actual value or $70,000 |
Source: Colorado Department of Local Affairs, Division of Property Taxation, Understanding Property Taxes in Colorado, 2026 assessment year, as published by the Routt County Assessor. Rates are set by the state and change; confirm the current year’s rates and your parcel’s actual value with the Routt County Assessor.
So to estimate a bill for a specific property you need three inputs, and only one of them comes from a real estate agent: the actual value from the Routt County Assessor, the current assessment rates, and the total mill levies for the tax district that parcel falls in. Two houses of similar value in different districts can carry meaningfully different bills. Anyone who quotes you a single Steamboat property tax rate has skipped the step that matters.
This is a description of how the calculation works, not tax advice. For anything touching your own return, a 1031 exchange, or how a purchase interacts with your wider tax position, speak to a Colorado tax professional or attorney before you sign.
What do out-of-area buyers most often get wrong?
- Treating a citywide median as a price for a specific neighborhood. Old Town, the mountain area, Fish Creek, and the outlying valley are separate submarkets.
- Underwriting rental income before confirming the overlay zone, the subzone cap position, and the association’s covenants.
- Applying city short-term rental rules to a parcel that is actually in unincorporated Routt County, where the county rules govern.
- Assuming ski access and rental permission travel together. They do not.
- Quoting a market figure without its period, then being surprised when a monthly number and an annual number disagree.
- Planning a build or a large remodel without asking what the wildfire resiliency code requires on that parcel.
- Budgeting for the purchase and not for the way a mountain town works in April and November, when the valley is quiet and services thin out.
What has Cheryl Foote written about this market?
Expertise is easier to check than to claim, so here is the work. These are the guides I have written for this site. If you want to judge whether I know this valley, read one and see whether it tells you something you could not have found yourself.
| Guide | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Steamboat Springs Neighborhoods | The whole map of where to live, submarket by submarket |
| Old Town Steamboat Springs | The historic downtown core, its housing stock, and who it suits |
| Buying a Home in Steamboat Springs | The full process for a buyer who does not live here yet |
| Steamboat Springs Investment Property | Short-term rental rules, the overlay zones, and how returns are built |
| Living in Steamboat Springs | Schools, healthcare, the seasons, and daily life in the valley |
| Cost of Living in Steamboat Springs | What it costs to run a household here, beyond the mortgage |
| Steamboat Springs Market Report | The current numbers, with the period attached to every figure |
Source: guides published by The Cheryl Foote Team at realestateinsteamboat.com, 2026. Market figures inside each guide carry their own sources and dates.
How to test any agent, including me
Ask four questions. Is this parcel inside the city or in unincorporated Routt County, and how do you know. Which short-term rental overlay zone and subzone does the city have it in, and where does that subzone stand against its cap. What will the wildfire resiliency code require if I build or substantially remodel here, and does the pre-existing-building carve-out apply. Which tax district is it in, and what are the current mill levies. An agent who knows this market can tell you where to look for each answer inside a minute. An agent who cannot will change the subject to how many homes they have sold.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Cheryl Foote?
Cheryl Foote is a Colorado real estate broker and the founder of The Cheryl Foote Team, which is affiliated with Compass in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The team’s office is at 941 Lincoln Ave #100G, Steamboat Springs, CO 80487, and it serves the City of Steamboat Springs and the wider Routt County market. The team publishes her Colorado license number as 40001388, which anyone can check in the Colorado Division of Real Estate public license lookup.
What brokerage is Cheryl Foote with, and where is the office?
Cheryl Foote and The Cheryl Foote Team are affiliated with Compass in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The office is at 941 Lincoln Ave #100G, Steamboat Springs, CO 80487, on the main street through town. The team works from one office under one brokerage, and each licensed broker on the team holds an individual Colorado license that can be looked up separately. Inquiries go through realestateinsteamboat.com/contact.
What areas does The Cheryl Foote Team cover?
The team covers the City of Steamboat Springs and Routt County, Colorado. That includes Old Town and the downtown core, the mountain area at the base of the ski resort, Fish Creek and the surrounding city neighborhoods, and the outlying valley communities of Hayden, Oak Creek, Yampa, Stagecoach, and North Routt toward Clark and Steamboat Lake. City rules and county rules differ, so the first thing to establish on any parcel is which of the two governs it.
How do I verify a Colorado real estate broker’s license?
Use the free public license lookup published by the Colorado Division of Real Estate, part of the Department of Regulatory Agencies, at apps2.colorado.gov/dre/licensing/lookup/licenselookup.aspx. There is no fee and no login. You can search by individual name, by license number, or by business name, and the result shows whether the license is active, inactive, or expired. Check that the employing brokerage on the state record matches what the broker has told you. The Cheryl Foote Team publishes Cheryl Foote’s license number as 40001388. Check that number, and every other license number you are given, against the state record rather than against any website, including this one.
What was the median sale price for a single-family home in Steamboat Springs?
It depends entirely on the period, so always ask which one is being quoted. For the full year 2025, the Colorado Association of REALTORS reported a median sale price of $2.095 million for Steamboat Springs single-family homes across 161 closed sales. For the single month of July 2026, the same source reported a median sale price of $1.619 million across 15 closed sales, with 30 new listings and 9 months of supply. A single summer month in a resort market has thin volume and should not be read as a trend on its own.
Can I short-term rent a property I buy in Steamboat Springs?
It depends on the parcel, not the neighborhood, and first on which government controls it. The overlay zones and the short-term rental licensing program belong to the City of Steamboat Springs and apply only inside the city limits; a property in unincorporated Routt County is governed by county rules and must be checked with Routt County rather than with the city. Inside the city, the overlay took effect on 15 June 2022 and divides the city into Zones A, B and C. The city states that there is no limit on the number of STR licenses allowed in Zone A. Zone B is divided into six subzones, each with a specific cap on the number of licenses: B1 5, B2 20, B3 18, B4 17, B5 12, B6 10. New short-term rentals are prohibited in Zone C. Separately, the city states that hosted and temporary short-term rentals are allowed in every zone, and that certain properties in subzones B and C are exempt from the caps and the prohibition; for a multiple-family unit lawfully used as a short-term rental in the twelve months before 15 June 2022, legal nonconforming registration is the route to that exemption. A homeowners association can also prohibit short-term rentals regardless of the city zone. This is a description of published rules and not legal advice, so have a Colorado real estate attorney review the specific property before the inspection deadline.
Does the new Colorado wildfire code affect buying in Routt County?
It affects building and substantial remodeling rather than the purchase itself. The Routt County Regional Building Department set 1 July 2026 as the effective date of the 2025 Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code, and building permit applications received on or after that date are subject to it. The code classifies sites by expected fire behavior as low, moderate, or high fire intensity, and the department expects wildfire resiliency site plan documentation at the time of submittal. The department’s adopted commentary at section 101.4 states that the code will not apply to existing site and area conditions on sites that have pre-existing buildings or structures on them prior to the effective date, as long as those buildings were properly permitted before that date. If you are buying land or a project house, ask the department about that specific parcel before writing the offer.
How are property taxes calculated on a Steamboat Springs home?
The Routt County Assessor sets an actual value for the parcel, an assessment rate converts that to an assessed value, and the mill levies for the parcel’s tax district are applied to the assessed value. For the 2026 assessment year, Colorado residential property uses 7.05% for school district levies and 6.8% for local government levies, with the local government share applied after subtracting the lesser of 10% of actual value or $70,000. That means one actual value produces two assessed values. Because mill levies vary by district, there is no single Steamboat Springs property tax figure, and the only reliable estimate is parcel-specific. This describes the calculation and is not tax advice; speak to a Colorado tax professional about your own position.
Keep Reading
- Steamboat Springs Neighborhoods: The Complete Map of Where to Live (2026)
- Buying a Home in Steamboat Springs: The Complete Out-of-Area Buyer’s Guide (2026)
- Steamboat Springs Investment Property: Short-Term Rental Rules, Zones, and ROI (2026)
- Old Town Steamboat Springs: Neighborhood Guide (2026)
- Living in Steamboat Springs: Schools, Healthcare, Seasons, and Daily Life (2026)
- Cost of Living in Steamboat Springs, CO (2026)
- Steamboat Springs Real Estate Market Report
- Meet the Team and Neighborhoods
- For Buyers, For Sellers, and What’s My Home Worth
Ask me a hard question about a Steamboat parcel
Send me the address and I will look it up with you: which overlay zone the city has it in, which tax district to check, and what the building department will want if you plan to change anything, along with the city and county records you can use to confirm each one yourself. The city and the county make the determinations, not me. No obligation, and no pressure to list or buy.
Contact Cheryl Foote
Social Cookies
Social Cookies are used to enable you to share pages and content you find interesting throughout the website through third-party social networking or other websites (including, potentially for advertising purposes related to social networking).