Beaver Creek's Real Estate Transfer Assessment Isn't a Tax. It Still Costs More Than One.

Picture this. You are two days from closing on a $4.8 million home in Beaver Creek Village. The settlement statement lands in your inbox, and there's a line item labeled RETA for $114,000, a figure nobody mentioned when you toured the property or negotiated the price. You had already budgeted for a transfer cost, because you shopped in Vail first, and Vail's 1 percent Real Estate Transfer Tax was easy to plan around. Beaver Creek does not run on that math, and the gap is not a rounding error.

That gap is the whole story. Buyers who cross over from Vail, or from any town with a conventional municipal transfer tax, tend to assume every resort community in the Vail Valley prices its closing costs the same way. Beaver Creek doesn't have a town government to run that kind of system, and what it built instead costs more, calculates differently, and shows up on a different legal basis entirely.

The Fee That Isn't a Tax

Beaver Creek is not an incorporated town. It sits inside unincorporated Eagle County, which means there is no municipal government collecting property tax revenue or running a town council the way Vail does a few miles up the interstate. To fund the services a town would normally provide, the Beaver Creek Resort Company, which operates under a management agreement with Vail Resorts, collects a set of private assessments written into the community's property covenants.

The one that hits every buyer is the Real Estate Transfer Assessment, or RETA. As published on the Resort Company's own assessments schedule for 2026, RETA is set at 2.375 percent of a property's fair market value, collected every time title changes hands. That is more than double Vail's 1 percent transfer tax, and it is calculated on fair market value rather than the contract price, which matters if an appraisal or assessment lands higher than what you agreed to pay.

The Resort Company is direct about why this exists. Beaver Creek is not a municipality, so a variety of assessments are collected on taxable sales and transfers in order to fund the services a town would otherwise provide, from public safety and controlled access to the resort, to maintenance of common areas like parks and community malls, to the Design Review Board that keeps architecture and landscaping consistent across the community.

What the Numbers Actually Look Like Side by Side

The mechanism difference between Vail and Beaver Creek explains the dollar difference. Here is what that $4.8 million transaction looks like under each system.

The $66,000 difference is not a fee stacked on top of Vail's structure. It replaces it entirely, because Beaver Creek was never set up to collect a government transfer tax in the first place.

The Rest of the System, Because RETA Isn't the Only Line

RETA is the one that lands at closing, but it sits inside a broader set of assessments that make Beaver Creek function more like a small, privately funded municipality than a typical HOA community. As of 2026, the published schedule also includes a Civic Assessment of 5.35 percent on taxable retail and lodging sales, which is the resort's substitute for a municipal sales tax since there is no town to levy one. There's a Lodging Civic Assessment of 0.96 percent on short-term rental nights, a Recreation Assessment of 5 percent on activities like golf, tennis, and ski lessons, and an annual Common Assessment based on assessed property value, capped at 20 mills.

None of the others hit a straight home purchase the way RETA does. But if part of your plan is renting the property short term, the Lodging Civic Assessment and a Beaver Creek business license requirement become recurring costs you'll want in your underwriting from day one, not something you discover after your first booking season.

Before You Write the Offer

A few things worth confirming before a Beaver Creek contract gets signed, based on how these assessments are actually structured:

• Confirm which associations govern the specific parcel. Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead each maintain their own homeowners associations layered on top of whatever Beaver Creek Resort Company assessments apply resort-wide, so a property in one village can carry a different total assessment picture than one a few miles away, even under the same resort umbrella.
• Ask whether RETA will be calculated against the contract price or an independent fair market valuation. The Resort Company's own language ties it to fair market value, which can diverge from what you negotiated.
• If any part of the transfer involves a gift, an estate plan, or a transfer into a trust or LLC, know that BCRC requires a RETA Exemption Form even for Quit Claim Deeds or Special Warranty Deeds executed for zero consideration. Paperwork is required either way.
• Ask your title company to itemize RETA separately from Colorado's standard state documentary fee, which remains a flat 0.01 percent statewide, and the flat county recording fee. Seeing them broken out makes it clear exactly what is driving your bottom line at the table.
• Negotiate who pays RETA in the purchase contract early. Colorado's standard contract language treats transfer costs as negotiable between buyer and seller, and nothing about Beaver Creek's private assessment changes that default. Don't assume the convention from a prior transaction in a different town carries over.

Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign

Does RETA replace the standard Colorado transfer costs, or stack on top of them? It stacks. Colorado's statewide documentary fee of 0.01 percent and the county recording fee still apply on top of RETA. RETA is Beaver Creek's addition, not a substitute for the baseline state costs every Colorado closing carries.

Do Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead carry the same assessment picture as Beaver Creek Village? Both Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead have their own homeowners associations, separate from Beaver Creek Resort Company, that layer their own dues and rules on top of the resort-wide assessment structure. A buyer should request the governing documents for the specific parcel rather than assuming Beaver Creek Village's numbers translate exactly across the resort.

Can RETA be negotiated between buyer and seller? Who ultimately pays it is a contract term like any other closing cost allocation in Colorado. It should be addressed explicitly in the purchase agreement rather than assumed.

What if I'm transferring the property to family or into an entity I control? Even zero-consideration transfers, such as Quit Claim Deeds between family members, require a RETA Exemption Form to be filed with the Resort Company. Confirm the exemption before assuming no assessment applies.

The Beaver Creek Valley rewards people who read the fine print the same way it rewards people who know which run gets first light in the morning. A 2.375 percent assessment on fair market value is not a hidden cost so much as a cost that only surfaces if someone tells you to look for it before the contract is signed, not after.

If you're weighing a purchase or sale in Beaver Creek, Bachelor Gulch, or Arrowhead and want a clear-eyed read on what a specific transaction will actually cost from offer to closing table, Tom Dunn can walk you through the numbers before you write the offer. Request a Confidential Valuation and get the full picture, line by line.