As KPCW reported in March 2025, Kamas City Councilmember Jessica Bateman said, "I hate using the word ban, because it just seems so absolute," right before the council voted to freeze new short-term rentals across town. A separate development agreement already in place inside city limits allows nightly stays in one neighborhood, while the moratorium restricts new short-term rentals elsewhere in Kamas.
That exception is the reason a buyer can pull up two Kamas listings a few minutes apart on Highway 248 and find one priced like a starter home for the valley and the other priced like a Park City townhouse. It is not a fluke of the market. It is a zoning carve-out with a name, a development agreement, and a price tag attached to it.
Kamas's Short-Term Rental Rules
For years, Kamas restricted short-term rentals the quiet way.
That changed on March 11, 2025, when the Kamas City Council adopted a moratorium on new short-term rental licenses and, in the same session, approved a 1 percent transient room tax on existing operators. Property owners running rentals at that point were given until April 10, 2025 to register with the city and continue operating as grandfathered, nonconforming uses. Everyone else was frozen out while the planning commission worked on permanent rules.
The council kept refining that language well into 2026. According to CitizenPortal, a February 10, 2026 ordinance update, formally adopted as Ordinance 2026-09, revised the city's definition of transient lodging to match the "less than 30 consecutive days" standard used in Utah's own tax code, a housekeeping change on paper but a sign that Kamas is still actively writing this rulebook rather than treating it as settled.
High Star Ranch's Development Agreement
The March 2025 reporting also noted a detail relevant to buyers comparing properties in the valley. Some Kamas rentals sit inside High Star Ranch, which allows nightly stays through a standing development agreement with the city. The council's moratorium does not touch that agreement. It was never on the table.
That means the short-term rental question in Kamas is not really a citywide yes or no. It is a parcel-by-parcel question that depends on whether a specific address falls inside High Star Ranch's boundary or outside it. Two homes a few blocks apart can carry entirely different rental rights, and nothing about the city limits themselves will tell you which one you are looking at.
What the Carve-Out Does to the Price Tag
Run the numbers on Kamas Valley's condo and townhome market and the split becomes visible in dollars, not just ordinances.
- Entry-level resale condos in the Kamas and Marion area trade in the high $300,000s to low $400,000s.
- New construction townhomes at developments like Francis Commons run from the mid $400,000s into the low $500,000s.
- Mid-tier communities without nightly rental rights sit between the high $500,000s and roughly $800,000.
- The Willows at High Star Ranch, the one product in the valley marketed with nightly rental flexibility, lists between $1.29 million and $1.375 million.
That last number is not an outlier because the finishes are dramatically better or the lots are dramatically bigger. It is priced against income potential that the rest of the valley's townhome stock legally cannot generate. A buyer comparing a $700,000 townhome to a $1.3 million one in the same zip code is not comparing two versions of the same product. They are comparing a primary residence to a licensed short-term rental asset, and the development agreement is what separates the two.
Single-family inventory tells a version of the same story at a different scale. As of September 7, 2026, active Kamas single-family listings showed a median list price of roughly $1.55 million across 46 properties, spanning everything from in-town starter homes to legacy ranch parcels on acreage. A median that wide is not describing one market. It is describing several markets that happen to share a mailing address.
The 2026 Numbers Are Already Showing the Strain
Regional market analysis covering the first half of 2026 found that the sell-to-list price ratio in Kamas moved from 98 percent in 2025 down to 94 percent in 2026, even as inventory in the Kamas and Jordanelle corridor grew year over year. That is the opposite direction from nearby Snyderville Basin, where tighter inventory pushed sellers closer to full asking price over the same period.
A falling sell-to-list ratio paired with rising inventory is not a subtle signal. It means listings are coming to market priced for what the seller hopes the property is worth, sitting longer, and eventually closing below that number. In a valley where one product carries rental income rights and the rest does not, that gap gives a buyer real room to ask hard questions about which price a given listing is actually built around before assuming the number on the sign reflects the property in front of them.
What to Confirm Before You Assume Anything About Rental Rights
The city's own moratorium history is the clearest warning here. Kamas spent nearly two years adjusting this policy in public meetings, and staff themselves said the rules could keep changing as the planning commission and council continue their work. Relying on what a listing says about rental potential, or on what a neighboring property is doing, is not a safe substitute for confirming the actual agreement that governs a specific parcel.
Before writing an offer on anything in the Kamas Valley with rental income in mind, a buyer should ask the city planning department directly whether the parcel falls inside High Star Ranch's development agreement or under the general moratorium, and whether any HOA covenants on top of that further restrict what the city agreement allows. The full text of Kamas's municipal code is public and current through the February 2026 update, and it is worth reading the actual ordinance rather than a secondhand summary of it.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly
Does the moratorium mean nobody in Kamas can do a short-term rental anymore? No. Operators who were running rentals before the March 2025 moratorium and registered by the April 10, 2025 deadline were grandfathered in as nonconforming uses. The freeze applies to new licenses outside High Star Ranch's agreement, not to every rental in the city.
Is High Star Ranch's exemption permanent? the council's 2025 moratorium was explicitly written not to affect it.
Does this pattern apply anywhere else in the valley? Not that current reporting shows. The moratorium was framed as citywide, and High Star Ranch is the specific example named in council coverage. Any other parcel should be verified individually rather than assumed to carry the same rights.
If you are weighing a property in the Kamas Valley against something in Park City proper, or trying to figure out what a specific address can actually do before you write an offer, Bessie Ostertag can walk through the parcel-level details with you before the excitement of a listing photo gets ahead of the paperwork.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
