Nov 6, 2026 · @tamarahaddad

If you own a rental in Colorado and the last time you read your lease carefully was before 2024, I have some news: it's probably out of date.

Over three legislative sessions, Colorado rewrote large parts of the rules for renting out a home. The changes cover when you can end a tenancy, how fast you have to fix things, what you can charge, how you handle deposits and who can come after you if you get it wrong. None of it was secret. But it arrived in pieces, one bill at a time, and most owners have caught some of it and missed the rest.

Here's the plain-English version, organized by the parts of the job you actually do. I'm a broker, not your attorney, so use this as a map. It shows you where the new lines are. Your lawyer can tell you exactly where you stand.

You can't simply decline to renew anymore

This is the biggest shift, and the one that surprises owners most.

It used to be that when a lease ran out, you could let it end for any lawful reason, or for no reason at all. HB24-1098, Colorado's for-cause eviction law, ended that. With limited exceptions, a landlord now needs cause to evict a tenant or to refuse a renewal. In practice, the tenant decides whether to stay.

"Cause" covers what you'd expect: nonpayment, serious lease violations, damage to the property and nuisance behavior. There are also a handful of no-fault reasons:

• major repairs that require the unit to be empty
• you or a family member moving in
• demolition or conversion
• taking the home off the rental market to sell it

Those require 90 days' written notice and careful compliance with the statute. Get the steps wrong and you can owe the tenant relocation assistance and damages. Some small owner-occupied properties are exempt. A lease clause that tries to waive any of this is void.

The law also blocks the obvious workaround: you can't raise the rent to push someone out.

What this means for you: the tenant you approve today may live in your property for a very long time. That makes careful, consistent screening more valuable than it has ever been.

The repair clock is now measured in hours

Colorado's warranty of habitability isn't new, but SB24-094 gave it real deadlines. The clock starts once a tenant notifies you of a problem in writing or electronically, and a text or email counts.

Type of problem	Respond and start the repair	Fixed within
Threatens life, health or safety (no heat in January, a gas smell, water pouring through a ceiling)	24 hours	7 days
Other conditions that make the home unfit to live in	72 hours	14 days

Your response has to say how and when you'll fix it. For the serious category, the tenant can ask you to provide a comparable unit or a hotel room while the work gets done. Mold and pest infestations have specific requirements of their own.

If you manage your own rental from out of state and check messages on Sunday nights, those deadlines are a real exposure. You need a vendor you can reach on short notice and a way to show exactly when a request came in and when you answered it.

The rent you advertise has to be the rent they pay

As of January 1, 2026, HB25-1090, the "junk fee" law, requires the price in your ad to be the total price. That means rent plus every mandatory recurring fee, excluding only charges for actual utility usage.

Say you rent a house for $1,200 with a required $50 trash fee. Your listing, your yard sign and your email reply to an inquiry all have to say $1,250.

The law goes further than advertising:

• Some separate fees are now off the table. Charges for things like common-area maintenance and pest control are out.
• Fee increases are capped at 2% a year.
• Late fees can apply only to base rent.
• A markup on a third-party charge is allowed only if the lease expressly authorizes it.
• Tenants can demand their money back. If a tenant sends a written demand over a fee they believe is prohibited, you have 14 days to stop charging it and refund it.

The late-fee rules from a few years ago still apply too. You can't charge a late fee until rent is 7 days late, and the fee is capped at the greater of $50 or 5% of the past-due amount.

One piece of good news came out of the 2026 session. HB26-1013, signed in March, confirms that you can split a shared utility bill among units using a ratio billing system. The conditions: tenants' combined charges can't exceed the actual bill, you add no surcharge, you exclude common-area usage, and the lease explains the method.

Security deposits: your move-in photos are now your best friend

Deposit disputes are among the most common fights between landlords and tenants, and HB25-1249, in force since January 1, 2026, was written to head them off. The basics:

• Two months' rent is the maximum deposit.
• Return it within 30 days after the lease ends or the tenant moves out, whichever is later, along with an itemized list of deductions. You can extend that to as long as 60 days, but only if your lease says so.
• You can't deduct for normal wear and tear, and now you also can't deduct for any damage or defect that existed before the tenant moved in.
• Charges for replacing carpet and repainting are limited, and you need documentation to back up what you deduct.
• Keeping a deposit in bad faith can cost you three times the amount withheld, plus the tenant's attorney fees.

The new rule about preexisting damage puts the burden squarely on your records. If you can't show what the kitchen floor looked like on move-in day, you'll have a hard time charging for it on move-out day. Take dated photos and video of every room, have the tenant sign a condition report, and keep every receipt.

Applications: fewer fees, more disclosure

Since 2023, Colorado landlords have generally had to accept a portable tenant screening report: a report the applicant already paid for, prepared within the last 30 days. If an applicant gives you one, you can't charge an application fee or a fee to look at it.

Two newer laws build on that:

• HB25-1236 (January 1, 2026) lets applicants hand you the report directly, in whatever format they choose, though you can still verify it with the agency that issued it. It also says applicants renting with a housing subsidy don't need credit history in the report.
• HB26-1196 (2026 session) requires every rental application to tell applicants what information you'll pull, how you'll evaluate it and which screening company you use, if any. It also requires you to redact personal identifying information from court filings in an eviction.

The long-standing rules still apply. Application fees can cover only your actual screening cost, everyone pays the same fee, and you refund what you don't use. Source of income is a protected class in Colorado, so a housing voucher counts as income, and you can't turn someone away because of it.

The simplest protection here is boring and effective: write down your criteria before you list, and apply them the same way to every applicant.

Why the stakes went up: who enforces these laws

For years, most landlord-tenant rules were enforced one way: a tenant had to hire a lawyer and sue. That kept a lot of violations out of sight.

SB25-020, effective August 6, 2025, changed that. The Colorado Attorney General, along with counties and cities, can now bring civil and criminal actions to enforce state landlord-tenant law. For multifamily properties with serious violations, a court can appoint a receiver to take over operations.

Put plainly, the tenant is no longer the only one watching. A fee schedule that quietly breaks the rules, or a habit of slow repairs, can now draw the attention of a government office with its own attorneys.

One proposal didn't become law. In 2025 the legislature passed a ban on algorithmic rent-setting software (HB25-1004), and Governor Polis vetoed it. That doesn't make every pricing tool safe, though. Using software that pools competitors' private rent data still carries antitrust risk, so price from public comparables.

What We'd do this month

If you own one rental or forty, here's where we'd start:

1. Have a Colorado attorney review your lease against the 2024–2026 changes. Old templates downloaded from the internet are the number-one problem we see.
2. Rewrite your listing so the advertised price is the total price.
3. Audit every fee you charge, line by line.
4. Update your rental application with the portable-report notice, the tenant-data notice and your written screening criteria.
5. Set up repair intake that records the time of every request and every response.
6. Document move-in condition as if you'll need to show it to a judge.
7. Put lease expirations on your calendar at least 120 days out so a nonrenewal decision never gets rushed.
8. Check your city. Denver and Boulder, among others, require rental licenses, and local rules can stack on top of state law.

None of this makes owning a rental in Colorado a bad investment. It does make it a business that rewards being organized, documenting everything and staying current. If you'd rather have a licensed team handle it, that's exactly what we do at Revii Advisors. We're glad to look over your current setup and tell you where you stand.

This article is general information about Colorado law as of November 2026. It is not legal advice. Laws change, and how they apply depends on your property and your lease, so consult a Colorado real estate attorney about your specific situation.

Sources: Colorado Division of Real Estate, HB25-1249 summary · HB25-1236 summary · SB25-020 summary · Colorado General Assembly, Renters' Rights summary · Legislative Council, 2026 housing legislation summary · HB26-1196 · Colorado Lawyer, 2024 landlord-tenant changes