Colorado HOA laws & resources.

Laws & regulations impacting Colorado associations.

Colorado keeps most community-association law in one place. The Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act — CCIOA, C.R.S. §§ 38-33.3-101 to -402 — governs condominiums, cooperatives and planned communities alike, and its provisions may not be varied by agreement, nor the rights it confers waived, except where the article expressly allows (§ 38-33.3-104). Four other bodies of law sit around it. HOPB hosts every one of these statutes in full, each with a plain-language guide, alongside the federal laws that apply nationwide.

Five things are worth knowing about how Colorado’s HOA law works:

• The date your community was created decides how much of CCIOA reaches you. The Common Interest Ownership Act applies to communities created on or after July 1, 1992 — except that § 38-33.3-116 leaves a post-1992 cooperative or planned community of twenty units or fewer with no development rights, and a limited-expense planned community, subject only to §§ 105 to 107 (§§ 38-33.3-115, -116). For earlier ones, § 38-33.3-117(3) says the article “shall not apply” except as that section expressly provides — and then lists, in a series of dated waves, what does. That list is long and it covers most of what homeowners argue about: enforcement and attorney fees (§ 123), the assessment lien (§ 316), collections (§ 316.3), records (§ 317), meetings (§ 308), voting (§ 310(1) and (2)) and annual registration (§ 401). The construction-defect procedure at § 303.5 applies to every community regardless of date (§ 38-33.3-117(1.9)), and a pre-1992 community can opt in wholesale by a 67 percent vote (§ 38-33.3-118).
• The Condominium Ownership Act was split, not repealed — and the split is by section. The 1963 Condominium Ownership Act, C.R.S. §§ 38-33-101 to -113, is a condominium statute, not a common-interest-community statute. CCIOA § 38-33.3-115 provides that §§ 38-33-101 to -109 do not apply to communities created on or after July 1, 1992, while §§ 38-33-110 to -113 “shall remain in effect for all common interest communities” — of any age and any type. Two provisions there are worth knowing, but only one survives the date test. § 38-33-109 — inside the §§ 101 to 109 block, so pre-1992 condominiums only — caps an owner’s liability in a suit against the association at the damages multiplied by that owner’s percentage ownership; but read its second sentence, because where the unit owners have incorporated, their liability is determined as that of any other corporate stockholder. Surviving whatever your date, § 38-33-112 gives a tenant in a building being converted to condominiums ninety days’ notice, declared a matter of statewide concern that no county or municipality, home rule included, may conflict with.
• Your association is also a corporation — but one set of corporate protections is switched off for you. CCIOA requires the association to be organised no later than the day the first unit is conveyed (§ 38-33.3-301) — as a nonprofit, not-for-profit or for-profit corporation, or as an LLC — and, where it is organised under the Colorado Revised Nonprofit Corporation Act, its bylaws to comply with that Act (§ 38-33.3-306(1)); where the two conflict, CCIOA controls (§ 38-33.3-319). Watch one trap. That Act protects “residential nonprofit corporations” with open board meetings, agendas and limits on executive session at § 7-128-203(3), and it reads almost word for word like CCIOA. It does not apply to your association — § 7-121-401(33.5)(b)(I) excludes “a unit owners’ association or any other entity subject to” CCIOA, “regardless of whether it was formed before, on, or after July 1, 1992.” You have those rights; the section to cite is § 38-33.3-308. What the corporate Act uniquely adds is a way out when the association stops functioning: where it is “impractical or impossible” to hold a meeting, a member may petition the district court, which may order one and dispense with any quorum requirement (§ 7-121-601); and a court may dissolve the corporation, and in that dissolution proceeding appoint a receiver or custodian, where those in control act illegally, oppressively or fraudulently or assets are being misapplied or wasted (§§ 7-134-301(2), 7-134-303).
• A second collections statute switches on the moment your file leaves the association. The Colorado Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, C.R.S. §§ 5-16-101 to -135, does not reach an association collecting its own assessments in its own name (§ 5-16-103(3)(a)(II)(A), (3)(b)(I)). It does reach one collecting under a borrowed name (§ 5-16-103(3)(c)), an outside management company regularly collecting debts owed to another (§ 5-16-103(3)(a)(II)(A)), the association’s collections attorney (§ 5-16-103(3)(e)(I)), and anyone who bought the debt (§§ 5-16-103(8.5), 5-16-134.5). From that firm you are owed a validation notice within five days, and a written dispute within thirty days obliges it to obtain verification and “cease collection” until it does (§ 5-16-109). Breaking the rules costs it actual damages, up to $1,000 more, and your costs and reasonable attorney fees — but you have only one year, and an unsuccessful claim can leave you liable for its costs and fees (§ 5-16-113).
• Fair housing is the limit that reaches every community, whatever its date or size. The Colorado Fair Housing Act, C.R.S. § 24-34-501 et seq., makes it unlawful to discriminate in housing because of disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, familial status, veteran or military status, religion, national origin or ancestry (§ 24-34-502(1)(a)(I)), and separately because of source of income (§ 24-34-502(1)(l) to (1)(p), subject to a full exemption for a landlord with three or fewer units (§ 24-34-502(1.5)(a)), and a narrower rule relieving one who owns five or fewer single-family rental homes and no more than five rental units in total from having to accept federal housing choice vouchers for those homes (§ 24-34-502(1.7))). The provision aimed squarely at associations is § 24-34-502(1)(c)(II): it is an unfair housing practice “to honor or exercise or attempt to honor or exercise any restrictive covenant pertaining to housing.” A discriminatory covenant is not merely unenforceable — enforcing it is a separate unlawful act. And § 24-34-502.2(2) makes refusing a reasonable modification or a reasonable accommodation discrimination in its own right; CCIOA § 38-33.3-106.5(1)(g) separately bars an association from prohibiting reasonable modifications — that section has no accommodation limb, and it measures the duty by the federal standard at 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(A).
  Three different deadlines — missing one bars the charge
  • Housing — a charge must be filed with the commission within one year of the alleged practice (§ 24-34-504(1)).
  • Public accommodation — sixty days (§ 24-34-604). Discriminatory advertising is also sixty days (§ 24-34-706). The public accommodation provisions have a different protected-class list from housing — no familial status, religion or veteran status (§ 24-34-601(2)(a)). Whether an association’s pool or clubhouse is a “place of public accommodation” turns on whether it offers facilities to the public (§ 24-34-600.3(1)(a)); the statute does not answer that for associations.
  • The private lawsuit runs separately — two years, in “an appropriate United States district court or state district court”, excluding any time an administrative proceeding was pending — except in an action for breach of a conciliation agreement, where that tolling does not apply, and available whether or not a charge was ever filed (§ 24-34-505.6(1) to (3)).

Several answers homeowners most want sit outside all five statutes — small claims, construction defects, arbitration and mediation, rain barrels, accessory dwelling units, child care homes and owner data. Those are collected on the related and miscellaneous Colorado laws page.

Federal & state government agencies.

Colorado has an HOA office, and it is worth knowing exactly what it can and cannot do. Unlike most states, Colorado requires every association to register and funds a dedicated information centre — but the statute that creates it makes it a clearing house, not a regulator. Match your problem to the right body below.

• The HOA Information and Resource Center, inside the Division of Real Estate, is the free resource CCIOA’s notice of delinquency is required to point you toward (§ 38-33.3-209.5(5)(a)(V)(E)). Its information officer must be genuinely independent — the director may not appoint anyone licensed by or registered with the division in the previous ten years, or anyone holding stocks, bonds or any pecuniary interest in a corporation the division regulates — and must “place a high premium” on candidates without current financial ties to an HOA board or a management company (§ 12-10-801(2)). The officer keeps a database of registered associations, publishes reference material on open meetings, proper use of executive sessions, removal of board members, owners’ right to speak, and collections, and tracks inquiries and complaints and reports them annually (§ 12-10-801(3)).
  What it cannot do
  • Section 12-10-801 gives the centre no power to investigate your association, order a board to do anything, or impose a penalty. It compiles, educates, monitors, reports, and may request certain records from associations (§ 12-10-801(3)(b)(II)). If you need an order, you need a court — and for most disputes that means small claims, which has jurisdiction over assessment, fine and fee disputes up to $7,500 and, unusually, an express exception to its lack of injunctive power for enforcing an association’s governing documents (§ 38-33.3-209.5(9); § 13-6-403(1)(b)(I), (2)(h)).
• The Division of Real Estate, in the Department of Regulatory Agencies, runs the annual registration every association must file — name, management company or designated agent, address, contact details and unit count (§ 38-33.3-401(2)). Check it before you pay a demand. While an association is unregistered or its registration has expired, its right to impose or enforce a § 316 assessment lien, or to pursue any § 123 remedy, is suspended; a lien recorded while the association was validly registered, or before registration was required, survives, but a pending enforcement proceeding is suspended and the applicable time limit tolled (§ 38-33.3-401(3)). Registration now also reports how many owners were six or more months delinquent, how many judgments were obtained, how many payment plans entered and how many foreclosures filed (§ 401(3.2)) — figures that appear in the centre’s annual report (§ 12-10-801(3)(c)(II)).
  Division of Real Estate
  • 1560 Broadway, Suite 925, Denver, CO 80202 — Phone: 303-894-2166 · Fax: 303-894-2683 — dora_realestate_website@state.co.us
• The Colorado Civil Rights Division — that is its statutory name; it sits in the Department of Regulatory Agencies and its director and staff “receive, investigate, and make determinations on charges” of unfair or discriminatory practices (§ 24-34-302). It is the body to go to over a discriminatory covenant, a refused accommodation or a refused modification — but mind the clocks above: one year for housing, sixty days for public accommodation. The division is also authorised to publish a form for assistance-animal documentation, and a landlord who requires documentation shall provide the tenant with that form where the division has posted it (§ 24-34-309). The Attorney General may intervene in a private fair-housing action certified as being “of general public importance,” and may sue independently over a pattern or practice of resistance to protected rights (§ 24-34-505.5(1), (2)). Federally, HUD takes complaints under the federal Fair Housing Act in parallel, and the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division enforces the Americans with Disabilities Act where part of a community is open to the public.
• The Colorado Attorney General is where debt collection complaints go, and the statutory route is precise. The “administrator” who enforces the Colorado Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is the administrator of the Uniform Consumer Credit Code, whose office is created in the department of law (§ 5-16-103(1)). Any person acting as a collection agency must hold a licence issued by that administrator (§ 5-16-118), and on a written complaint from any interested person the administrator “shall conduct an investigation” — with power to subpoena witnesses and documents, administer oaths and hold hearings (§§ 5-16-114, 5-16-127).
  If the collector is your association’s law firm
  • A complaint about an attorney does not stay with the administrator — it “shall be forwarded to the supreme court’s attorney regulation counsel” (§ 5-16-117(3)). File it anyway; the statute routes it.
  • File a collection agency complaint · CFPB complaint under the federal FDCPA
• The Colorado Secretary of State holds the corporate register, and a lapse there is visible in the public record. The corporation files a periodic report giving its name, registered agent and principal office (§§ 7-136-107, 7-90-501); after four hundred days of delinquency the entity name itself “shall include the word ‘delinquent’” with the date, and a dissolved entity’s name must include “dissolved” (§§ 7-90-601.6, 7-90-601.5). One search tells you whether the corporation collecting your assessments is in good standing. A dissolved association can usually be reinstated, with its existence deemed to have “continued without interruption” (§§ 7-90-1001 to 7-90-1005).
• Two further state resources. The Office of Legislative Legal Services is the non-partisan in-house counsel to the General Assembly; it drafts and publishes the statutes and issues plain-language memoranda, including Application of CCIOA in subdivisions and condominium communities and Regulation of homeowners’ property rights within common interest communities. The Division of Housing works on access to affordable, safe and secure homes; the Colorado state portal indexes the rest by topic and agency.

Find HOA contact information & documents.

• Who runs your association — two registers, not one. The Secretary of State’s business search — or HOPB’s HOA Directory, selecting Colorado — gives corporate status, registered agent, officers and filed documents including the articles of incorporation. Search the legal name of the subdivision or community. Separately, the Division of Real Estate’s annual registration holds the association’s management company or designated agent, physical address, contact details and unit count (§ 38-33.3-401(2)) — useful when the corporate record names only a registered agent at a law firm.
• The association has to tell you where its declaration is recorded. Within ninety days of taking control from the declarant, and again within ninety days of any change, it must make available its name and its agent’s, a valid physical address and telephone number, the name of the community, the initial date of recording of the declaration, and the reception number or book and page for the main declaration document (§ 38-33.3-209.4(1)). That is the search key for the county records. It must also make available, annually, the budget, current assessments by unit type, financial statements, reserves, the most recent audit or review, and a list of every insurance policy with limits, deductibles and expiration dates (§ 209.4(2)).
• Recorded documents. The declaration — the CC&Rs — with its amendments, plat or map, deeds and liens, is recorded with the county clerk and recorder where the community sits. Recording is not a formality in Colorado: a common interest community may be created only by recording a declaration, in every county any part of it lies in, and no community is created until the plat or map is recorded (§ 38-33.3-201(1)). Recording the declaration is also what perfects the association’s assessment lien — no further claim of lien need be recorded (§ 38-33.3-316(4)). Use the searchable Colorado land records map to identify the county, then that county recorder’s website.
• Association records — two independent rights, with different remedies. Under CCIOA, § 38-33.3-317(1) lists eighteen categories the association must keep, and it may not condition production on your stating a proper purpose (§ 317(2)(a)). Failure to allow inspection or copying within thirty calendar days of a written request sent by certified mail, return receipt requested and after you have paid any copying charge it may impose under § 317(4), costs it $50 per day from the eleventh business day, up to $500 or your actual damages, whichever is greater (§ 317(4.5)) — note the form requirement: the penalty attaches to certified mail, not to an email. Independently, the Nonprofit Corporation Act opens principal-office records on five business days’ written demand with no proper purpose required, a right that “may not be abolished or limited by the articles of incorporation or bylaws” (§ 7-136-102) — and if a court then orders inspection it shall award your costs including reasonable counsel fees unless the corporation proves it refused in good faith (§ 7-136-104). Put every request in writing and keep the receipt.