Hello, greetings from Colorado Springs. My name is Lance Kohler, and I'm the managing broker and owner of the Cornerstone Real Estate Team. Today, I'd like to provide you with our legislative update number three from the 2024 legislative session. In two previous updates, we talked about two different bills that had a fairly significant impact on rental property owners and property management.
The first was House Bill 1098, which was "Cause Required for Eviction of Residential Tenants," commonly known as the Just Cause Eviction Bill. The second bill we talked about was Senate Bill 094, which was "Safe Housing for Residential Tenants" and expanded the warranty of habitability that we previously had in Colorado. So, if you're interested in either of those bills, please go back to our previous legislative update numbers one and two for 2024.
There are seven other bills that were passed in 2024 that may impact property management, certainly housing in general, and may impact you as a rental property owner. I'm going to cover two of those in this update. The first one we're going to talk about is House Bill 24-1175, which is the Local Government Right to Property for Affordable Housing. What this bill does is it gives local governments the right of first refusal to purchase multifamily rental properties when they come for sale in their municipality. The purpose of this bill is to create more long-term affordable housing. So, if you're interested, or if you're considering selling a multifamily rental property, you should look up the bill, because there are requirements and criteria within the bill for properties that local governments are looking to purchase. If you have a property that fits that description, then the local government has the right of first refusal to purchase that property from you. This bill was signed on May 30, 2024, and took effect on August 7, 2024, so it’s already in effect.
The second bill I’d like to discuss today is Senate Bill 24-064, which is Monthly Residential Eviction Data and Reporting. This bill requires the judicial department to collect, compile, and publish online, on a monthly basis, residential eviction data for all evictions and forcible entry and detainer actions filed in each county in the state of Colorado for the preceding month. This makes that information available to the public. The purpose of the bill wasn't immediately apparent to me, so I had to do some research. What I found is that, when the bill was first presented in the Senate, the sponsor, Senator Mullica, stated that, as part of a larger effort to address Colorado's housing crisis, we need to ensure a thorough understanding of how often and why people are being evicted. The Senator's hope is that, through improved data collection and reporting, we can better recognize trends from county to county and, in the future, develop policies that will keep more Coloradans housed.
I found the timing of this bill interesting because the Just Cause Eviction Bill I referenced earlier, which we spoke about in a previous legislative update, really limits landlords, rental property owners, and property management companies to just six reasons for eviction. In fact, the term “eviction” often used to mean "non-renewal," or choosing not to renew the lease. Those reasons are already severely limited by the government, and really the biggest one—unless you’re doing major repairs, moving in, or selling the property—is gross lease violations or non-payment of rent. So, I’m interested to see what actually comes of the eviction data and reporting. This bill was signed on May 31, 2024, and took effect the same day, though I believe the publishing of the data doesn’t start until the beginning of the year, so expect to see that in January.
That concludes legislative update number three. We have two more updates covering five additional bills that I believe will impact housing. If you’re interested in the previous updates, please check out our YouTube channel or our website. Thanks for your time, and make it a great day!