Colorado Residential Lease Agreement

What every Colorado lease must include

Standard lease elements

• Parties and the Colorado county + street address of the rental.
• Lease term — fixed end date or a periodic (month-to-month) tenancy.
• Monthly rent amount, due date, and accepted payment methods.
• Security deposit amount with the 2-month cap enforced at /review.
• Utilities — which the landlord covers and which the tenant pays.
• Occupancy rules, pets, smoking, and entry procedures.
• Default, eviction-notice tiers (5/3/10 day per C.R.S. § 13-40-104), and periodic-tenancy termination language built on the § 13-40-107 tenant tiers and the HB24-1098 for-cause rule.
• 1-month default deposit return + treble-damages exposure for willful wrongful withholding.
• Mandatory pre-lease disclosure block: radon, bed-bug, gas-hazard remedy, EV-charging right, owner identification.
• HB23-1095 illegal-lease-provisions enumeration.
• Signatures of all parties.

Colorado-required disclosures

• Federal lead-paint disclosure and EPA pamphlet for any unit built before 1978. (42 U.S.C. § 4852d; 24 C.F.R. Part 35)
• Radon disclosure — written warning + known test results + mitigation history + Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment radon brochure, before lease signing (SB23-206). (C.R.S. § 38-12-803(2))
• Bed-bug disclosure — landlord may not knowingly rent infested unit; obligation applies to ALL rentals (not just multi-family). (C.R.S. § 38-12-1004 et seq.)
• Gas-hazard remedy — 72-hour repair window or tenant may vacate and recover deposit + prepaid rent. (C.R.S. § 38-12-104)
• Owner / agent identification — name and address of landlord (or authorized agent) in the lease body. ((state law))

Colorado-specific workflow

• 2-month security-deposit cap, effective August 7, 2023 under SB23-184. C.R.S. § 38-12-102.5.
• 1-month default deposit return; lease may extend to up to 60 days. C.R.S. § 38-12-103(1).
• Treble damages for willful wrongful withholding of the deposit. C.R.S. § 38-12-103(3).
• 7-day mandatory rent grace before late fees may be charged. C.R.S. § 38-12-105(1).
• Late fee capped at the greater of $50 or 5% of past-due rent. C.R.S. § 38-12-105(1).
• Late fee must be disclosed in the written lease; no interest may accrue on the fee; and a late fee alone may not be the sole basis for eviction.
• 24-hour repair window for life-safety conditions; 72-hour window for lesser uninhabitable conditions. C.R.S. § 38-12-503.
• Repair-and-deduct after written notice — 10-day default, 48-hour serious. C.R.S. § 38-12-507(1)(c).
• Eviction notice tiers per lease type: 5-day Exempt Residential / 3-day Employer-Provided / 10-day Standard Residential. C.R.S. § 13-40-104.
• Periodic-tenancy termination: tenant gives 21 / 28 / 91 days by length of tenancy (C.R.S. § 13-40-107); a landlord of a covered residential tenancy needs cause under §§ 38-12-1301 to -1305, with 90 days' notice for no-fault grounds (HB24-1098).
• Self-help eviction prohibited. C.R.S. § 38-12-510.
• Source-of-income protection (HB23-1099). C.R.S. § 24-34-502.2.
• Statewide rent-control preemption: cities cannot impose rent control on private residential property. C.R.S. § 38-12-301.

Colorado DOLA — Laws for Renters and Tenants

How the Colorado lease is structured

1. The document opens with parties, the Colorado county, and the rental-property address.
2. The property-location subphase surfaces the rent-control preemption + the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act non-discrimination + a single combined major-city overlay informational callout for Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, and Colorado Springs.
3. The term section identifies the arrangement as fixed-term with an end date or as a periodic tenancy carrying the § 13-40-107 tenant notice tiers and the HB24-1098 landlord-cause framework.
4. The rent section sets the monthly amount, due date, accepted payment methods, and surfaces the 7-day rent-grace floor + the $50/5% statutory late-fee cap.
5. The security-deposit section captures the deposit amount and renders the post-SB23-184 2-month cap, the 1-month default return (extendable to 60 days), the treble-damages exposure for willful wrongful withholding, and the warranty of habitability.
6. A dedicated Colorado-disclosures subphase informs the user that the lease will automatically include the radon disclosure, the bed-bug disclosure, the gas-hazard 72-hour-or-vacate remedy, the EV-charging right, and the owner-identification clause.
7. The document closes with the C.R.S. § 13-40-104 eviction-notice tiers, the SCRA service-member protections, the self-help-eviction prohibition, the HB23-1095 illegal-lease-provisions enumeration, the statutory mutual attorney's-fees clause, and the non-discrimination clause covering CADA + HB23-1099 source-of-income + the federal Fair Housing Act — followed by signatures.

BuildMyLease assembles all of this for you in a guided interview.

Free Colorado lease template vs BuildMyLease

Free Colorado lease templates are everywhere, but most pre-date the 2023 wave of statutes (HB23-1095 / HB23-1099 / HB23-1196), miss the 7-day grace floor, get the $50/5% late-fee cap wrong, and skip the radon disclosure that SB23-206 requires. Here is the honest side-by-side.

Who this is for

This is for

• Colorado landlords managing 1–25 private-market units (single-family, condo, small multi-family).
• Owners who want the post-SB23-184 2-month deposit cap, the 7-day grace floor, the radon disclosure, the 24h/72h habitability tier, and the HB23-1095 illegal-provisions enumeration baked in without researching each statute.
• Front Range landlords in Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, or Colorado Springs who need the major-city overlay informational callout rendered automatically.
• Landlords issuing a new fixed-term lease OR a periodic tenancy that needs the § 13-40-107 tiered notice + the C.R.S. § 13-40-104 lease-type cure-period framework.

This isn't for

• Renting fewer than five SFH units where the landlord wants the Exempt-Residential 5-day cure period structurally enforced — BuildMyLease's wizard does not yet capture lease-type as a structured field; counsel review recommended.
• Mobile-home park tenancies (separate Colorado statutory regime).
• Section 8 / federally subsidized tenancies — those carry separate HAP-contract requirements that this document does not encode.
• Renting to an employee where the lease should be the Employer-Provided Housing Agreement variant with a 3-day cure — counsel review recommended.
• Ongoing eviction proceedings — those require court forms, not a lease.
• Commercial leases.