Selling a Home With Tenants in Colorado: Your Two Exits
A lease does not lower your price. It changes who is allowed to bid: the financed owner-occupant signs a covenant to occupy within 60 days. So you have two exits. Sell tenanted, into the market that buys income, or reach vacant, and Colorado's no-fault door opens only at the end of the term.
Selling a tenant-occupied home in Colorado does not lower your price so much as narrow your bidders. A financed owner-occupant promises to move in within 60 days, which a lease running past that window prevents. So you have two exits: sell tenanted, into the market that buys income, or reach vacant on the statute's calendar. Colorado's no-fault door back to vacant opens only at the end of the lease term, which makes possession a renewal decision rather than a listing decision.
A lease does not lower your price. It changes who is allowed to bid, and the day that gets decided is not your listing appointment. It's the day your renewal window came and went, whether you signed a page that morning or the lease renewed itself and never told you.
Key takeaways
- The buyer signs a covenant to occupy within 60 days, so a lease running past it is a promise they cannot keep. That clause governs an existing loan, not whether one gets written.
- All-cash purchases were 26 percent in NAR's 2025 national survey, leaving roughly three in four buyers financing, so the restriction reaches most of the pool.
- C.R.S. 38-12-1303(3)(d) works only at the end of the term, and subsection (3)(d)(II) forbids using it any earlier.
- Being exempt from that statute is not permission to break a lease. The lease is a contract and binds you either way.
- No general Colorado statute requires notice before a landlord enters. Showing access is whatever your lease says.
You are not discounting for the tenant. You are changing who can buy
The financed owner-occupant is removed by a promise, not a preference. The uniform security instrument makes the borrower occupy the property as a principal residence within 60 days and keep it that way for a year. A lease running past that is a covenant the buyer would breach on day one, so the pool narrows to purchases underwritten on income. The covenant governs a loan once it exists, not whether one gets written.
The tenanted listing gets read as a discount: a buyer walks in, sees somebody else's furniture, feels the friction, offers less. That story is wrong in an expensive way, because it suggests the cure is money.
Your buyer's loan will contain a promise about your house that you never see and cannot renegotiate. Conforming conventional loans close on a standard Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac uniform instrument, and section 6 of the Colorado version says the borrower "must occupy, establish, and use the Property as Borrower's principal residence within 60 days after the execution of this Security Instrument and must continue to occupy the Property as Borrower's principal residence for at least one year after the date of occupancy, unless Lender otherwise agrees in writing, which consent will not be unreasonably withheld, or unless extenuating circumstances exist that are beyond Borrower's control."
Read the escape clause, because summaries routinely drop it. Nothing there makes a buyer legally ineligible. The truth is narrower and more practical: your buyer would be signing a promise the lease prevents them keeping. But that clause governs an existing loan, not whether one gets written in the first place.
Sellers underestimate the size of that effect. In the National Association of Realtors' 2025 buyer and seller survey, which covers primary-residence buyers, all-cash purchases remained at an all-time high of 26 percent, leaving roughly three in four of those buyers financing. That is a national figure, sizing a mechanism rather than describing your street.
What is left is not a worse buyer. It is a different instrument. An income purchase is often underwritten on what the property earns rather than on comparable sales, and that figure was fixed the day the lease was signed. An owner-occupied loan is underwritten against those comparable sales. Same house, two arithmetics, and your lease decides which one reads it.
So you have two honest exits, and only one of them gets written about. You can sell tenanted, into the market that buys income, and take the number that market produces: the tenancy continues undisturbed, nobody is displaced, and the calendar stops mattering. Or you can reach vacant, lawfully, on a timetable Colorado sets rather than one you choose, which is slower and starts earlier than anyone expects.
| What differs | Sell tenanted | Reach vacant |
|---|---|---|
| Who can buy | Buyers who do not need to move in, plus an owner-occupant whose own timeline happens to fit inside the lease | The whole pool, including the financed owner-occupant who signs the 60-day covenant |
| What underwrites the price | Often what the property earns, a figure fixed the day the lease was signed | Comparable sales, the way any other listing is read |
| What it costs you | Money, in whatever the income market pays | Calendar, in a notice period you cannot shorten |
| When it must be decided | At your lease's renewal window | At your lease's renewal window, and earlier, because the notice sits in front of the term's end |
| What you owe the tenant | Nothing beyond the lease; the tenancy continues undisturbed | Written notice on the statute's terms, and a move they did not ask for |
| Who it fits | An owner whose rent is strong against nearby sale prices, or whose renewal has already run | An owner with a term ending far enough out to serve notice inside it |
Neither is a failure. What is a failure is reaching your listing appointment without having noticed there was a choice.
The number we are not going to give you
We will not publish a "tenant-occupied homes sell for X percent less" figure. No paired-sales study of tenanted against vacant sales exists for this corridor, and the $800K to $1.5M slice the question really asks about sits behind an MLS pull we have not run. Any percentage we printed would be one we chose.
The direction is knowable, and you can compute it on your own house in a minute. Multiply your actual monthly rent by twelve and hold it against what a comparable vacant sale nearby recently fetched. That ratio is roughly what an income purchase reads. A high annual rent against that sale price means the two markets are close, and selling tenanted costs you little; a low one means they diverge, and the gap between them is the decision. It's your number, from your lease, and it beats any average we could quote you. Bring both sides of it and we will build the comparison with you.
The renewal you sign in spring decides the offer you get in autumn
A renewal is administrative and a sale eight months out is not yet real, so the renewal gets signed. It is the most consequential piece of routine paperwork a move-up seller handles, because it fixes both the income a future buyer underwrites and the earliest date either statutory route to vacant can take effect.
This is where the money is actually lost, and it never looks like a decision at the time.
A renewal notice lands in the spring. The sale is a conversation you've had twice, in the abstract, about maybe next year. Signing takes a minute and avoids a vacancy, so you sign. In doing so you have quietly set two things for another year: the income figure any income buyer will underwrite, and the earliest date either statutory route to vacant can take effect.
Watch for the version that doesn't even ask. Plenty of Colorado leases roll automatically into a new fixed term, or into a month-to-month tenancy, unless somebody gives notice by a stated date. Nothing arrives in the mail, nobody signs anything, and your silence fixes the same two things.
So put one date in your calendar: the day your lease's renewal or non-renewal notice window opens. Then work backwards from the season you would want to be on the market. If the two are in tension, that tension is the decision, and it is worth facing whenever you find it: earlier means both exits are open, later means one of them is, and one exit is enough to sell a house. Keeping the tenant and selling into the income market is a fine answer, so long as it's one you chose rather than a default you backed into on a busy morning.
Before anything else, find three dates in your own lease. The end date. The date your lease's own renewal-or-notice window opens. And whether silence rolls you into a new fixed term or a month-to-month. Then note the thing that catches people out: the statutory notice period sits in front of the lease end date, not on it. It runs at least 90 days under one statute; under the other, at least 91 days on a tenancy of a year or longer, with shorter periods for shorter tenancies on that route only. And it counts from your tenant's receipt, not the day you send it. So the date to protect is the attorney conversation, and it belongs before your lease's notice window opens, not after. If that window is already open, that is the call to make this week rather than next.
Selling with tenants in Colorado: the door opens only at the end of the term
C.R.S. 38-12-1303(3)(d) lets a landlord planning to sell initiate a no-fault eviction, but only at the end of the term, with at least 90 days from the tenant's receipt of a written notice. If your tenancy is on the exemption list at C.R.S. 38-12-1302(1), a different statute governs and the period is at least 91 days on a tenancy of a year or longer. One test routes you; you are never choosing between them.
Colorado does give a selling owner a real, enumerated route to vacant. C.R.S. 38-12-1303(3)(d) covers a landlord planning to sell a single-family home, a townhome, a duplex, a triplex, or an individual condominium unit. It permits a no-fault eviction "at the end of the term of the rental agreement" on three conditions: a notice period, a written notice of intent to withdraw and sell that states the vacate date, and a bar on re-listing the home as a rental afterwards, a bar that does not apply if you can show the home was listed for sale on a multiple-listing service after the tenant was required to vacate. The table below gives each, against the alternative route.
Then comes the sentence the whole calendar hangs on. Subsection (3)(d)(II): "nothing in this subsection (3)(d) may be construed to allow a landlord to initiate a no-fault eviction or otherwise terminate a rental agreement without cause before the end of the term of the rental agreement."
Selling doesn't break a term. It prevents a renewal. That is the difference between a route you can plan around and a route you have already closed.
That ninety days runs against the seller in two ways. It counts from the tenant's receipt, not from the day you sent it. And because it is a floor of at least ninety days measured from that receipt, a notice served close to the end of the term produces a vacate date after the term ends rather than one finishing neatly on it, during which, in the statute's words, the tenant "may remain in possession of the residential premises under the same terms of the tenant's existing rental agreement."
There is also a second statute, and this is where online summaries go wrong. It is not an alternative you get to pick. One test decides which applies.
| The question | If Part 13, the 2024 for-cause eviction law, covers your tenancy | If your tenancy is exempt under C.R.S. 38-12-1302(1)(a), (b), (d), (e) or (f) |
|---|---|---|
| Which statute sets the notice | C.R.S. 38-12-1303(3)(d) | C.R.S. 13-40-107(2)(a) |
| How long | At least 90 days, counted from the tenant's receipt | At least 91 days on a tenancy of a year or longer; shorter periods apply to shorter tenancies |
| When it can take effect | Only at the end of the term of the rental agreement | At the end of the tenancy period, or by electing not to renew at the end of a fixed term |
| What else it requires (partial — the statute requires more than this row lists, and a notice missing an element can fail; the full contents are your attorney's) | Written notice of intent to withdraw and sell, stating the vacate date, plus no rental re-listing for 90 days after that date, unless the home was listed for sale on an MLS after the vacate date | Written notice describing the property and stating the date the tenancy terminates, signed by the landlord or an agent |
C.R.S. 38-12-1303(3)(d), 38-12-1302(1) and 13-40-107, as enacted and amended by HB24-1098, signed 19 April 2024; read from the enrolled act, August 2026. Which route governs a particular tenancy is a legal determination.
That exemption list reaches ordinary move-up sellers in two places. One is the owner-occupied case, which the checklist below puts in plain English and the sources set out in full. The other is the tenant-duration test, routinely reported backwards: the statute exempts "a residential tenant who has not been a tenant of a residential premises for at least twelve months".
That measures the tenant's duration, not the length of your lease. A tenant eight months into a twelve-month lease has not been a tenant for twelve months. Every summary reporting this as "leases under a year are exempt" has it wrong, and the error cuts the seller's way, which is the direction errors are least likely to be questioned. The rest of the list covers short-term rentals, mobile home spaces, employer-provided housing, and a tenant the landlord does not know to be a tenant.
This section is doing work for you if
- You moved out of a home you still own, rented it out, and now want to sell it.
- You live in the property, or in an adjacent one, and rent a unit or an accessory dwelling on the same lot.
- Your tenant has been in the property for less than twelve months, or anywhere near that line.
- Your lease renews automatically unless somebody gives notice.
Here is the trap that costs the most. An exemption from Part 13 is not permission to break a lease. Part 13 governs whether a landlord needs cause to evict. A lease is a contract, and it binds you whether or not that statute reaches you. A seller who reads an internet summary, concludes they are exempt and hands their tenant a mid-term notice has breached an agreement they were always bound by, in writing, and has told someone to start looking for a place they did not have to leave. Which route applies, and what your lease permits, are legal determinations: take them to a Colorado real-estate attorney before you count days.
One more reason to count carefully. If you promise vacant possession and the tenant is still there on possession day, CBS1 section 17 says a seller who fails to deliver possession after closing "will be subject to eviction and will be additionally liable to Buyer" for a per-day amount written into the contract, and a part-day counts as a whole one. Miscount the notice period and you have a daily invoice, and you are the one being evicted from a house you no longer own. That exposure exists only if you promise vacant possession, which makes the promise itself the decision, and it is why the sequence at the end of this guide starts with your lease rather than with your list date.
Nobody is required to let your photographer in
There is no general Colorado statute requiring advance notice before a landlord enters an occupied rental. Showing access is whatever the lease grants. Where the legislature has written entry rules at all, it has written them narrowly and let the lease control, so a cooperative tenant is something you negotiate rather than something you demand.
You may have read that Colorado requires twenty-four hours' notice before entry. It doesn't, and the claim is repeated confidently enough to be worth stating plainly: there is no general Colorado statute requiring advance notice before a landlord enters a residential rental. Access is whatever your lease grants. If the lease is silent, assume you cannot commit a buyer's agent to a Saturday afternoon without your tenant's agreement, and ask your attorney what, if anything, silence leaves you.
That absence holds up under pressure. The legislature has written entry-notice rules only narrowly, and in the one closest to ordinary housing, a bed-bug inspection at forty-eight hours' notice, it lets the rental agreement set a different minimum and lets the tenant waive it outright. That isn't a gap waiting to be filled. It's the shape of the rule.
So read your lease before you commit to a marketing plan. If access is granted on terms, work inside them. If the lease is silent, cooperation is the only thing that opens the door, and cooperation is bought rather than demanded: a rent credit for the marketing period, professional cleaning, a flat sum for keys and a departure date, showings clustered into agreed blocks instead of at will. And because a keys-and-date agreement ends a tenancy, have your attorney paper it and check whether your municipality adds anything. None of that is the soft option. You are asking someone to keep their home presentable for strangers, on your schedule, and a silent lease gives you nothing to point to. A season of showing badly costs far more than the credit that would have avoided it. Price it as a net-sheet line, early, and treat a demand letter as the expensive alternative it is.
The clause one contract deletes and the other keeps
Colorado has two residential purchase contracts and they take opposite positions on your lease. On CBS1, the Residential form, both tenant provisions are struck: section 10.9 on modifying or signing leases, and section 11 on tenant estoppel statements. On CBS2, the Income-Residential form, both are live, and 10.9 bars you from extending or renewing a lease without the buyer's written consent. Which form your sale is written on is a transaction-appropriateness judgment under Commission Rule 7.1.A, made by the broker who prepares the contract, so ask which one you are on before you touch the lease.
Open CBS1, the Residential contract, in the version mandatory since 1 January 2026, and find section 10.9. It carries its full heading, "Existing Leases; Modification of Existing Leases; New Leases", and then, where the clause should be, the bracketed marker Intentionally Deleted. Section 11, "TENANT ESTOPPEL STATEMENTS", is the same: heading, then the same marker, and nothing else.
Now open CBS2, the income-residential contract, at the same two numbers. Section 10.9 is live: the seller "will not amend, alter, modify, extend or cancel any of the Leases nor will Seller enter into any new leases affecting the Property without the prior written consent of Buyer, which consent will not be unreasonably withheld or delayed." Section 11 is live too, running to a full estoppel procedure with its own deadline.
Same section numbers. Opposite content. And the split is not a 2026 afterthought: the Commission's own rule on deleting inapplicable provisions has listed 10.9 and 11 as belonging to CBS2, CBS3 and CBS4, never CBS1, since well before these forms were adopted.
It is the pair that makes this deliberate rather than an oversight: the residential form is written for a house sold vacant, the income form for a house sold with tenants in it. Which is why the form question is yours to ask rather than assume. A broker must use the Commission form that is appropriate for the transaction, and no rule assigns one by property type, so a tenant-occupied house selling to an income buyer can land on either. On CBS1 nothing printed restrains you from renewing or extending the lease after you are under contract, and nothing obliges you to produce what the tenant would say the arrangement is. On CBS2 both of those restraints apply, and renewing without your buyer's written consent would breach the contract. So the first question is not what the clause says. It is which contract you signed. The section numbers that follow are CBS1's; on CBS2 the equivalents differ.
Read that absence carefully, because it is not a license. Your buyer still relies on what you told them the tenancy was, and the leases cross as due-diligence documents regardless. What is missing is only the printed guardrail. A renewal signed between contract and closing can push the tenancy past your buyer's own sixty-day covenant, which is the exact mechanism the first section of this guide describes, and the form's silence is not the buyer's consent, and if you are on CBS2 the form is not silent at all. So if the sequencing matters to your deal, write it into the contract.
What you still owe the tenant after the closing table
One duty here is still yours. C.R.S. 38-12-103(4) binds whoever holds the deposit, and before closing that is you. On cessation of the landlord's interest by sale, that person has 60 days to transfer the deposit to the successor and notify the tenant by mail, or to return it. Since 1 January 2026 the deadline is a number; it used to read "a reasonable time".
Most of what happens to the tenancy at closing is the buyer's problem, and our guide to buying a tenanted University Hill house walks the deposit credit and the due-diligence deadlines from that side. One duty is genuinely yours, and its deadline changed recently enough that plenty of published guidance still carries the old version.
C.R.S. 38-12-103(4) binds "the person in possession of the tenant's security deposit, including the landlord, the landlord's agent, or the landlord's executor". Before closing that is you, or whoever manages the property for you. The duty follows the deposit rather than the title, so a property manager holding the funds is inside the statute, not outside it.
On cessation of a landlord's interest in the dwelling unit, whether by sale, assignment, death, appointment of a receiver or otherwise, that person must within sixty days either transfer the funds to the landlord's successor in interest and notify the tenant by mail of the transfer and of the transferee's name and address, or return them to the tenant. The sixty days is the 2026 change; until 1 January 2026 the provision read "a reasonable time". Everything else in the subsection, "by sale" included, is older than the amendment.
Then read the next subsection, because it is what ends your exposure: upon compliance with subsection (4), the person holding the deposit "shall be relieved of further liability". Compliance is the trigger. Not the closing, not the assignment, not the handshake.
The contract does this at the table. CBS1 section 16.1.2 says that at closing the seller will transfer or credit to the buyer the security deposits for all assigned leases, or any remainder after lawful deductions, "and notify all tenants in writing of such transfer and of the transferee's name and address". That is nearly the statute's own sentence, but not word for word: the statute says notify by mail, the contract says in writing. Close the gap by doing both. It costs a stamp and settles the question.
Where this gets decided, in order
BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE
Read the lease, then find your notice window
End date, renewal or non-renewal mechanism, the date notice must be given by, and whatever it says about access. Put that notice date in your calendar as a hard date. Everything below is downstream of it.
AT THE NOTICE WINDOW, NOT AFTER IT
Decide possession before you decide a list date
Sell tenanted into the income market, or reach vacant on the statutory calendar. Both are legitimate. Only one of them survives a renewal you sign without thinking about it.
SAME CONVERSATION
Take the statutory question to an attorney
Which route governs your tenancy, what your lease permits, whether an automatic roll puts you into a new fixed term or a month-to-month and what that changes, and what your notice has to say. An hour here is cheaper than a notice served under the wrong statute.
BEFORE MARKETING
Negotiate the access you need
If the lease does not grant it, negotiate it and price it. A rent credit or a keys-and-date agreement is a net-sheet line, and it is cheaper than a season of showing badly.
AT THE OFFER
Say which leases survive, in the contract
Section 10.6.1.1 of CBS1 leaves a blank for the leases that continue after closing. Make sure it names the leases that survive, because your buyer's financing is reading it.
AT AND AFTER CLOSING
Discharge the deposit duty and keep the proof
Transfer or return within sixty days, notify the tenant by mail, keep the receipt. Compliance is what relieves the liability.
All of this sits on top of an ordinary listing, which still has to be right: the move-up seller's guide is where pricing and preparation live, and the contract deadlines guide takes over once you are under contract. Two others apply only to some readers. If this house was once your own residence, renting it out started a separate clock on your tax position, which the capital-gains guide explains and your CPA should confirm. And if what you want is the arithmetic rather than the law, the net proceeds guide builds the net sheet.
Frequently asked
Can I evict my tenant in Colorado because I'm selling the house?+
Not during the term. C.R.S. 38-12-1303(3)(d) gives a landlord planning to sell a single-family home, townhome, duplex, triplex or individual condominium unit a no-fault ground, but only at the end of the term, and subsection (3)(d)(II) forbids terminating without cause any earlier. Its conditions: at least 90 days after the tenant receives written notice of intent to withdraw from the rental market and sell, stating the vacate date, and no re-listing as a rental for 90 days after. Whether it reaches your lease is an attorney's question.
Does my tenant's lease survive the sale?+
Ordinarily yes. CBS1 delivers possession subject to the Leases identified in section 10.6.1.1, and section 12.5 requires the seller to assign at closing the leases that continue after it, with the buyer assuming the seller's obligations under them. Your buyer is not buying an empty house with a person in it. They are buying the house and the tenancy together.
How much notice do I have to give a tenant if I'm selling?+
It depends which statute governs, and there are two. If Part 13 applies, C.R.S. 38-12-1303(3)(d)(I)(A) requires at least 90 days, counted from the tenant's receipt. If the tenancy is on the exemption list at C.R.S. 38-12-1302(1), the period comes from C.R.S. 13-40-107(2)(a) instead: at least 91 days for a tenancy of a year or longer, served before the end of the period or term. Both take effect at the end of the term. Which is yours is a legal question worth an attorney's hour before you count a day.
Does my tenant have to allow showings?+
Not by any general Colorado statute. Colorado has no across-the-board entry-notice rule for residential rentals, so access is whatever the lease grants. The legislature has written entry rules only narrowly: C.R.S. 38-12-1004 requires at least 48 hours before a bed-bug inspection, and even there the lease may set a different minimum and the tenant may waive it, while C.R.S. 38-12-222(3) asks for a reasonable effort to give 72 hours before entering a mobile home space. Neither reaches an ordinary showing.
What happens to the security deposit when I sell?+
C.R.S. 38-12-103(4) binds whoever holds the deposit, which before closing is you. On cessation of a landlord's interest, whether by sale or otherwise, that person must within 60 days either transfer it to the successor in interest and notify the tenant by mail of the transfer and the transferee's name and address, or return it. Before January 1, 2026 the deadline read a reasonable time. Subsection (5) relieves further liability only upon compliance, and CBS1 section 16.1.2 is how a seller ordinarily performs that transfer at the closing table, though the statute says notify by mail and the contract says in writing, so do both.
The bottom line
A tenant does not put a discount on your house. It decides which market reads it, and Colorado decides when you may change that. The no-fault statute, C.R.S. 38-12-1303(3)(d), opens at the end of a term and never before, so the possession question is answered at your renewal window, long before the listing. Sell tenanted or reach vacant, but choose it deliberately, and the listing takes care of itself.
This guide is general information about Colorado statutes and Commission-approved contract forms. It is not legal, tax or financial advice, and it does not assess your lease or your situation. A Colorado real-estate attorney should confirm which notice statute governs your tenancy and what your particular lease permits, and a CPA should confirm anything touching your tax position, before you act.
Two markets can buy this house. Your lease decides which one.
Both exits have a shape you can price: what the income market would pay for the house exactly as it stands, and how much calendar the vacant path adds before you could list. Ask us and we'll build that comparison with you, from your actual lease and your actual rent rather than an average. The notice determination itself is your attorney's, and it is worth having before your renewal window opens. If your renewal window has already closed, that is worth knowing too, because it tells you which of the two you are actually choosing between.
True North Boulder is a real-estate team with eXp Realty.
Sources & data notes
- Withdrawal from the rental market to sell, and its end-of-term limit: C.R.S. 38-12-1303(3)(d)(I)(A)-(C) and (3)(d)(II), as enacted by HB24-1098, signed 19 April 2024. Read verbatim from the enrolled act, August 2026.
- Part 13 applicability and the exemption list, including the twelve-month tenant-duration test at (1)(e) and the accessory-dwelling wording at (1)(b)(I)(A): C.R.S. 38-12-1302(1), same act. A lease provision purporting to waive or modify Part 13 is void and unenforceable under C.R.S. 38-12-1305. The owner-occupied limb covers a unit where the owner or master tenant lives in and maintains the premises as a primary residence, or where the owner lives in an adjacent property as one, and the premises is a single-family home with or without an accessory dwelling unit on the same lot, a duplex or a triplex, and is not a multifamily property of four or more units.
- The 91-day period and the exemption routing: C.R.S. 13-40-107, retitled "Notice to terminate tenancy" and rewritten by the same act. Amended subsection (1) reaches a landlord of nonresidential real property or of a residential premises described in C.R.S. 38-12-1302(1)(a), (1)(b), (1)(d), (1)(e) or (1)(f); the period sits at (2)(a). Pre-2024 copies of this section are still widely mirrored online and read differently; the enrolled act is the text used here.
- Entry notice: C.R.S. 38-12-1004(1)(a) and (1)(b) (bed-bug inspection, at least 48 hours, rental agreement may set a different minimum, tenant may waive) and C.R.S. 38-12-222(3) as amended by HB24-1098 SECTION 12 (mobile home space, reasonable effort, 48 hours raised to 72). No general residential entry-notice statute was found in the Colorado Revised Statutes. Claims that HB25-1090 created a 24-hour entry rule are false: that act concerns deceptive pricing practices and contains no entry provision.
- Claims that Boulder requires 60 days' notice before terminating a lease because of a sale are false. The City's mandatory rental-unit lease disclosure, the list of ordinances a Boulder landlord must hand every tenant, covers occupancy, eviction legal representation, noise, nuisance and trash, and says nothing about termination notice or about a sale; the City's own landlord-tenant handbook and its tenant FAQ cite state law only. The 60 days that does exist is a municipal licensing deadline the buyer owes the city after transfer, not notice owed to a tenant. Provenance of the claim: a cash-buyer blog citing nothing.
- C.R.S. 38-12-801 is widely miscited as requiring a new owner to give the tenant a copy of the lease within seven days of a sale. The section exists; the obligor and the trigger are both wrong. Subsection (1) runs seven days from the tenant's own signature and falls on the landlord, not on a sale. The duty a sale does trigger, at subsection (2), is one business day and falls on the new landlord, which is why this guide, written from the seller's side, does not carry it.
- Security deposit on a sale: C.R.S. 38-12-103(4) and (5), as amended by HB25-1249, signed 3 June 2025, effective 1 January 2026 and applying to conduct occurring on or after that date. The amendment replaced "a reasonable time" with "sixty days"; the remainder of the subsection, including "by sale", is unamended. Codified copies published online during 2025 still show the pre-amendment deadline.
- Contract provisions: CREC form CBS1, Contract to Buy and Sell Real Estate (Residential), and CBS2, Contract to Buy and Sell Real Estate (Income-Residential), the 2026 forms, which carry no version suffix, both mandatory for use on or after 1 January 2026. Read from dre.colorado.gov, August 2026 (the site returns 403 to a plain fetch; retrieved with a browser user agent). CBS1 sections 10.6.1.1, 10.9, 11, 12.5, 16.1.2 and 17; CBS2 sections 10.9 and 11. The form text was not re-verified at the fact-checking pass, when dre.colorado.gov returned 403 to every retrieval method available in that session, but the CBS1 and CBS2 split at sections 10.9 and 11 is independently corroborated by the Commission’s own rule, below.
- Which Commission form governs a given sale is not assigned by property type. Rule 7.1.A of the Commission’s rules (4 CCR 725-1, chapter 7, Use of Standard Forms) requires only that a broker “must use a Commission-Approved Form when such form exists and is appropriate for the transaction,” and permits an attorney form only where none exists “or is not appropriate for the transaction.” No rule found in that chapter directs a broker to CBS1 rather than CBS2 for a tenant-occupied single-family home. Chapter 7 is published by the Colorado Secretary of State in the Code of Colorado Regulations independently of dre.colorado.gov, which is where it was read.
- That CBS1 carries no live section 10.9 or section 11 is corroborated by the Commission’s rule as well as by the forms: Rule 7.2.F’s list of deletable provisions reads “Section 10.9. Existing Leases; Modification of Existing Leases; New Leases (CBS2, CBS3, CBS4)” and “Section 11. Tenant Estoppel Statements (CBS2, CBS3, CBS4),” while the adjacent entry for Section 10.8 reads “(CBS1, CBS2, CBS4, CBSF1)” — so the omission of CBS1 discriminates rather than abbreviates.
- Occupancy covenant: Colorado Deed of Trust, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Single-Family Uniform Instrument, Form 3006, 07/2021, section 6, quoted in full including the lender-consent and extenuating-circumstances clauses.
- All-cash share: National Association of Realtors, 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (survey window July 2024 to June 2025, primary-residence buyers only); NAR's summary reports cash purchases "remained at an all-time high this year at 26%". National, not local, and used to size a mechanism rather than to describe this market.
- Deliberately not published: any tenant-occupied discount percentage, any capitalization rate, any in-band transaction count, and any general entry-notice period stated as Colorado law.
