Free Colorado Notice of Non-Renewal

Direct answer: in Colorado a landlord can no longer decline to renew a covered residential lease simply because the term is ending. C.R.S. § 38-12-1303(1) provides that a landlord shall not serve a notice to terminate tenancy or a demand for possession, or otherwise proceed with an action for unlawful detainer, unless there is cause for the eviction. Expiry of the term is not on the list of causes: HB24-1098 rewrote the holdover ground at C.R.S. § 13-40-104(1)(c) so that it now reaches only nonresidential property and the residential premises exempted by § 38-12-1302. A landlord of a covered tenancy who wants the unit back without alleging tenant fault must use one of the six no-fault grounds in § 38-12-1303(3), state its legal and factual basis in the notice, and allow the tenant at least 90 days to vacate — 45 days in the single case of an active-duty military landlord moving in under § 38-12-1303(3)(c)(II). The 21-day answer that forms sites and automated summaries still give for this query is the pre-2024 rule; it survives only for tenancies part 13 does not cover, and even there 21 days is just one of five tiers. The form below is built to the current statute: it refuses to generate without a cause, prints the cause and its citation on the face of the notice, computes the period the cause carries, and states expressly that the tenancy does not simply end at expiry.

Start with coverage, then cause — everything else follows from those two answers. If the tenancy is covered by part 13, the generator offers the causes C.R.S. § 38-12-1303 recognises and applies the period that cause carries. If the tenancy is one of the six exemptions in § 38-12-1302(1), it switches to the § 13-40-107(2) tier table and prints the exemption it is relying on, so the notice shows its own reasoning. It will not produce a file with no cause selected, because § 38-12-1303(1) forbids serving a notice to terminate tenancy without one. Describe the facts in your own words: § 38-12-1303(5)(b) requires a statement of the legal and factual basis, and § 13-40-106(1) requires a specific description of the no-fault eviction grounds.

Watch: the Colorado Notice of Non-Renewal after HB24-1098

▶ Watch overview

Direct answer: only with a cause the statute names. C.R.S. § 38-12-1303(1) reads that a landlord shall not serve a notice to terminate tenancy or a demand for possession or otherwise proceed with an action for unlawful detainer pursuant to article 40 of title 13 unless there is cause for the eviction. Subsection (2) then closes the list: cause exists only as described in the thirteen paragraphs it enumerates. A landlord who wants the unit back at the end of the term, with no allegation of tenant fault, has exactly one route — the no-fault grounds in subsection (3) — and that route costs at least ninety days.

The elegance of the drafting is worth understanding, because it explains why the old answer stopped working rather than merely becoming unfashionable. Before HB24-1098, a landlord ending a Colorado tenancy at expiry relied on two provisions working together: § 13-40-107 supplied the notice period, and § 13-40-104(1)(c) supplied the cause of action — unlawful detention by a tenant who holds over after the expiration of the term. HB24-1098 amended both. Section 13-40-104(1)(c) now reads, in the operative part, that a person has committed an unlawful detention when a lessee or tenant at will or at sufferance of any nonresidential real property or residential premises described in section 38-12-1302(1)(a), (1)(b), (1)(d), (1)(e), or (1)(f) holds over after the expiration of the term. Those cross-references are the exemption list. For a covered residential tenancy, holding over after expiry is simply no longer an unlawful detention.

Section 13-40-107(1) was narrowed the same way and in the same words. As amended it authorises “a landlord of nonresidential real property or a residential premises described in section 38-12-1302(1)(a), (1)(b), (1)(d), (1)(e), or (1)(f), or a tenant of any property or premises” to terminate a periodic tenancy or elect not to renew a fixed term tenancy. Read the sentence twice. A tenant of any property may still give notice and leave. A landlord may do so only for nonresidential property or an exempt residential premises. The landlord of a covered residential tenancy is not in the sentence at all.

So the two halves of the old non-renewal — the notice power and the cause of action — were removed together, deliberately, by cross-reference to the same five exemption paragraphs. That is why a 21-day non-renewal served on a covered Colorado tenancy is not merely short. It is an instrument with no statutory basis, terminating a tenancy the landlord has no power to terminate, in support of a claim the landlord cannot bring.

Direct answer: HB24-1098 added an entire new part to the landlord-tenant title and rewrote nine sections of the eviction statute around it. The act is titled “Concerning protections for residential tenants, and, in connection therewith, requiring cause for the eviction of a residential tenant.” It created part 13 of article 12 of title 38 — C.R.S. §§ 38-12-1301 through 38-12-1307 — and amended C.R.S. §§ 13-40-104, 13-40-106, 13-40-107, 13-40-107.5, 13-40-108, 13-40-110, 38-12-202, 38-12-204.3, 38-12-222, 38-12-508, 38-12-509, 38-12-701 and 38-33-112.

Section 1 of the act is a legislative declaration stating that it is reasonable and necessary for the important public purposes of preventing arbitrary displacement of individuals, protecting safety and promoting public health, and that it should be construed broadly to achieve these purposes. That instruction matters in practice: a court reading an ambiguous exemption or an ambiguous ground is directed to read part 13 broadly, which cuts against the landlord asserting an exemption.

Section 17 of the act is a safety clause — the general assembly’s declaration that the act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety. A Colorado act with a safety clause takes effect on the governor’s approval rather than after the ordinary post-session waiting period, and it is not subject to the referendum petition window. HB24-1098 was approved by Governor Jared Polis in April 2024. The act carries no separate applicability clause limiting it to agreements signed after a given date, so it applies to tenancies that were already running when it took effect. Confirm the exact approval date on the General Assembly’s bill page before you put a specific day in a pleading.

What the act did not do

Three things are worth stating plainly, because the guidance circulating for this query has blurred all three.

• It did not repeal § 13-40-107. The tier table is intact and unchanged in substance: 91 days for a tenancy of one year or longer, 28 days for six months or longer but less than a year, 21 days for one month or longer but less than six months, 3 days for a week or longer but less than a month or a tenancy at will, and 1 day for a tenancy of less than a week. What changed is who may use it.
• It did not create a general 90-day notice for every Colorado termination. The ninety days attaches to the no-fault grounds in § 38-12-1303(3). An at-fault cause — nonpayment, a material violation, a nuisance — still runs on the § 13-40-104 periods, which for a residential agreement are ten days, or three days for a substantial violation under § 13-40-107.5.
• It did not make lease renewal compulsory. Several pages ranking for this query are headlined “lease renewals are required by law in Colorado.” That overstates it. Nothing obliges a landlord to sign a new fixed-term agreement. What the act does is remove the landlord’s power to obtain possession at expiry without a cause, so the practical effect for a covered tenancy is that the tenant stays on the existing terms unless a ground is made out. That is a different proposition, and it matters when the argument turns to what terms govern after the term ends.

Two more sections nobody is citing

The rankers for this query discuss § 38-12-1303 at length and stop. Part 13 has seven sections, and the last two are the ones that decide contested cases.

C.R.S. § 38-12-1306 — affirmative defence. If a landlord fails to comply with part 13, the tenant may assert that failure as an affirmative defence to an eviction proceeding. If the tenant does, and the landlord cannot demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that the landlord has complied with part 13, the court shall dismiss the eviction proceeding. Note the allocation: once the defence is raised, the landlord carries the burden of showing compliance, and dismissal is mandatory rather than discretionary. This is why the drafting of the notice is not a formality in Colorado.

C.R.S. § 38-12-1307 — retaliatory rent increase prohibited. A landlord shall not increase a tenant’s rent in a discriminatory, retaliatory or unconscionable manner to circumvent the requirements and prohibitions of part 13. The section exists because the obvious response to a for-cause regime is to price the tenant out instead, and the general assembly closed that door in the same act. HB24-1098 also amended § 38-12-701(2)(b) so that a landlord shall not terminate a tenancy with no written agreement by serving a notice with the primary purpose of increasing rent inconsistently with the rent-increase statute. Our Colorado rent increase rules guide covers the § 38-12-701 mechanics.

Direct answer: because the statute says so, in the definitions. C.R.S. § 38-12-1301(6) provides that “no-fault eviction” means an action brought by a landlord pursuant to article 40 of title 13 for the eviction of a tenant under conditions described in § 38-12-1303(3). Section 38-12-1303(3) is the list of end-of-term grounds. Declining to renew a covered tenancy is therefore, as a matter of statutory definition, the initiation of a no-fault eviction.

This inverts the usual advice. Across most of the country the honest correction to make on a non-renewal page is that a non-renewal is not an eviction — it is the expiry of a contract, and conflating the two misleads tenants into thinking they have a filing on their record. Colorado is now the state where that correction is itself the error. Here the conflation is written into the code: the notice is a step in an unlawful detainer action, the holding-over that follows a properly served no-fault notice is the unlawful detention at § 13-40-104(1)(e.8), and if the tenant stays the landlord files under article 40 like any other eviction.

Three practical consequences follow, and they are the ones a Colorado landlord tends to discover late.

• The notice is drafted to eviction standards, not letter standards. It must satisfy § 13-40-106 as amended, which now applies expressly to a demand or notice required by § 13-40-104 or § 38-12-1303. A friendly end-of-lease letter does not meet that standard, however clearly it communicates.
• Service is eviction service. C.R.S. § 38-12-1301(8) defines proper service by reference to § 13-40-108, the eviction service statute, which HB24-1098 also tightened. Emailing the notice does not start the clock.
• The tenant has eviction defences from day one. Retaliation under § 38-12-509, breach of the warranty of habitability where § 38-12-509(2) applies, the § 38-12-1306 compliance defence, and the mediation right at § 13-40-110 referenced in § 13-40-106(2) are all in play against a non-renewal in a way they never were against a simple expiry.

Direct answer: there are six, all in C.R.S. § 38-12-1302(1), and the count itself is contested on this search result. Some pages report five, some six, and at least one merges two. The section opens by declaring that part 13 applies to every residential premises in the state, and then lists paragraphs (a) through (f) as the only carve-outs. Six.

Two things about exemptions in Colorado are worth internalising. First, the burden runs the wrong way for the landlord: § 38-12-1306 puts the onus on the landlord to demonstrate compliance with part 13 once a tenant raises non-compliance, and asserting an exemption is part of demonstrating compliance. Second, the legislative declaration in section 1 of HB24-1098 directs that the act be construed broadly to achieve its purposes, which is an interpretive thumb on the scale against a stretched exemption. An owner-occupancy exemption claimed for a property the owner visits rather than lives in is the classic way this goes wrong.

Direct answer: subsection (2) is a closed list of thirteen paragraphs, and it says cause exists only as described in them. Most are procedural or apply to non-residential situations. Five of them are what a residential landlord will actually plead, and each takes its notice period from C.R.S. § 13-40-104 rather than from part 13.

The nuisance cause is new, and it is drafted narrowly

C.R.S. § 13-40-104(1)(j) did not exist before HB24-1098. It reaches a tenant who holds over after engaging in conduct that is disturbing others or causing a nuisance, where that conduct interferes with the quiet enjoyment of the landlord if the landlord lives in the same or an immediately adjacent property, or of others residing in an immediately adjacent property, or of other tenants or occupants of the same property — or a tenant who by reason of negligence damaged the housing accommodation. Ten days’ written notice is required for a residential agreement, and the notice must contain a description of the specific conduct and require in the alternative that the conduct cease.

Two guardrails sit inside the same paragraph. Subparagraph (1)(j)(II) provides that the lawful exercise by a tenant of any rights under any law or rule relating to occupancy of a property is not to be deemed interference with quiet enjoyment or a ground under (1)(j) — so complaining to a code officer cannot be repackaged as a nuisance. Subparagraph (1)(j)(III) provides that it is not a nuisance or disturbance where a victim of domestic violence is accused of causing one as a direct result of being a victim, and states expressly that the exception applies only to victims and not to perpetrators.

Where an at-fault cause meets the end of the term

An at-fault cause and a no-fault ground are not alternatives you pick for convenience. If the tenant is in material breach, the ten-day § 13-40-104(1)(e) route is available immediately and does not wait for the term to end. If the tenant is not in breach and you simply want the unit at expiry, the only route is subsection (3), and that costs ninety days. What a landlord cannot do is dress an end-of-term wish as a fault cause; § 38-12-1306 will put the landlord to proof, and a thin breach allegation asserted to avoid a ninety-day clock is exactly the case that gets dismissed. Our Colorado eviction notice rules guide sets out the at-fault notice mechanics in detail.

Direct answer: demolition or conversion, substantial repairs, landlord or family occupancy, withdrawal to sell, refusal to sign a reasonable new lease, and a history of nonpayment. Every one requires the tenant to be allowed at least ninety days after receiving the written notice, and every one carries conditions beyond the clock. Subsection (5)(a) adds that the landlord may file only if proper service of the written notice was given and the tenant failed to vacate on or before the deadline stated in it.

(3)(a) Demolition or conversion of the residential premises

Available where the landlord plans to demolish the premises, convert it to a nonresidential use, or convert it to a short-term rental property. The landlord must allow the tenant at least ninety days after receiving the written notice, during which the tenant may remain in possession on the same terms as the existing rental agreement. The notice must state the vacate date, which must be at least ninety days after the date the landlord provides the notice, and it must include a description and timeline of the demolition or conversion and a material demonstration of the proposed commencement date — the statute gives, as examples, a copy of a building permit, a permit application, or an application for a licence to operate a short-term rental property where applicable. This is the only no-fault ground that demands documentary proof of intention on the face of the notice.

(3)(b) Substantial repairs or renovations

“Substantial repairs or renovations” is a defined term at § 38-12-1301(13), and the definition does most of the work. The repairs must (a) be incapable of being reasonably accomplished in a safe or efficient manner with the tenant in place, (b) not be repairs necessary to remedy a breach of the warranty of habitability under § 38-12-503, and (c) require the tenant to vacate for at least thirty days. All three limbs must hold. A kitchen refresh the tenant could live through is not within the ground.

On top of the ninety days and the notice stating the vacate date, the landlord must give the tenant an expected completion date and a general description of the works, and must proceed without unreasonable delay to effect the works on recovering possession. Where the works are expected to last less than one hundred eighty days, the landlord must send the tenant a written notice of the expected completion date in the manner the landlord usually uses to communicate; if the tenant replies within ten days that they want to return, the landlord must offer the tenant the first right of refusal to sign a new rental agreement with reasonable terms, and on acceptance the tenant has thirty days to occupy unless the parties agree a longer timeline in writing.

Subparagraph (3)(b)(II) is the anti-abuse clause and it is absolute: the ground is unavailable where the works are required for the landlord to satisfy remedial action under § 38-12-503 for a breach of the warranty of habitability, or where they are initiated in retaliation against the tenant under § 38-12-509(1). A landlord who has been served with a habitability complaint and then discovers a need for substantial renovation has walked into both limbs at once. Our Colorado habitability rules guide explains what § 38-12-503 requires.

(3)(c) Landlord or family member of the landlord assumes occupancy

Available where the landlord plans to recover possession for the landlord’s own use and occupancy as a residence, or for use and occupancy as a residence by the landlord’s family member — a term borrowed from C.R.S. § 8-13.3-503(11). Four conditions attach:

• the landlord or the family member moves in within three months after the tenant vacates;
• the landlord gives proper service of written notice at least ninety days before the vacate date, with the tenant remaining in possession on existing terms in the meantime;
• no substantially equivalent unit is vacant and available to house the landlord or family member in the same building; and
• the landlord does not list the premises for a long-term or short-term rental for at least ninety days after the vacate date.

Two variations sit in the same paragraph. Subparagraph (3)(c)(II) is the forty-five-day rule: where the landlord is an individual on active military duty for the United States military forces, or a spouse of such an individual, the notice must be served at least forty-five days before the vacate date rather than ninety. Subparagraph (3)(c)(III) allows the three-month move-in window to be extended for a reasonable time where the landlord or the family member is a person with a disability, to allow changes to be made to accommodate them.

(3)(d) Withdrawal from the rental market for the purpose of selling

Available only for a defined set of property types: a single-family home, a townhome, a duplex, a triplex, or an individual condominium unit. A landlord selling