How does a Colorado landlord lawfully end a tenancy, and when may a tenant leave early?

The statewide for-cause requirement applies to every residential premises in the state except six carve-outs: a short-term rental property; an owner-occupied or master-tenant-occupied single-family home with or without an accessory dwelling unit on the same lot, a duplex or a triplex that is not part of a property of four or more units, or such a home next to the owner's primary residence; a mobile-home space let to a home owner or under a lease-to-own or purchase-option agreement; a home let under an employer-provided housing agreement; a tenant who has not been a tenant of the premises for at least twelve months; and an occupant the landlord does not know to be a tenant. Inside the carve-outs, and for property that is not residential, the ordinary notice ladder governs and no ground is needed. Separately, the rules for a lease that ends because a tenant died reach only agreements entered into on or after September 1, 2025; for an older agreement its own terms govern.

Two switches, one by property and tenancy, one by the date of the lease. Whether the for-cause law applies is decided by the six carve-outs above, and the one a reader meets most often is the twelve-month mark: a tenancy inside its first year is outside the law, and crosses into it on the twelve-month anniversary, at which point a no-cause notice stops being available to the landlord. Whether the death-of-tenant protections apply is decided by the date the rental agreement was entered into, September 1, 2025 being the line.

The switch changes: ending a month-to-month tenancy; is a reason required; when a fixed-term lease ends; a tenant who stays past the end; when a tenant may end the lease early; early-termination fees; and how a termination notice is delivered.

Landlord: no no-cause period exists, because a landlord must have a reason to end a covered tenancy. Tenant: the statute states tiers for the tenant with no default track.

The notice must be served before the end of the rental period or fixed term and must expire at the end of that period or term, so the day figure is a minimum lead time and the tenancy still ends on a period boundary. Both halves bind. A notice given on September 2 to a month-to-month tenant whose periods end on the last day of the month, where 91 days are required, cannot take effect before December 31: 91 days runs to December 2 and the next period ends on December 31.

The termination date must fall on a rental-period boundary or a rent-due date.

Tiers: The ladder in section 13-40-107, subsection (2) is set by the length of the tenancy: at least 91 days for a tenancy of one year or longer; at least 28 days for six months or longer but less than a year; at least 21 days for one month or longer but less than six months; at least 3 days for one week or longer but less than one month, or a tenancy at will; and at least 1 day for a tenancy of less than one week. A tenant of any property may use the ladder. A landlord may use it only for property that is not residential, or for a residential home that falls into one of the exceptions to the statewide for-cause law: a short-term rental; an owner-occupied or master-tenant-occupied single-family home with or without an accessory dwelling unit on the same lot, duplex or triplex that is not part of a property of four or more units, or a home next to the owner's own residence; employer-provided housing; a tenant who has lived there less than twelve months; or an occupant the landlord does not know to be a tenant. The top rung is close to unreachable through the twelve-month exception alone, because a tenancy that has run a year has also passed the twelve-month mark that brings the for-cause law into play.

The statute says nothing about agreeing to a different period. Nothing in the eviction article bars an agreement changing the notice period in section 13-40-107; the article's anti-waiver clauses each attach to a different section, and an older Supreme Court of Colorado decision preserved in the official annotation held that a notice requirement there could be waived by the lease. For a home covered by the statewide for-cause law the question does not arise: a lease term purporting to waive or modify any provision of that part is void and unenforceable (section 38-12-1305), so the ground requirement and its 90-day notices cannot be contracted away.

Source of the period: a termination-notice statute states it.

Colorado runs two tracks, and which one a landlord is on decides whether a no-cause notice exists at all. For a home covered by the statewide for-cause law, a landlord may not serve a notice to terminate the tenancy, or a demand for possession, or otherwise bring an eviction, unless there is cause; there is no no-cause period for that landlord to give. For a home outside that law, and for property that is not residential, section 13-40-107 lets the landlord end a periodic tenancy or decline to renew a fixed term on written notice of at least 91, 28, 21, 3 or 1 days according to how long the tenancy has run. A tenant of any property or premises, covered or not, may end a periodic tenancy on the same ladder, and needs no notice at all to leave at the end of a fixed term that by agreement ends on a set date. The written notice must describe the property, state the particular date the tenancy will end, and be signed by the party giving it or by that party's agent or attorney. Its delivery is not governed by the article's service section, which by its own words reaches only the for-cause demands, the mobile-home-park notices and the no-fault eviction notices.

Yes: a statute bars no-cause termination or non-renewal for covered tenancies across the state once its coverage conditions are met.

How a tenancy comes inside the rule: the landlord-tenant statute itself defines coverage.

Who is covered: The for-cause part applies to every residential premises in the state except six carve-outs: a short-term rental property, meaning one let for less than thirty consecutive days for temporary, recreational, business or transient purposes, or let back for less than six months to a tenant who sold the home to the landlord; an owner-occupied or master-tenant-occupied single-family home with or without an accessory dwelling unit on the same lot, a duplex or a triplex, or such a home next to the owner's primary residence, so long as it is not part of a property of four or more dwelling units; a mobile-home space let to a home owner or under a lease-to-own or purchase-option agreement, which the manufactured-home-park page covers; a home let under an employer-provided housing agreement; a tenant who has not been a tenant of the premises for at least twelve months; and an occupant the landlord does not know to be a tenant. The twelve-month carve-out is the widest: a tenancy inside its first year is outside the law, and the landlord may use the ordinary notice ladder instead.

No-fault grounds: Six grounds count as a no-fault eviction, and each takes at least 90 days' written notice. Demolition of the home or conversion to a use that is not residential or to a short-term rental, with the notice giving the vacate date, a description and timeline of the work and something showing when it will start, such as a permit or an application. Substantial repairs or renovations that cannot be done safely with the tenant in place, are not habitability remediation, and require the tenant to be out for at least thirty days, with an expected completion date; where the work is expected to last less than 180 days the landlord must send a further notice of the completion date, and a tenant who says within ten days that they want to come back gets the first right of refusal on a new agreement with reasonable terms and thirty days to move back in. Occupancy by the landlord or a family member, who must move in within three months after the tenant leaves, where no substantially equivalent unit in the same building is vacant and available and the landlord does not list the home for rent for at least 90 days; that notice may be 45 days instead of 90 where the landlord or the landlord's spouse is on active military duty, and the three-month move-in window may be extended a reasonable time for a person with a disability. Withdrawal from the rental market to sell, available only for a single-family home, townhome, duplex, triplex or individual condominium unit, with no rental listing for 90 days after the vacate date unless the landlord shows the home was listed for sale on a multiple-listing service. A tenant's refusal to sign a new agreement with reasonable terms, with at least 90 days after the refusal. And a history of late payment, where a tenant paid late more than twice during the agreement, a payment counting as late only if it came more than ten calendar days after it was due and the landlord served a proper unpaid-rent notice. A repairs eviction is barred where the work is what the landlord must do to satisfy a habitability remedy or where it is retaliatory. Every ground except the refusal to sign takes effect only at the end of the agreement's term.

Local ordinances: no statute or decision addresses them. No Colorado statute addresses local just-cause or eviction-control ordinances in either direction. The for-cause part carries no preemption clause, no declaration that the subject is a matter of statewide concern and no local-option authorization, and the contrast with its neighbors is the point: the General Assembly declared local rent control preempted as a matter of statewide concern in section 38-12-301, subsection (1), and declared the habitability part a matter of statewide concern that unenforceable local rules must yield to, but wrote nothing of the kind into the for-cause part. The rent-control preemption reaches the amount of rent only and is carried on the rent-increase page.

Since April 19, 2024 a Colorado landlord of a covered home may not serve a notice to terminate the tenancy or a demand for possession, or otherwise bring an eviction, unless there is cause. Cause means either a tenant-side ground, which the eviction page covers, or one of the six no-fault grounds above, each with at least 90 days' notice and each, except a tenant's refusal to sign a new agreement, taking effect only at the end of the agreement's term. A no-fault notice must state the legal and factual basis for the eviction, and the legal basis must be one of the six. A lease term that purports to waive or modify any provision of the part is void and unenforceable. If the landlord cannot show by a preponderance of the evidence that the part was complied with, the court must dismiss the eviction. A landlord may not raise rent in a discriminatory, retaliatory or unconscionable way to get around the requirement. The part also says expressly that it does not affect what good cause means under federal law or federal regulations.

A statute requires notice before a fixed term ends, or notice of non-renewal (90 days).

For a covered home there is no ordinary non-renewal: letting the term run out is itself an eviction that needs cause, so the landlord's route is one of the six no-fault grounds, each with at least 90 days' written notice and each, apart from a tenant's refusal to sign a new agreement, taking effect only at the end of the term. For a home outside the for-cause law and for property that is not residential, the landlord may elect not to renew a fixed term by written notice that expires at the end of the term, on the same ladder as a periodic tenancy: at least 91, 28, 21, 3 or 1 days by the length of the tenancy. A tenant needs no notice to leave at the end of a fixed term that by agreement ends on a set date. A lease may still require a tenant to give notice of non-renewal, but a clause fixing a fee, damages or a penalty for not giving it is void: only the landlord's actual losses may be charged, except for a duplex, triplex or accessory dwelling unit where the owner lives in the property or on the same lot.

After the term, no statute governs conversion; the common-law rule applies. No Colorado statute converts an expired fixed term into a periodic tenancy; the rule is the common-law one preserved in the official annotation to the notice section, under which a tenant who holds over with the landlord's assent after a term of a year or more holds from year to year, and after a shorter term holds for a like period, which then fixes the notice needed to end it.

What happens at the end of a Colorado fixed term depends on whether the for-cause law covers the home. For a covered home the landlord needs a ground and at least 90 days' notice even to decline renewal; for an exempt home or property that is not residential the landlord gives notice on the ordinary ladder that expires at the end of the term. No Colorado statute requires a landlord to remind a tenant before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect, and none converts a holdover into a new tenancy. The only statutory limit on a tenant's own non-renewal notice is that a lease may not charge a fee or penalty for failing to give it, only the landlord's actual losses.

Holding over is unlawful detention only for property that is not residential and for a residential home outside the for-cause law. For a covered home, staying on after the term is not by itself unlawful detention: the landlord's ground is that the tenant holds over and keeps possession after the landlord has properly started a no-fault eviction by meeting the notice and other requirements for it. Either way the landlord goes to court; there is no route to possession by staying out of it.

Damages: No statutory enhancement: the landlord recovers ordinary rent or use and occupancy.

Colorado attaches no statutory penalty to a holdover: there is no double rent, no multiple of the rent, no daily penalty and no liquidated holdover sum anywhere in the eviction article or the landlord-tenant article. The prevailing party in an eviction action recovers damages, costs and reasonable attorney's fees, except that a residential landlord or tenant recovers fees only if the rental agreement provides for them. The heavier money rule in this area runs the other way: a landlord who removes or shuts out a tenant without going to court owes the tenant actual damages plus the greater of three times the monthly rent or $5,000.

Yes: an appellate decision imposes the duty; no statute does.

When it attaches: The duty attaches when the tenant wrongfully leaves the property before the end of the term, not on any statutory abandonment procedure.

Burden of proof: no authority allocates it.

The standard: Reasonable efforts to find a substitute tenant. Damages are the amount needed to put the landlord in the position they would have been in had the lease not been broken, which is usually the difference between the rent reserved and the reasonable rental value of the property for the rest of the term, plus any other losses caused by the breach. If the landlord cannot find a substitute after reasonable efforts, or the property cannot be let, the landlord may recover the full rent reserved plus those other losses.

A lease clause accelerating all remaining rent is enforceable only with an offset for re-letting or another limit.

Whether a lease may waive the duty is not settled.

No Colorado statute imposes a duty to mitigate on a landlord whose tenant leaves early; the rule comes from the Supreme Court of Colorado, which held in 1987 that the contract principle of avoidable consequences applies to a lease, so a landlord may not passively suffer preventable loss. Two things must be said with it. The decision, and the one that followed it in 1988 on how a re-letting premium is credited, both arose from commercial leases, and the court expressly left open whether the holding reaches leases of every type, noting that the parties to a residential lease are not in the same bargaining position. Yet the same opinion overruled several earlier decisions, one of them an apartment case, as inconsistent with its holding that a landlord must mitigate damages when a tenant abandons the property, and no later Colorado decision has extended or refused the duty for a home. A residential landlord should expect the duty to apply and should not read the open question as an absence of one. No authority says who must prove that reasonable efforts were made. There is no general statutory bar on a clause accelerating the remaining rent, but the damages measure itself limits it, and two statutes void acceleration outright: on the death of a tenant, beyond the end of the month or ten business days after the home is emptied, whichever is later; and as a penalty for a tenant's failure to give notice of non-renewal, where only actual losses may be charged. On a termination by a victim of abuse the ordinary calculation is displaced by a different rule: the tenant owes at most one month's rent, and only if the landlord documents actual economic loss within thirty days.

A statute caps what an early-termination fee may be.

The cap: Colorado has three condition-bound caps rather than one general one. First, on a termination by a victim of unlawful sexual behavior, stalking, domestic violence or domestic abuse the tenant owes at most one month's rent, payable within 90 days of leaving, and owes even that only if the landlord actually incurred economic loss and gave the tenant a written statement of it within 30 days after the termination; a landlord who misses that 30-day statement forfeits the right to charge or collect any future rent, and nothing at all may be collected from the victim where another tenant remains on the agreement. Second, where an agreement ends early because a tenant died, a clause requiring liquidated damages, acceleration of rent beyond the end of the month or ten business days after the home is emptied, repayment of concessions or move-in discounts, or any other fee, damages or penalty for the early termination is void and unenforceable; that rule applies to rental agreements entered into on or after September 1, 2025. Third, a clause fixing a fee, damages or penalty because a tenant did not give notice of non-renewal is void, leaving only the landlord's actual losses, except for a duplex, triplex or accessory dwelling unit where the owner lives in the property or on the same lot.

Outside the three capped situations, a tenant who leaves early owes the ordinary contract measure: the rent reserved less the reasonable rental value of the property for the rest of the term, plus other losses caused by the breach, subject to the landlord's duty to make reasonable efforts to re-let. A lease may not dress an early-termination charge up as rent: only the set monthly payment for occupancy may be called rent for the purposes of the eviction remedies. A term purporting to waive or modify any provision of the statewide for-cause part is void, and any clause the prohibited-terms section forbids is void as well. This answer rests on the statutes rather than on the state's administrative rules; no section of either article gives an agency power to make rules about what a lease may charge for ending early.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, a statutory right to end the lease; military service beyond the federal act, the state adds nothing to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act; death of the tenant, related duties only, no termination right; and other statutory grounds.

Domestic violence and related grounds: a victim may end the lease on notice.

Who qualifies: A tenant who is a victim-survivor of unlawful sexual behavior, stalking, domestic violence or domestic abuse, each defined by reference to the criminal code or the protection-order statute. Human trafficking is not named, so a trafficking survivor reaches the statute only where the conduct also fits one of those four. The word tenant carries its habitability-part meaning and expressly includes a mobile-home owner, so an owner renting a park space has the right too. The statute states no requirement that the incident happened on the property.

Documentation: The tenant supplies at least one of four things, and any one is enough: a self-attestation affidavit stating that the tenant is a victim-survivor and that the incident caused or contributed to ending the tenancy, naming the person responsible if the name is known and the tenant judges it safe to give; a letter signed by a qualified third party, which may be an employee, agent or volunteer of a victim-survivor service provider, an attorney, a social worker, a medical professional, a faith leader or a mental-health provider the tenant has turned to, stating that the third party believes the incident happened and is the ground for ending the tenancy; a police report from the previous 120 days; or a valid civil, criminal or emergency protection or restraining order. The statute says additional or other documentation is not required to qualify the tenant as a victim-survivor. A landlord who receives documents carrying conflicting information may require the qualified-third-party letter. A tenant who has invoked the right without producing documents has seven days to supply them after the landlord asks in writing.

Window: There is no state-wide window on how recent the abuse must be. The only time limit sits on one of the four documentation routes: a police report must come from the previous 120 days. A self-attestation affidavit, a qualified-third-party letter and a valid protection order carry no look-back at all.

Notice: The statute prescribes no advance notice period and no waiting interval. The tenant notifies the landlord in writing that the tenant is a victim-survivor, provides the evidence, and states the intent to leave because of fear of danger; the tenant may then end the agreement and leave without further obligation beyond the capped amount below. The right may be used at any point before a court enters an eviction order.

Rent owed: Nothing, unless three conditions are all met: the landlord incurred economic loss as a direct result of the early termination, gave the tenant written documentation of that loss within 30 days after the termination, and no other tenant remains on the agreement. Then the tenant owes at most one month's rent, payable within 90 days after leaving. A landlord who does not give the written statement of loss within those 30 days forfeits the right to charge or collect any future rent.

Cost to the tenant: No fee or penalty for the termination beyond the capped one month's rent described above. The landlord may hold the deposit refund until that amount is paid, but may not deduct from the deposit or otherwise charge the victim for damage caused by the abuse and may pursue that damage only against the person responsible; where the victim and the person responsible are both on the lease, the victim is presumed to receive the whole deposit less anything lawfully withheld under the ordinary deposit rules. A landlord may not hand the debt to a third-party debt collector unless the loss was documented and the amount charged as the statute requires and the landlord has given at least 90 days' written notice of the intent to assign it, sent by whatever means the victim asked for or, if none was given, to the last known electronic contact; and not at all if the victim pays inside those 90 days.

Other tenants on the lease: the victim is released while the lease continues. The termination releases the victim; it does not end the lease for anyone else and does not remove the person responsible. Where another tenant remains on the agreement the landlord may not collect the one month's rent from the victim at all.

Locks: The victim may require the landlord to change the locks. Once the tenant has given notice and documentation the landlord may not stop the tenant changing the locks, including electronic locks, may not charge for it, take adverse action or retaliate, and may not stop the tenant taking other reasonable safety measures such as window bars, cameras or other non-permanent changes; the landlord must take the steps reasonably needed to keep the home safe, and a lease term forbidding a safety lock change is void. Changing the lock is not a material or substantial lease violation. In return the tenant must make all reasonable efforts to give the landlord a copy of the key or the electronic code as soon as reasonably practicable and no later than fourteen days after the change, and where the landlord, property manager or owner is the person alleged to be responsible, that key goes to a safe alternative manager instead.

Later screening: a landlord may not deny, refuse to renew, or terminate because of victim status or a past victim-status termination. A landlord may not ask about, consider, or require an applicant to disclose anything about the applicant's status as a victim-survivor or experience of unlawful sexual behavior, stalking, domestic violence or domestic abuse, and may not end a tenancy or evict a tenant solely because the tenant is a victim-survivor. A lease may not let the landlord end the tenancy or penalize a tenant for calling for police or other emergency help, and that right cannot be waived. The bar operates at the application and the tenancy; Colorado has no separate rule about how a past termination may be described in a tenant screening report.

The landlord must keep the victim's documentation or status confidential.

The landlord's side: The landlord keeps the ordinary remedies against the person responsible for the abuse: the repayment-plan protection does not stop a landlord seeking possession against the tenant who is responsible, and a landlord whose tenant has been excluded from the home by a protection order may use the eviction article's remedies against that person. The landlord may require documentation before the right takes effect and may ask for the qualified-third-party letter where the documents conflict.

A tenant who is a victim-survivor of unlawful sexual behavior, stalking, domestic violence or domestic abuse may end the lease and leave without further obligation, by telling the landlord in writing, giving one of four kinds of evidence, and stating the intent to leave because of fear of danger. No advance notice period is prescribed. The tenant owes at most one month's rent, and only where the landlord incurred economic loss and documented it within 30 days; nothing at all is owed if another tenant remains on the agreement. The landlord must keep the tenant's status and documents confidential, including from a co-tenant, and must keep the tenant's new address confidential too, disclosing only with the tenant's written consent or under a court order. A tenant who is refused these rights may sue to stop further violations and, where the court finds a violation, must be awarded actual damages plus the greater of three times the monthly rent or $5,000, with costs, fees and any punitive damages. Separately from the right to leave, a tenant who missed rent because of the abuse is entitled to a repayment plan of at least $25 a month running no more than nine months with no fees, interest or penalties; a landlord's failure to offer one is a defense to the eviction, and the tenant loses that defense by not responding within seven days. Those repayment rules are covered on the eviction page.

Military service: The state adds nothing to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

Colorado adds no lease-termination right to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act; a service member ending a Colorado lease for military service does it under the federal act. What the state adds is procedural. Under the Colorado State Military Service Civil Relief Act of 2002 an eviction, a distress action or a requirement to deposit accrued rent may not proceed against a person called to state military service or state defense force active duty for longer than thirty days on the Governor's order, during the service and for thirty days afterwards, provided the person gave the landlord written notice within thirty days of being called and the home is occupied chiefly as a residence by the person, their spouse or a dependent; a court may let the case go forward if it finds no substantive prejudice, and the person must furnish the orders with a statement from the adjutant general, renewable every thirty days. The one military provision inside the landlord-tenant article runs the other way: a landlord who is on active duty in the United States military forces, or the spouse of one, may give 45 days' notice instead of 90 for a no-fault eviction to move into the home.

Death of the tenant: A statute addresses the deposit, rent, or property after death but gives no termination right. Where a rental agreement ends before the end of its term because a tenant died, four kinds of lease clause are void and unenforceable: liquidated damages; acceleration of rent for any period beyond the end of the month or more than ten business days after the home is emptied following notice of the death, whichever is later; repayment of concessions or move-in discounts; and any other fee, damages or penalty charged because the agreement ended early. The landlord may take possession without filing an eviction or getting a court order if the personal representative of the estate gives notice of surrender, or if thirty days after the death rent is unpaid or substantially all of the tenant's property has been removed; the deposit may still be applied to damage caused by the death. The statute is a set of prohibitions and a possession rule rather than a right to terminate: it does not give an executor a way to end the lease on a stated notice. It applies to rental agreements entered into on or after September 1, 2025.

Other grounds: Colorado gives a tenant no other statutory way out. There is no care-facility, senior-housing or disability ground, no job-transfer ground, no fire or casualty ground and no natural-disaster ground. Ending a lease because the home was not kept habitable, and the protection against retaliation, are on the habitability page, as is a tenant's remedy for being removed or shut out without a court order.

The statute keys on facts showing the tenant has surrendered.

Colorado has no absence clock and no notice of belief of abandonment. What it has is a standard that decides when a landlord may retake a home without going to court: the home must have been abandoned as shown by the return of the keys, the substantial removal of the tenant's belongings, notice from the tenant, or an extended absence while rent goes unpaid, any of which would lead a reasonable person to believe the tenant had permanently given up possession. Any one of the four is enough, and each is filtered through that reasonable-person test, so there is no period to count and nothing for the tenant to answer. The risk sits with the landlord: removing or shutting out a tenant without court process where the test is not met means the tenant must be awarded actual damages plus the greater of three times the monthly rent or $5,000, and the court may restore possession. One bright line exists alongside it, on death only: thirty days after a tenant's death the landlord may take possession without a court order if rent is unpaid or substantially all of the tenant's property has been removed. What a landlord may do with property left behind is covered separately from this page.

Colorado's service section does not reach a no-cause termination notice. By its own words it governs a written notice to vacate or demand required by the unpaid-rent and lease-violation section, by the two mobile-home-park sections, or by the no-fault eviction section, and the notice section for ending a periodic tenancy or declining renewal is not in that list; how such a notice must be delivered is not legislated, and the statute requires only that it describe the property, state the particular termination date and be signed. For the notices the service section does reach, a copy is delivered to a known tenant occupying the property, or left with a person or a family member older than fifteen who lives there or is in charge of the property, or, where no one is there after attempts at personal service at least once on two separate days, posted in a conspicuous place. Where a tenant has told the landlord in writing, or the landlord otherwise knows, that the tenant is a victim-survivor of unlawful sexual behavior, stalking, domestic violence or domestic abuse, the landlord must make all reasonable efforts at personal service, and only after three failed attempts may serve by posting a copy and also sending it by certified mail or by a commercial mail courier whose receipt or other document proves delivery.

Electronic delivery: the termination statute is silent on it.

What the notice must contain: Two sets of rules, and they must not be run together. A notice ending a periodic tenancy or declining to renew a fixed term must describe the property, state the particular date the tenancy will end, and be signed by the landlord or tenant giving it or by their agent or attorney; nothing else is required. A for-cause demand or a no-fault eviction notice must be in writing, specify the grounds with a specific description of the alleged violation or of the no-fault ground, describe the property, give the date and time possession is to be delivered up, and be signed; it must also tell a residential tenant receiving supplemental security income, social security disability benefits or Colorado Works cash assistance of the right to mediation before an eviction is filed, and any notice demanding unpaid rent must state that a tenant whose missed payment was caused by unlawful sexual behavior, stalking, domestic violence or domestic abuse is entitled to a repayment plan of up to nine months. A no-fault notice must also state the legal and factual basis for the eviction.

Language: A for-cause demand or a no-fault eviction notice must be written in English, Spanish, or any other language the landlord knows, or has reason to know, is the tenant's primary language. By the same words, the rule does not reach a notice ending a periodic tenancy or declining renewal.

Colorado has written the federal CARES Act notice into its own law, which is unusual and changes what a change in federal law would do here. A landlord starting an eviction for unpaid rent must comply with the notice requirement in section 9058(c) of title 15 of the United States Code as that provision was enacted on March 27, 2020, notwithstanding any later change in federal law, and the Division of Housing is encouraged to publish help for landlords working out whether a property is a covered dwelling. Two further points matter. The statewide for-cause part says expressly that it does not affect what good cause means under federal law or federal regulations, so the state ground requirement and federal program rules run on separate tracks. And park management counts as a landlord for the codified notice, so it reaches mobile-home-park tenancies.

The federal CARES Act 30-day notice to vacate for covered properties, as read in this state's courts: written into the state's own statute in a narrower form. Two independent legs. The Supreme Court of Colorado held in In re Arvada Village Gardens LP v. Garate, 2023 CO 24, 529 P.3d 105 (May 15, 2023), that the federal thirty-day notice provision is still in effect for covered properties, because the moratorium expired by its own terms while the notice provision includes no expiration date, and that a landlord of a covered property must give thirty days' notice before filing an eviction in Colorado. Separately, section 38-12-1502, added in 2025 and in force since May 29, 2025, requires a landlord starting an eviction for unpaid rent to comply with the federal notice as it stood on March 27, 2020, whatever later happens to the federal provision. The statute's own reach is narrow: eviction proceedings for unpaid rent. The decision is not so limited, and reads the federal provision as attaching to a notice to vacate for a covered dwelling. (Appellate picture read as of September 2, 2026.)

Schneiker v. Gordon, 732 P.2d 603 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 1987; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): The contract principle of avoidable consequences applies to a lease, so a landlord whose tenant abandons the property must mitigate damages rather than passively suffer preventable loss; the landlord must ordinarily make reasonable efforts to find a substitute tenant, and damages are the rent reserved less the reasonable rental value for the rest of the term plus other losses. The case arose from a commercial car-wash sublease, and a footnote expressly reserved whether the holding reaches leases of every type, while the same opinion overruled several earlier decisions, including an apartment case, as inconsistent with the duty.

La Casa Nino, Inc. v. Plaza Esteban, 762 P.2d 669 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 1988; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): A tenant is entitled to set off against rent arrears the entry premium the landlord received from a later tenant as consideration for re-letting the property after the first tenant defaulted. The case arose from a commercial shopping-center restaurant lease and settles how a re-letting credit is calculated; it does not extend the duty to mitigate to residential leases.

Heatherridge Management Co. v. Benson, 192 Colo. 190, 558 P.2d 435 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 1976; residential lease; bears on the duty to re-let): An apartment tenant who left before the end of the lease remained liable for the rent under the older rule that a landlord need not re-let. The decision was later overruled, along with four others, to the extent it is inconsistent with the holding that a landlord must mitigate damages when a tenant abandons the property, which is why a residential landlord should not rely on it today.

In re Arvada Village Gardens LP v. Garate, 2023 CO 24, 529 P.3d 105 (Supreme Court of Colorado; residential lease; bears on the federal 30-day notice): The federal CARES Act thirty-day notice provision remains in effect for covered properties: the moratorium expired by its own 120-day term, but the notice provision contains no expiration date and the court would not insert one. A landlord of a covered property must therefore give thirty days' notice before filing an eviction in Colorado, and the ten-day state notice does not suffice; the tenant there held a housing choice voucher, which made the property covered.