Hello, greetings from Colorado Springs. My name is Lance Kohler. I'm the managing broker and owner of Cornerstone Real Estate Team. Today, I'd like to provide you with our fifth and last legislative update.
Over the course of our legislative update series, we've covered nine bills that were passed in the 2024 session that pertained to housing—all of which may have an impact on rental properties, owners of rental properties, landlords, and property management companies. Of the nine that I selected from the bills that impacted housing, we've covered seven of those in previous sessions. If you're interested, please review our YouTube channel or website to see the previous legislative updates.
This is legislative update number five. I'm covering the last two bills that we found to have an impact on residential housing.
The first bill I'll talk about today is House Bill 24-1007, which prohibits residential occupancy limits. This bill prohibits counties, cities, and municipalities from limiting the number of people who may live together in a single dwelling based on familial relationship.
What this bill addresses is that in some places in Colorado, municipalities would have a bill that said, "Hey, no more than three unrelated people can live in the home," or, "No more than five unrelated people could live in the home." That's an example of what this bill addresses. Local governments can only limit occupancy based on a few things: health and safety standards, such as building codes, fire code regulations, or public health, environmental water, and wastewater standards.
An example of that might be if you have a home with a septic system that is only designed for four people—you wouldn't be able to have eight people living in the home because you'd exceed the limits of the septic system. Or in some cases, it may be that, if you're on a well, the well is only designed to provide enough water for three people on a daily basis. That might be an example of a health and environmental water or wastewater standard that would limit the number of people that could live in a home.
Otherwise, local governments and landlords cannot limit the number of occupants in a property. The last exception, I guess, is local, state, or federal affordable housing program guidelines. For some affordable housing, they may have limits on the number of people that can live in the property. This bill was signed on the 15th of April and became effective on the 1st of July, 2024. At this time, it's already in effect.
The second bill I'll talk about today, which may have an impact if you own or rent a condo or if you're in a covenant-restricted community, is House Bill 24-1091: Fire-Hardened Building Materials in Real Property. This bill prohibits covenants or other restrictions that prevent the installation, use, and maintenance of fire-hardened building materials in residential real property, including in common interest communities.
Most of this bill seems to address common interest communities, which is why I mentioned it might apply if you live in an HOA or a condo association. However, it does allow an owner association to develop reasonable standards regarding the design, dimensions, placement, or appearance of materials. But they cannot restrict the use or maintenance of fire-hardened building materials in real property.
This concludes our legislative updates for 2024. Our legislation was busy this year! We covered nine bills that will impact property management, rental property owners, and landlords in the future.
If you haven't seen legislative updates number one and two, please visit our website and review those. They cover Safe Housing for Residential Tenants and the commonly called Just Cause Eviction Bill. These are the two bills that have the most impact on daily operations, whether you're a do-it-yourself landlord or a professional property manager.
I encourage you to review the highlights, read the bills, and ensure you're in compliance. I hope this information has been of value to you. I appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for watching, and make it a great day!