Colorado security deposit return

A landlord shall, within thirty days after the termination of a lease or surrender and acceptance of a premises, whichever occurs last, return to the tenant the full security deposit deposited with the landlord by the tenant, unless the lease agreement specifies a longer period of time, but not to exceed sixty days.

The clock runs from the LATER of lease termination and the landlord accepting surrender of the premises, so do not compute from lease-end alone if you accepted the keys later. There is no forwarding-address condition (unlike some states): the deadline runs on its own. If day 30 lands on a weekend or a Colorado legal holiday, the law may extend it to the next business day (C.R.S. § 2-4-108(2)), but no Colorado court has applied that to this statute and missing the deadline forfeits your right to keep any of the deposit, so treat day 30 as the real target.

Except as provided in subsection (3.5)(a)(IV) of this section, a landlord has actual cause to retain reasonable amounts from the security deposit only for: (I) Nonpayment of rent; (II) Nonpayment of utility charges; (III) Nonpayment of other lawful charges listed in the lease; or (IV) Necessary repair work for damage or defective conditions that exceed normal wear and tear and did not preexist the tenancy.

This list is EXCLUSIVE ("only for"). HB25-1249 removed the old "abandonment of the premises" and "cleaning contracted for by the tenant" grounds, so an early-termination or cleaning charge must now fit one of the four categories, usually "other lawful charges listed in the lease." "Normal wear and tear" is now defined by statute and expressly includes ordinary damage and uncleanliness from typical use; it does not cover uncleanliness that leaves the unit substantially less clean than at move-in. Preexisting damage may never be charged, and a lease clause assigning normal-wear or preexisting-condition costs to the tenant is void (§ 103(7)(b)).

A landlord shall not deem carpet to be substantially and irreparably damaged if the carpet has not been replaced with new carpet within ten years preceding the termination of the lease or surrender of the premises.

Carpet: no whole-unit replacement charge unless the damage is substantial AND irreparable, and old carpet (not replaced in the last ten years) can’t be called substantially and irreparably damaged, which forecloses the replacement charge: you may still charge to repair the specific damaged portion. Paint: no whole-interior repaint charge unless there is substantial paint damage throughout the entire unit (there is no paint-age safe harbor). These limits do not apply to a mobile home in a mobile home park.

Upon a landlord’s or tenant’s request, if reasonable and practicable, the landlord and tenant shall conduct a walk-through inspection, either in person or via a telecommunication-assisted interactive walk-through, of the dwelling unit to identify in writing any damage or defective conditions that are beyond normal wear and tear and that did not preexist the tenancy. The landlord shall provide a walk-through inspection at a tenant’s request, at a time that is mutually convenient to the parties, before the termination of the lease or the surrender of the premises, and after the tenant has had the opportunity to remove furniture.

This is new in 2026. Either party may request it, but the landlord’s duty to actually provide one is triggered by the TENANT’s request. A walk-through is strongly advisable: the written record is exactly the kind of documentation the tenant can later demand, but note the statute does not say damage left undocumented at the walk-through becomes un-chargeable (that consequence was proposed and removed before passage). It does not apply to a mobile home in a mobile home park.

For a termination of a lease or a surrender of the premises on or after the effective date of this section, as amended, if a landlord provides a tenant with a written statement pursuant to subsection (1) of this section within fourteen days after a written request by the tenant, the landlord shall provide documentation in the landlord’s possession or control, including photographs, inspection forms or reports, receipts, invoices, or estimates, that is relevant to the retention of the tenant’s security deposit or any portion of the security deposit.

The duty is triggered by the tenant’s WRITTEN request; without one it is not engaged. There is no standalone fine, but failing to provide the documentation is one of the ways a withholding becomes "wrongful" (§ 103(2.5)(a)), which opens the door to forfeiture and treble. Read the 14-day window as running from the tenant’s written request.

On and after August 7, 2023 except as described in subsection (2) of this section, a landlord shall not require a tenant to submit a security deposit in an amount that exceeds the amount of two monthly rent payments under the rental agreement.

The cap is two months’ rent. A widely-repeated claim that HB25-1249 cut it to one month is wrong: that provision was in the introduced bill and was removed before passage. "Rent" is not defined for this purpose, so our reading uses the base monthly rent under the lease. SB26-054 amended this section effective August 12, 2026 to add one narrow exception, and the exception itself does not begin until January 1, 2027. From that date the cap does not apply where the landlord and tenant have executed a post-closing occupancy agreement under a purchase contract by which the landlord bought the residence from the tenant. That is a seller rent-back rather than an ordinary tenancy, so two months is the answer for a normal rental both now and after that date.

No state statute requires deposit interest and none requires a separate or interest-bearing account for an ordinary residential deposit. The City of Boulder is the exception (B.R.C. ch. 12-2). Mobile-home-park deposits (§ 38-12-207) must sit in a separate trust account, but the interest there belongs to the landlord as administration compensation, not the tenant.

The owner of a mobile home park or the owner’s agents may charge a security deposit in an amount not greater than one month’s rent.

A mobile home in a park is different from an ordinary rental in two ways: the cap is one month’s lot rent (not two), and the deposit must be held in a separate trust account as the home owner’s property (the landlord may keep the interest earned as compensation). Everything else: the 30-day return, the written statement, wrongful-withholding forfeiture and treble, still applies. The walk-through and carpet/paint limits do NOT apply here. A mobile home on private land (not in a park) is treated as an ordinary residential rental (two-month cap, full § 103).