2026 SESSION RECAP: 2026 Advocacy Efforts Save the Industry $1.2 Billion

The 2026 Legislative Session has now concluded. It has been a very successful session for rental housing providers (and indirectly for their residential customers). Our industry had successful outcomes on each of the bills on which we engaged. This included not only the enactment of statutory safeguards to protect RUBs utility billing, but also the defeat of a string of bills which would have made rental housing operations significantly more expensive and administratively burdensome.

There are a lot of factors that came together to achieve this success in advocacy. Many of our legislative victories came down to a single vote. Our “Slow Your Roll” public affairs campaign seemed to be a message that resonated. Three additional Republicans in the House changed the math a bit. However, we believe the single biggest factor is the growth and emboldening of the more pragmatic wing of the Democratic party who make up the Opportunity Caucus. The Association has aggressively pursued a strategy of supporting the more pragmatic members of the Democratic party for the last 3 years and the group has enjoyed increasing influence at the statehouse during this time. It remains to be seen whether that trend can continue through this year’s primary and general elections and selection of house and Senate leadership in 2027.

Highlights from the 2026 Legislative Session

HB26-1106
EVICTION PROTECTIONS DEFEATED

The bill would have provided near endless possibilities for delay for defendants misusing the court system, but the portion of the bill placing numeric limitations on eviction filings per day and the expansion of the stay of execution on writs of restitution would have delayed all of Colorado’s nearly 60,000 evictions filed each year by approximately 35 days. With rent averaging $1,800.00 per month, avoiding those delays saved the industry approximately $126,000,000 annually.

HB26-1036
VACANCY TAX DEFEATED

No one can say how many local governments would have taken advantage of the bill’s authorization to impose a tax on vacant residential units or what those taxation rates may have looked like. However, with a 12.5% current vacancy rate and with total property tax revenues of $15 Billion, any projection of this potential new tax would be astronomical.

HB26-1047
TENANT PROTECTIONS DEFEATED

Estimating how problematic the suppression of all eviction records would have been on quality leasing decisions is imprecise, but even if that loss of important information only impacted the default/eviction rate by 10%, the likely impact of this mandate would have resulted in additional bad debt loses of $60,000,000 annually. The requirement to attach copies of the lease and ledger to each rent demand would have resulted in roughly 20,000,000 additional copies annually at a cost to the industry of $7,000,000, making the total annual savings to the industry of killing this bill approximately $67,000,000.

HB26-1284
RUBS BILL DEFEATED

By mandating that a minimum of 10% of all utilities be presumed to be for common area usage and not billed to tenants, this bill more than doubled industry averages on prohibited utility billings. The likely impact of this proposed increased utility prohibition is $750,000,000 annually.

SB26-062
RODENTICIDE DEFEATED

By requiring most widely used rodent poisons to be professionally applied by a licensed exterminator, the impact of turning all $15.00 dollar self-exterminations into $300.00
exterminator calls would have been very expensive. Utilizing the US Census compilation that 19% of Colorado residences experience rodent sightings each year, avoiding this additional
expense likely saved the industry’s’ 500,000 units approximately $27,075,000 annually.

HB26-1130
BABY CHANGING STATIONS DEFEATED

While most of our industry’s restrooms are private and would not have required the installation of changing stations, we estimate that our members’ portfolios include 8,000 public restrooms. With an $1,200 anticipated installation cost, avoiding this requirement likely saved our industry $9,600,000.

HB26-1196
TENANT DATA AMENDED

How many of our residential customers would have demanded that their housing provider pay the approximate $10 month subscription cost for reporting their rent payments to the credit report agencies mandated by this bill is uncertain. If 25% of customers did, the cost to the industry would be $15,000,000 annually.

HB26-1013
RUBS SAFE HARBOR PASSED

While no one knows how many of our members were persuaded not to bill residents for their utilities utilizing RUBs systems, our obtaining the AG Memorandum and this bill documenting that RUBs billing is permissible impacted hundreds of millions of dollars of utilities annually.