How much notice is required to raise the rent in Colorado?

Verified July 9, 2026 All Colorado topics →

Colorado limits how often rent can rise — no more than once in any 12-month period of consecutive occupancy, no matter what kind of lease the tenant has or whether anything is in writing — but sets no limit on how much.

For residential tenancies without a written agreement, a landlord must give at least 60 days' written notice of any increase and may not dodge the rule by terminating the tenancy primarily to re-rent at a higher price; tenancies under a written lease follow the lease's own terms on notice. There is no statewide rent control, and local rent control on existing private housing has been prohibited since 1981 — a 2023 repeal attempt died in a Senate committee — though localities may strike voluntary rent-limitation deals with owners and may impose affordable-unit requirements on new construction. The once-per-12-months rule is a frequency limit, not a price cap: no Colorado statute constrains the size of an increase.

Colorado rent increase notice at a glance

Notice — month-to-month	60 days
Varies by increase size	Not addressed by statute
Fixed-term leases	For tenancies WITH a written agreement, no statutory notice period applies — the lease governs when and how rent changes — but the one-increase-per-12-months limit of 38-12-702 still applies regardless of lease type. The 60-day written notice of 38-12-701(2)(a) textually covers residential tenancies WITHOUT a written agreement.
Statewide rent control / stabilization	No
Rent control details	No statewide rent control and no cap on increase amounts. Local rent control on private residential property is prohibited by C.R.S. 38-12-301 (enacted 1981 after Boulder's rent-control initiative), which remains fully in force — the 2023 repeal bill (HB23-1115) passed the House and was postponed indefinitely by a Senate committee on 2023-04-25. The statute excepts VOLUNTARY agreements between a locality and a property owner to limit rent (including deed restrictions for affordable housing), and a locality may not deny a development permit because an applicant declines one; HB21-1117 (2021) separately authorized inclusionary-zoning requirements for NEW or redeveloped construction without touching existing units.
Local rent control preempted	Yes
Frequency limits	Rent may not be increased more than one time in any 12-month period of consecutive occupancy, regardless of whether there is a written rental agreement, the length of the tenancy, or whether the tenancy is fixed-term, month-to-month, or indefinite (C.R.S. 38-12-702, HB21-1121, eff. 2021-06-25).

Notes and caveats

notice_days_month_to_month is 60 per 38-12-701(2)(a), with the scope caveat carried in fixed_term_rules and here: the statute's text covers residential tenancies WITHOUT a written agreement (classic oral month-to-month), so page copy must not present 60 days as universal — written-lease m2m arrangements are governed by the lease, though 38-12-702's frequency limit catches everything. The anti-avoidance clause (2)(b) (no terminating primarily to raise rent inconsistently with the section) is unusual and worth page copy. 38-12-701(1)'s 21-day rule survives only for NONRESIDENTIAL no-written-agreement tenancies of 1-6 months. HB25-1092 (2025), which would have declared fair-market increases per se reasonable, died in House committee 2025-02-19. rent_control_state false + local_control_preempted true puts CO in the FL/IL/OH camp, with the voluntary-agreement and new-construction carve-outs as the CO twist.

Statute citations

C.R.S. 38-12-701 (current-code mirror) (1)-(2) Unofficial mirror
C.R.S. 38-12-702 (current-code mirror) Unofficial mirror
HB21-1121 (official signed act — created 38-12-702, amended 38-12-701) Official source
C.R.S. 38-12-301 (HB23-1115 repeal attempt — died; official bill record) Official source

How this record was verified: Colorado's official CRS text is published via LexisNexis without stable deep links (GA-class sourcing situation), so verification pairs official session-law sources with current code mirrors: the HB25-1249 enrolled act read verbatim from the official leg.colorado.gov PDF (full text extracted) and re-confirmed against the official bill-page summary (independent reads matched on the 30-day return deadline, wrongful-retention standard, 125% presumption, walk-through, and carpet/paint rules, and confirmed NO deposit-cap change); official bill pages read for SB23-184 (deposit cap), SB21-173 (late fees), HB21-1121 (rent-increase notice/frequency), HB23-1068 (pet deposits), HB23-1115 (rent-control repeal — died), HB25-1092 and HB26-1047 (died), and SB26-054 (PCOA exemption, eff. 2026-11-01). Statute text quoted from the colorado.public.law and FindLaw mirrors (official: false), with §§ 38-12-105 and 38-12-701 each read on the mirror twice via independent fetches that matched. Checked 2026-07-09.