New Rules for Renting: Fee-Free Payments, Eviction Privacy, and Landlord Lawsuits

The Bottom Line

This bill overhauls the eviction process by forcing landlords to show their receipts upfront and automatically hiding most eviction records from public view so they do not haunt tenants forever. It also guarantees renters the right to pay their rent without being forced to use an online portal or eat surprise transaction fees. If you own rental property or rent your home, this fundamentally changes how disputes and payments are handled.

What This Bill Actually Does

Colorado has seen a massive surge in eviction filings recently, jumping to over 50,000 cases in 2025. Right now, a landlord can start an eviction without attaching the lease or a detailed payment history to the initial court complaint. HB26-1047 changes the ground rules. It requires landlords to include a copy of the lease and an up-to-date rent ledger if the eviction is about unpaid rent. It also requires the initial written demand or notice to cite the specific state law being used and to redact personal identifying information like social security numbers, bank accounts, and dates of birth. If a landlord forgets this paperwork, the tenant gets an automatic affirmative defense to fight the eviction in court.

Here is the part that really matters for the long term: the bill completely rewrites the rules on court records. Currently, eviction court records are temporarily suppressed, but they become public if the landlord wins the case (unless both sides agree to keep them hidden). This bill flips that standard. Under this proposal, almost all eviction court records remain permanently suppressed (hidden from the public), even if the landlord wins and the tenant is evicted. The only exception is if the eviction is for a "substantial violation" of the lease — think violent criminal activity or severe property damage. For standard evictions, the record stays invisible.

Finally, the bill takes aim at the modern digitization of property management. Increasingly, landlords rely on apps or online portals that charge "convenience fees" to process rent. This bill mandates that every landlord must offer at least one rent payment option that does not require logging into an online portal or paying a transaction fee. Tenants must have a free, offline path to pay their rent.

What It Means for You

If you are a Colorado renter, the most immediate change in your day-to-day life is how you pay rent on the first of the month. If you have ever been frustrated by property management apps that tack on a processing fee or require you to navigate a glitchy online portal just to pay your bills, this bill guarantees you a free, non-electronic alternative. You will always have the right to hand over your rent without paying a tech middleman, which is especially crucial for folks who do not have reliable internet access, prefer traditional banking, or simply refuse to pay a fee to pay their rent.

If you ever face an eviction threat, the playing field changes significantly. You will not have to guess why you are being asked to leave or what exactly you allegedly owe. The landlord must provide the specific legal citation, your lease, and a full rent ledger detailing every payment made. This forces transparency right out of the gate, making it easier for you or a legal aid attorney to spot errors — like a misapplied payment or an illegal late fee — before you end up in front of a judge. Plus, the mandatory redaction of your sensitive data on these notices protects you from identity theft when eviction demands are inevitably taped to a front door for the whole hallway to see.

The most long-lasting impact, however, is how this treats your housing record. An eviction on your record is often a permanent scarlet letter, making it incredibly difficult to get approved for a new apartment. By making most eviction records permanently suppressed, this bill effectively wipes the slate clean for standard evictions. It even writes into law that you can legally deny the existence of the suppressed record on a rental application. Unless you were evicted for a major safety or property violation, a past housing dispute — even if you lost the case — will not block you from securing a new lease.

What It Means for Your Business

For independent landlords, property management companies, and real estate developers, this is the one to watch. It requires an immediate audit of your standard operating procedures. You can no longer rely exclusively on software platforms like AppFolio, RentCafe, or Buildium if they force tenants to pay transaction fees or mandate online access. You must create and maintain at least one completely free, offline payment pipeline. That means you may need to reintroduce lockboxes, mail-in check processing, or in-person rent collection, complete with the strict receipting rules already required by Colorado law.

Your eviction workflow will also need a strict compliance overhaul. Before you post a demand for rent or a notice to quit, your team must ensure that all personal identifying information (like social security numbers, bank accounts, and dates of birth) is fully redacted. When filing the actual complaint with the court, you are now required to front-load your evidence. You must attach the lease and an up-to-date rent ledger for non-payment cases. Missing any of these steps is not just a clerical error; it hands the tenant an automatic affirmative defense. In the eviction business, time is money. An affirmative defense could result in your case being thrown out, forcing you to start the legal clock all over again and lose another month of rental income.

The changes to court records fundamentally alter how you handle tenant screening. Because the state will now automatically suppress all eviction judgments unless they involve a substantial violation of a lease (like a violent crime or severe property damage), standard background checks will no longer flag a history of non-payment or minor lease infractions. The bill explicitly permits tenants to legally deny these past evictions on their applications. Property owners will need to rely much more heavily on credit scores, employment verification, and direct landlord references to assess financial risk, since the judicial record will be largely wiped clean.

Follow the Money

The financial footprint for the state is surprisingly small, but it does require some new administrative muscle to handle the shift in how records are managed. According to the fiscal note, the bill costs the state approximately $59,282 in its first year and about $40,482 annually after that, paid directly out of the General Fund.

Where does that money go? The Judicial Department needs an extra $18,800 upfront to translate and rewrite roughly 14 standard court forms to reflect the new document requirements and affirmative defenses. The ongoing costs cover about 0.4 full-time equivalent (FTE) court staff. These judicial clerks are needed to manually review the roughly 27,000 eviction cases filed annually to figure out which ones involve a "substantial lease violation" so those specific records can be legally unsuppressed. There is no direct financial impact on local city or county governments, but the operational costs for private landlords to update their tech portals and legal forms will be entirely on their own shoulders.

Where This Bill Stands

HB26-1047 is currently Dead. The latest official action came on 02/24/2026: House Committee on Judiciary Postpone Indefinitely.

That means the bill is no longer advancing this session. In practice, measures that are postponed indefinitely or otherwise declared lost generally stay dead unless they are reintroduced in a future session.