Colorado HOA Foreclosure Limits: Six Months of Assessments, a Judgment First, and Never for Fines

The lien itself is broad and needs no paperwork. C.R.S. § 38-33.3-316(1)(a) gives an incorporated Colorado association a statutory lien on a unit for any assessment levied against it and for fines imposed on the owner, and subsection (4) provides that recording the declaration is itself record notice and perfection, so no separate claim of lien is filed against your unit. What the association may actually foreclose is much narrower: fees, charges, late charges, attorney fees, fines and interest charged under §§ 38-33.3-302(1)(j), (1)(k), (1)(l), 38-33.3-313(6) and 38-33.3-315(2) can be secured by the lien but, in the words of the statute, are not subject to a foreclosure action under article 33.3. A Colorado HOA cannot take your home over unpaid fines. If assessments are payable in installments, the lien attaches to an installment fifteen days after it comes due, but § 38-33.3-316(1)(b) bars the association from pursuing legal action until the owner has missed at least three monthly installments. The whole lien is extinguished if enforcement proceedings are not instituted within six years after the full amount became due.

Colorado is a genuine six-month super-lien state, and the mechanics matter. Section 38-33.3-316(2)(a) subordinates the association lien to encumbrances recorded before the declaration, to the first-position security interest recorded before the delinquency, and to real estate tax liens. Subsection (2)(b)(I) then jumps the association back ahead of that first mortgage for an amount equal to the common expense assessments, ignoring any acceleration, that would have come due during the six months immediately preceding institution of a foreclosure by either the association or a senior lienholder. That priority reaches only liens and encumbrances created after June 30, 1992, per subsection (2)(d). Where two associations hold assessment liens on the same property, § 38-33.3-316(3) gives them equal priority unless the declaration says otherwise.

House Bill 24-1337, effective August 7, 2024 and applicable to debts accrued on or after that date, added the gate that changed Colorado practice. Under § 38-33.3-316(10.5) an association may foreclose only if it first obtained a personal judgment against the owner in a collection action, or tried to sue but was prevented by the owner's death or incapacity, or tried to sue and could not serve the owner within one hundred eighty days despite a reasonable attempt, or the owner is in bankruptcy and the debt is part of that case. Subsection (10.6) confines that protection: it applies exclusively to a unit owned by an individual who occupies it as a principal residence, and to workforce housing, and it does not apply to a unit owned by an entity or to one that is not the owner's principal residence. Subsection (10.7) requires written and electronic notice of the right to mediate at least thirty days before the association files, with the owner responding within thirty days and both sides selecting a mediator knowledgeable about article 33.3, and it separately requires thirty days' notice to every lienholder shown in the property records stating the outstanding assessments and other money owed.

Only after all of that does § 38-33.3-316(11)(a) apply, and it carries the two limits Colorado owners quote most often. The balance secured by the lien must equal or exceed six months of common expense assessments under the association's periodic budget, and the executive board must have formally resolved, by a recorded vote, to authorize the filing against that specific unit on an individual basis. The board may not delegate that vote to an attorney, insurer, manager or anyone else, any action filed without evidence of the recorded vote must be dismissed, and no attorney fees, court costs or other charges from a case dismissed for that reason may be assessed against the owner. Section 38-33.3-316(7)(b) separately denies the association attorney fees incurred before it complied with the delinquency notice requirements of § 38-33.3-209.5(1.7)(a). Subsection (12) then closes off self-dealing at the sale: a board member, the community association management company or its employees, employees of the association's law firm, and immediate family members as defined in § 2-4-401(3.7) may not buy the foreclosed unit, with a five-year lookback that also catches affiliated business entities, and under subsection (13) whoever does buy takes the unit subject to the covenants and use or sale limits that bound the previous owner.

Payment plans are a hard stop, not a courtesy. C.R.S. § 38-33.3-316.3(1)(b) requires the association, or anyone holding or assigned its debt, to make a good-faith effort to coordinate a plan with the owner, and subsection (2) requires that plan to let the owner clear the deficiency in equal installments over a period of at least eighteen months. Subsection (3.5), also added by HB 24-1337, prohibits foreclosing the § 38-33.3-316 lien at all while the owner is complying with that plan. Subsection (4) forces the association to apply any payment to assessments first and only then to fines, fees and other charges, which is what keeps a fine balance from quietly consuming an assessment payment and manufacturing a foreclosable delinquency. The association need not negotiate a second plan with an owner who already had one, and the payment-plan duty does not run to a non-occupying owner who acquired the unit through a security-interest default or through foreclosure of the association's own lien.

House Bill 25-1043, chapter 433 of the 2025 session laws, took effect October 1, 2025 and applies to enforcement actions instituted on or after that date. It added § 38-33.3-316(10.3), requiring written and electronic notice at least thirty days before filing that the owner may obtain credit counseling at the owner's own expense, with information available through the HOA Information and Resource Center created in § 12-10-801(1) or a federal Department of Housing and Urban Development link on the Department of Local Affairs website. It added subsection (10.8), a separate notice of intent to foreclose sent at least thirty days ahead by certified mail with return receipt plus at least two of a telephone call, a text message, an email or regular mail, and sent in the owner's preferred language if the owner asked for notices in a language other than English under § 38-33.3-209.5(1.7)(a)(I). It added subsection (11.2), requiring notice to every lienholder within five business days after the association files, and it created § 38-38-109.5, which lets the owner move at any time before the auction to stay the sale and list the unit at fair market value or at an alternate value that still exceeds all liens and advanced costs. That stay runs nine months and the court may extend it, sale proceeds are held in escrow and distributed by lien priority, and a buyer of a unit listed this way takes title free and clear of encumbrances relating to the foreclosure filing. Section 38-38-109.5(7) excludes time share units, which run instead under § 38-33.3-316.5.

The remedy for an unlawful association foreclosure in Colorado is statutory and it is money. 3(5), an owner against whom an association violated any foreclosure law may file civil suit within five years of the violation and recover damages of up to twenty-five thousand dollars plus costs and reasonable attorney fees, proved by a preponderance of the evidence. 3-316(11)(a)(II) requires outright dismissal of any action filed without evidence of the board's recorded vote and forbids charging the owner any attorney fees, court costs or other charges incurred in it.

3-123(3) makes strict compliance with Colorado's lien and foreclosure provisions, and with the association's own declaration, bylaws, articles and rules, a condition precedent to recovering any money owed, collection costs or attorney fees through a lien foreclosure, and it lets the court stay the case to give the association a reasonable period to come into strict compliance while barring the association from assessing or accruing late fees, interest or other delinquency charges during the stay. 5) then directs the court, when setting reasonable attorney fees, to weigh whether the association ran up inflated or duplicative fees because of that stay.

Owners with a complaint short of litigation go to the HOA Information and Resource Center in the Division of Real Estate under § 12-10-801, whose information officer tracks inquiries and complaints and reports annually.