Senate Bill 184: How It Affects Colorado Renters

This August, new laws offering protections for renters in Colorado officially took effect. While we’re apartment locators, not legal pros, we did a quick summary of the new stuff that impacts our fellow renters.

Want the skimmable details? We got you.

You can also read the bill for yourself: Senate Bill 184

• Landlords and property management groups can only require a tenant’s gross monthly income to be 2x the monthly rent or less.
• Security deposits are now capped at no more than the amount of 2 rental payments.
• There are now additional legal protections for tenants in certain eviction situations.

What’s changed for Denver renters?

Before, apartment complexes typically required tenants to make at least 3x the monthly rent before taxes(but in some cases, we saw up to 5x.)

For example, let’s take a $1600 apartment.

Before, you would have needed to make at least $4,800 monthly ($57,600 annually pre-taxes) to get approved for an apartment at this price. Now, you’d only need to make $3,200 monthly (that’s $38,400 annually) to qualify.

What does this mean for apartment specials?

While we’re huge fans of self-prorating apartment specials to lower the monthly rate, keep in mind that these income qualification caps apply to the market rate of a unit (aka, the price before you factor in savings.)

So, if that $1600 apartment comes with a 2 months free special attached to it that brings the effective rate (the monthly price after prorating) down to $1333, you’d still need to be making 2x the market rate of $1600 to qualify.

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