Buying a house works differently in Colorado than the national homebuying advice you’ll find online suggests. The contract comes from a state commission rather than a lawyer, the whole deal runs on a table of negotiated deadlines, and since 2023 every residential contract in the state has carried a radon disclosure. Here is how the process actually runs.
Before you look: financing
Talk to a lender before you talk to houses. A pre-approval tells you what you can borrow, and in a competitive situation it tells a seller you are real.
What you can afford and what you can borrow are different questions, and only one of them is the lender’s to answer. A payment that technically qualifies can still be a payment that makes the house a burden. Decide your own ceiling before someone hands you a bigger one.
The contract comes from the Real Estate Commission
This surprises people moving from other states. In Colorado, licensed real estate brokers are required to use contract forms written and approved by the Colorado Real Estate Commission. That requirement is set out in the Commission’s rules on the use of standard forms.
A broker may only use an attorney-drafted form when no Commission-Approved Form exists for the situation, or where the approved form is not appropriate for the transaction — and when an attorney form is properly used, it has to say on its face that it has not been approved by the Commission. A broker cannot substitute an attorney’s form to get around using an available approved one.
So for a standard residential purchase, you are not legally required to hire a real estate attorney the way you would be in New York or New Jersey. That said, the contract states plainly that it has important legal consequences, and because brokers are not attorneys it directs the broker to recommend that the parties get legal and tax counsel. “Not required” is not “never worth it” — an unusual ownership structure, a messy title, or an estate sale are all good reasons to bring in a lawyer.
The upside of a standardized contract is real: both sides work from the same document, with the same defined structure, drafted by a state body rather than by whichever party’s attorney got there first.
Dates and Deadlines: the engine of the deal
The Colorado contract contains a table of dates and deadlines, and once you are under contract that table governs everything that happens next. It covers the major checkpoints of the transaction — title review, the loan, the appraisal, inspection, and closing — each with its own date.
These dates are negotiated, not fixed by law. They are filled in for your specific transaction. Two houses bought the same week can have completely different timelines. Whenever you read general advice quoting a specific number of days, check it against your own contract — yours is the one that counts.
Most contingencies work as a pair of deadlines: one date to raise an issue, a later one to resolve it. Miss the first and you generally lose the right to raise that issue at all.
Earnest money
When your offer is accepted you put up earnest money — a deposit showing you are serious, credited toward your purchase at closing. The contract specifies the amount and the deadline for delivering it. Both are negotiated terms of your deal, not statutory figures.
Earnest money is the thing at risk if you walk away outside of your contract rights. Used properly, the contingencies in the contract are what protect it.
Inspection
An inspector examines the house and reports what they find — structure, roof, drainage, electrical, plumbing, mechanical systems, evidence of pests or moisture. This is the part of the process where you learn what you are actually buying, and it is not a formality.
Inspection runs on that pair of deadlines. By the objection deadline, you deliver a written description of what you want addressed. By the resolution deadline, you and the seller either reach written agreement or the contract can terminate — which, when your rights are intact, means recovering your earnest money.
An inspection report is a list of findings rather than a verdict. Some items are worth negotiating over; others are ordinary for a house of that age and construction. Telling them apart is most of the work.
Radon: required disclosure since 2023
Colorado’s radon disclosure law took effect in August 2023. Every contract of sale for residential real property must now carry a specific radon warning in bold-faced type, and the contract or the Seller’s Property Disclosure must disclose what the seller knows about the property’s radon: whether it has been tested, the most recent records and reports, any concentrations detected or mitigation performed, and whether a mitigation system has been installed. The seller must also give you a copy of the state health department’s radon brochure.
Colorado has good reason for the requirement. In the text of the law, the legislature found that elevated radon levels have been detected in every Colorado county, that nearly half of all homes tested in Colorado come back at or above the EPA’s action level of four picocuries per liter, and that radon exposure is responsible for the deaths of approximately five hundred Coloradans a year.
One thing to understand clearly: disclosure is not testing. The law requires a seller to tell you what they know. It does not require them to find out. If a house has never been tested, “never tested” is a complete and lawful answer — and the testing is then yours to arrange. The legislature also noted that a Colorado home can have elevated radon even when its neighbors do not, so a neighbor’s clean result tells you nothing about the house you are buying.
Title, appraisal, and the loan
Running alongside the inspection are three other reviews, each with its own deadlines in the contract.
- Title — you receive and review title documents, and raise objections to anything that clouds ownership: easements, liens, covenants, restrictions.
- Appraisal — your lender’s valuation. If it comes in below the contract price, the contract gives you defined options.
- Loan — your financing has to actually come through. The contract sets the date by which financing problems must surface.
Each has a date attached. Each date passing without action narrows what you can do afterwards.
Final walkthrough and closing
Before closing you walk the property again — confirming agreed repairs were done, that included items are still there, and that nothing has changed since you last saw it. Then you sign, funds transfer, and the house is yours.
Two things people get wrong about buying in Colorado
“I need to hire a real estate lawyer.” Not for a standard residential transaction using the Commission-Approved Forms. Recommended in the contract, genuinely useful in complicated deals — but not a required step, and not the way most Colorado closings run.
Debt-to-income rules of thumb from the internet. A great deal of homebuying advice online is written for other countries and quietly reproduced on American websites. Qualification standards differ by loan program and by lender, and they change. Get your numbers from a lender who will actually be making you the loan, not from an article — including this one.
The Colorado process is well-structured and, once you can see the shape of it, quite navigable. The contract is standardized, the deadlines are explicit, and the disclosures are required. What it asks of you is attention at the right moments — which is exactly what an agent is for.