Why a Colorado association would have cared

Three features of Colorado association claims make a scope dispute uniquely painful, and each maps onto something the bill addressed.

The disagreement is usually about scope, not coverage. After a hail event the carrier and the association typically agree the roof was hit and disagree about how much of it needs replacing. Appraisal — a valuation process rather than a liability determination — is precisely the mechanism built for that disagreement, and today whether it is available depends entirely on whether the policy contains an appraisal clause and on how that clause is worded.

Delay compounds into an assessment. An association cannot defer a roof indefinitely while a scope dispute runs. It either funds the work from reserves, borrows, or levies a special assessment, and then argues about reimbursement. A four-month statutory ceiling on the dispute would have been a ceiling on that exposure.

The third-party assessment right addressed the imbalance boards complain about most. An association that hires its own engineer or roofing consultant currently has no statutory mechanism to force the carrier to re-process on the strength of that report. The bill would have created one.

What actually governs now

Appraisal clauses in Colorado homeowner and association property policies remain governed by the policy language and existing insurance law. There is no statutory mandate, no qualification standard for appraisers, and no statutory timeline. Whether an association has an appraisal right, and what it looks like, is a question about that association's policy.

The practical step for a board is therefore document review rather than legislative hope: read the master policy's appraisal provision at renewal, and know before a loss whether it exists, who selects the appraisers, who pays, and whether it binds.

The contrast with what did pass

The pattern in Colorado's 2026 insurance legislating is worth naming, because it explains the year. The legislature acted on insurance availability and declined to act on claim disputes.

SB26-155, signed June 4, 2026, created the Strengthen Colorado Homes Enterprise inside the Division of Insurance, funded by a fee equal to 0.5% of insurers' multiperil homeowners premium from January 1, 2027, with at least 85% of the revenue going to homeowner grants for hail-resistant roofs. HB25-1182, effective July 1, 2026, made wildfire risk scores disclosable and appealable and required insurers to credit mitigation or discount for it.

Both are about getting and pricing a policy. Neither touches what happens when the carrier and the association disagree about a claim already made — and that, on the state's own evidence, is where Colorado associations are losing money. The Division of Insurance's HB24-1108 market study reported stakeholders describing HOA deductibles that have “climbed to unprecedented levels, sometimes reaching 10%” and renewal quotes that “surged up to eightfold.”

What to watch next

The bill had a single prime sponsor, Representative Rebecca Keltie, with no Senate sponsor and no co-sponsors, and lost 9–4. That is a thin base for a refile.

The likelier route to the same outcome is administrative. The Division of Insurance is working two live projects that touch claim handling: a draft revised Bulletin B-5.57 on insurers' use of aerial imagery in underwriting and claims decisions, whose comment period closed September 1, 2026, and a draft study under HB24-1315 on remediation of property damaged by fire — smoke, soot and ash — whose comment window closed September 11, 2026. The second grew directly out of dozens of complaints the Division received after the 2021 Marshall Fire, and its recommendations include science-based standards, tiered proximity-informed assessment, and post-remediation verification expectations. Neither is a rule yet. Both are closer to a Colorado standard for a claim dispute than anything the legislature produced this year.