Why 65% is much harder than it sounds

The threshold is sixty-five percent of votes allocated, not sixty-five percent of votes cast. Every unit that does not vote counts against the motion. In a community with absentee owners, investor owners, or ordinary apathy, a board can win a lopsided vote among participants and still fall short.

There is a drafting artifact worth knowing about. Subsection (1)(d)(III) — the list of votes excluded from the calculation, covering declarant-held units and units owned by banks and mortgagees — still opens “for purposes of calculating the required majority vote under this subsection (1)(d) only.” The 2025 act amended the cross-reference in the introductory portion without relabelling that phrase, so the exclusion list now applies to a sixty-five percent threshold while still calling it a majority calculation. The exclusions help a board — they shrink the denominator — and confirming which votes come out of it before counting is the first thing to do, not the last.

Practically, this means a defect campaign has to be planned around the annual meeting calendar, with proxies and a real turnout effort, rather than run as a board resolution with a confirmatory vote attached.

The repair-first mandate changes budgeting

Boards have historically treated a defect recovery as a financial event: money arrives, the board decides what the community most needs. Subsection (5) removes that discretion for the portion of the recovery that corresponds to the defect. Two consequences follow.

First, reserve planning should not assume a defect settlement is available for anything else. A study that shows a funded ratio improving because a settlement is expected is a study built on money the statute has already spent.

Second, the sequencing of a settlement and a special assessment matters. Where the recovery is less than the repair cost — the common case — the shortfall is still the association's to fund, and the statute does not change the assessment machinery for raising it.

The changes that apply to every claim, not just program claims

Two provisions in the same act are easy to miss because they sit in CDARA rather than CCIOA, and they favour the claimant.

Mandatory document production. By the earlier of a settlement offer or sixty days after actual notice of claim, a non-design construction professional must give the claimant, to the extent in its possession, custody or control: all plans, specifications and soil reports; maintenance and preventive-maintenance recommendations; the name, last-known address and scope of work of every construction professional who contracted for and performed related work; all third-party inspection documents plus the inspector's name and address; and copies of every related insurance policy from the earlier of substantial completion through the notice-of-claim date. Reasonable copying costs may be charged for everything except the subcontractor list.

The sanctions have real bite. Failing to give the subcontractor identifying information by the nonparty-at-fault designation deadline bars designating that unidentified professional as a nonparty at fault later. And failing to produce plans, specifications or soil reports means the claimant need not comply with the certificate-of-review requirement at all.

An insurer cannot punish a repair offer. New C.R.S. 13-20-803.5(13) provides that an insurer “shall not cancel, deny, or reduce coverage” on an existing liability policy because the construction professional made an offer to repair or settle — though any settlement or repair agreement that affects coverage remains subject to insurer approval.

What to watch next

No Colorado appellate court has construed the amended C.R.S. 38-33.3-303.5, and none is likely to soon: the act reaches only claims brought on or after August 6, 2025. Appellate treatment of the sixty-five percent threshold is a 2027 question at the earliest.

Meanwhile, one widely repeated claim about 2025 Colorado construction-defect law does not survive reading the opinion. Several summaries described the Court of Appeals as having clarified the “control exception” to CDARA's statute of repose in Kritzer v. Qwest Corp., 2025COA54. The published opinion expressly declined to reach it — “the district court has yet to make those findings. And we're not going to do so here” — leaving the question for remand. The control exception remains unsettled.