New Construction Condo Reserve Study Questions in Steamboat
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
If you are sitting in a sales office at the base of Steamboat Resort this month, ask the person across the table one question before you sign anything: when was the declaration for this building recorded? Not the closing date. Not the date you expect to move in. The recording date. In two days, on August 12, 2026, a new Colorado law changes what developers owe homeowners' associations before handing over control, and whether it applies to the unit you're buying depends entirely on that one date rather than on how new the building actually is.
That distinction matters more this year than in any year since Steamboat last saw this kind of construction at the base. Nearly $1 billion in planned base-area investment is currently reshaping the resort's core, according to reporting in the Steamboat Pilot & Today, with new base-area pricing climbing toward $2,500 per square foot as tracked by Mile High CRE. At those replacement costs, whether a building starts life with a real capital plan or a guess is not a technicality. It is the difference between predictable dues and a special assessment landing in year three.
For years, Colorado's Common Interest Ownership Act asked associations to adopt a written policy addressing how they would think about reserves. It did not require them to commission an actual study, and it set no minimum funding level. The Colorado Division of Real Estate has been candid about the limits of that framework: there is no regulatory body with authority to enforce compliance, and disputes between owners and their board are treated as civil matters, not something the state will step in to referee.
In practice, that meant a brand-new association could satisfy the letter of the law with a policy document while starting its life with no professional read on what the elevators, the roof membrane, or the underground parking garage would actually cost to maintain over three decades. The buyer signing at closing had no statutory guarantee that anyone independent had ever run those numbers.
House Bill 26-1099, signed by Governor Polis on April 13, 2026, closes that gap for a specific moment in a building's life: the handoff from developer to homeowner-elected board. Once the law takes effect, a declarant of a new planned community or condominium must obtain and pay for a professional reserve study before transferring control, and that study has to project the cost of maintaining, repairing, and replacing every common element over a 30-year period.
The independence requirement is the part worth reading twice. The bill specifies the study must be performed by a professional who has no business relationship with or financial interest in the declarant and is not an affiliate of the declarant. That single clause is designed to stop a developer from producing an in-house number that flatters the sales pitch rather than the building's actual future costs.
Here is the catch that a lot of buyers touring new construction this fall will miss. The law's protections do not reach backward. According to legal analysis of the bill published by the Colorado HOA law firm Orten Cavanagh Holmes & Hunt, the reserve study requirement is not applicable to communities already in existence before August 12, 2026.
A common interest community comes into existence when its declaration is recorded, and a declarant generally has to record that declaration before selling any units. Which means a building that has already launched sales, already opened a model unit, already has buyers under contract, almost certainly already has a recorded declaration sitting in the Routt County records. If that declaration predates August 12, the new reserve-study requirement does not attach to it, no matter how many months are left before the last unit closes or the board takes over.
That is the mechanism buyers need to sit with. New construction and legally covered by the new reserve-study law are not the same thing. One is about when the building was finished. The other is about when the paperwork creating the association was filed. This year, at the base of Steamboat Resort, those two dates are unusually far apart, because most of the buildings people are touring right now have been selling for months.
Steamboat's current construction cycle is not one project. It is several, at very different points in that declaration timeline.
The Stockman, between Slopeside and T-Bar at the base, is the largest of them, a ski-in, ski-out development from Alterra Mountain Company and Marquis Development with an estimated construction cost of more than $550 million, according to Steamboat Pilot & Today. City planning staff have approved the final plat, with conditions tied to drainage and Ski Time Square frontage improvements, and Haselden Construction, the firm behind One Steamboat Place, has been selected to build it. At roughly 440,000 square feet, it will sit alongside the resort's three largest existing buildings, the Steamboat Grand, the Sheraton Steamboat Resort Villas, and One Steamboat Place, each in the 440,000 to 500,000 square foot range. Sales are already underway, which means a declaration almost certainly already sits on file with the county.
The Amble, near the Steamboat Grand, has been selling for a while now, with a majority of its units already under contract. Whatever declaration governs that association was filed long before this law existed.
The Astrid, near Edgemont, is under construction as a ski-in, ski-out project. Powderline, an adaptive reuse of a former bank branch at 2155 Resort Drive into nine condominiums, is under construction now and slated to open for the 2026-2027 ski season, with pricing starting at $1.35 million, according to Mile High CRE and Steamboat Pilot & Today. Both projects already have buyers under contract, which typically means both already have a recorded declaration.
The Vantage, a seven-townhome project three blocks from the ski area designed by architect Bill Rangitsch and built by Colorado Home Solutions, rounds out the current wave with a smaller footprint and the same underlying question mark.
None of this means these developments are poorly reserved. It means the new law's floor, an independent 30-year study paid for by the declarant before turnover, is not something a buyer can assume applies simply because the drywall is new. The wave of construction defining Steamboat's base right now may turn out to be the last generation of associations formed under the old rule, arriving just ahead of the law meant to fix it.
When was the declaration recorded, and has turnover to the homeowner board already happened or is it still pending? This tells you whether HB26-1099 has any legal reach into your building at all.
Has the developer commissioned an independent reserve study voluntarily, even if the law doesn't require it here? Some declarants will do this anyway now that the state has defined what independence looks like. Ask for the name of the firm and confirm it has no financial ties to the developer.
If no study exists, what is the association's current reserve funding policy, and who wrote it? A policy is not a study, but it will tell you whether the board inherited a real plan or a placeholder.
Does this law apply to condos that are already fully built and sold out? No. It only reaches communities whose declarations are recorded on or after August 12, 2026, and it governs the declarant-to-association handoff specifically, not existing buildings that completed turnover years ago.
If my building isn't covered, do I have any leverage to ask for a study anyway? Yes. Nothing prevents a buyer or a group of buyers from making an independent reserve study a condition of purchase, even where the state doesn't require one. Given the pricing at stake in Steamboat's current base-area projects, that ask is reasonable.
Where can I verify when a declaration was recorded? Routt County's real property records will show the recording date. Your closing attorney or title company can pull it directly.
Buying into a building this new is as much about reading the paperwork trail as it is about the finishes. If you're weighing a unit at the base this fall, The Zopf Team can walk through exactly what's been filed, what hasn't, and what to ask for before you commit.
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