Colorado Developers to Build More Next Year
Residential construction to start to boom in Colorado as they need more housing.
According to The Colorado Sun, builders say the reason for the decline is simple: Colorado laws lack guardrails, leaving developers susceptible to costly lawsuits over things like leaks, concrete leveling and defective cabinetry, which in turn makes it too difficult and expensive to find insurers willing to underwrite condo projects. State law prevents builders from limiting buyers’ right to sue and spreads liability for any construction errors among all the contractors and subcontractors who work on a project, even if they didn’t cause the defect.
“It’s not that people don’t want to take responsibility for (their) product,” said Dave Lemnah, president of Lokal Homes, a Colorado developer that builds condos. “They really do want to take responsibility for their condo product. It’s just that we’ve got such an uneven playing field.”
The attorneys filing the lawsuits say builders are just looking to maximize their profits.
“The building industry could easily put me out of a job,” said Chad Johnson, a Colorado lawyer who represents homeowners in lawsuits against builders. “All they have to do is not be negligent.”
Caught in the middle of that power struggle over so-called construction defects liability, playing out in the Capitol and the courts, are Coloradans struggling to find an affordable place to live. The legislature has been reluctant to take on reform because of how politically fraught the topic is. But the failure this year of Gov. Jared Polis’ signature land-use measure, which would have imposed higher residential density zoning rules on local governments, has reignited the push to take on the issue.
Now, a group of Colorado lawmakers is making moves to pass legislation next year aimed at jumpstarting condo construction and easing the housing affordability crisis. Some of their ideas include isolating liability for construction defects claims to the people who did the work and making it easier for builders to resolve a defect before it leads to a lawsuit.
“Policy solutions I’d like to see would be ones that can cut down on litigation,” said state Rep. Shannon Bird, a Westminster Democrat who plans to sponsor a construction defects bill at the Capitol next year.
