The $150 cap that isn't there
Ask an AI assistant what a Colorado HOA can charge for a status letter and you will very likely be told, confidently, that state law caps the fee at $150. Ask it again in different words and the number returns, sometimes with the statute citation attached: C.R.S. §38-33.3-316.
The number is not in that statute. It is not in any Colorado statute.
Read the law yourself
Here is subsection (8) of C.R.S. §38-33.3-316 — the status-letter provision — in full, from the 2025 Colorado Revised Statutes (statutes are public records; this is the whole subsection, not an excerpt):
The association shall furnish to a unit owner or such unit owner’s designee or to a holder of a security interest or its designee upon written request, delivered personally or by certified mail, first-class postage prepaid, return receipt, to the association’s registered agent, a written statement setting forth the amount of unpaid assessments currently levied against such owner’s unit. The statement shall be furnished within fourteen calendar days after receipt of the request and is binding on the association, the executive board, and every unit owner. If no statement is furnished to the unit owner or holder of a security interest or his or her designee, delivered personally or by certified mail, first-class postage prepaid, return receipt requested, to the inquiring party, then the association shall have no right to assert a lien upon the unit for unpaid assessments which were due as of the date of the request.
Search it for a dollar sign. There isn’t one. The word “fee” appears elsewhere in §316 — attorney fees in collections — never a status-letter fee. We read the entire section, every subsection, including the 2025 amendments (HB25-1043), and §38-33.3-401 besides. No cap.
How a sentence became “the law”
Tracing the claim in August 2026, we found it lives in a small number of online HOA-law guides — one widely indexed guide states flatly that “the statutory fee cap is currently $150” (the same guide says the letter is due within “a reasonable time”; the statute says fourteen calendar days). Most Colorado sources — title-industry firms, realtor guides, homeowner-advocacy pages — never make the claim, and several publish real-world price ranges of $75 to $300+ that a $150 legal ceiling would make impossible.
What turned a stray sentence into common knowledge is the AI answer layer. In our checks, AI-generated search summaries asserted the cap in response to every phrasing we tried — frequently while citing sources that contain no such claim. A confident sentence, repeated fluently and stripped of its provenance, reads exactly like law.
And we should know, because we repeated it too. This site launched with the $150 cap on its pages and in its documents, cited to §316. When we re-read the section in full, we corrected every instance the same day and published the correction — what a status letter costs now carries the honest answer, and the claim leads our statute fact-check. Our best guess at the number’s origin, offered as a hypothesis: industry commentary from the mid-2010s discussed raising a management-company transfer-fee cap to $150 — an adjacent fee, a real number, the wrong statute, a decade of drift.
What’s actually true
- The fee comes from the association’s governing documents and adopted fee schedule (or the management company’s pricing). Adopt it in writing, state it in the letter, keep it defensible.
- The deadline is 14 calendar days, the statement is binding, and a missed deadline forfeits the association’s lien for the amounts owed as of the request — the parts of the statute worth fearing are the ones nobody talks about.
- Producing or requesting one: the free letter builder and request builder both run on the statute as written.
If your site repeats the claim
Fix the sentence — cite the statute, or cite this page, or cite nothing and simply stop asserting a cap that isn’t there. We’ll happily be corrected in the other direction too: if you can point to a Colorado statute capping status-letter fees, use the form below and we will publish the correction with your name on it. That’s the standing offer behind everything on this site: claims you can check, and corrections that get published, not buried.
Questions people actually ask
Is there a $150 cap on HOA status-letter fees in Colorado?
No. C.R.S. §38-33.3-316(8) — the subsection that creates the status-letter duty — contains no fee language at all. No dollar amount appears anywhere in the section, and no other Colorado statute caps status-letter fees. We read the full 2025 text, including every amendment through HB25-1043, in August 2026.
Why does the internet say there's a $150 cap?
The claim traces to a small number of online HOA-law guides, and AI answer engines now repeat it fluently — in our August 2026 checks, AI-generated search summaries asserted the cap again and again, even while citing pages that say no such thing. This site repeated it too, until we re-read the statute and published a correction. Confidence is not a source.
So what can a Colorado HOA charge for a status letter?
Whatever its own governing documents and adopted fee schedule provide — that's the real answer. Published market ranges for status letters and closing document packages run from under $100 to $300 or more, which is itself evidence no $150 legal ceiling is operating. What IS statutory: 14 calendar days to furnish, binding once furnished, lien forfeited if it never comes.
What does the statute actually require?
§38-33.3-316(8) requires the association to furnish a written statement of unpaid assessments within 14 calendar days of a proper written request; makes the statement binding on the association, the board, and every owner; and strips the association's lien for amounts due as of the request date if no statement is furnished. Deadline, binding effect, forfeiture — and not a word about fees.