The photo at the top of this page is a driveway in Colorado Springs, taken this week. Everything in that pile came out of a rental house after the tenants were evicted. Plastic storage crates, a broken shelving unit, area rugs, trash bags, a dead pine, and the accumulated debris of people who stopped caring about the place a long time before they left it. At 6,035 feet, with 100-plus freeze-thaw cycles a year and indoor winter humidity down at 10 to 20 percent, a vacant Colorado Springs house comes apart faster than it would almost anywhere else, and this one sat empty through the worst of it.
Inside was worse. Stair balusters knocked loose and split at the base. Handrail chewed up down to bare wood. Carpet on the stairs ground so far past cleaning that the pattern is just stains now. And a basement that flooded when a supply line let go while the house sat vacant, with nobody there to hear it. Standing water for days, then mold, and by the time it was discovered, the flooring, the bathroom walls, the basement walls, the doors, and the trim had all been damaged, requiring a complete gut including mold remediation.
The landlord did not do anything wrong. They hired a property manager, they screened the tenants, they collected a deposit. And they still ended up with a five-figure renovation and a hard decision about whether filing an insurance claim would cost them their policy.
If you own rental property in the Pikes Peak region, this is the scenario worth understanding before it happens to you. Here is what it actually costs, what the law lets you recover, and where the money goes.
The short version: as of July 2026, a post-eviction turnover on a three-bedroom Colorado Springs rental runs roughly $1,500 to $3,500 if the damage is cosmetic, $4,000 to $8,000 if flooring and doors are involved, and $8,000 to $25,000 when the house needs a full cleanout plus flooring, trim, and drywall throughout. Add water intrusion and mold and the range moves to $25,000 to $45,000. Colorado caps the security deposit at one month’s rent, so recovery through the deposit covers a small fraction of a heavy turnover. Prevention, documentation, and leak detection carry far more financial weight than anything you can withhold after the fact.
Colorado Landlord Tenant Laws That Apply After an Eviction
Colorado requires cause to evict, gives most tenants a 10-day window to cure before you can file, and caps security deposits at one month’s rent. Those three facts set the outer limit on what you can recover after a tenant destroys a rental, so know them before you build a repair budget. What follows is a working summary for that purpose, not legal advice. Colorado landlord tenant law changed substantially in 2024 and again in January 2026, and anyone holding rental property here should read the current statutes in full or sit down with a real estate attorney. But you cannot plan a repair budget without knowing what the runway looks like, so here is the shape of it.
Colorado changed significantly for landlords in 2024. HB24-1098, signed in April of that year, requires cause to evict or to decline renewal on most residential tenancies. Nonpayment of rent, a material lease violation, a substantial (criminal) violation, and nuisance all qualify. A no-fault termination that fits one of the statutory exceptions requires 90 days’ notice.
For the common cases, nonpayment and lease violation, the notice is a 10-day demand for compliance or possession. If the tenant does not cure or leave, you file a Forcible Entry and Detainer (FED) action, in El Paso County through the 4th Judicial District. Realistically, from first notice to a writ of restitution and an actual set-out, most contested evictions run six to ten weeks. Uncontested ones move faster. Either way, you are not collecting rent during that window, and the house is deteriorating the entire time.
Eviction volume in Colorado has been climbing. Statewide filings passed 25,000 by early August 2024, roughly 10 percent ahead of the prior year’s pace. This is not a rare event anymore.
Then there is the deposit, and this is where a lot of Colorado landlords are about to get surprised.
C.R.S. 38-12-103 has always required the deposit back within 30 days (up to 60 if the lease specifies), with willful withholding exposing you to treble damages plus attorney fees. But HB25-1249, effective January 1, 2026, tightened it considerably:
- Security deposits are now capped at one month’s rent. You cannot collect more up front.
- You cannot withhold for normal wear and tear, or for anything that preexisted the tenancy. The statute also broadened what counts as normal wear and tear to include things like carpet buckling, wall scuffs, and general deterioration from ordinary use.
- You cannot charge a tenant for damage that was not documented at inspection.
- If a tenant asks, you have 14 days to hand over all supporting documentation you hold: photos, inspection forms, receipts, invoices, estimates.
- Carpet cannot be charged against the deposit unless the damage is substantial, did not preexist, and the carpet was not already replaced within the prior 10 years. Interior repainting carries similar restrictions.
- Miss the deadline or the required notices and you waive the right to retain any of it.
The practical takeaway: photograph everything, before and after, with dates. Keep the receipts. Keep the estimates. A move-in condition report with photos is now the single most valuable document in your file. And understand that on a house like the one above, the deposit is going to cover a rounding error’s worth of the total. One month’s rent against a $20,000 renovation is not a recovery plan.
What Junk Removal Actually Costs
Budget $1,200 to $2,500 to empty a three-bedroom Colorado Springs house after an eviction, including a 20-yard roll-off dumpster at $490 to $650, labor, and disposal fees. Before a single repair starts, the house has to be emptied. This is the step landlords underestimate most, because it looks like a weekend of hauling and it is almost never a weekend of hauling.
Junk removal service: the national range is $140 to $400 for partial loads, with a full truckload (roughly 360 to 480 cubic feet) running $400 to $800. A house like the one pictured is not one truckload. Interior furniture, mattresses, appliances, yard debris, and construction demo from the mitigation work together typically run two to four loads.
Roll-off dumpster: in Colorado Springs, a 20-yard roll-off currently runs $490 to $650 for a standard rental period, with sizes across the range landing between roughly $483 and $794. A 20-yard holds about eight pickup loads. For a full-house cleanout plus demo debris, a dumpster on site is usually the cheaper path than repeated service calls, and it lets the demo and the cleanout happen at the same time instead of sequentially.
Watch for the surcharges, because they are where dumpster quotes go sideways:
- Mattresses and box springs carry per-item fees at most El Paso County transfer stations.
- Appliances with refrigerant (fridges, freezers, window AC units) require certified recovery and cannot go in a mixed load.
- Tires, paint, solvents, and electronics are separate streams. The El Paso County household hazardous waste facility takes most of it, but it is a trip, not a pickup.
- Overweight loads. Concrete, tile, and wet carpet are heavy. Wet carpet in particular weighs several times what dry carpet does, and a dumpster that goes over tonnage gets billed by the ton on top of the rental.
Realistic budget for a full post-eviction cleanout on a three-bedroom Colorado Springs house: $1,200 to $2,500 including dumpster, labor, and disposal fees. Add the yard if it was neglected, which it usually was.
The Water Damage Multiplier
Water that runs unnoticed for days in a vacant house turns a plumbing repair into a renovation, with mitigation at $3 to $7.50 per square foot and mold remediation in a finished basement at $18 to $28 per square foot. The variable is not the leak. It is how long it ran. A burst supply line in an occupied house is a bad afternoon. A burst supply line in a vacant house is a renovation.
The difference is time. Water that runs for hours gets extracted and dried. Water that runs for days soaks the slab, wicks up the drywall, saturates insulation, gets under the flooring, and by the time anyone opens the door there is visible growth. Colorado’s dry air (10 to 20 percent indoor relative humidity in winter) helps a little on the drying side, but it does nothing once moisture is trapped behind drywall and under LVP.
Current cost ranges:
| Work | Cost |
|---|---|
| Water damage restoration, national average | ~$3,867 (typical range $1,384–$6,384) |
| Mitigation only (extraction + drying) | $3–$7.50 per sq ft |
| Repair and rebuild after mitigation | $20–$37 per sq ft |
| Mold remediation, unfinished basement | $10–$20 per sq ft |
| Mold remediation, finished basement | $18–$28 per sq ft |
| Mold remediation, typical whole job | $1,200–$3,750 |
The finished basement premium is not a markup. It is demo. Crews have to pull baseboard, cut drywall back above the water line, remove insulation from the stud bays, lift and dispose of flooring and pad, and treat the framing and slab before anything goes back. On a 900 square foot finished basement, remediation alone can run $16,000 to $25,000 before a single new piece of drywall goes up.
After mitigation, you are rebuilding: new subfloor prep, flooring, baseboard, drywall, texture, paint, and often a new shower if the pan or surround was involved. In Colorado Springs, budget $6 to $12 per square foot for basement flooring installed depending on material, plus $4,000 to $9,000 for a standard shower rebuild with tile.
On the insurance question
A lot of landlords in this exact position freeze up, and the fear is legitimate. Non-weather water damage is the single most common homeowner claim type, carriers in Colorado have been tightening aggressively, and a claim history absolutely factors into renewal decisions in a state with our hail loss ratios.
I am a contractor, not an insurance advisor, so take this as a framing rather than advice: get a written scope and estimate from a licensed contractor before you call the carrier. Once you have a real number, you can compare it against your deductible and make an informed decision instead of a fearful one. Plenty of these jobs come in close enough to the deductible that filing was never worth it, and you only learn that by getting the number first. If the number is $25,000, that is a different conversation, and one worth having with an independent agent who can tell you what a claim actually does to your book.
Interior Damage: What Each Line Item Runs
Interior doors run $250 to $450 each installed, baseboard $3.50 to $7 per linear foot, drywall patches $75 to $600, and a full stair railing rebuild $1,800 to $4,500. A post-eviction house rarely needs one of anything.
This is the stair railing from the same house. Balusters split at the base, handrail gouged through the finish, newel post loose in the floor. This is not wear and tear. Wear and tear is a scuffed handrail. This is impact damage.
Here is what the individual pieces cost in the Colorado Springs market, installed:
Doors and trim
- Interior door slab replacement, prehung, painted: $250–$450 each
- Door hardware replacement: $40–$120 per opening
- Baseboard replacement: $3.50–$7 per linear foot installed
- Door and window casing: $4–$9 per linear foot installed
- Full trim package, 1,800 sq ft house: $3,500–$7,000
A post-eviction house rarely needs one door. It needs six, because holes get punched, hinges get torn out, and slabs get kicked. Once you are replacing more than two or three in a run, replacing the whole set is often the better call, because a mismatched door in a hallway is visible to every prospective tenant who walks through.
Stairs and railing
- Individual baluster replacement: $35–$75 each installed
- Handrail replacement and refinish: $400–$1,200 per run
- Newel post reset or replacement: $200–$600
- Full stair railing rebuild: $1,800–$4,500
Drywall
- Small patch (fist hole, door knob): $75–$200 each
- Large patch (over 2 sq ft, texture match): $250–$600
- Full sheet replacement with texture and paint: $400–$900 per room
Texture matching is the part homeowners underestimate, and it is the single most common reason a drywall repair reads as a patch instead of a wall. Colorado Springs builders used knockdown, orange peel, and skip trowel across different eras and subdivisions, and a patch that does not match the surrounding texture reads as damage even after paint.
Paint
- Interior repaint, whole house, 1,800 sq ft: $3,500–$6,500 (painting and finishes)
- Single room: $350–$700
- Priming over smoke, pet, or water staining: add 20–35 percent
Remember the deposit rule here: under the 2026 statute you cannot automatically charge repainting to a departing tenant. Repaint on turnover is a cost of doing business unless the damage is genuinely beyond wear and tear and documented as such.
Flooring
That carpet is not dirty. It is finished. There is a point past which extraction cleaning is money spent to confirm that the carpet needs replacing, and pet contamination that reached the pad and subfloor is always past it.
- Carpet and pad, installed: $3.50–$6.50 per sq ft
- Stair carpet, installed: $12–$25 per stair
- LVP, installed: $5–$9 per sq ft
- Subfloor sealing after pet contamination: $0.75–$1.50 per sq ft
- Subfloor replacement, water or rot damage: $4–$8 per sq ft
If you are choosing new material for a rental rather than matching what was there, durability matters more than looks. Our guide to flooring for Colorado homes covers what holds up at altitude and under tenant use.
The subfloor sealing line is the one people skip and then regret. If urine reached the pad, it reached the subfloor. New carpet over an unsealed contaminated subfloor smells within a month of the first warm day.
The Realistic Total
A post-eviction turnover on a three-bedroom, 1,800 square foot Colorado Springs rental runs $1,500 to $3,500 for cosmetic damage, $4,000 to $8,000 when flooring and doors are involved, $8,000 to $25,000 for a heavy turnover, and $25,000 to $45,000 once water and mold enter the picture. Putting the ranges together:
| Scenario | Scope | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Light turnover | Paint, carpet clean, minor patching, hardware | $1,500–$3,500 |
| Moderate | Above plus carpet replacement, 3–4 doors, trim repair | $4,000–$8,000 |
| Heavy post-eviction | Full cleanout, flooring throughout, doors and trim replaced, extensive drywall, full repaint | $8,000–$25,000 |
| Heavy plus water event | All of the above plus mitigation, mold remediation, basement rebuild, shower replacement | $25,000–$45,000 |
Against a deposit of one month’s rent. That is the actual math, and it is why the documentation and the prevention side matter more than the recovery side.
What Actually Protects You
Quarterly interior inspections, timestamped move-in photos, and a leak-detection shutoff prevent far more loss than anything you can recover from a deposit after the fact. In that order.
Inspect quarterly, in person. Not a drive-by. A property manager who has not been inside the unit in eight months is not managing the property. A burst line, a running toilet, a pet that was never disclosed, and a slow accumulation of junk are all visible early and all cheap early.
Photograph move-in condition, every room, timestamped. Under the 2026 rules, the burden is on you to prove damage did not preexist. No photos means no withholding.
Install a leak detection shutoff. A smart water shutoff with leak sensors runs $500 to $1,200 installed and it is the highest-ROI device you can put in a rental. The house in these photos flooded while vacant. A $600 device would have closed the valve and saved a five-figure remediation. That math is not close.
Winterize between tenancies. A vacant house in Colorado Springs still gets 100-plus freeze-thaw cycles a year and 40-degree daily swings. If it is going to sit through a winter, keep heat at 55 minimum, or drain the system properly.
Sequence the repairs correctly. Cleanout, then mitigation and drying, then demo, then rough repairs, then interior remodeling finishes. Landlords lose real money by starting paint or flooring before the moisture problem is fully resolved, and then paying twice.
Get one contractor for the whole scope. Chasing the lowest bid on each trade is how these projects go sideways, and what cheap contractors actually cost you applies double when the work is hidden behind new drywall. Coordinating a junk hauler, a mitigation company, a flooring installer, a painter, and a trim carpenter separately means five schedules, five invoices, and every gap between trades costs you another week of vacancy. A single flat-rate scope for the rebuild portion removes the coordination cost and gives you one number to compare against your deposit, your reserves, and your deductible.
Post-eviction turnovers are ugly, expensive, and more common in El Paso County every year. They are also finite. The house in these photos will rent again, and it will rent for more than it did before, because everything in it will be new.
If you are staring at a rental that came back destroyed, the first thing you need is an honest written scope so you know what you are actually dealing with. Call (719) 243-9718 for a walkthrough and a flat-rate estimate on the repair work. Licensed, insured, and no hourly surprises while your unit sits vacant.
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