Every board that has switched management companies knows the version of this story where it goes badly. The new company is in place, dues need to go out, and the old company is not returning calls. Somewhere in a filing cabinet or an old email account are the minutes, the contracts, the ledger history, and nobody can get to them until someone decides to send them.
Colorado just put a deadline and a price on that story. Starting August 12, 2026, when HB26-1099 takes effect, a Colorado association that changes management companies will have a former manager who is legally required to hand everything back within 45 days, at no charge, or start owing the association money for every business day it doesn't.
What the law actually requires
HB26-1099, signed by Governor Polis on April 13, 2026, does two things. The one that matters most for records applies when an association with a management company (not a self-managed one) switches to a new company. Once it takes effect, the outgoing manager will have 45 days to deliver, at no charge, all association property, records, money, and accounts to the new manager or the association itself.
Miss that window, and the penalty isn't symbolic. Unless the association agreed otherwise in writing, the former manager owes the association $250 for every business day the handover is late, plus any interest or late fees the association racks up because it couldn't pay its own bills without its records, plus whatever other damages resulted. If a court finds the delay was willful, the former manager is on the hook for triple the association's actual damages, on top of the association's attorney fees and court costs.
That "unless otherwise agreed in writing" is the kind of detail a management contract can already touch, so a board actually stuck past the deadline should get its attorney to confirm how the statute applies to their specific contract, not treat this post as the final word.
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The bill's second provision is narrower: before a developer can hand control of a new community over to its homeowners, the developer will have to pay for an independent 30-year reserve study first, done by a professional with no business relationship with, or financial interest in, the developer. It's a separate protection, aimed at communities being born rather than communities in transition, but it comes from the same instinct: don't let the party stepping away leave the association holding an incomplete picture of what it owns and what it owes.
Why this isn't just a Colorado story
Every board that manages, or has ever managed, a transition between management companies has lived some version of the 45-day problem, whether or not their state puts a number on it. The delay is rarely malicious. It's usually just nobody's priority once the contract is over, which is exactly why a deadline with teeth changes the incentive.
Community managers feel the other side of this. When you're bringing on a new client that just left a prior firm, how fast you can get their history, their vendor list, and their ledger determines how many weeks it takes before you can actually manage the community instead of reconstructing it.
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The fix that doesn't wait on state law
A 45-day clock and a $250-a-business-day penalty are real teeth if a board ever needs them. But the better position is not needing them at all, because the association's own records were never the outgoing manager's to hold onto in the first place.
That's what HOA-OS's full data export is for. Any org admin can download the community's records, documents, and financials at any time, in a standard format, without asking a management company's permission or waiting on its cooperation. And when a board brings a new manager, or brings management in-house, on to HOA-OS, the import hub (Community plan and up) carries members, vendors, and opening balances over from wherever the community was before, with a full preview and an undo if something's wrong. We've laid out exactly how that works in how to move your HOA records out of a management company.
Colorado boards get a legal deadline this August. Every board, in every state, can have the same protection today: keep the records somewhere the association controls, so a management change is a decision the board makes, not a negotiation it has to win.