On November 23, 2015, the Denver city counsel passed an ordinance on condominium construction defects. Under the ordinance, a project cannot be called defective in a civil action if it was built and maintained in conformance with the building code, and building codes violations can only be cited in a lawsuit only if they can be linked to damage…
The New York Times recently reported on real estate companies that hide behind shell companies to commit fraud against owners of their homes. The article reveals how various homeowners were told unsatisfied promises that resulted in the homeowners losing their homes. In one case, the real estate company promised to refinance two Brooklyn homeowners’…
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock proposed his Bill (BR15-0811) to the Denver City Council. According to the memorandum accompanying the Bill, condominium construction in the Denver metropolitan area comprises less than 4% of all new owner-occupied housing. While high-rise apartment construction in Denver is booming, very little high-rise condominium construction is occurring. Mayor Hancock believes that…
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_27881047/colorado-senate-passes-bill-reducing-time-file-defects As reported by the Denver Post, the Colorado Senate approved SB91, a bill that seeks to shorten the construction defect statute of repose to five years in Colorado. If a defect is noticed in the fifth year, a homeowner would have one year to sue. Currently the statute of repose is six years, and…
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/lumber-liquidators-linked-to-health-and-safety-violations/ Lumber Liquidators will undoubtedly be facing numerous class action and individual lawsuits from homeowners all over the country for its involvement in selling laminate flooring from China with unacceptable levels of formaldehyde. After reading about this issue, the first thing I did was double check that the flooring in my own home came from a reputable source.…
A wonderful realtor and friend of mine sent me an email yesterday asking my opinion about SB 15-177. The Colorado Association of Realtors strongly supports this bill and sent an email blast to all realtors providing its support of the bill. The email to the realtors, in turn, requested that the realtors send an email to their representatives…
In January 2015, we really didn’t know what bills the builders would try to pass in the legislative session. One idea that was wisely rejected was a “right to repair.” I wrote about this on the firm’s facebook page on January 5, 2015 with the following: Below is a recent Denver Post article illustrating [edit:…