Mortgage Note Investing in Colorado

Colorado runs foreclosures through a public trustee — a state-specific official who conducts the sale rather than a private trustee or a court — and the process typically takes around five months. Since a 2008 reform, the property owner has no post-sale right of redemption (Colo. Rev. Stat. §38-38-302); redemption now belongs only to junior lienholders who file an intent to redeem. For a first-lien note buyer, that means a clean exit without an owner buy-back window.

The headline caution is Colorado's HOA super-lien. The common-interest-ownership act gives an association a six-month super-priority that sits ahead of a prior-recorded first deed of trust (Colo. Rev. Stat. §38-33.3-316). On any property in an HOA or condo association, six months of assessments can come off the top before your lien is satisfied — price that in on every governed file.

The roughly five-month timeline is moderate — slower than Texas or Arizona, faster than the judicial Northeast — and deficiency judgments remain available. The distinctive items to underwrite here are procedural: the public-trustee mechanics and the super-lien, not the borrower's ability to redeem.