DSCR Loan Colorado 2026: 1,557 Loans, 122 Lenders, New Tax Rates

Colorado is a small DSCR market, and a growing one

The headline for Colorado is not size. In 2025 Colorado lenders originated 9,959 conventional investor-property mortgages, and 1,557 of them (15.6%) were DSCR-type. In Texas the share is 25.7% and in Florida 42.4% (see our Texas page and our Florida page, same federal definition). A Front Range investor is therefore more likely than a Texan or Floridian to hold a loan underwritten on personal income. Colorado made 1,744 investor loans with a debt-to-income ratio reported, at a 6.875% median, against 1,557 DSCR-type loans at 7.125%.

Colorado DSCR-type loans, 2024 and 2025 (federal HMDA data, our arithmetic)

Two readings. First, the rate fall is large and broad: the median dropped 0.375 points, and the share of loans at or under 7% rose from under a third to nearly half. Second, treat the 57.4% jump in loan count with care. Business-purpose investor loans rose 19.5%, and the share of them reported with no debt-to-income ratio went from 41.5% to 51.4%. Some of the extra DSCR-type loans were therefore loans that earlier files reported with a ratio, or a larger no-ratio product mix, and not purely new demand (our arithmetic). The 2024 file is the FFIEC's one-year dataset and the 2025 file its snapshot dataset, both downloaded on October 22, 2026.

Who lends: 122 lenders, most of them behind a broker

Colorado has no home-grown DSCR giant in the data. The largest reporter is a wholesale mortgage company that sells only through brokers.

Top 15 Colorado DSCR-type lenders, 2025, with their 2024 loan counts

What stands out:

• Brokers dominate. 67.8% of Colorado DSCR-type loans were not submitted directly to the lender, and the loans that came directly had a slightly lower median rate (7% against 7.125%). Of the top 15, nine lenders took 97% or more of their loans through brokers.
• Churn is high. Champions Funding went from 9 loans to 98, HomeXpress from 4 to 58, Arc Home from 6 to 41, while Deephaven fell from 101 to 41. As with the reporting note above, some of this is how a company labels its loans from one year to the next.
• Banks are a footnote. Banks and credit unions (names containing Bank, Credit Union, Federal or N.A.) made 100 DSCR-type loans, 6.4% of the total. The largest were FirstBank (16) and ANB Bank (15) (our arithmetic).
• The lender list is long and thin. 37 lenders made 10 or more loans, and 32 made exactly one.

Kiavi, Visio, Lima One and Velocity in Colorado

The four platform lenders our readers ask about are small here. Kiavi Funding reported 54 DSCR-type loans (12 in 2024) at a 7.375% median and a $195,000 median loan, plus 235 short-term no-DTI investor loans at a 9.95% median (193 at 10.95% in 2024). Investor Mortgage Finance, the Visio Lending affiliate, reported 22 DSCR-type loans at 7.312%. Velocity Commercial Capital reported 14 at 9.865%, LendingOne 17 at 6.97%, and Lima One 7 DSCR-type loans plus 19 short-term ones. These are HMDA-visible loans only.

Does Kiavi lend in Colorado? Its own states page says: “Kiavi currently offers hard money loans to entities in AL, AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, and WY as well as Washington D.C.” Its site footer adds that bridge loans on Colorado property “are originated and funded by Kiavi Funding, LLC” and that “All DSCR and Rental Loans are originated and funded by Figure Lending LLC dba Figure effective 9/1/2026.” So 2025 Colorado loans appear in HMDA under Kiavi Funding, Inc., and rental loans made after September 1, 2026 are Figure Lending's (see our Kiavi review and the Figure Technology Solutions explainer). We read kiavi.com on October 22, 2026; the states page does not itself list states for the DSCR product.

Where in Colorado: Pueblo leans on DSCR loans, Denver on short-term ones

Five counties on the Front Range made over half the loans: Denver (210), El Paso (174), Arapahoe (170), Adams (136) and Pueblo (126), 52.4% together. The top 10 counties made 1,220 of the 1,557 (78.4%). 44 of Colorado's counties had at least one, 23 had at least 10 and only 6 had 100 or more.

Colorado counties with 50 or more DSCR-type loans in 2025

• Pueblo is the DSCR county. One investment-property loan in three (32.5%) was DSCR-type, at the highest median rate of the ten (7.397%) and a $155,000 median loan, under half the state's $335,000. A Pueblo median loan at that rate carries principal and interest of $1,072.87 a month (our arithmetic).
• Denver and Jefferson are flip markets first. For every 100 DSCR-type loans, Denver County had 132.9 short-term no-DTI investor loans and Jefferson County 148.2. Our hard money loans pages read the same file for other states; for Colorado, the short-term count is simply a signal that rehab and bridge money is the larger business in those two counties.
• Resort counties are tiny and expensive. Summit had 33 DSCR-type loans (median loan $545,000, median property value $1,095,000), Eagle 23 ($1,275,000 loans on a $2,015,000 median property), Grand 20 and Pitkin 10. Rates there ran lower (Eagle 6.75%, Summit 6.875%), at a median combined LTV of 54.4% in Summit and 61% in Eagle, below the state’s 70%.

What Colorado's property-tax rewrite does to a rental's DSCR

A DSCR is rent divided by the monthly payment that includes property tax, so the tax line is part of the denominator. Colorado has changed its residential assessment rates in nearly every recent year, and the rewrite applies to rentals, not just owner-occupied homes.

Colorado residential valuation for assessment, as set by HB24B-1001 (the August 2024 special-session act) and certified

Three facts about those rows. The enacted text applies the 2026 residential rates to “all residential real property other than qualified-senior primary residence real property”, so a rental gets the same treatment as a homestead except for the senior exemption. The 2026 rate depends on a determination by the State Board of Equalization that we could not find published on October 22, 2026; the Garfield County assessor, among others, already lists “Residential – School 7.05% Local Governments 6.8%”, the five-percent-or-less case. And values themselves move on a schedule: Denver’s assessor says Colorado requires re-appraisal “every two years”, “in each odd-numbered year (2023, 2025, etc)”, so 2025 values carry into 2026.

Worked example: a Denver County rental, using the HMDA median (our arithmetic)

Denver County’s median DSCR-type loan in 2025 was $355,000 at 7.125% on a property valued at $545,000. Denver’s assessor publishes 2025 mill levies of 27.328 (local government, with Urban Drainage) and 52.274 (schools), a combined 79.602 mills.

The reading: for a mid-priced Denver rental the 2026 change is about $19 a year, smaller than a rounding error in a rent roll, but the tax itself is 9.3% of the P&I-plus-tax payment and lifts the rent needed for a 1.25 DSCR by $306 a month over a P&I-only test. The 2026 mill levies are certified in December 2026, so the example holds 2025 mills constant. The bigger swings came from the 2025 reappraisal and the removal of the earlier value reduction, which Denver’s assessor describes as “removing the value reduction applied to actual value from all property types”. Our DSCR calculator lets you put in the tax line for your own county.

When a short-term rental stops being residential

Colorado’s definitions carry a trap for owners with several vacation units. In C.R.S. 39-1-102, “hotel units” means “more than four residential unit ownership equivalents in a project” owned by one person or a group of related persons who use the units in a business to provide lodging “predominantly on an overnight or weekly basis”. A residential unit that is a hotel unit is part of “hotels and motels”, not residential real property, and the statute’s own provision for computing owners’ shares says taxes are what would be levied “if the hotel unit was residential real property”. On our reading, an investor with five or more condos used as nightly rentals in one project risks the nonresidential class. At Denver’s combined 79.602 mills and the 2025 rate of 27%, the same $545,000 property would owe $11,713.43 a year, 3.99 times the $2,939.36 residential figure (our arithmetic). Owners of four or fewer units are outside that definition. Ask the county assessor, not the lender, which class your property is in.

Short-term rentals: Denver, Colorado Springs and Summit County, three different rules

Colorado leaves short-term rental regulation to cities and counties, and the three largest DSCR markets we can read have three different answers. DSCR lenders that underwrite on short-term rent usually ask for a license, which is why the local rule decides whether the loan is available at all (see our short-term rental DSCR page for how lenders treat the income).

Short-term-rental rules in three Colorado jurisdictions, read from the government pages on October 22, 2026

Denver is the sharpest. Its assessor’s licensing page says the city “requires hosts to get a license to offer a short-term rental in their primary residence”, and defines that as “the place in which a person's habitation is fixed for the term of the license and is the person's usual place of return.” HMDA codes every loan in our count as an investment property; on our reading, that is not the borrower’s primary residence, so Denver’s rule would not license it for short-term rental. In Colorado Springs, the city describes two permit types created on December 26, 2019, and notes “There is not a cap on the number of short term rentals being approved; however, limitations are in place for non-owner occupied properties.” Summit County says its caps “will be achieved by natural attrition (when a property sells or an STR owner no longer wishes to have a license)”.

The lending data shows how small the resort-market DSCR loan is: Summit’s 33 loans and Eagle’s 23 in 2025 were 3.6% of the state total. Whether a lender will count short-term income at a given address is a lender rule that HMDA does not record. Our DSCR with an LLC page covers the entity side.

Landlord-tenant law since 2023: what changed and what a lender will not see

Four state rules shape a Colorado rental’s cash flow. None enters a DSCR formula, which divides rent by the debt payment, but they change timing, deposits and eviction paths, which an investor should know when sizing reserves.

Colorado landlord-tenant rules read from the statute text and Division of Real Estate summaries

On a $3,300 monthly rent, the deposit cap is $6,600 (our arithmetic). The HB25-1240 change lengthens the minimum eviction path for nonpayment, which raises the vacancy-and-legal-cost reserve a careful owner holds against a late-paying tenant; it does not change how a DSCR lender reads rent. The Division of Real Estate also describes HB25-1249 as updating “normal wear and tear” and allowing either party to request a walk-through before the lease ends. We do not read the statutes as changing the rent a lender will underwrite. We could not find any lender guideline tied to these rules, and HMDA does not carry one.

What a Colorado payment looks like at each rate

The middle half of Colorado DSCR-type borrowers paid between 6.75% and 7.5% in 2025, with the 10th percentile at 6.499% and the 90th at 7.99%. On the $335,000 median loan, the 30-year fixed principal and interest is:

Monthly principal and interest on $335,000, 30-year fixed, at each Colorado 2025 rate (our arithmetic)

The fall in the median from 7.5% to 7.125% is worth $85.41 a month, $1,024.94 a year, on that loan. From the 25th to the 75th percentile the payment differs by $169.56 a month, $2,034.78 a year. Rates did not move much with loan size: the median was 7.375% under $150,000, 7% from $150,000 to $299,999, 7.125% at $300,000 to $499,999, and 6.875% on the 81 loans of $1,000,000 or more. By loan-to-value, loans at 60% or less had a 6.875% median and those over 70% to 75% had 7.25%.

How we read the federal file

The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) file lists every loan a reporting lender originates, with its note rate, amount, loan-to-value, purpose, county and lender. We downloaded the Colorado files for 2024 and 2025 from the FFIEC HMDA Data Browser on October 22, 2026 and computed everything on this page from them (our arithmetic). We keep a loan if it is a conventional first lien on a one-to-four unit investment property, closed-end, not a reverse mortgage, made for a business purpose, with debt-to-income reported as NA and a term of 30 years or more. Colorado had 121,939 conventional originations in 2025; 9,959 were investment property, 6,726 of those business-purpose and 3,454 of those with no DTI. The 1,557 DSCR-type loans are the 30-year-or-longer part of the last group. Our what is a DSCR loan page explains the loan itself, and our DSCR lenders ranked by loans page reads the national file.

Limits, so you can weigh the numbers:

• A proxy, not a census. Other no-DTI business loans fall into the group, and so do loans to entities (19% of the 2025 Colorado loans).
• Rates, not prices. Discount points were reported on 0% of these loans and the prepayment-penalty term is NA on 100%; the file has no credit score, rent or DSCR ratio.
• Rounded amounts. Loan amounts are band midpoints (100% of the DSCR-type amounts end in 5,000), so medians land on multiples of $5,000.
• Small counts. Resort-county figures rest on 10 to 33 loans; read them as direction, not as a rate.
• Statutes were read in the form we saved. The bill text is the enacted HB24B-1001; some statute sections are read on colorado.public.law, which says it is current through Fall 2025. 2026 assessment rates depend on a State Board of Equalization determination we could not find on October 22, 2026.

What a Colorado investor can do with this

1. Price both doors outside the DSCR product. In Larimer, Jefferson, Douglas and Boulder counties DSCR-type loans were only 11.9% to 13% of investor loans; income-qualified investor loans had a 6.875% median against 7.125%. Our DSCR versus conventional comparison shows which one a property clears.
2. Put your county’s tax line into the DSCR. Use the assessor’s 2025 mill levies and the 2026 rates in the table above, and confirm in December 2026 when levies are certified. A rental where tax is 9% of the payment is not one where a 1.25 DSCR ignores it.
3. Check the license before the contract. In Denver a purchased investment property is not eligible for a short-term license; in Colorado Springs the 500-foot rule applies; in Summit County two basins are over their caps. Until you hold the license, the safe figure is long-term rent.
4. Ask who funds the loan. 67.8% of loans came through brokers, and the Kiavi rental product moved to Figure Lending LLC on September 1, 2026 (kiavi.com footer). Ask for a written breakdown of points, fees and the prepayment penalty, which HMDA cannot show.
5. Hold a reserve for the longer eviction path. HB25-1240’s 30-day minimum is a cash-flow cost, not a DSCR input.

FAQ

Related reads: Texas, Florida and California DSCR pages use the same federal data.

Loan-level data: FFIEC/CFPB HMDA Data Browser, originated conventional loans for Colorado, 2024 and 2025, downloaded October 22, 2026 (request URLs are in the data file; the scripts and our_arithmetic files are in sources/); definitions from the FFIEC HMDA field list and the Regulation C commentary; lender names from the FFIEC filer lists; county names from the Census Bureau 2020 county list; assessment rates from the enacted text of House Bill 24B-1001 as published by the Colorado General Assembly, the Division of Property Taxation bulletin of October 15, 2025, C.R.S. 39-1-102 and the Denver and Garfield County assessors’ pages; short-term-rental rules from the City and County of Denver, the City of Colorado Springs and Summit County websites; landlord-tenant rules from C.R.S. 38-12-102.5 and 38-12-105 and the Colorado Division of Real Estate summaries of HB25-1240 and HB25-1249; Kiavi statements from kiavi.com. All percentiles, medians, shares, tax and payment figures are our arithmetic. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice, and not a loan offer.