Ask two owners in Cherry Hills Park when they filed their building permit, and you'll learn something about their renovation budget that the county assessor never will. One filed in November 2025. The other filed in March 2026. Same lot size, same 1970s ranch coming down, same intention to build a new estate in its place. Their inspectors are working from two different rulebooks, and neither owner chose that on purpose.
That's not a hypothetical stitched together to make a point. Cherry Hills Village's city council amended Chapter 18 of its building code in 2025, formally adopting the 2024 editions of the International Building Code, the International Residential Code, and the International Existing Building Code, with that standard taking effect at the start of 2026. If you're shopping a teardown candidate in this city right now, that single administrative fact will shape your total project cost more than the price per square foot on the comp sheet ever will.
The Corridor Where This Actually Bites
Two areas of the city carry most of the current scrape-and-rebuild activity: the Belleview corridor and Cherry Hills Park, where aging 1960s and 1970s homes on premium lots are steadily being replaced with new estate construction. The arithmetic in these pockets has been fairly consistent. Older ranch homes have been trading in the neighborhood of $1.5 million to $2 million for the land and existing structure, and the new builds that replace them are listing between $3.5 million and $5 million or more. One recent example makes the ceiling on that math concrete: a newly built 11,000-square-foot estate on 2.5 acres on Cherryridge Drive closed at $7.2 million in the twelve months ending in early 2026.
That kind of spread is exactly why buyers in these two corridors are the ones who need to think hardest about permit timing. A buyer closing on a move-in ready home rarely touches Chapter 18 at all. A buyer closing on a teardown candidate is about to file a New Single Family Dwelling permit, or inherit one that's already in progress, and that permit is where the 2024 code transition actually lands.
What Changing Code Editions Mid-Cycle Means for a Buyer
Every jurisdiction that adopts a new code edition creates a transition window, and Cherry Hills Village is no exception. Work that received final inspection and closed out under the prior code edition stands as approved. The risk sits with anything still open when the new edition takes effect. If you buy a lot where the seller started a renovation, pulled a permit, and stalled before finishing, you inherit a plan set that may need to be reconciled against a code your architect wasn't designing to. If you're filing your own permit for a full teardown, you're already working under the 2024 codes from day one, which means your engineer's assumptions about things like exterior wall assemblies and energy code submittal requirements need to reflect the current edition, not a design pulled from a project drawn up a few years earlier.
Here's the practical difference in plain terms:
| Permit closed before the 2024 edition took effect | Permit open or newly filed after | |
|---|---|---|
| Review standard | Prior code edition, as approved | Current 2024 edition |
| Where surprises show up | Rarely, if inspections already passed | Plan review comments, re-inspection requests |
| Buyer's exposure | Low, assuming the file is truly closed | Higher, especially on inherited open permits |
| What to check first | Certificate of Occupancy or closed permit status | Whether the plan set was drawn to the 2024 standard |
The New Disclosure Form Doesn't Close This Gap
Colorado's Real Estate Commission adopted a substantially revised Seller's Property Disclosure form, SPD19, on August 5, 2025, with mandatory use beginning January 1, 2026. It's a meaningful document. Sellers complete it themselves, not their broker, based on their current actual knowledge, and they're obligated to supplement it in writing if a new adverse material fact turns up before closing.
What it isn't is a code compliance report. The form tells you what the seller knows about the property. It doesn't tell you which code edition an open permit will be measured against, and it doesn't flag that the city just went through a code transition. A seller who genuinely doesn't know that their contractor's 2025 permit is now subject to a 2024 standard has nothing to disclose, because they don't know it either. That gap belongs to the buyer's due diligence, not the seller's paperwork.
What to Actually Pull Before You Waive Anything
The city keeps a set of handouts specifically for this kind of project, and pulling the right ones before you write an offer is worth more than another round of comps.
- FAR Worksheet. This tells you how much house the lot legally supports before you fall for a floor plan sized under a different code cycle's allowances.
- Bulk Plane Requirements. Governs how close to the property line and how tall you can build. Worth confirming against the current edition rather than assuming it matches whatever your architect used on a past job.
- Building Height Calculations. Same logic applies here. Height limits get measured differently depending on which code edition is in force.
- NSFD Permit Issue Checklist. This is the actual document your new construction permit gets measured against. Ask whether the copy in your file is the current version.
- Pre-Application Neighborhood Input Meeting Application. For larger projects, the city requires this conversation before it will process your permit. Know the requirements as they stand now, not as they stood when a stalled prior renovation began.
The dirt is easy to price. The permit calendar isn't, and it's the part of the deal an appraisal will never touch.
A Short FAQ
Does this only affect full teardowns, or does a major remodel count too? Any project that requires a building permit in the city falls under Chapter 18, so a substantial remodel with an open or newly filed permit sits under the same transition as a ground-up rebuild. The scale of the project doesn't exempt it from the code in force.
What if the home I'm buying already has a permit that closed before 2026? A permit that received final inspection and closed under the prior code edition should stand as approved. Your attention belongs on anything still open, not on work that's already finaled.
Does the new disclosure form ask about open permits at all? It asks sellers to disclose based on their current actual knowledge, so an open permit should show up if the seller is aware of it. It stops there. Which code edition that permit gets reviewed against is a separate question, and it's one your own due diligence has to answer, not the form.
If you're weighing a teardown lot along the Belleview corridor or in Cherry Hills Park and want someone who'll pull the permit file before you waive anything, Niki Collier is a good place to start that conversation.
