Denver, CO Development Impact Fees (2026)

Denver is a home-rule city/county. Its PRIMARY residential development charge is the Affordable Housing Linkage Fee (Expanding Housing Affordability ordinance, D.R.M.C. Ch. 27 Art. V / Ord. 20220426), assessed on gross floor area (GFA, per IBC) at building-permit issuance. Residential: $5.00/sf for dwelling units of 1,600 sf or less, $8.00/sf for units over 1,600 sf (threshold based on TOTAL unit size, not scope of work). For an ~2,000-2,500 sf single-family home the >1,600 sf rate ($8.00/sf) applies, ~$16,000-$20,000.

Important exemptions

(1) New detached/attached ADUs do NOT trigger the linkage fee. (2) Residential projects of 10 or more dwelling units are subject to the Mandatory Affordable Housing (MAH) requirement (build income-restricted units or pay an alternative/buyout), NOT the linkage fee, so the per-unit linkage fee shown applies to small residential (single, two-unit, or 9-or-fewer-unit buildings).

What does not exist in denver

Denver has NO citywide transportation/road impact fee, NO parks impact fee, NO school impact fee (Colorado does not authorize school impact fees and Denver does not levy one), and NO citywide fire/police or drainage impact fee. The one exception is the GATEWAY IMPACT FEE (Ord. 863, Series 2000), which applies ONLY within the ~4,500-acre Gateway/Green Valley Ranch area of far-NE Denver; it is geographically limited (not citywide) and current per-unit amounts were not verifiable, so it is excluded from the fee rows and noted here. WATER (Denver Water, a separate enterprise serving most of Denver): one-time System Development Charge (SDC / tap fee). Single-family SDC = base charge + per-square-foot charge based on PROPERTY/LOT square footage ($3,380 base + 7,000 sf x $1.01 = $10,450 at the July 1, 2026 full rate, matching Denver Water's own published example of a 7,000-sf-lot home). SDCs were raised effective 2026 (first increase since 2013) in a two-step phase-in: Jan 1-Jun 30, 2026 (interim) then July 1, 2026 (full). July 1, 2026 figures are used as primary. SEWER (collected by Denver DOTI via the Sewer Use & Drainage Permit): the connection charge has two parts per the 2026 Sewer Permit Fees schedule, a Denver SAFE (Sanitary sewer services Availability FEe) of $410/unit and a METRO fee of $6,070/unit that funds Metro Water Recovery (a SEPARATE regional wastewater district), total $6,480/unit for single-family. Storm-drainage charges in Denver are an ongoing utility bill, not a one-time development connection fee.

Verify

Independently re-checked all sources on 2026-06-16. Confirmed verbatim from re-fetched live sources: Denver Water news page (SF SDC $10,450, exact quote present), Denver Water 2026 SDC schedule (interim SF base $3,205 + $0.86/sf; multifamily inside-Denver tiers first-two $12,350 / next-6 $2,710 / over-8 $2,170, all exact), and DOTI 2026 Sewer Permit Fees PDF (SFR SAFE $410 / METRO $6,070 / total $6,480; 3/4-inch tap 2.0 SFRE $820/$12,140/$12,960; effective for all SUDP permits issued/paid on or after Jan 1, 2026, all exact). The official GFA Calculation Guide FAQ (source 5) was extracted and confirms the two-tier 1,600-sf threshold, the 9-or-fewer-units scope, the ADU exemption, and the 10+ unit Mandatory Affordable Housing carve-out. The linkage fee estimator XLSX (source 0) could NOT be opened from this environment: denvergov.org blocked every access method (curl timeout, WebFetch timeout, Google Docs viewer 'couldn't preview', cross-origin/same-origin browser fetch 'Failed to fetch', direct navigation error page), so the exact spreadsheet cell quotes could not be confirmed. The $8.00/sf >1,600-sf rate is independently corroborated by a secondary source (Stonebrook Construction Group: 'the applicable rate is $8 per sq ft'), so those rows were kept but confidence downgraded high->medium. The $5.00/sf lower tier (1,600 sf or less) had NO independent confirmation and its exact quote was unverifiable, so that row was DROPPED. Confirmed 9 of 10 rows; dropped 1 (linkage fee 1,600-sf-or-less $5/sf tier: rate/quote unconfirmable, no secondary corroboration); excludeFromTotal corrections: none, all flags already correct (interim water SDC, combined sewer SAFE+METRO total, and multifamily 3/4-inch meter-size sewer variant are properly excluded from the representative single-family total to avoid double-counting; the representative SF total of water $10,450 + sewer SAFE $410 + sewer METRO $6,070 plus the per-sqft linkage fee is sane and not double-counted).