The homebuilders suggest that every $1,000 in cost ultimately prices 2,373 Colorado households out of the market.

That model treats every dollar as identical regardless of what it buys. Run it on egress windows, hardwired smoke alarms, GFCI outlets, or the snow-load tables Colorado jurisdictions set above the national standard, and it produces the same result. The figure is an argument against every provision in the code equally. It also assumes the cost passes straight through to the sale price, and the best available evidence says it does not: Across 45 code adoptions in 26 states, the aggregate effect was zero. Builders absorb code costs in margin and in what they choose to build, and buyers sort into what they can afford. On the numbers in the building permit records, a sprinkler system is 1% to 2% of the price of a home. What’s more, this is the very argument for a building code – that there must be standards to protect life and property to prevent a margin-driven race to the bottom.