Miscellaneous & related New Mexico laws
Beyond the acts that govern condominium and homeowners’ associations directly, a handful of broader New Mexico laws can still reach your community — and several things people assume about New Mexico law turn out not to be so. A quick orientation, with links to the statutes we host in full.
HOPB reproduces the New Mexico acts that govern community associations in full — they are indexed in the New Mexico HOA Law Guide. This page covers the edges: general-purpose statutes that are not association law but can still reach a community, and a short list of things commonly assumed about New Mexico that the statutes do not bear out.
Because these are broad statutes we do not reproduce in full, each entry below is a brief plain-language summary with its citation; the official text is available from the New Mexico Compilation Commission.
These are not part of the community-association acts indexed in the law guide, but each can bear on a New Mexico community, its developer, or its members in the right situation.
New Mexico’s landlord and tenant statute, and the longest of the related acts. It reaches a community whenever a unit or lot is rented rather than owner-occupied — deposits, notice to enter, repairs, and the grounds and procedure for terminating a tenancy are all here rather than in the association statutes.
It governs the relationship between the owner and the resident. It does not give an association a route to evict someone else’s tenant, and it does not displace the covenants: a tenant is bound by the community documents through the lease and, under § 47-16-18(A), a lot owner’s tenants, guests and invitees must comply with the Homeowner Association Act and the community documents.
One section, and it settles a question that comes up whenever a community debates short-term or long-term rentals. “No political subdivision or any home rule municipality shall enact an ordinance or resolution that controls or would have the effect of controlling rental rates for privately owned real property.”
It binds local government, not your association. A covenant restricting rentals is a private contract among owners and is not what this section prohibits. Subsection C carves out privately owned property for which benefits or funding have been provided under contract by federal, state or local government.
A separate 24-section regime for mobile home parks, with its own rules on the rental agreement, grounds for termination and the resident’s position on sale of the park. If your community is a mobile home park, this Act and not the Homeowner Association Act is likely to be the governing statute — check which before relying on either.
Chapter 47 carries two subdivision regimes — Article 5, subdivisions generally, and Article 6, the New Mexico Subdivision Act governing county approval. They control how land is divided and what a developer must disclose and provide before a community exists. Your community’s plat, its common areas and its private roads exist because of approvals given under them.
Your association’s assessment lien is created by the association statutes — § 47-16-6 for a homeowners’ association and § 47-7C-16 for a condominium — but how liens rank, how a mortgage is foreclosed and how a deed of trust operates are in Chapter 48. Articles 2 (mechanics’ and materialmen’s liens), 7 (mortgages) and 10 (deeds of trust) are the ones that touch a homeowner most often.
Eight sections for an association that is not a corporation at all. It covers filing a statement, articles and rules with the county clerk, holding property, the effect of a member’s death, and suing and being sued.
This page exists because the assumption that every association is a non-profit corporation is exactly that — an assumption. If yours is unincorporated, the Nonprofit Corporation Act does not apply to it of its own force, and this is the article to read instead.
A short chapter, separate from the Human Rights Act, on the admittance of a qualified service animal, penalties for interfering with one, and an offence of falsely presenting an animal as a qualified service animal (§ 28-11-6).
It is framed around access rather than housing. A request to an association to waive a no-pets rule for an assistance animal is normally a reasonable-accommodation question under the Human Rights Act and the federal Fair Housing Act, not under this chapter — and the federal route reaches assistance animals that are not service dogs.
Ten sections restricting how medical debt may be collected in New Mexico. It is not association law and will not help with an assessment, but it is the reason a flat statement that New Mexico has no debt-collection statute would be wrong. For assessments, the relevant pages are the Collection Agency Regulatory Act and the Unfair Practices Act.
Four things people expect New Mexico law to say. The statutes say otherwise, and in each case the right answer is somewhere else on this tab.
The most common mix-up on this tab. § 47-16-15(C) says the Homeowner Association Act “does not apply to a condominium governed by the Condominium Act”. If you own a condominium unit, the ten-business-day records right and the fifty-dollars-a-day remedy in § 47-16-5 are not yours — your records provision is § 47-7C-18, which is considerably weaker. Work out which statute governs your community before anything else.
Many states that adopted the Uniform Condominium Act also adopted its provision putting a slice of unpaid assessments ahead of a first mortgage. New Mexico did not. § 47-7C-16 gives the association a lien and gives competing association liens equal priority with one another, and subsection H lets the declaration make the lien subordinate to other liens or encumbrances.
The older Building Unit Ownership Act does state a priority, at § 47-7-24 — behind tax liens and a first mortgage of record, ahead of everything else. So a pre-1982 condominium and a post-1982 one sit differently, and the older regime is the stronger of the two on this point.
The uniform act New Mexico worked from applies an enumerated list of its provisions to pre-existing condominiums automatically. New Mexico’s version does not. § 47-7A-2(A) is a single sentence applying the Condominium Act to condominiums created after its effective date, and there is no carry-over list.
A pre-1982 condominium therefore stays under the Building Unit Ownership Act until its owners change that — by a resolution approved by a majority of the unit owners which is then recorded. Note that it is the resolution that gets recorded, not a declaration.
Be careful with commentary here. The Compilation Commission prints the uniform act’s official commissioners’ comments beneath these sections, and those comments describe provisions New Mexico never enacted. They are useful background and they are not New Mexico law.
New Mexico’s Open Meetings Act binds public bodies. § 10-15-1(B) reaches a quorum of “any board, commission, administrative adjudicatory body or other policymaking body of any state agency or any agency or authority of any county, municipality, district or political subdivision” meeting to formulate public policy. A community association is none of those — it is a private body, however much it behaves like a small government.
Your open-meeting rights come from the association statutes instead, and for a homeowners’ association they are unusually strong: § 47-16-17 requires an annual meeting at least once every thirteen months, forty-eight hours’ notice of board meetings, and gives every lot owner “the right to attend and speak at all open meetings”, subject only to reasonable time limits. For a condominium the equivalent is § 47-7C-8.
General information, not legal advice. The laws summarised here are broad statutes HOPB does not reproduce in full; for the official current text, see the New Mexico Compilation Commission. Always confirm the current law and how it applies to your situation.