Albuquerque rejected short-term rental limits a third time — your declaration is what is left
Albuquerque rejected short-term rental limits a third time — your declaration is what is left
2026-09-15 · New Mexico · Regulation · Did not pass
Albuquerque councillors have now declined to limit short-term rentals three times in three years. For an association board, the practical result is that the recorded declaration is the only instrument realistically governing a short-term rental on its block.1
What failed, and when
February 3, 2026 — Council Bill O-26-5. Introduced as a citywide 330-foot separation requirement between short-term rentals, amended down to a 100-foot buffer limited to Districts 2, 6 and 7, and defeated 5–4.
August 21, 2023 — Council Bill O-23-69. Would have required a local property manager within 20 miles, limited permits to three per natural person, capped citywide permits at 1,200, raised civil penalties to $500 a day, and allowed revocation after three or more violations in twelve months. It was introduced in February 2023, moved through committee in March, postponed repeatedly through the spring, and failed in August.
A further set of measures failed in September 2024.
What remains in force
Section 13-19 of the Revised Ordinances of Albuquerque, the Short Term Rental Ordinance, enacted by Council Bill O-20-30 and effective April 23, 2021. Its requirements, per the City's own guidance: a permit fee of “$120 (first year) and an annual renewal fee of $90 (second and following years)”; a business licence; a scaled floor plan; a “Good Neighbor Agreement” posted in each unit; occupancy of “2 adults (over 12 years old) per bedroom, plus 2”; gatherings capped at “two times the maximum overnight occupancy, but no more than 20” which must “disperse by 10:00pm local time”; and proof of short-term rental insurance.
The enforcement picture
Reporting at the time of the February 2026 vote put the number of short-term rentals in Albuquerque at roughly 2,000, of which about 800 are registered — leaving some 1,200 operating without a permit or lodgers' tax.
The gap that matters to a board
Albuquerque's short-term rental material contains no covenant or homeowner association clause. The City's own short-term rental guidance does not address associations at all, and the failed amending bill did not add anything.
That is a deliberate contrast with two other New Mexico cities. Santa Fe requires the applicant to affirm “that no private covenants prohibit the operation of the short-term rental unit,” mails notice to “the homeowners association within which the unit is located (if applicable)” within ten days of issuance or renewal, and states expressly that “Private restrictive covenants, enforceable by those governed by the covenants, may prohibit short-term rental units.” Rio Rancho tells applicants in its own published guidance that “Homeowners Associations (HOA) may still prohibit short-term rentals from operating within their covered neighborhood.”
Albuquerque says nothing in its short-term rental rules. Its answer lives in the zoning code instead, at Section 14-16-1-9(B) of the Integrated Development Ordinance: “The City shall have no obligation to enforce any private covenant or agreement unless it is a party to the covenant or agreement.”
What that means operationally
The association gets no notice. Unlike Santa Fe, where the arrival of a mailed notice tells a board that a unit has gone short-term, an Albuquerque board learns about a rental by noticing it — from listings, from traffic, from neighbours.
The association gets no help enforcing. A covenant violation is not a City violation. Code enforcement will not act on it, and with roughly 60 percent of the market unpermitted, the City's own enforcement capacity is visibly stretched against its own rules, let alone anyone else's.
A permit proves nothing about the covenant. Because the City does not ask about covenants, a permit holder in Albuquerque has made no representation the board can use — a contrast with Santa Fe, where an owner in a community whose declaration bans the use has, by applying, made a false affirmation.
The tool Albuquerque boards do have
Bernalillo County's Assessor has reclassified roughly 1,000 properties from residential to non-residential on the basis that they are short-term rentals, following an analysis of every candidate property completed in 2025. The classification is public assessor data.
For a board, that is a free compliance database. An association that wants to know which of its units are being operated as short-term rentals can read the classification record, without subpoenas, platform scraping or surveillance of its own members.
What to watch
Nothing is pending at the Council. At the state level, a short-term rental work group reported to a legislative interim committee in December 2025 recommending a “Short-Term Rental Preemption & Accountability Act” — but that Act has never been introduced, and its draft contents are aimed at local ordinances rather than at private covenants. If it appears in 2027, expect it to be misreported as overriding HOA rental restrictions. On the current draft language, it would not.
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