Albuquerque's zoning code says it out loud: your covenants are your problem
Albuquerque's zoning code says it out loud: your covenants are your problem
2026-09-15 · New Mexico · Regulation
Albuquerque's zoning code answers the question every association board eventually asks — does a City permit beat my declaration? — in writing, and in both directions. The text sits in the 2025 Update to the Integrated Development Ordinance, Council Bill O-26-2, Enactment O-2026-006, adopted February 18, 2026 and effective April 20, 2026.1
Two independent tracks
Section 14-16-1-9(A): “This IDO applies to all land uses and development regardless of whether it imposes a greater or lesser restriction on the development or use of structures or land than a private agreement or restriction, but shall have no impact on the applicability or enforceability of any private agreement or restriction between the parties to that agreement or restriction, except as set forth in Subsection (C) below.”
Section 14-16-1-9(B): “The City shall have no obligation to conform the terms or applicability of this IDO to any private agreement or restriction. The City shall have no obligation to enforce any private covenant or agreement unless it is a party to the covenant or agreement; if the City is a party to the covenant or agreement, enforcement shall be at the discretion of the City.”
The subdivision-side mirror at Section 14-16-5-4(D) says the same thing from the other end: “Subdivision regulations do not repeal, annul, or in any way interfere with existing private agreements or restrictive covenants… However, subdivision approvals are not required to be consistent with those private agreements or restrictive covenants… Enforcement of any private agreements or restrictive covenants applicable to a property is the responsibility of the parties to that agreement, and not the City.”
So: a city permit is not a defence against the association, and a covenant is not a reason for the City to refuse a permit. Neither instrument reaches the other.
The one exception, and it cuts against boards
Section 14-16-1-9(C) is genuinely unusual and most Albuquerque boards have never read it:
“The City may not approve any subdivision application for property on which there are any deed restrictions, covenants, or binding agreements prohibiting solar collectors from being installed on buildings or erected on the project site.”
Note the mechanism. It does not declare a solar-ban covenant void — that is Section 3-18-32 NMSA 1978's job, and it does so only where the covenant “effectively prohibits” a collector. What 1-9(C) does is make the land unsubdividable while the covenant exists.
That is a far more practical lever than asking a court to strike a restriction, and it converts an old solar-ban clause into a live entitlement problem the moment anyone in the community wants to re-plat, split a lot, or process a subdivision application. An association sitting on a declaration drafted in the 1970s or 1980s with a flat prohibition on “solar panels or collectors” should know that the clause now has a cost attached to it that has nothing to do with whether anyone wants solar.
What 1-9(B) specifically means for a board
The sentence is short and its consequences are not.
Enforcement is entirely the association's cost. There is no City channel. An owner violating a covenant is not violating a City rule, so code enforcement will not act, and the association's only instrument is its own enforcement process followed, if necessary, by a lawsuit it funds.
“The City approved it” is not an answer. When an owner presents a building permit for work the architectural committee refused, the permit establishes that the City is satisfied. It establishes nothing about the declaration, and 1-9(A) says so expressly.
The reverse is equally true. An architectural committee that approves a design the IDO forbids has approved nothing the owner can build. Committees that review submissions against the declaration alone, without checking the zoning standards, routinely issue approvals that cannot be acted on.
Where the City has taken over part of the committee's job
This is worth noticing because it is new territory. The IDO's accessory dwelling unit standards dictate matters an architectural committee would normally own: an ADU is limited to 750 square feet of gross floor area citywide, requires a minimum five-foot side or rear setback, “shall be no taller than the primary structure on the property,” must be located behind the rear wall of a primary building in residential and mixed-use zones — and, in the code's own words, “Building façades of an accessory dwelling unit shall be the same or similar in color to that of the primary building on the lot.”
A municipality legislating façade colour is a municipality doing architectural review. The declaration still applies on top of it, which means an Albuquerque owner building a casita is answering to two design authorities whose standards were written independently and are not required to agree.
What to check in your own declaration
Whether it contains any prohibition on solar collectors, in any wording — because of 1-9(C). Whether the architectural standards have ever been reconciled against the IDO's dimensional and design standards. And whether the association's enforcement budget reflects the fact that, in Albuquerque, the association is the only enforcement authority its covenants have.
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