Every New Mexico HOA ruling of the past two years is one a judge is free to ignore
Every New Mexico HOA ruling of the past two years is one a judge is free to ignore
2026-09-15 · New Mexico · Courts
New Mexico's Court of Appeals decided several association matters in 2025 and 2026. It published none of them as precedent — so a board reading one as “New Mexico law now says X” is over-reading it.1
What the precedential record contains
The Court's Formal Opinions index — the repository of its binding slip opinions — was reviewed in full for both years: 119 opinions, read by case name. The complete set of real-property, land-use and community-adjacent formal opinions in that window is a forcible-entry and unlawful-detainer jurisdiction case where title was in issue; an air-quality permit appeal; two municipal cases against the City of Santa Fe; a Mobile Home Park Act case; two land grant cases; and a construction contract dispute.
No precedential New Mexico Court of Appeals opinion in 2025 or 2026 decides a homeowners association, condominium association, planned community, CC&R, assessment-lien, architectural-control, board fiduciary duty or short-term-rental covenant question.
Where the association decisions went instead
Into memorandum opinions and Rule 12-405(B) decisions. In New Mexico those are not precedent, and the Court says so on the face of the document — typically invoking the rule that permits disposal of a case “by nonprecedential order, decision, or memorandum opinion under certain circumstances.”
The association matters decided that way in this window include a covenant-extinguishment case from Lincoln County, an association's own suit dismissed for failure to prosecute in Taos, a summary judgment for an Angel Fire association, an access and easement dispute in Sierra County, a rural water association's records and open-meetings obligations in Grant County, and a one-paragraph summary affirmance out of Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court.
What “not precedent” actually means in practice
It does not mean the reasoning is worthless. A New Mexico district judge may find a memorandum opinion persuasive, and counsel cite them. What it means is that no judge is obliged to follow one, and that a later panel of the same court is free to decide the identical question the other way without explaining itself.
Three consequences follow for a board.
Be sceptical of confident claims about recent New Mexico covenant law. If a manager, vendor or newsletter says the courts have recently held something, the citation is almost certainly to a memorandum opinion. That is worth knowing before a board changes its practice on the strength of it.
Do not assume a favourable decision protects you. An association that won on an argument in a 2026 memorandum opinion has won that case. It has not established the rule for the next one, and the next owner's lawyer is not obliged to concede the point.
The older authority is still the law. Whatever governed covenant interpretation, waiver and selective enforcement in New Mexico before 2025 governs it now.
The summary-calendar trap
One procedural point deserves emphasis, because it decided at least one 2025 association appeal outright. The Court of Appeals moves many appeals on a “summary calendar”: it issues a notice of proposed summary disposition, and the parties have a deadline to file a memorandum in opposition.
In Ross v. Villa Del Rio Homeowners Association, decided July 3, 2025, the entire substantive opinion reads: “Summary affirmance was proposed for the reasons stated in the notice of proposed summary disposition. No memorandum opposing summary affirmance has been filed and the time for doing so has expired. AFFIRMED.”
The appellant was self-represented; the association was not. Nothing about the merits was examined. For an owner appealing an association dispute — and these often begin in Metropolitan Court, where the amounts are small and self-representation is common — missing that deadline ends the appeal.
What would have to happen for this to change
The Court of Appeals would have to elect to publish an association decision as a formal opinion, or the Supreme Court would have to grant certiorari in a covenant case. Neither has happened, and nothing of the sort is currently pending before the Supreme Court.
Until one does, the practical position in New Mexico is unusual and worth stating plainly: a state with no HOA regulator, no association-specific administrative rules, no recent legislation aimed at associations, and no binding appellate decision about them in two years. What governs a New Mexico association is its own declaration, the Homeowner Association Act, the Condominium Act, the Nonprofit Corporation Act, and an older body of case law — and nothing that happened in the last two years changed any of them.
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