New Mexico's new rental fee rules carry treble damages, not a $250 penalty
New Mexico's new rental fee rules carry treble damages, not a $250 penalty
2026-09-15 · New Mexico · Legislation
A board that tells its owner-investors New Mexico capped screening fees, and stops there, has told them the least important half. The 2025 law routed fee violations into a consumer-protection statute with statutory damages, treble damages and attorney fees.1
What was enacted
Senate Bill 267, Laws 2025 Chapter 122, signed April 8, 2025 and effective June 20, 2025. It has nine sections: four amend the Uniform Owner-Resident Relations Act and its definitions, four enact new sections of that Act, and the last two reach the Unfair Practices Act.
The provision that changes the exposure
Section 8 adds a new paragraph to the Unfair Practices Act's definition of an unfair or deceptive trade practice:
“charging an applicant a fee in violation of the Uniform Owner-Resident Relations Act”
And Section 9 enacts a standalone new section of that Act:
“PROHIBITED CONDUCT IN RENTING OF DWELLING UNITS.— … B. It is an unfair or deceptive trade practice for an owner to charge a fee to an applicant that is not a screening fee or deposit or that was not published in a listing for rental of a dwelling unit in violation of the Uniform Owner-Resident Relations Act. C. It is an unfair or deceptive trade practice for an owner to charge fees that are not included in the rental agreement in violation of the Uniform Owner-Resident Relations Act.”
New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act carries statutory damages, discretionary treble damages for willful conduct, attorney fees, and Attorney General enforcement. That is a different order of exposure from a capped fee.
Why this reaches a community association
Not because the association is an owner — but because its members are. In any New Mexico association with investor owners or owners renting out a unit, those owners are now exposed on three specific practices:
Unpublished fees. A fee charged to an applicant that was not published in the listing.
Fees outside the agreement. Charges that do not appear in the rental agreement.
Fees that are neither a screening fee nor a deposit. The residual category, which catches administrative fees, processing fees and the assorted charges that accumulate at the front end of a tenancy.
Boards communicate a lot of practical information to owners who rent — about parking, about registering tenants, about house rules. This belongs in the same communication, because an owner who learns about it from a demand letter will learn about treble damages at the same time.
It reaches manufactured-home pads
The Act's definition of “dwelling unit”, carried into the new Unfair Practices Act section verbatim, is:
“a structure, mobile home or the part of a structure… that is used as a home, residence or sleeping place… and includes a parcel of land leased by its owner for use as a site for the parking of a mobile home.”
So a leased pad in a New Mexico manufactured-home community is inside the new fee rules.
That is worth noting precisely because the separate Mobile Home Park Act was not amended in either session. Park residents got fee protection through the landlord-tenant statute rather than through their own Act.
What did not change
A verified negative worth stating alongside this one. A census of every statute citation in all 279 bills enacted across the 2025 and 2026 sessions returns zero bills citing the Building Unit Ownership Act, the Solar Rights Act, the Subdivision Act, the Mobile Home Park Act, the Construction Industries Licensing Act, the Manufactured Housing Act, the Human Rights Act, or the foreclosure and lien chapters.
Across both sessions there is not a single occurrence, in any enacted bill, of “short-term rental,” “accessory dwelling,” “casita,” “xeriscape,” “assistance animal,” “squatting,” “construction defect,” “restrictive covenant,” “reserve study” or “planned community.”
What this means in practice
Circulate the substance, not the headline. An owner who rents a unit needs to know that fees must be published in the listing and must appear in the rental agreement, and that getting it wrong is now a consumer-protection claim rather than a regulatory footnote.
And check whether the association itself charges anything to a prospective tenant — a tenant registration fee, a move-in fee, an amenity access fee. Those are charged under the declaration rather than a rental agreement, which is a different legal footing, but a board levying them for the first time should get advice on where the line sits.
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