New Mexico's first elevator code makes your association the regulated party
New Mexico's first elevator code makes your association the regulated party
2026-09-15 · New Mexico · Regulation
New Mexico adopted its first elevator safety code in 2025, and almost nobody framed it as an association story. If a condominium building, a clubhouse or a parking structure has a lift, the association is now the regulated party — and the registration deadline passed on January 1, 2026.1
What was adopted
The Construction Industries Division of the Regulation and Licensing Department proposed “a new chapter to Title 14 of the Housing and Construction of the New Mexico Administrative Code titled Chapter 15 Elevator Safety Code,” parts 14.15.1 through 14.15.8, under the authority of the Elevator Safety Act, Subsection B of Section 60-13B-4 NMSA 1978. The notice appeared in the New Mexico Register, Volume XXXVI, Issue 2 on January 28, 2025, with a hearing on March 24, 2025.
The chapter was adopted in full: general provisions, permitting and certificates of operation, inspections, fees, contractor requirements, journeyman certification, inspectors, and the 2019 New Mexico Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators.
14.15.1 and 14.15.2 NMAC took effect September 12, 2025, and the code applies to work performed in New Mexico “on or after July 1, 2025, involving the erecting, constructing, installing, altering, servicing, testing, repairing, maintaining, removing, or dismantling conveyances.”
The permit rule, and the exemption that does not reach a condominium
14.15.2 NMAC provides that “no person shall erect, construct, service, test, repair, maintain, install, alter, remove, or dismantle a conveyance within a building or structure unless the applicable permit has been obtained.”
There is an exemption at 14.15.2.9(P), and it is narrow: “Conveyances within a single-family dwelling” are exempt from the permit requirement.
A multi-unit condominium building is not a single-family dwelling. Neither is a clubhouse, a mid-rise, a parking structure, or a common-element lift serving several units.
The deadline that has already passed
CID's own public notice states the registration duty in one sentence: “By January 1, 2026, all commercial conveyance(s) in New Mexico must be registered with the Construction Industries Division (CID).” The Act, in CID's description, “will ensure the safety of all publicly accessible conveyances in New Mexico by requiring the annual inspection of existing conveyances and the permitting and inspection of new installations to certify code compliance.”
For a New Mexico board reading this now, the question is remediation rather than preparation. Registration is made through CID's elevator registration form, and the Elevator Bureau is the office that handles it.
Three things this changes in an association's ordinary operations
The maintenance contract is now a permitted activity. The permit requirement reaches servicing, testing, repairing and maintaining, not just installation. An association whose elevator contractor has been performing routine service without a CID permit has an exposure that sits on the association, as the party that owns the conveyance.
There is an annual inspection obligation. It recurs. A board that registers once and files the confirmation has done the first of an annual sequence, not a one-off.
The vendor's certification status matters. The chapter includes contractor and journeyman certification parts, which means the association's contractor is also regulated — and a board that has never asked to see certification has no basis for assuming it exists.
Why this is also an insurance problem
The Office of Superintendent of Insurance's own consumer guidance on condominium insurance lists the common-area exposures a master policy typically covers: “physical damage and liability for common areas such as the hallways, roof, basement, elevator, boiler and common walkways.”2
So the conveyance sits in both regimes at once. An uninspected, unregistered elevator is a code problem with CID and a question a carrier may ask after a loss. The two failures are documented in the same absence — no permit record, no inspection record.
What makes this unusual for New Mexico
New Mexico governs community associations almost entirely by statute and almost not at all by agency rule. A search of the state's own cumulative indexes of the New Mexico Register for 2025 and 2026 returns no rulemaking anywhere in state government that uses the words “homeowner,” “condominium” or “community association.”
Chapter 14.15 is the exception that proves the pattern. It does not mention associations either — it reaches them because they own buildings. That is how regulation arrives for a New Mexico association: sideways, addressed to somebody else, and without anyone sending the board a letter.
What to establish this week
Whether every conveyance the association owns is registered with CID, and on what date; when the last annual inspection was performed and by whom; whether the current maintenance contractor holds CID certification; and whether any service, repair or alteration has been performed since July 1, 2025 without a permit.
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