Affordable housing developers asked New Mexico lawmakers on Monday for stable funding and specific tax relief to help them plan, secure financing, and build more homes. They said more certainty would help address the state’s housing shortage. Developers explained that unpredictable state funding, sudden property tax hikes, and higher construction costs have made it harder to move projects from planning to construction.
Developers made these requests at a meeting of the interim New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority Oversight Committee. They described the challenges of building new housing, even though lawmakers have approved about $500 million for housing in recent legislative sessions.
According to figures shared with the committee, New Mexico is short at least 34,000 housing units.
Developers said that much of the state’s housing market, especially around Albuquerque, has slowed because of inconsistent funding, sudden property tax increases, and rising construction costs.
They urged lawmakers to make affordable housing funding ongoing rather than one-time, create statewide protections against large property tax increases for multifamily buildings, and expand tax breaks for construction materials.
They said this incentive is already helping the financial outlook for planned developments and encouraged lawmakers to extend it to projects for middle-income households, making the payoff clearer.
“I do think that the projects that are in the queue are going to benefit greatly from that,” Bishop said. “Hopefully, that return of capital will spur developers to reload and hopefully do another project.”
Bishop also told lawmakers that New Mexico has not yet returned to its pre-2008 rate of home construction, unlike neighboring states such as Arizona and Texas. She said the state has had a housing production deficit of about 66,000 units since the financial crisis.
“We have not been building enough houses by a pretty significant margin for 20 years,” Bishop said. “Despite this housing shortage and this gap, we’re building fewer houses every year. We’re getting further away from the solution.”
