Rio Rancho, Sandoval Co. lead the way on housing growth

SANTA ANA PUEBLO — Rio Rancho and Sandoval County are leading the way in New Mexico’s housing developments.

During the Rio Rancho Regional Chamber of Commerce quarterly meeting June 26, Jerry Schalow, president and CEO of the chamber, noted some population trends that support that.

He said communities and Sandoval County and Albuquerque zip codes west of the river have begun to exceed population on the east side.

“There’s a larger population than east of the river and now exceeds it by 7,000 people,” he said. “The community out here, Rio Rancho, the west side, Santa Ana Pueblo, southwest Albuquerque, (Paseo del Volcan), Paseo del Norte, all the infrastructure and the focus is coming out here, and it’s all focused on growth and expectations.”

J.P. Rael, president of the Homebuilders Association, broke some of the numbers down even further, saying Rio Rancho in particular is “the driving force in home building right now and development.”

In comparisons of the metro area from Bernalillo, Sandoval, Santa Fe and Valencia counties from 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, Sandoval stands out.

In the metro, he said, 526 homes have been started with 472 closed. However, 47% of all new home starts were in Sandoval County. It was also home to 42% of closings, 47% of the housing inventory and 31% of vacant developed lots, though he noted the last figure was a little skewed because of how data was collected at the national level.

“You can see right there how vital Rio Rancho is to the home building process,” Rael said. “I honestly think we will start to see the 47% of starts and closings creep incrementally higher over the next five years, and we will see a significant portion of all new construction happening here.”

However, the growth doesn’t come without challenges, with the primary challenge being affordability.

“Whether it’s interest rates, costs as we came out of COVID, everything has gone up, and so entry into the market, the homeownership market, has become incredibly difficult,” he said.

For example, Rael said, the median price in the market for a new home is $424,000, while $321,000 is the median price for a resale home.

He said data from the first quarter showed prices dipping a bit, which seemed good on the surface, but digging deeper, he said, what they were really seeing was people buying smaller houses at an increased cost per square foot.

One trend he sees that could help with affordability is the build to rent model, a national trend which is starting to come to Rio Rancho and the metro area.

“The common thought to the build to rent idea is that it will address the barrier of entry into the market: affordability, Rael said, stating his personal thoughts on the issue.

“What I’m seeing is the rates that the companies from out of state are going to be bringing in on this rental stuff is going to do nothing but help the home building and the home selling side because the rental rates are significant as well,” he said. “They have the same infrastructure costs, the same development costs, everything that we have on the home building side go into that, so their rental rates match that. I think it’s really going to help us as a selling tool for new construction.

Rael also broke down some of the numbers by development in Rio Rancho by neighborhood:

• Broadmoor quarter: 1,200 finished lots, 1,400 lots of projected future development

Paseo Gateway: 240 finished lots, 1,900 future

Rio Rancho North (Mariposa): 175 finished lots, 1,300 future

Rio Rancho West: 769 finished lots, 510 future

“We have a total of 2,384 finished lots and 5,185 lots coming to the market, and all of that will be in the next 18 months to five years, all of those will come to the market,” Rael said. “You can tell that the growth in Rio Rancho was real for us as builders and developers … but we all have to continue working together to make sure we address the affordability issue, because our cost of building houses is not going to go down.”

“The housing growth that Rio Rancho has experienced over the past seven, eight years has just been amazing,” Schalow said. “It’s been an average of about 1,000 houses a year, if not more. … The opportunity for growth has just begun.”