Rio Rancho sees a resurgence in new home starts. Developers point to a pro-growth mentality.

Mackenzie Bishop drives through northwest Rio Rancho on Monday. Light rain turns dirt to mud in the lots that scatter this side of the city.

He points to one area, Stonegate, where D.R. Horton is working on a master-planned community that includes 600 lots. Bishop, owner and cofounder of Abrazo Homes, an Albuquerque-based homebuilder, said the community has been in the works for roughly 20 years.

Next door, Tierra Del Norte and Tierra Del Oro — two communities local land developer Pierre Amestoy has worked on with local builders — have brought hundreds of new homes online, with more in the works.

On the east side of Broadmoor Boulevard, just slightly north of the aforementioned communities, is Broadmoor Heights — a community largely built by national homebuilder Pulte Homes, Bishop said.

There’s more land in the area, known by local builders and developers as the Broadmoor Corridor, being prepared for additional homes in the coming years.

In many ways, the corridor represents a changing landscape in the world of homebuilding for the city of Rio Rancho, the fastest-growing city in New Mexico.

How did we get here you ask?

Developers and homebuilders said there isn't as much red tape in Rio Rancho, compared to Albuquerque.

Add to that the fact that Rio Rancho, they said, has lower crime rates and better performing schools, which are a driving force in the growth of new homes and people.

“One of the things that I think you attribute that to is a consistent process,” said Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull, now in his third term. “I think that a lot of communities will tend to get into this place where they’ll adopt a process and then they'll deviate from it.

“So what we’ve tried to do is just make sure that our processes are very consistent, very predictable so that when people do come in for permits, the process is open and transparent.”

By the numbers

A large share of homes under construction in the metro area since 2020 rose in Rio Rancho, and developers say momentum is building.

According to the City of Rio Rancho, which compiled data from market intelligence and research firm Zonda, the city accounted for 44% of new, single-family home starts in the Albuquerque metro area and Santa Fe in fiscal year 2021, which comes out to 1,091.

In the following fiscal year, new home starts accounted for 37% of all single-family home starts in the area, and, in the fiscal year 2024, which runs from July 2023 through June 2024, about 912 home starts were underway, accounting for 40%.

So far this calendar year, Rio Rancho is on pace to likely surpass 1,000 new home starts with 813 through September. That would eclipse the 1,054 home starts in 2021 and be in the ballpark of last year’s number, 966.

Bishop said 30-40% of new permits for homes are being built in the Broadmoor corridor.

“There’s a bunch of pieces of land in here that are large enough that you can develop it,” Bishop said.

Other areas of Rio Rancho are also seeing growth, including the Los Diamantes community, which Amestoy said includes roughly 500 lots and about another 141 lots on the way this year.

City of Rio Rancho officials told the Journal that there have been new home starts in about 15 different communities, including the Vista Grande and Mariposa subdivisions.

That has led to a large number of homebuilders in the city, which has about nine “production builders” and another 11 “custom builders,” according to city spokesperson Jaley Turpen.

A development-friendly city

Developers and homebuilders the Journal spoke with made it clear that the city is pro-business and growth, saying the process from entitlement to getting homes built takes, in some cases, half the time it does in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

Wade Messenger, the division president for Pulte Homes in New Mexico, said the entitlement process specifically — which includes zoning and plan approvals and traffic studies — can take about eight months on average in Rio Rancho before the company can start building homes. In Albuquerque? About 12 to 18 months. And in Santa Fe? Up to two years.

The slowdown in Albuquerque, for instance, is what Bishop attributes to a “political review process,” whereas in Rio Rancho it’s a “technical review process.”

“If you have the right zoning, and if your community conforms with all the rules, it’s very rare that you have to deal with any kind of unforeseen political BS,” Bishop said. “In Albuquerque, that’s not the case. In Albuquerque, there’s always in the back of your mind that you could do everything right but then just because someone doesn’t want housing, or the housing is too big or too small, or too dense or not dense enough, someone will complain.”

For example, said Tim McNaney, owner and cofounder of Albuquerque-based Twilight Homes, Rio Rancho is a city in which you can get things done “concurrently.”

“In the City of Rio Rancho, say we have lot No. 1, there are 100 lots we build on lot number one; we go for a permit, we can go ahead and start,” he said. “In the city of Albuquerque, they won’t even accept a permit until all the grading is done and accepted by them. … In the City of Rio Rancho, you can run things concurrently.”

That has made the city more attractive to developers and homebuilders alike — a place where they aren’t held up by the “red tape and the many levels of bureaucracy you have to get through to get an approval,” said Amestoy.

There are other forces pushing development in Rio Rancho, including a severe undersupply of housing across the state and in the metro area.

Rio Rancho has also become a hotbed for families looking to lead a simpler life with great schools and less crime, said Messenger.

“Rio Rancho is extremely desirable. It’s a town that has been built upon a foundation of education and low crime,” Messenger said. “They have a mayor that’s pro-growth and wants to develop and wants to bring businesses ... and more vibrancy to the town.

“And you’re seeing homebuilders and buyers alike following suit, and they’re all very interested in building homes there. And buyers want to live there. This is a place that people want to live, a place that people want to call home.”

Looking ahead

Of course, with the growth of any city, especially when it comes to homebuilding, there are hiccups that will always need to be addressed.

Amestoy said one of those key issues is antiquated platting, which has some portions of undeveloped areas of the city owned by people scattered across the country.

That can prove to be a problem as the city grows, particularly as it relates to Amestoy being able to buy up enough land in one area that can then be transformed into new communities. He said with Los Diamantes, which he purchased, it took 13 years for the former owner to assemble.

“It’s almost impossible to assemble enough land to do a development because we can’t find the owners. They’re all over the country, they’re dead, they’re older — it’s very hard (to find them),” Amestoy said. “So some of the projects I’m doing now, I’m doing them because they’re assembled.”

Added Hull: “It’s not just a matter of attracting investment, we’re trying to attract people that are actually having to put in more work than you would think to assemble and aggregate land into a meaningful parcel that they can build an efficient and functional development.”

Either way, Rio Rancho is on a path to more growth — and more homebuilding. It’s what Bishop says is the “next frontier.”

Hull agrees.

“I think the outlook is very strong,” Hull said.