At a time when renting has never cost more, legal experts say some landlords in New Mexico have been using dishonest or sometimes illegal actions to get even more money from their tenants. On Tuesday, lawyers with non-profit advocacy organizations presented testimony to state lawmakers revealing some tactics landlords have used and detailing systemic issues in the rental market.
The presenters started by detailing the struggle renters sometimes have simply maintaining their housing.
For example, Riley Massey, senior attorney with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, said rents across New Mexico went up nearly 60% from 2017 to 2024, pushing the average rent in the state to $1,700.
In some areas, she said it’s even worse. Santa Fe, for example, saw rent almost double — jumping 74% during that time. Wages, meanwhile, stagnated.
“So that leaves almost no money for any type of emergency situation, any kind of crisis that could come up.,” she said. “And meanwhile, homelessness continues to rise in the state.”
On top of that, New Mexico’s timeline for evictions is relatively short. Some states have up to a 30 day window for tenants to catch up. But in New Mexico if rent isn’t paid in full, a landlord can post a notice on the second day of the month. That only gives tenants three days to come up with the full amount before a landlord can file for eviction.
After that a hearing must take place within 7 to 10 days, and if the landlord wins, a writ of restitution, which is what orders the sheriff to remove a tenant from the property, will be issued within 3 to 4 days. That means a tenant could be on the streets by the 17th of the month.
Massey also pointed to studies showing that increasing the amount of time renters have to get caught up can drastically lower rates of homelessness.
“This benefits residents by giving them more time to pay rent,” she said. “This benefits owners by ensuring that they actually get that rent instead of getting a judgment that basically, oftentimes, is uncollectible.”
But Massey says even just the threat of eviction can have “drastic impacts on people's health, on children in schools, on their academic achievement. They have lower cognitive scores, lower grades, and not only the children facing eviction, but also all of the other children in those classrooms that are seeing this displacement.”
Another presenter, Bryce Dorado, a managing attorney with New Mexico Legal Aid, said the threat of eviction may also prevent tenants from exercising their rights, such as giving a landlord written notice of needed repairs and then withholding a portion of rent until those repairs are done.
But Dorado says that rarely happens, "because they could, by day 17, be homeless or be evicted, (so) many tenants choose not to abate their rent and try to force their landlord to make needed repairs."
Judges also rarely dig into details, Dorado said, or try to understand nuance at eviction hearings, which Dorado has timed as lasting as few as "37 seconds – and this is a trial at which a family may or may not become homeless.”
According to the Uniform Owner-Resident Relations Act (UORRA), landlords are not required to present a ledger or any accounting of payments as evidence of payment history. So, according to Dorado, cases come down to the landlord’s word versus the renter’s, and if the numbers presented by the landlord are not accurate “how do you prepare a defense to that?” he said.
Cassie Fleming, also with New Mexico Legal Aid, told state lawmakers that some landlords have been charging what she called “bizarre” fees that could be illegal.
"They're just padding their pocketbooks so they can make more money off of people who can't afford to pay those extra fees,” Fleming said.
UORRA limits late fees, for example, to 5% of monthly rent. But Fleming said they are often charged at double that, if not more. Some renters have seen multiple late fees charged in a single month.
She’s also seen landlords charge tenants a fee for simply filling out an eviction form, she said, and then charge another fee for posting the notice on a tenant’s door.
In another case a tenant was charged a “credit premium fee” and a “risk mitigation fee.” At first the property management company said they didn’t know what those fees were, she said. She couldn't get an answer until talking to upper management.
“It was because these people are low-income. They had a low credit score, so they charged them extra,” she said. "So it really is expensive to be poor in our country right now."
When lawsuits between tenants and landlords do happen, she said, the law says the prevailing party has a right to be reimbursed by the losing party for the costs of hiring an attorney. But some landlords include provisions in their leases that charge tenants “reasonable attorney's fees and costs whether or not a suit is filed.”
“So they're getting attorneys' fees when attorneys are not doing work,” said Fleming. “They're not going to court. There is no court case yet they are assessing attorneys' fees, legal fees, on these tenants.”
Moreover, Fleming said Ratio Utility Billing Systems (RUBS), have become more common. RUBS is a system where an apartment complex gets a single utility bill for the entire complex that is then split between tenants, usually based on square footage.
That means tenants are paying for utilities for common areas and for business-specific facilities, such as front offices and maintenance sections. It also means a single person would be paying the same as a family of four living in the same sized unit.
“Tenants shouldn't have to be paying for these costs,” she said, “and we don't know if these are actually incurred by the landlord or if these are costs that the landlord is inflating and passing on to the tenants.”
Some landlords also try to charge for things that don't even make sense, Fleming said. In one case, a low-income tenant who relied solely on Social Security Disability was charged almost $900 for carpet replacement in a unit that only had hardwood floors, and almost $3,000 in ‘make-ready’ fees, despite the tenant having video evidence that the property was clean.
In another case, a tenant was sent to collections after being charged twice for the final month of their lease, and the following two months after they vacated the premises.
Presenters suggested several changes to improve the situation. When it comes to evictions, they encouraged extending the 3‑day notice period for nonpayment so tenants have more meaningful time to clear arrears and avoid eviction.
They also said UORRA should require landlords to attach documents to eviction filings, such as mandatory rent ledger accounting and the lease itself, so tenants and courts can verify amounts and fees
The presenters all said that legal help for tenants is rarely available even at the best of times. The presenters suggested implementing a court mediation program, and providing access to legal representation in tenant-landlord cases.
“Another thing is funding civil legal services like New Mexico Legal Aid,” Massey said. “It's basically the only organization that represents tenants facing eviction in the state.”
Fleming said even private attorneys often don’t provide those services.
“I speak with a lot of the private attorneys and they won't take tenant eviction cases because the timeline's too quick,” Fleming said. “They just can't turn around a defense or jump in and negotiate.”
The Apartment Association of New Mexico is the only major group representing landlords in the state. They did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
