HUD Fair Market Rents for Santa Fe vs. Albuquerque

[Marc C.]

If you rent to tenants under the Housing Choice Voucher program, formerly called Section 8, which I recommend, the rent you can charge is limited to what the Dept. of Housing and Urban development list in their annual Fair Market Rent study. They are pretty scientific about it, but sometimes the rents are above the actual market rents and sometimes below. 

For 2016, they lowered Santa Fe slightly and raised Albuquerque's dramatically. That doesn't make sense. The table might not reproduce correctly, but you can grab FMR's from the HUD web site at http://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr.html. Suffice to say, that they now pay landlords $324 more to rent a 4BR house to a Section 8 tenant in Albuquerque than Santa Fe. For 3BR's, it's about $100 more in ABQ. Only for one and two bedroom units do Santa Fe landlords get to charge more than Albuquerque landlords. Doesn't make sense! Keep in mind that these rents INCLUDE UTILITIES. For those utilities you don't pay, the reduce the rent according to a scheduled Utility Allowance. For example for a 3BR home in Albuquerque, it's $129 less than the published FMR. For a 4BR, it's $156 less. BUT, that means that in Albuquerque, a landlord can charge $1500 for a 4BR house, which are available for around $150,000. Anytime you can get 1% for rent, you are doing fine. This doesn't seem possible in Santa Fe.

2016	2015
Efficiency	One-Bedroom	Two-Bedroom	Three-Bedroom	Four-Bedroom		Efficiency	One-Bedroom	Two-Bedroom	Three-Bedroom	Four-Bedroom
Santa Fe	$715	$773	$932	$1,238	$1,299		$739	$804	$953	$1,278	$1,366
Albuquerque	$584	$758	$930	$1,336	$1,624		$543	$682	$836	$1,210	$1,481