Land Banking in New Mexico

This memorandum summarizes the Center for Community Progress’ recent scholarship engagement with the City of Raton, New Mexico, and stakeholders from across the state to explore statewide legislative solutions to address vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated (VAD) properties, including brownfield properties—a subset of VAD properties where actual or potential contamination makes redevelopment challenging and costly. It also provides recommendations for Raton and its partners to consider as they seek to address VAD and brownfield properties and contemplate legislative reform in 2027 and beyond.

Background and Framing

In late 2025, Community Progress competitively selected the City of Raton to receive a Technical Assistance Scholarship on Land Bank Approaches to Brownfield Revitalization made possible by a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant. The focus of the engagement was to work with a group of statewide stakeholders to explore and build support for potential legislative options to advance land banking in New Mexico as a tool to address VAD and brownfield properties.

This scholarship was an exciting opportunity to build off a previous engagement between Community Progress and the City in 2023 that provided observations and recommendations for how to address VAD properties across the city. This work also built on lessons from a 2019 engagement between Community Progress and local officials in Albuquerque, New Mexico to explore approaches to addressing VAD properties. Each report identified existing tools—such as housing and building code enforcement and delinquent property tax enforcement—that Raton and Albuquerque could use to address VAD properties and move them towards equitable, efficient, and effective reuse. The reports also sought to address the question of whether a land bank might help each community acquire and reuse VAD property in a way aligned with community needs. This memorandum adds to the observations and recommendations outlined in prior reports, with added consideration given to the potential of these tools to address brownfield properties.

Approach

Community Progress’ goal was to build support for potential legislative options addressing VAD and brownfield properties and advancing land banking in New Mexico. To that end, we:

• Participated in regular calls with a core stakeholder group led by Raton city officials, including representatives from the New Mexico Municipal League, two New Mexico Councils of Government, and the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department (Tax and Rev) and the New Mexico Environment Department (Environment Department).
• Interviewed New Mexico local government officials, including city code enforcement staff and county officials, to understand the challenges municipalities face with VAD properties and the overlap between code enforcement and delinquent tax enforcement.
• Reviewed state law related to delinquent property tax enforcement and housing and building code lien enforcement.
• Hosted a convening in Albuquerque for municipal officials from across the state, along with state, regional, and private partners working on VAD properties.
• Presented to County Managers and County Attorneys at the annual County Conference in Gallup, outlining the need for stronger tools to address VAD properties and exploring potential County roles.

Key Takeaways

Based on our stakeholder engagements, research into local and state policy, and experience working in New Mexico and communities across the country, we offer the following high-level takeaways:

• Building capacity and understanding of VAD property challenges, including challenges specific to brownfield properties, should be prioritized over the next 12 months. Our engagement proved that there is strong interest and momentum across New Mexico to expand and adopt new tools for addressing VAD properties, including brownfield properties. One of the most impactful steps stakeholders can take now is building the capacity, partnerships, and coordination needed to better understand VAD and brownfield properties—starting with improving data collection, mapping, and analysis locally and potentially regionally.
• Explore a regional solution to capacity building. Building regional capacity is a common strategy for economic and community development in rural and resource-strained areas. New Mexico’s seven councils of government offer a natural platform for building the expertise and capacity local governments and counties need to tackle VAD properties in general, and brownfield properties in particular. A critical first step is closing the gap in data and information about the nature, scale, and local impact of these properties.
• New Mexico needs policy reforms to make land banking a more effective tool to address VAD and brownfield properties. These include reforms to the state’s delinquent property tax enforcement statute. Because these legislative reforms require significant coalition-building, capacity, and resources, the 2027 legislative session is likely not a realistic timeline unless substantial resources are committed to build that coalition. Fortunately, there are near- and mid-term actions possible with existing tools. For example, we have proposed a pilot land banking program in Albuquerque and Raton built on the power to foreclose on code enforcement liens.
• The State must commit resources to addressing VAD properties. Every state with an effective strategy to address VAD properties—including those with land banks—has allocated some initial or recurring funding for operations, programs, and capital projects. New Mexico will need to do the same if it hopes to build the capacity and expertise to leverage VAD properties for affordable housing and other priorities that support safe, resilient, and vibrant neighborhoods. Similarly, given the State’s central role in delinquent property tax enforcement, any future efforts land bank or land banking programs in New Mexico must also involve the State.

We are honored and inspired by the stakeholders we met during this engagement, and are encouraged that New Mexico stakeholders are working together to enhance the tools available to address VAD and brownfield properties. The remainder of this memorandum summarizes our key findings and offers recommended next steps consistent with the takeaways above. We appreciate the opportunity to contribute an outside perspective to this conversation, but encourage stakeholders to consult local attorneys before relying on the observations or recommendations herein.

Download the memo »