The Bernalillo County Tax Assessor’s Office sent shockwaves across the county May 1 when it mailed out non-residential property notice of value statements.
The statements showed steep increases in property value assessments, concerning property owners that they, the businesses that operate in their properties, and their consumers will not be able to absorb the anticipated resulting increase in property taxes.
“Usually, property taxes go up two to three percent a year, and that’s easily something we can manage,” local hotel developer and President and CEO of Total Management Systems Prakash Sundaram said. “But, (…) the increases this year were pretty ridiculous and substantial.”
Bernalillo County Assessor Damian Lara said that generally speaking, property taxes are calculated by multiplying the assessed value of the property by a third and by the mill rate — the amount of tax payable per dollar of the assessed value of a property.
The average assessed value of a non-residential property in Bernalillo County increased by 47% this year, Lara said.
So, depending on what the mill rate is set to, non-residential property owners in Bernalillo County could see significant increases in their property taxes.
Albuquerque Business First spoke with key stakeholders about the potential impacts of the steep property assessment increases, why it’s happening and possible future solutions.
Why Bernalillo County is seeing such steep property assessment increases
When Lara took office in 2023, the non-residential assessment department of the Bernalillo County Assessor’s office was understaffed, Lara said.
The department, which should’ve had between 12 to 15 assessors, had just two, Lara said.
He added that the previous assessor or assessors did not prioritize assessing non-residential properties or the department as a whole.
This is demonstrated by Bernalillo County’s non-residential net taxable values increasing by just 4.6% from 2013 to 2023 compared to its residential net taxable values increasing by 42.2% over the same time, according to the Bernalillo County Assessor and Clerk.
State statute requires that when a non-residential property is assessed, it must be brought to current and correct market value, Lara said.
This meant that as he staffed and trained the non-residential assessment department, increasingly more properties — many of which had been underassessed for as long as a decade — would be reassessed to their current and correct market value all at once, stoking frustration and concern among non-residential property owners and tenants.
“Why should we or our tenants or consumers have to pay the penalty because they (assessors) didn’t do their job,” Allen Sigmon Real Estate Group Principal Lance Sigmon said. “And that’s our whole point. You can’t double property taxes just because you haven’t done your job for 10 years.”
Lara approached state Rep. Derrick Lente (D-Dist. 65) — the house taxation and revenue committee chair — with the backing of the New Mexico County Assessor’s Affiliate to create a bill to address the issue, Lente said.
Lente asked Lara and the assessor’s affiliate to collaborate with commercial real estate leaders and organizations on the bill, Lente said.
The bill they helped develop, House Bill 342, was a compromise.
The county assessors would get some form of confidential disclosure on commercial sales prices, and property owners would get a 12% cap on how much property assessments could increase in a given year. Currently, there’s no cap on how much a non-residential property assessment can increase in one year.
“Our industry really wanted the transparency and the predictability of the increases,” Sigmon said. “(Because) you can’t run a business like that, where each year you wake up and you’re like, ‘Ok, what’s my bill going to be this year?’”
But, the bill faced opposition, though Lente said he couldn’t recall from whom, and the opposing group’s lobbyists ultimately persuaded stakeholders that the bill shouldn’t pass, Lente said.
Tax protest consultant businesses, which file property tax assessment protests for property owners, led the movement against the bill, according to Sigmon, a key member of the group that helped form HB 342.
Double Eagle Property Tax Consultants is New Mexico’s only representative of the National Property Tax Group (NPTG) — a national alliance of property tax consultants, according to its website.
Double Eagle Property Tax Consultants did not reply to Albuquerque Business First’s request for comment.
The tax consultant has over 5,000 clients in New Mexico, the NPTG’s website shows.
Now, with no 12% cap, Lara said he must follow state statute when assessing non-residential properties and bring their assessed values to their current and correct market value.
“I don’t disagree with them (non-residential property owners) that an increase that high may be unfair,” Lara said. “But, the state Legislature said, ‘No, that (HB 342) is not the law we want. Follow the law that is currently in place, which is to bring properties to their current and correct market value.’”
How, if at all, could sudden and steep property value assessment increases impact BernCo?
Most commercial leases have provisions that require tenants pay either property taxes or the annual increase in property taxes, said Tom Jenkins, REA NM qualifying broker and economic development chair for the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.
And, although the average increase in 2025 Bernalillo County property assessments was 47%, increases above that were common, especially for larger properties.
In an independent poll of members, NAIOP New Mexico found that the highest increase in property assessment for one property was 704%, according to NAIOP New Mexico Executive Director Rhiannon Samuel.
The mode — the most common percentage change — from that poll was 62%, Samuel added.
Similarly, large non-residential properties such as 111 Lomas Blvd. NW and 320 Gold Ave. SW saw one-year property assessment increases of 196% and 109%, respectively, according to the Bernalillo County Assessor’s website.
If those increases in non-residential property assessments translate to significant increases in non-residential property taxes, local Albuquerque and New Mexico businesses could get handed burdensome increases in their lease payments.
“If people think it’s going to be rich property owners that are going to bear the brunt of this, it’s not,” Jenkins said. “In most cases, the tenant will be taking on 100% of the (property tax) increase.”
For businesses with thin margins or those in industries characterized by them, absorbing that increase without sacrificing profitability could prove difficult.
For example, the property assessment for Jenkins’ client American Home Furniture saw a 68% jump in value from 2024 to 2025 on its warehouse, home to its clearance center and other uses, Bernalillo County records show.
In an industry with thin margins, American Home Furniture is considering ways to brace for the potential impact of a resulting property tax increase and pondering how much of that increase its consumers can absorb, Jenkins said.
“Whether it’s your favorite brewpub, where you get your hair cut or even your doctor who has an office space, all those tenants are going to get the increase,” Jenkins said. “Which means that they’re going to try to pass it to the consumer because their margins might not be that good. If you throw some other things on top, it’s not a pretty situation.”
Total Management Systems’ Sundaram said that this year he received property assessment increases ranging from 27% to 108%.
If those increases, or any other large property assessment increases, translate to steep rises in property taxes, it won’t be feasible to pass a meaningful amount of those increases to consumers in the hospitality industry, Sundaram said.
This has led Sundaram and Total Management Systems to consider delayed wage increases for employees and significant cuts to operating expenses to offset the anticipated property tax increase, he said.
“It affects how we have to operate (because) it’s kind of a fixed expense,” Sundaram said. “We’re going to have to really clamp down on some of our operating expenses to offset some of our increased fixed costs.”
Lara emphasized that an increase in the assessed value of property does not necessarily mean there will be an increase or significant increase in property taxes because the state’s yield control formula and statute limits county revenue yields that result when property values are increased due to reassessment.
“Many property owners don’t understand the (property tax) formula, so they are very hesitant and very scared that an increase in property values means an automatic increase in property taxes,” Lara said. “Typically, if you see an increase wholesale in property values, you should see a proportional decrease in the mill rate.”
Possible future solutions
After years or even a decade of under assessment, it’s challenging for tenants and property owners to absorb the cost of their property values being raised to their current and correct market value in just one year.
In HB 342, the 12% cap on how much a non-residential property’s value could be reassessed in one year was included to address that challenge and give businesses and property owners predictability, Sigmon said.
On average, commercial properties nationwide appreciate between 3% and 5% annually, Sigmon said.
An additional 7% was added to the upper end of that range to give the assessor’s office room to raise non-residential property assessments to their current and correct market value over the course of a few years, Sigmon said.
This would make the burden of increased property assessments more manageable for tenants and property owners, Sigmon said.
“(Increases are) all hitting at one time, in one year, without anyone being able to start adjusting for it and planning for it is what’s really the problem,” Jenkins said. “If it was implemented on some kind of scale where it increased over time, … I think most businesses could prepare for that. But if it’s like, ‘Next year, it’s doubling,’ that’s a big hit all at once.”
There are currently no concrete plans in place to resurface HB 342 or a similar version in upcoming sessions, Lente and Sigmon said, but they said there seemed to be consensus that the bill could be a good solution.
“The assessors, they’d been asking for disclosure on commercial sales prices for a number of years, and we (non-residential property owners) have always opposed it,” Sigmon said. “So, we got together and came up with a disclosure component and a cap (that property owners wanted). … We wanted to be an example of how two opposing groups could come together and do what was right for the state instead of just fighting each other.”
Protests to property tax assessments in Bernalillo County were due June 2, and decisions will be announced within approximately 180 days of June 2, Lara said.
