Albuquerque Permit Guide
Albuquerque is the largest local enforcement agency in New Mexico, running its own plan review and inspections rather than sending them to the state — and as a home rule city it may amend the state code upward, so both standards have to be satisfied and the stricter one governs.
Bernalillo County Permit Guide
Bernalillo County permits the land Albuquerque does not — the South Valley, the East Mountains behind the Sandias and the North Valley villages — three areas with almost nothing in common but the same county building department.
Chaves County Permit Guide
Chaves County covers over six thousand square miles of the Pecos Valley and eastern plains, and sits above the Roswell artesian basin — a declared groundwater basin where the right to drill a well is a legal question long before it is a drilling one.
Doña Ana County Permit Guide
Doña Ana County contains more colonias — unincorporated settlements that developed without full water, sewer or paved access — than any other county in New Mexico, and bringing one of those parcels to a building permit is a different exercise from an ordinary rural build.
Eddy County Permit Guide
Eddy County combines the most intense oil development in the country with ground that dissolves — the same gypsum and limestone karst that made Carlsbad Caverns produces sinkholes and subsidence across the county's inhabited land.
Las Cruces Permit Guide
Las Cruces keeps its permit counter open from seven in the morning to six in the evening four days a week and closes it at eleven on Friday — the longest working day of any New Mexico jurisdiction in this band, and the earliest end to the week.
Lea County Permit Guide
Lea County sits on the New Mexico side of the Permian Basin, the most active oil field in the country — and outside its incorporated cities, building permits are issued by the state's Construction Industries Division rather than by any county building department.
McKinley County Permit Guide
More of McKinley County is tribal land than any other county in the band — Navajo Nation, Zuni Pueblo and the Ramah Navajo community — and none of it is permitted by the county or the state at all.
Otero County Permit Guide
Otero County runs from the Tularosa Basin at four thousand feet to the Sacramento Mountains above nine thousand, and holds White Sands Missile Range, Holloman Air Force Base and the Mescalero Apache Reservation — none of which it permits.
Rio Rancho Permit Guide
Rio Rancho was laid out in the 1960s as a speculative land subdivision covering far more ground than was ever built on, which leaves the city with tens of thousands of small legacy lots — and makes the platting and access question the first one on many parcels.
Roswell Building Permit Guide
How to get a building permit in Roswell, New Mexico - City of Roswell Planning, Zoning, and Building Services / Development Services, portal filing, state code coordination, fees, inspections, and closeout. 2026 guide.
San Juan County Permit Guide
San Juan County works a four-day week — open long days Monday to Thursday and closed on Friday — in a county where a large share of the land is Navajo Nation territory that the county does not permit at all.
Sandoval County Permit Guide
Sandoval County added more residents than any other county in New Mexico last year, and it does so on a map interrupted by pueblo land, national forest and federal holdings — none of which the county permits.
Santa Fe County Permit Guide
Santa Fe County ties building to water: development in the unincorporated county has to demonstrate an adequate and legal water supply, which in a high-desert county with a closed groundwater basin is the constraint that decides most projects.
Santa Fe Permit Guide
Santa Fe regulates how a building looks as tightly as how it is built — its historic district ordinances govern massing, materials, colour and detail across much of the city, and that review runs alongside a building permit rather than instead of it.
Valencia County Permit Guide
Valencia County grew faster in percentage terms than any other New Mexico county last year, absorbing housing demand pushed south out of Albuquerque onto valley and mesa land that is largely unsewered.