Albuquerque rental demand is anchored by a small group of very large, stable employers, led by Kirtland Air Force Base, Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico, plus steady in-migration to the wider metro. On the supply side, a wave of apartments permitted from 2021 to 2023 has been absorbed, and rental permits fell sharply in 2024, which helps explain why federal housing analysts described the market as “slightly tight” at the end of that year.
The picture is not one of runaway growth. The city’s own population has edged down since 2020, and job counts have softened in 2026. For owners and passive investors, the useful question is which forces keep renters in Albuquerque’s apartments and which ones could loosen the market. The sections below take each in turn, with every figure tied to its source and year.
Population: a flat city inside a growing metro
The U.S. Census Bureau’s QuickFacts profile for Albuquerque city estimates the population at 556,588 as of July 1, 2025, down from 564,428 at the April 2020 census, a decline of about 1.4%. Bernalillo County shows the same pattern, at 667,601 in 2025 versus 676,446 in 2020.
The metro tells a different story. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines the Albuquerque housing market area as Bernalillo, Sandoval, Torrance and Valencia counties. HUD’s January 2025 Albuquerque housing market profile estimated that area at 931,100 people as of January 1, 2025, growing about 3,075 people a year (0.3%) since April 2020. All of that growth came from net in-migration, roughly 3,500 people a year, with Sandoval County growing fastest at about 1.4% a year.
For apartment owners, the distinction matters. A shrinking core city does not necessarily mean shrinking renter demand, because household formation, age mix and the share of households that rent all shift independently of headline population. But it does mean demand growth is modest, and it argues for underwriting that assumes steady occupancy rather than rapid rent gains.
Who rents in Albuquerque
Census American Community Survey figures for 2020 to 2024 describe the city’s households:
- 243,733 households, averaging 2.27 people each.
- 61.8% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, so roughly 38% of households rent.
- Median gross rent: $1,145 a month.
- Median household income: $68,317 (in 2024 dollars).
- 39.2% of adults 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.
- Poverty rate: 15.5%.
Two observations follow. First, median gross rent from the ACS blends long-standing leases with new ones, so it runs below current asking rents (HUD’s market data, discussed below, put the average apartment rent at $1,279 at the end of 2024). Second, rent equal to $1,145 a month is about 20% of the city’s median household income, a ratio that comes up again in the discussion of rent burden below.
The employers behind Albuquerque rental demand
Albuquerque’s job base is unusually concentrated in federal, defense and research employment. HUD’s January 2025 profile, drawing on Albuquerque Regional Economic Alliance data, lists the three largest employers:
- Kirtland Air Force Base: 23,000 workers, including 4,200 active-duty military.
- Sandia National Laboratories: 14,125.
- University of New Mexico: 13,950.
Kirtland Air Force Base
Kirtland’s fiscal 2024 economic impact statement put the base’s economic impact at $7.5 billion, with more than 22,000 military and civilian employees and 56,687 jobs credited across Albuquerque. Military households are a familiar renter segment: assignments are typically a few years long, and many service members and contractors rent rather than buy.
Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia reports 16,320 employees in total for fiscal 2025, measured as full-time equivalents, with 12,915 of them at the Albuquerque site. According to Sandia’s facts and figures page and its January 2026 release, the average salary was $145,000 in 2025 and the lab’s economic impact reached a record $5.2 billion. A large, well-paid technical workforce supports demand for newer, amenity-rich apartments, particularly for early-career hires and contractors on fixed-term projects.
UNM, health care and the film industry
The University of New Mexico is both an employer and a source of student renters (covered below). Beyond the three largest employers, the city has also gained film and television work. In July 2024 the City of Albuquerque marked an expansion of Netflix’s Mesa del Sol studio campus from 28 to 108 acres, adding four soundstages, three mills, a production office and two support buildings. The city reported that the build employed 2,800 construction workers and that Netflix employed more than 4,000 New Mexico cast and crew from 2021 to 2023. Production work tends to be project-based, which supports demand for flexible, short- to medium-term leases.
Intel is a neighbor, not a resident
Intel’s large New Mexico manufacturing site is in Rio Rancho, in Sandoval County, not in Albuquerque. Intel lists roughly 3,100 New Mexico employees. Some of those workers live in Albuquerque, but owners should treat Intel as a regional influence rather than a city employer.
What the latest job numbers show
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Albuquerque metro economy at a glance shows a softer picture in 2026. Preliminary figures for August 2026 put:
- The unemployment rate at 4.8%.
- Total nonfarm employment at 418,100, down 0.5% from a year earlier.
- Government as the largest sector, with 80,100 jobs, followed by education and health services at 75,400.
A modest year-over-year job decline is worth watching, especially in a market so reliant on federal spending. At the same time, the size of the government and education-and-health sectors explains why Albuquerque’s renter base has historically been less volatile than in metros driven by tourism or private-sector hiring cycles.
Students: UNM and CNM
Higher education adds a distinct layer of demand. According to the New Mexico Higher Education Department’s fall 2025 headcount data (a revised draft produced in March 2026):
- UNM’s main campus enrolled 24,009 students, up from 23,406 in fall 2024.
- Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) enrolled 19,521, up from 19,404.
UNM’s own census-day count, reported in September 2025, was 23,955 at the Albuquerque campus and 28,285 across all campuses, its fourth straight year of total enrollment growth.
Most of these students live off campus. HUD’s 2023 comprehensive housing market analysis estimated that about 21,750 UNM students lived off campus in fall 2022, roughly 4% of the metro’s renter households. CNM is a commuter college, so its students are already counted among local households. The neighborhoods near UNM, including the university area and Nob Hill along Central Avenue, feel this demand most directly, with leasing patterns that follow the academic calendar.
Supply: a construction wave, then a pullback
HUD’s January 2025 profile, using CoStar data, summarizes the apartment market at the end of 2024:
- Apartment vacancy was 6.9% in the fourth quarter of 2024, unchanged from a year earlier, a level HUD described as “slightly tight.”
- The average apartment rent was $1,279, up $36, or nearly 3%, year over year.
- 1,225 units were absorbed in 2024, compared with only 50 in 2023.
- Vacancy varied widely by area, reaching 17.6% in the North Valley submarket.
- 800 rental units were permitted in 2024, down 58% from the prior year, after 5,100 rental units were permitted from 2021 through 2023.
HUD’s earlier 2023 market analysis had forecast demand for 2,925 new rental units between April 2023 and April 2026, against 3,675 units already under construction at the time. The same report put the overall rental vacancy rate, which covers all rental housing rather than only apartments, at 7.1% as of April 1, 2023. In other words, the pipeline was large enough to cover the forecast demand, and the strong absorption in 2024 shows the market working through it. With permits down sharply in 2024, fewer new units are likely to be competing for renters in 2026 and 2027 than during the peak delivery years.
The North Valley figure is a reminder that metro averages hide real dispersion. A new property in lease-up can push a submarket’s vacancy far above the metro rate for a year or two, while older, well-located buildings nearby stay full.
City policy: Housing Forward ABQ and zoning changes
The City of Albuquerque launched Housing Forward ABQ in 2022 with a goal of adding at least 5,000 housing units beyond what the market would otherwise build, by 2025. The city’s 2021 gap estimate behind the plan included 13,223 market-rate apartments and 15,500 units for households at or below 30% of area median income.
The most concrete changes came through the city’s zoning code, the Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO). Amendments adopted in June 2023, signed by the mayor on July 6 and effective July 27, 2023:
- Allowed casitas (accessory dwelling units) citywide.
- Made it easier to convert hotels and commercial buildings into housing.
- Let a microwave plus an induction cooktop count as a kitchen, which lowers the cost of hotel-to-apartment conversions.
These rules add a new kind of competitor: converted motels and offices that can offer small units at lower rents. Owners of older, smaller apartment buildings, particularly along commercial corridors, are most likely to see that competition directly.
Statewide shortage estimates
At the state level, Housing New Mexico (the Mortgage Finance Authority) presented its NM Housing Strategy 2026 update to legislators in May 2026. It estimated that New Mexico needs 57,979 housing units by 2045, including 18,641 rentals, and that Bernalillo County alone needs 21,600 units by 2045, including 8,191 rentals. Those are long-range projections rather than near-term forecasts, but they frame the gap that city and state policy is trying to close.
How demand differs by renter segment
Because Albuquerque’s demand comes from a few distinct groups, the same building can lease very differently depending on which group it serves. Each segment brings its own lease length, unit preference and sensitivity to rent:
- Military and defense households. Kirtland’s mix of active-duty personnel, civilians and contractors produces renters on assignments that are often a few years long. They value proximity to the base and predictable lease terms, and turnover clusters around reassignment cycles.
- Laboratory and technical staff. With an average Sandia salary of $145,000 in 2025, this group can afford newer product and often rents while deciding where to buy. Its demand leans toward one- and two-bedroom units with modern finishes.
- Students. UNM and CNM together enrolled more than 43,000 students in fall 2025. Student demand concentrates near campus and along transit routes, follows an August-to-May cycle and is price-sensitive.
- Production crews. Film and television work brings project-based demand that favors furnished or flexible leases, often for a few months at a time.
- Service and health care workers. Hospitals, schools and retail employers add a broad base of renters who are most sensitive to rent levels and most likely to choose older, lower-rent buildings.
Household size reinforces the unit-mix point. At 2.27 people per household citywide, most renter households are singles, couples or small families, which keeps one- and two-bedroom apartments the core of demand.
Rent burden in context
Affordability is one of Albuquerque’s quieter demand supports. Using the Census figures above, median gross rent of $1,145 equals about 20% of the median household income of $68,317. Even HUD’s higher average apartment rent of $1,279 at the end of 2024 works out to about 22% of median income. Those ratios are not a forecast of how far rents can rise, because renter incomes typically run below the citywide median, but they suggest that typical rents leave room in household budgets, which is consistent with continued net in-migration to the metro even as the core city’s population has dipped.
The legal backdrop for rents
New Mexico law prohibits local rent control. Section 47-8A-1 NMSA 1978, enacted in 1991, bars cities and counties from regulating rents on private residential property. Repeal bills have been introduced repeatedly (SB 99 in 2023, SB 186 in 2024 and SB 216 in 2025), and the 2026 version, SB 138, was postponed indefinitely in committee on January 26, 2026. Day-to-day landlord-tenant relationships are governed by the state’s Uniform Owner-Resident Relations Act, in Chapter 47, Article 8 NMSA.
For underwriting, the practical effect is that rent levels in Albuquerque are set by the market, not by a local cap. That cuts both ways: owners can adjust rents when demand is strong, but there is no regulatory floor under rents if new supply arrives faster than renters do.
Reading the market as an owner or passive investor
Putting the pieces together, Albuquerque’s apartment demand looks durable but not explosive. A few takeaways for owners and for investors evaluating the market from a distance:
- Federal and institutional employers are the foundation. Kirtland, Sandia and UNM together account for roughly 51,000 jobs on HUD’s list, and their payrolls do not follow the same cycle as private industry. Federal budget decisions are the main risk to watch.
- In-migration supports the metro even as the core city’s population dips. Sandoval County’s faster growth suggests some renters will trade city locations for suburban ones.
- Supply pressure is easing. After 5,100 rental units were permitted from 2021 through 2023, the 2024 drop to 800 permitted units should reduce competition from new lease-ups.
- Submarket selection matters more than the metro average. A 17.6% vacancy in one submarket alongside a 6.9% metro rate shows how much location and building vintage drive results.
- Conversions are a new competitor. The 2023 IDO changes make it easier to turn hotels and commercial buildings into small apartments, which mainly affects the lower-rent end of the market.
Passive investors who want a grounding in how such market factors feed into a property’s returns and risks can start with our guide to passive multifamily investing.
Where to go from here
Owners of Albuquerque buildings can find more local context, including how Skyline Capital looks at properties in the city, on our Albuquerque market page. Our New Mexico market overview covers the other cities we follow in the state. Because several figures above, including employment, vacancy and enrollment, are updated at least annually, it is worth checking the HUD, BLS and Census sources directly before making a decision that depends on them.
