Albuquerque, New Mexico: security deposit interest
No Albuquerque ordinance requires interest on residential security deposits — the city has no landlord-tenant chapter anywhere in its codified ordinances, so New Mexico's state rule is the whole answer inside city limits.
Cited to Revised Ordinances of Albuquerque (complete code; no landlord-tenant chapter) and 1 more source · Verified August 28, 2026
The one Albuquerque provision that makes a deposit draw interest concerns a different deposit entirely: customers of the city's own utility services may be required to post deposits that "draw reasonable interest as determined by the Mayor," money held by the city, not by a landlord. Claims that Albuquerque requires deposit interest appear to trace to that utility rule. The nearest real rental-deposit rule in the city code is a fair-housing one: landlords may not demand extra deposits from tenants whose rent is subsidized.
Albuquerque deposit interest at a glance
| Interest owed under local law | No — no local law addresses it |
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How this interacts with state law
New Mexico's deposit-interest statute, § 47-8-18, applies in Albuquerque unmodified: on a year-or-longer lease with a deposit exceeding one month's rent, the state duty is what governs, and the city adds nothing — no rate, no account rule, no enforcement mechanism, and no landlord-tenant chapter at all.
Notes and caveats
- The utility-deposit rule that misleads — Section 9-10-1-11(F)(4) of the city code lets the city require "reasonable deposits" from utility customers, and those deposits "shall draw reasonable interest as determined by the Mayor." It binds the city as a utility provider and has nothing to do with rental housing — but it is the only Albuquerque text pairing deposits with interest, which makes it the likely seed of the claim that the city requires deposit interest.
- Rental ordinances that did not pass — Two recent City Council measures on rental practices — the 2025 RENT Ordinance and a companion rental-practices measure — both failed, in August 2025 and January 2026 respectively, and neither proposed deposit interest in any event. The city's 2026 habitability-enforcement ordinance, which did pass, contains no deposit provisions.
Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Albuquerque, New Mexico: security deposit interest (verified August 28, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/deposit-interest/new-mexico/albuquerque/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified).
Citations
- Revised Ordinances of Albuquerque (complete code; no landlord-tenant chapter) (verified 2026) Official source
- Albuquerque ROA 1994 § 9-10-1-11 (city utility customer deposits) · (F)(4) (verified 2026) Official source
How this record was verified: Read of the complete codified corpus of Albuquerque — the Revised Ordinances (current through Ordinance 2026-010, passed April 6, 2026), the Integrated Development Ordinance, the Code of Resolutions, the Administrative Instructions, the City Charter, and the Personnel Rules, 4,289 documents in all — with every occurrence of security-deposit and deposit-interest language classified, plus a search of the City Council's legislation records for rental measures.
This page records local law on deposit interest. The statewide position — New Mexico requires a landlord to pay annual interest on a security deposit, but only under an annual rental agreement where the deposit is greater than one month's rent — and the rate the statute names stopped existing in 1986. — lives on the New Mexico deposit-interest page with its own citations and verification date.