Free tool · Albuquerque
What does a squatter cost you in New Mexico?
Change the numbers to match your property. The rent is New Mexico's own, from HUD; how long it drags on is your call; everything else is yours to overwrite.
New Mexico estimate
$34,936
Your numbers.
These are national starting points, not claims about your property. The one figure that drives the total — how long it drags on — is yours to set. Nobody can source it, so we do not pretend to.
How long before you get it back?
6 months
Your assumption, not ours — courts do not publish how long this takes. A contested removal runs in months, not weeks, almost everywhere; how it goes in New Mexico is in the guide.
How many bedrooms?
Sets the rent from HUD’s published Fair Market Rent for Albuquerque — $2,036/mo.
Mortgage / loan payment — per month
$
Only you know this one. The placeholder is roughly a $300k loan at current rates.
Lost rent or delayed sale — per month
$
HUD's Fair Market Rent for this metro, at the bedroom count you picked. It is the 40th percentile of recent-mover rents, so on a renovated or market-rate property it is a floor, not a valuation.
Attorney fees — one-off
$
No public data exists. Our estimate — nothing published backs it. No state bar and no court in any of these markets publishes fee data for an ejectment. Get a written quote and put it here.
Property taxes — per month
$
Your bill, divided by twelve. The placeholder is roughly a $250k property at Philadelphia's 1.3998% — Newark runs 1.845%, Los Angeles 1.187%.
Insurance — per month
$
No public data exists. Our estimate. Vacant cover genuinely does cost more, but the published figures for how much more disagree by a factor of five — anywhere from +25% to 5x. Use your own premium.
Utilities — per month
$
A national placeholder, unless your state overrides it below — Philadelphia's is the Water Department's own published bill. Whoever is inside, you are the ratepayer of record.
Damage and clean-out — one-off
$
No public data exists. Our estimate, and we want to be blunt: NO government body in the United States publishes squatter-damage data. Every figure you have seen quoted traces to one news story or to a lobby survey that counted houses, not dollars. We are not going to launder a number we cannot stand behind — put yours here.
If it happens in New Mexico
$34,936
at 6 months— and every extra month adds $4,406.
Against a $0–$120k range, so the bar means something as you drag.
Carrying it, empty ($4,406/mo × 6 mo)
$26,436
One-off costs (attorney, damage)
$8,500
What ruins you is the carry — the months. On top of this you will pay to file, for the sheriff to serve and remove, and for a lawyer. Those are set locally and we do not print a number we cannot cite — but next to the months, they are a sliver.
Can you get any of it back? NO. New Mexico's forcible entry / unlawful detainer judgment awards only damages and possession — § 35-10-4 does not order the losing occupant to pay the owner's attorney's fees, so there is no fee-shifting under the removal statute itself.. SECONDARY: read on FindLaw; official compilation CAPTCHAs. The section is silent on attorney's fees — it lists only damages and possession — so recovering fees would need a separate contractual or statutory basis, not this judgment. Confirmed against the FindLaw text 2026-07-14.
Why New Mexico costs what it does
New Mexico gives the owner a fast court route: after three days' written notice to leave, you file a possession case in the magistrate court for your county, and a hearing is set within three to ten days of the occupant being served. A judge signs the order that removes them — nobody is put out of a New Mexico house on the owner's sworn word alone; a sheriff acts on the court's judgment. If the person instead claims they actually own the building, the magistrate is not allowed to decide who holds title, and the case moves to a slower full lawsuit called ejectment in the district court.
How you must remove them
summary
“the defendant entered and occupied the lands and tenements of another against the will or consent of the owner and refused to vacate the premises after notice by the owner or his agent or attorney”
New Mexico does give the owner an expedited magistrate-court possession action that reaches a squatter who never had an agreement (§ 35-10-1(A)(1)), on a short clock (§ 35-10-3: three days' notice, return day 3–10 days). It is NOT sheriff-on-affidavit. The one fork out of the fast lane: if the occupant claims to OWN the building, § 35-10-3(C) bars the magistrate from deciding title and the case becomes a full ejectment suit in district court (§ 42-4-1). SECONDARY: read on FindLaw because the official NM compilation (nmonesource.com) answers with a CAPTCHA.
The statute
N.M. Stat. §§ 35-10-1 to 35-10-5 (forcible entry and unlawful detainer, magistrate court); ejectment at § 42-4-1
SECONDARY: read on FindLaw; the official New Mexico compilation returns a CAPTCHA on the cited chapters. Every quotation was compared word-for-word on 2026-07-14, but the grade tracks our source, not the text's quality.
Rent, by bedroom
1 bed $1,185 · 2 bed $1,464 · 3 bed $2,036 · 4 bed $2,399
2026-07-14
Verified verbatim against the official HUD FY2026 FMR Schedule PDF (Albuquerque, NM MSA row: 0BR 1009, 1BR 1185, 2BR 1464, 3BR 2036, 4BR 2399; area = Bernalillo, Sandoval, Torrance, Valencia counties). Downloaded and text-extracted 2026-07-14; HUD serves the PDF behind bot protection, so a browser fetch of the same URL is the reader's check.
Do you get your legal fees back?
NO. New Mexico's forcible entry / unlawful detainer judgment awards only damages and possession — § 35-10-4 does not order the losing occupant to pay the owner's attorney's fees, so there is no fee-shifting under the removal statute itself.
“If the defendant is found guilty in a civil action for forcible entry or unlawful detainer, judgment shall be entered against him: (1) for damages; and (2) that he be removed from the premises and the plaintiff be put in possession.”
SECONDARY: read on FindLaw; official compilation CAPTCHAs. The section is silent on attorney's fees — it lists only damages and possession — so recovering fees would need a separate contractual or statutory basis, not this judgment. Confirmed against the FindLaw text 2026-07-14.
Is there a fast sheriff route?
NO. No New Mexico law lets a sheriff remove an occupant on the owner's affidavit alone; removal happens only on a court judgment and the execution issued on it (§ 35-10-4). A 2026 bill (HB 144) that would have created an affidavit-to-officer removal died on the first day of the session, as did its 2025 predecessor (HB 332).
“Execution shall include an order that the sheriff or a full-time, salaried deputy sheriff remove the defendant from the premises.”
SECONDARY: read on FindLaw; official compilation CAPTCHAs. The affidavit fast lane is a legislative-risk item, not current law: HB 144 (2026) and HB 332 (2025) both died 'action postponed indefinitely.' A third such bill would flip this answer and end New Mexico as a market — track it.
This is the bill for finding out too late.
Nothing on this page will get an occupant out, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. What DeedProof does is earlier and duller: it verifies you own the property, structures the statement you swear before a notary, and files it — so that if someone does break in, the officer at the door has something to work from instead of a lease they cannot check.
The decision still belongs to the officer. Our job is to make it an easy one.
This page is the money. The law behind it is on New Mexico’s guide — whether police can arrest, whether a sheriff can act on your affidavit alone, and how long occupation takes to become a claim. Every answer quoted from the statute.