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Camino Property Co.
Market analysis

High-Desert Rental Market — Q1 2026 Outlook

Every January we publish what we're seeing across the 140 properties Camino manages — actual rents collected, actual days-on-market, actual renewal rates. Here's the early-2026 read.

Santa Fe

Santa Fe rents are flat year-over-year. Our 78 Santa Fe homes saw 2.1% rent growth in 2025, down from 4.8% in 2024. Days on market median: 12 days (vs. 9 in 2024). Tenant tenure median: 4.1 years.

Driver: New multifamily completion in the Railyard and Midtown added supply for the first time in years.

Tesuque

Tesuque saw 3.6% rent growth across our 8 properties. Days on market median: 18 days (smaller market, longer lease cycles). Tenant tenure median: 5.4 years.

Eldorado

Eldorado continues to outperform — 4.9% rent growth in 2025 across our 22 properties. Pueblo-style ranch homes in good school attendance zones are the hottest segment in our portfolio: 8 days on market median, multiple qualified applicants per listing.

Taos

Taos saw 3.2% rent growth across our 14 annual-lease properties. Tenant tenure median: 3.6 years (lower than other markets — Taos has more lifestyle migration in/out).

Galisteo + Los Alamos

Both small markets. Galisteo: 4 homes, all leased, no vacancies in 2025. Los Alamos: 14 homes, 96% occupancy, 4-6 month re-lease cycle (LANL employee turnover).

What we're advising owners

For Santa Fe owners: hold rent flat at renewal. For Eldorado owners: 3-5% increases at renewal — the school district is driving demand. For Tesuque owners: small increases (2-3%) — long-tenure tenants are worth keeping.

Questions about your own property? Get a free written rental analysis. We respond within one business day.

An owner once asked me whether the rental analysis we send is the same one we'd give a stranger off the street. The answer is yes — and that surprised her. The work is the same. The pricing recommendation is the same. The only thing that changes is who reads it.

That's the whole bet of this business. Show your work, in writing, and you don't have to spend your life relitigating it.

Comparable rentals, picked carefully

The discipline starts with comps. Three to five recent leases — not listings — within a three-quarter mile radius, matched on bedroom count, square footage, and condition. We weight by recency: a December lease counts more than a March lease in May.

The single biggest mistake amateurs make is using listing prices instead of executed leases. Listings are aspirations; leases are facts.

Listings are aspirations; leases are facts.

Days on market

If a unit sat for sixty days, the price was wrong. If it leased in seven, the price was probably low. Median days-on-market across our Santa Fe portfolio in Q1 was nineteen — a useful benchmark for a healthy lease velocity.

Seasonal rhythm

Santa Fe's rental market has a seasonal pulse: peak demand from May through August, a softer shoulder September through November, and a quiet December–February stretch where pricing rewards patience over speed.

The line items most pro-formas leave out

Three reliable misses: turnover cost, capital reserves, and vacancy lag.

Turnover isn't free. Painting, cleaning, re-keying, listing photography — call it 6% of annual rent on a normal turn, more if you replace flooring. Reserves for roof, HVAC, and water heater run another 2–3% of replacement value per year, even when nothing's broken. And vacancy lag — the gap between one resident leaving and the next paying — is rarely zero, even in a hot market.

Build those three into the model and your projection stops being optimistic fiction.

What we deliver

An eight-page PDF with the comps, the seasonal context, a recommended asking rent (with a high/middle/low band), an estimated days-to-lease, and a one-page net cash-flow projection. Everything cited. Everything dated. Free, no obligation.

If you want one, the form takes thirty seconds. We'll have a draft back in two business days.

santa fe eldorado taos market 2026
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