"We have site control locked — what do we actually owe Housing New Mexico before January 20, and does the checklist change if we file 4% instead of 9%?"
The QAP Phase 1 cites has already been superseded
Phase 1 of this guide cites the 2025 New Mexico QAP and notes that no 2026 QAP had posted as of that research. That has changed. Housing New Mexico's Board approved a 2026 9% LIHTC QAP and a separate 2026 4% LIHTC QAP on October 15, 2025; both were approved by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham in October 2025 (the posted document leaves the exact gubernatorial signature date blank) and both are effective December 1, 2025 — meaning both governed the January 2026 Initial Application round and remain the current documents as of this research. This is not a minor point-in-time update: Housing New Mexico has split what used to be one QAP into two independently numbered documents, one titled "State of New Mexico 9% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program Qualified Allocation Plan" and the other "State of New Mexico 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program Qualified Allocation Plan."
The underlying substance a developer has to satisfy for site control and zoning is essentially unchanged from what Phase 1 describes — the same June 30 initial-term rule, the same unzoned/agricultural exemption, the same tribal 10% test mechanics. What changed is where each rule lives inside the document. Site control moved from Section III.C.1(a) in the 2025 QAP to Section IV.A.1 in the 2026 9% QAP. The five-business-day deficiency correction period moved from Section IV.C.5 to Section III.F.7. Loss of site control as a termination ground moved from Section IV.H.1 to Section VII.F.1, and the mandatory notification requirement moved from Section IV.I.1 to Section VII.G. A due-diligence checklist or citation table built against the 2025 QAP's section numbers will point to the wrong place in the current document.
The 2026 9% and 2026 4% QAPs are not two tracks inside one shared document, either — each has its own independent section numbering that only loosely mirrors the other's. The Threshold Requirements sections (Site Control, Zoning, Fees, Market Study, Applicant Eligibility, Financial Feasibility, Pre-Application Requirements) line up as parallel IV.A through IV.G sections in both documents, but they diverge past that: the same termination-of-Reservation language sits at Section VII.F in the 9% QAP and Section VII.C in the 4% QAP, because the 4% document simply has fewer preceding subsections. Any citation used in this guide, or in a future EZFeasi due-diligence checklist, has to specify which of the two documents it comes from.
Market study: two different pass conditions behind the same 180-day clock
Both programs require a market study submitted with the Initial Application, prepared by a vendor meeting Housing New Mexico's Market Study Professional Certification requirements, following the National Council of Housing Market Analysts (NCHMA) Model Content Standards — incorporated into both QAPs as Appendix G — and issued within 180 days of the Application submission. Past that shared shell, the two programs test different numbers.
| 9% LIHTC | 4% LIHTC | |
|---|---|---|
| What must be shown | A Capture Rate for the Project overall and for each targeted income level and bedroom count; the overall Capture Rate must not exceed 10% | That the overall vacancy rate in the market study's defined Primary Market Area is less than 10% |
| Exemptions | Tribal Projects, Senior Housing, and Projects restricting 100% of Units to farmworkers are exempt from the Capture Rate ceiling but must still submit a study showing need | No stated exemption from the vacancy-rate test found in this research |
If the submitted study is insufficient in either program, Housing New Mexico may order its own additional market study at the Applicant's expense, billed as a Direct Cost Fee due within five days of a deficiency correction notice. Whether that second study clears the Application is Housing New Mexico's sole discretion in both QAPs — there is no appeal path back to the Applicant's own vendor's numbers.
What actually has to be inspected, appraised, and disclosed — and on which calendar
Phase 1 already covers the basic split: no blanket Phase I Environmental Site Assessment requirement for new construction, and a Capital Needs Assessment (CNA) required only for rehabilitation and Adaptive Reuse Projects. What Phase 1 doesn't cover is that the CNA's own due date branches depending on the building's age. For a Project Placed In Service less than 20 years before the Application Deadline, the CNA is due with the Initial Application. For a Project Placed In Service more than 20 years before the Application Deadline, the CNA is instead due by November 15 of the allocation year, filed with the Carryover Allocation Application rather than the Initial Application — a four-to-ten-month later deadline that's easy to miss if a diligence checklist treats "CNA due" as a single date.
Appraisals split by purpose, not just by identity-of-interest status. For a rehabilitation Project, an "As-Is" appraisal completed by an MAI appraiser licensed in New Mexico, dated no earlier than July 20 of the year immediately prior to the Application Deadline, is due with the November 15 Carryover Application. For an identity-of-interest acquisition specifically — the scenario Phase 1 covers in depth — the appraisal instead has to be dated within six months of the Application itself and must assume any existing use restrictions remain in place; the resulting value both caps the acquisition cost used to calculate the credit and reduces the Total Development Cost against which the developer fee is calculated. These are two different appraisals, on two different clocks, triggered by two different facts about the deal — rehabilitation status and identity-of-interest status aren't mutually exclusive, and a rehabilitation deal with a related-party seller needs both.
A rehabilitation Application also has to include a preliminary displacement/relocation plan at Initial Application — covering potential permanent, temporary, or economic displacement, the approximate number of tenants to be relocated, and a good-faith cost estimate — with a full Uniform Relocation Act plan due later, at Carryover Application. And for 4% deals specifically, if the Developer bought the land or depreciable real property within the year before the Initial Application using bridge financing, the 4% QAP requires disclosure of the purchase price paid; no equivalent disclosure requirement appears in the 9% QAP's site control section, because a 9% deal on that same timeline is far less likely to have already closed.
Diligence has its own bill, and 9% and 4% price it differently
Both QAPs charge the same Application Fee ($750 nonprofit / $1,500 for-profit) and the same Base Portion Design Review fee ($12,000, due with the Initial Application), which bundles a preliminary Design Standards review, construction drawing and specification review, an environmental study and HERS modeling review, contract document review, and three site inspections at 33%, 66%, and 100% completion. Both refund the $12,000 if the Application isn't awarded a Reservation or bond financing. Beyond that shared base, the fee schedules quietly diverge in ways that matter to a schedule under stress.
| Fee | 9% LIHTC | 4% LIHTC |
|---|---|---|
| Deadline extension | $500 per week | $2,500 per week |
| Processing fee (8.5% of the tax credit allocation) due | Before the Reservation Contract | Upon State Board of Finance approval of the volume cap allocation (deferrable to construction closing on a hardship request) |
| Monitoring & Compliance fee | $50/unit/year, dropping to $20/unit/year in the Extended Use Period — identical in both programs | Identical in both programs |
A 4% deal that slips its post-award schedule pays five times the weekly extension fee a 9% deal pays for the same delay — a real, budgetable cost difference that has nothing to do with credit pricing or construction risk, and everything to do with which QAP governs the deal.
Where the checklist EZFeasi doesn't run yet would sit
Housing New Mexico also administers a separate Draft 2026 Annual Action Plan governing HOME, CDBG, ESG, HOPWA, and Housing Trust Fund federal formula dollars — a common gap-financing layer on a New Mexico LIHTC deal, and a document with its own comment period and timeline, entirely outside the LIHTC QAP calendar this phase otherwise tracks. Confirming whether a specific gap source is available, and on what schedule, is a due-diligence step this research did not attempt to resolve for any specific New Mexico site.
EZFeasi has no New Mexico due-diligence checklist, document tracker, market-study-parameter library, or appraisal-deadline calendar built today. This phase, for a New Mexico deal, is currently a place to record which QAP — 9% or 4% — governs the filing, and to track the resulting dates by hand against the two documents above.
Where this goes wrong
- Citing the 2025 QAP's section numbers (e.g., Section III.C.1(a) for site control, Section IV.C.5 for the deficiency correction period) in a 2026 filing — both moved (to Section IV.A.1 and Section III.F.7, respectively, in the 2026 9% QAP) when Housing New Mexico split the QAP into separate 9% and 4% documents.
- Assuming one market study test serves both programs. The 9% QAP caps the Project's Capture Rate at 10%; the 4% QAP instead requires the Primary Market Area's overall vacancy rate to be under 10% — different metrics, not the same test under two names.
- Treating the Capital Needs Assessment as due on a single fixed date. A Project Placed In Service less than 20 years before the Application Deadline owes it with the Initial Application; one Placed In Service more than 20 years prior owes it by November 15 with the Carryover Application instead.
- Confusing the rehabilitation "As-Is" appraisal (MAI-licensed in New Mexico, dated no earlier than July 20 of the prior year, due with the November 15 Carryover Application) with the identity-of-interest appraisal (dated within six months of the Application itself) — they run on different clocks and a deal can require both.
- Not budgeting for Housing New Mexico's Direct Cost Fee if it orders its own supplemental market study — the cost is the Applicant's, due within five days of the deficiency correction notice, and the agency's judgment on sufficiency is final.
- Missing the 4%-only bridge-financing disclosure: if the Developer purchased the land within the year before the Initial Application using bridge financing, the 4% QAP requires disclosing the purchase price paid — a requirement with no stated equivalent in the 9% QAP's site control section.
- Underestimating a schedule slip's cost on a 4% deal. The deadline extension fee is $2,500 per week on 4% filings versus $500 per week on 9% filings — a fivefold difference that isn't obvious from the QAP's shared-looking fee table without reading both documents.
- Treating a complete LIHTC diligence file as covering all of a deal's soft-funding sources. HOME, CDBG, HTF, and other federal formula dollars in New Mexico run on the separate Draft Annual Action Plan calendar, not the LIHTC QAP calendar.
- HUD
- LIHTC
- State QAPs
- IRS § 42
- Housing Finance Agencies