City of Hobbs looks to bring 4,300 more homes with housing initiatives
Caleb A. Gallegos/News-Sun
With around $21 million spent in housing incentives and around 2,752 units built since starting the housing initiative in 2012, Hobbs Commissioners approved another housing agreement with hopes to build 4,300 more homes by 2040.
In Tuesday’s City of Hobbs commission meeting, Mayor Sam Cobb and the commission approved a development agreement with Stuard Homes LLC, for “market rate single-family housing.”
In the City of Hobbs staff summary form it states, “the developer proposes to produce market-rate single-family units and is requesting infrastructure incentive of $300,000.”
The publicly funded subsidies in the housing initiative are intended to encourage contractors to build new housing in the city. In February 2012, the City of Hobbs approved its first multi-family housing development agreement.
The incentives reimburse developers for expenses related to installing new public infrastructure, including streets, curbing, sidewalk and water and sewer mains installed by the developer at pre-approved city rates.
City of Hobbs assistant City Manager Todd Randall explained the housing initiatives date to before Cobb was on the city planning board before becoming mayor. Randall said the housing initiatives include affordable housing, multi-family housing and single-family housing projects.
Randall said since 2012, there have been 488 affordable housing project units built with an $8.1 million contribution from the City of Hobbs. Those developments include Parkside Terrace, West Berry Senior Apartments, Playa Escondida, Skyview Terrace and New Leaf.
When it comes to multi-family housing projects, Randall said around 1,081 total units have been built with a $3.6 million contribution from the City of Hobbs, and include Homestead, Sorrento, Windscape and Ledgestone.
And 1,183 single-family housing units have been built since 2012 with a $10.2 million contribution from the City of Hobbs, which has yielded $7.9 million in GRT (gross receipts tax) and around $1 million in annual property tax.
“Overall since 2012, there have been nearly 2,800 units developed in the City of Hobbs,” Randall said.
Randall said although around $31 million in incentive money was allocated in 2012, only around $21 million has so far been disbursed.
“A lot of difference there as far as development agreements that didn’t get completed,” Randall explained. “So once you get to 75 percent, if you ask for a new one (development agreement) then we term that existing one.
“So on average its about $8,000 per unit (incentive disbursed).”
Randall said the University of New Mexico did an updated study on housing needs for the Lea County Housing summit in 2024, which showed a shortage of 1,700 housing units at the end of 2023.
“As far as projections for 2040, there needs to be about 4,300 units,” Randall said. “One of the interesting facts is that for every 500 jobs created, you need about 1,300 additional housing units. That’s because when one person gets hired more families show up, and you need more school teachers, more services and other support staff that come along with job creation.”
With $21 million already spent on the incentives, Cobb said the process has absolutely been worth the investment the city and county has put in to building new homes.
“If you look at the amount of investment that $21 million has created, its in the hundreds of millions,” Cobb said. “You can’t have any job growth, you can’t have economic growth in the community without housing. That’s a basic requirement for growing a community is providing housing for the people that want to live and work in the community.”
Cobb also believes that building new homes can benefit older homes because of the current sellers market in real-estate.
“Housing values are based on comparable values, so when you build a new house that cost $200 a square foot to build and you have an older home that maybe 80 years ago cost $80 a square foot to built — that value of that older home goes up as well,” Cobb said. “When the consumer is looking to buy a new home verses an existing home, in most cases they can buy an existing home for less money than a new home. It creates a rise in the property value of all the housing in the community.
“We always monitor how many homes are available for sale. We only fund the house builder after a certificate of occupancy is issued. So if the numbers of homes available for sale in Hobbs were to increase dramatically, then we would stop our incentives until those homes were consumed by people moving into the existing homes.”
Cobb said without the 2,800 houses built since 2012, Hobbs wouldn’t have continued to grow the way it has.
“When I became mayor we were in the mid 40’s, now were at 54,000 (population),” Cobbs said. “Without housing in any shape or form, whether its manufactured homes, whether its multifamily, whether its affordable multifamily, whether its single family — there is no way to grow the population. Where would people live.
“I hope my successor in the mayor’s office and I hope the successors in the (city) commission and the county commission realize now how positive that whole program has been toward creating housing availability for people in the community.”
