Safest Counties in New Mexico: 9 Ranked (2026)
The 9 New Mexico counties where police report enough to the FBI to build a reliable rate, ranked by violent crime, with home prices, asking rents and incomes where available.
New Mexico has 33 counties. Nine of them clear the reporting bar this page uses, and the gap between the quietest, Sandoval at 305 violent offenses per 100,000, and the busiest, Bernalillo at 965, is 3.2 to one. What homes closed at over the last 12 months sits beside the rate where Resideline has enough sales to publish a median: 604 closing records tracked in the one county that clears that bar.
The crime rates here are built from the 1,450,855 residents those police agencies actually report on, over the months they reported. Each figure is a single county-wide figure, so treat this as a way to narrow a search rather than a verdict on any street.
We do not treat missing or conflicting crime data as zero. A county appears here only when its reporting clears our reliability threshold, and we set aside results that conflict materially with the state's own records. Whether a county is ranked depends on its crime reporting alone; whether it shows a price depends on whether Resideline tracked enough closings there.
The ranking
| # | County | Violent per 100k | Property per 100k | Median closed price | Median asking rent | Median income |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sandoval | 305 | 895 | n/a | n/a | $90,023 |
| 2 | Otero | 350 | 1,246 | n/a | n/a | $56,152 |
| 3 | Santa Fe | 394 | 1,982 | n/a | n/a | $85,540 |
| 4 | McKinley | 485 | 1,482 | n/a | n/a | $45,517 |
| 5 | Chaves | 575 | 1,951 | n/a | n/a | $55,258 |
| 6 | Lea | 580 | 2,452 | $270,000 | $1,256 | $73,147 |
| 7 | Valencia | 614 | 1,665 | n/a | n/a | $69,309 |
| 8 | San Juan | 670 | 1,467 | n/a | n/a | $64,999 |
| 9 | Bernalillo | 965 | 3,660 | n/a | n/a | $72,986 |
A closer look at each county
1. Sandoval County
Sandoval records 305 violent offenses per 100,000 residents, which places it in the lowest quarter of the New Mexico counties measured here. It is the lowest on this list and still above the median comparable US county, which records 245. Households there earn a median of $90,023, about 130 percent of the median for these counties. Property crime is low too, at 895 per 100,000, the bottom quarter of this list and 0.8 times the median comparable US county.
2. Otero County
Police in Otero reported 350 violent offenses per 100,000 people, putting it in the lowest quarter of this list. That is 1.4 times the median comparable US county, which records 245, though still below the New Mexico statewide rate of 701 per 100,000 in the same data. Median household income is $56,152, roughly 81 percent of the level across this list. Property crime is low too, at 1,246 per 100,000, the bottom quarter of this list and 1.0 times the median comparable US county.
3. Santa Fe County
At 394 violent offenses per 100,000, Santa Fe sits in the lowest quarter of the places on this list. That is 1.6 times the median comparable US county, which records 245, though still below the New Mexico statewide rate of 701 per 100,000 in the same data. Households there earn a median of $85,540, about 123 percent of the median for these counties. Property offenses run at 1,982 per 100,000, in the middle of this list.
4. McKinley County
Police in McKinley reported 485 violent offenses per 100,000 people, putting it in the middle range of this list. That is 2.0 times the median comparable US county, which records 245, though still below the New Mexico statewide rate of 701 per 100,000 in the same data. Households there earn a median of $45,517, about 66 percent of the median for these counties. Its property rate, 1,482 per 100,000, sits in the middle of these counties.
5. Chaves County
Chaves's violent crime rate is 575 per 100,000 residents, the middle range among the New Mexico counties Resideline can measure. That is 2.3 times the median comparable US county, which records 245, though still below the New Mexico statewide rate of 701 per 100,000 in the same data. Median household income is $55,258, roughly 80 percent of the level across this list. Property offenses run at 1,951 per 100,000, in the middle of this list.
6. Lea County
Police in Lea reported 580 violent offenses per 100,000 people, putting it in the middle range of this list. That is 2.4 times the median comparable US county, which records 245, though still below the New Mexico statewide rate of 701 per 100,000 in the same data. At $270,000, its median closed price is unremarkable against the rest of this list. Prices sit close to local earning power, at 3.7 times the median household income. Its property rate of 2,452 per 100,000 is in the top quarter here, and 2.1 times the median comparable US county. Asking rents run about $1,256 a month. For prices at street level, see Hobbs, the market with the most tracked closings in this county's ZIP codes.
7. Valencia County
Valencia records 614 violent offenses per 100,000 residents, which places it in the middle range of the New Mexico counties measured here. That is 2.5 times the median comparable US county, which records 245, though still below the New Mexico statewide rate of 701 per 100,000 in the same data. Its property rate, 1,665 per 100,000, sits in the middle of these counties.
8. San Juan County
Police in San Juan reported 670 violent offenses per 100,000 people, putting it in the highest quarter of this list. That is 2.7 times the median comparable US county, which records 245, though still below the New Mexico statewide rate of 701 per 100,000 in the same data. Property crime is low, at 1,467 per 100,000, the bottom quarter of this list and 1.2 times the median comparable US county.
9. Bernalillo County
At 965 violent offenses per 100,000, Bernalillo sits in the highest quarter of the places on this list. That is 3.9 times the median comparable US county, which records 245, and above the New Mexico statewide rate of 701 per 100,000 in the same data. Its property rate of 3,660 per 100,000 is in the top quarter here, and 3.1 times the median comparable US county.
The counties we cannot rank
This place has no reporting agency in the 2025 FBI release at all, so we have no coverage figure to show: Doña Ana (about 229,000 residents).
Reporting to the FBI is voluntary and incomplete. Where a place's agencies cover only part of its population, the rate is built on the part that reported, so it describes those communities rather than the whole area. We publish at 90 percent coverage or better, which is a line we chose rather than a point where the data becomes reliable.
How to read this list
A rate like this averages everything inside the area, from its downtown to its farmland, and the spread within one of them is often wider than the spread between them. Use it to shortlist, then look at the specific address and the block it sits on.
Prices and rents are as of September 9, 2026, from closings and rental listings Resideline tracks over the previous 12 months; a price is shown where at least 100 closings were tracked and a rent where at least 50 listings were. Rent figures are the median asking rent on listings, not lease figures. Crime is the 2025 FBI Crime Data Explorer release, measured for the whole county over the months each agency reported, and violent crime means murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Household income is the Census SAIPE 2024 estimate of the county's median household income; population is the Census 2024 estimate. Where this page compares a rate with the median comparable US county, that figure (245 violent and 1188 property offenses per 100,000) is the median across the 874 US counties with at least 50,000 residents whose agencies reported on 90 percent or more of them for the year.
Sources and related pages
- •Crime: FBI Crime Data Explorer, agency-level offense counts for 2025, aggregated by county over the months each agency reported.
- •Income: Census SAIPE 2024, county median household income.
- •Population: Census county population estimates, vintage 2024.
- •Prices and rents: Resideline's tracked closings and rental listings, 12 months to September 2026.
- •Related: Safest counties by state; Does crime actually lower home prices?; New Mexico housing market.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the safest county in New Mexico?
Of the 9 New Mexico counties measured here, Sandoval County records the lowest violent crime rate at 305 offenses per 100,000 residents, against 245 for the median comparable US county.
Is this every county in New Mexico?
No. It covers 9 of the state's 33 counties, the ones where police agencies report at least 90 percent of the population to the FBI, the area has at least 50,000 residents, and the resulting rate falls inside the sanity bounds we apply. Whether Resideline has enough sales there decides only whether a price is shown. The larger places that miss those bars are listed on the page with the reason.
Is this crime rate for my neighborhood?
No. The FBI publishes these figures for whole counties, so every part of a county carries the same number here, from its densest district to its farmland. It is useful for narrowing a search and not a substitute for looking at a specific address.
Are these rents asking rents or lease rents?
They are the median asking rent on rental listings in the county over the last 12 months. That is what landlords advertised, a guide to the market rather than a lease figure.
About the author
Jeffrey Batista
Jeffrey Batista is the founder of Resideline, a real estate technology company building institutional grade valuation and investment analysis tools for real estate investors.
A software engineer with more than 10 years of experience, Jeffrey has worked across full stack development, infrastructure, data engineering, machine learning, and large scale systems. He left his engineering career to build Resideline full time.
Jeffrey is also a real estate investor with nearly a decade of hands on experience buying, renovating, managing, and analyzing residential properties. His experience on both sides of the industry, as an engineer and an investor, led him to build Resideline after seeing how fragmented and outdated many of the tools available to individual investors were.
Today, he leads the development of Resideline's proprietary data infrastructure, automated valuation models, rental analytics, and investment underwriting technology.