Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Let­ters of of­fer sent to sev­er­al ap­pli­cants for the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) Cau­ra hous­ing units have re­port­ed­ly been void­ed, de­spite re­cip­i­ents hav­ing what Op­po­si­tion PNM Sen­a­tor Vish­nu Dhan­paul de­scribed as “le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tions” that the of­fers would be ho­n­oured.

Dhan­paul made the claim dur­ing Tues­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on a Gov­ern­ment land ac­qui­si­tion or­der in­volv­ing lands on which the HDC’s Cau­ra de­vel­op­ment is lo­cat­ed.
He said the Cau­ra project, ini­ti­at­ed un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, com­prised 100 town­hous­es priced be­tween $950,000 and $1.1 mil­lion.

“Sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als who met the ini­tial cri­te­ria were in­ter­viewed. The 100 town­hous­es have al­ready been al­lo­cat­ed through let­ters of of­fer.

“These in­di­vid­u­als with let­ters of of­fer will now have le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tions that the of­fer will be ho­n­oured. How­ev­er, we have been in­formed that these let­ters of of­fer have now been void­ed,” he said, claim­ing there were al­so re­ports of price in­creas­es.

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “a dis­turb­ing pat­tern,” Dhan­paul al­so cit­ed a Jan­u­ary 2026 let­ter from the HDC’s As­set Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd to a prospec­tive home­own­er re­gard­ing a unit at the Carlsen Field hous­ing de­vel­op­ment.

The let­ter, ti­tled “No­ti­fi­ca­tion of Pur­chase Price In­crease,” stat­ed: “The cor­po­ra­tion wish­es to ad­vise that pur­suant to the board’s de­ci­sion dat­ed Jan­u­ary 12, 2026, the pur­chase price for the above-men­tioned unit has been re­vised. The pur­chase price has been in­creased from $575,000 to $750,000.”

Ac­cord­ing to Dhan­paul, the cor­re­spon­dence al­so said the re­vised price and terms out­lined in the let­ter “are sub­ject to strict com­pli­ance with the terms and con­di­tions of the sub­sist­ing agree­ment for sale dat­ed Ju­ly 8, 2025, save and ex­cept for the vari­a­tion of the pur­chase price as afore­men­tioned.”

In wind­ing up de­bate, Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein said when the Hous­ing Min­is­ter ad­dressed the is­sue in the Low­er House re­cent­ly, he in­di­cat­ed that the prices of the Cau­ra units had not changed. Re­gard­ing claims that let­ters of of­fer had been void­ed, Ho­sein said on­ly that the hous­es would be al­lo­cat­ed in a “fair, trans­par­ent and eq­ui­table man­ner.”