Community Development Department — One Stop Shop
- Phone
- 575-528-3059
- Hours
- Monday to Thursday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Friday, 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.
New Mexico
Las Cruces, NM permit fees and requirements
Las Cruces prices a building permit by two paths drawn in one sentence:
a new single-family dwelling, townhouse or duplex is $0.20 per square foot of gross floor area measured to the outside walls, and "Remodels and additions follow the commercial process" — the Fee Table, seven bands running from a flat $50 under $2,000 to $5,830 plus $4 for each additional $1,000 above $1,000,000 of valuation. Plan check is the first 25% of the building permit fee, paid with the application and non-refundable — part of the fee rather than a charge on it. Every permit also carries a technology fee ($20 residential building, the greater of $100 or 5% commercial, $10 a trade permit), and every schedule on the document ends with the same line: fees are tripled for work started without an approved permit. Electrical is priced by enclosed living area on a dwelling and by amperage on a commercial service; plumbing by bathroom count when new and by plumbing valuation otherwise.
Permit costs we have worked out
Each page shows the fee components, the formula the jurisdiction uses, and a worked example you can follow by hand.
Estimate your potential Las Cruces permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Las Cruces building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-25 |
| Las Cruces electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-25 |
| Las Cruces plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-25 |
Local context
What is specific to Las Cruces
Las Cruces consolidated its fee schedules into one document on September 1, 2020, and the consolidation is visible in the result: Resolution 21-019 repealed seven earlier resolutions — 90-235, 00-360, 03-361, 03-009, 11-221, 14-026 and 19-131 — and replaced them with a single "2020 Schedule of Fees" that carries everything from building permits to land-use application fees. The schedule's own background note records what the consolidation was for: costs had risen "approximately 41% since the last fee schedule was approved in July 2002", the single-family rate had already been raised from $0.14 to $0.20 a square foot by Resolution 19-131 in 2019, and the commercial side was rebuilt on "the International Building Code (IBC) fee modeling" with a cost-recovery target of 80% of the One Stop Shop's expenses. Reading the schedule as one document rather than as seven is what makes its cross-references legible.
The commercial side's machinery has three layers, and they happen in order. First the valuation: the building official determines it "based on the adopted Building Valuation Data Table", and the schedule's own square-foot costs — the ICC's February 2020 Valuation Table — are adjusted by two published multipliers before anything is charged: the scope modifier (100% of value for new work and additions, 75% for a shell, 50% for remodels, repairs and tenant work) and the local area modifier of 88%, which is the ICC's national cost data scaled to Las Cruces. The table's footnote is blunt about it: "Local area modifier and scope modifier will be applied to the table values above." Second the Fee Table reads that determined valuation in seven bands. Third the plan check takes the first 25% of the result as the application payment.
Two details of the Fee Table are worth knowing before any number on it is trusted. The first is that the bands prorate: they say "$10 for each additional $1000" with no "or fraction thereof", while the mechanical and plumbing ladders in the same document print that phrase and mean it — so a $2,001 valuation is $50.01, not $60, and the table closes each band at exactly the next band's printed base ($280, $480, $830, $5,830). The second is that the table disagrees with itself once: the $500,001–$1,000,000 band opens at $3,330, while the band below computes $3,230 at $500,000 — a $100 jump that is the document's own. This site charges each band's printed formula and states the jump on the page rather than smoothing it.
The last thing running through every schedule is the tripling. "This fee is tripled on permits for work started or completed without an approved permit" sits above the building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, roofing, demolition, grading, sign and right-of-way fees alike, and it multiplies the *permit fee* — not the technology fee beside it, and not the plan check, which was already inside the fee. A separate variance table ($100 to $2,000 by valuation) is what the unpermitted work pays to be heard before the appropriate board, and it is a hearing fee rather than a permit fee, so it is named on the pages and charged by none of them.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
Two bases, and the schedule says which permit uses which. The residential-new path is square footage: "$0.20 per square ft of gross floor area measured to the outside walls" — the one price in the document that never sees a valuation, set by Resolution 19-131 when it replaced $0.14. Everything else on the building side is valuation: "the value of the work covered by the permit", without land cost, as determined by the building official against the adopted Building Valuation Data Table and built from the ICC cost table adjusted by the scope and local-area modifiers. The Fee Table's left column is headed "Total Project Valuation (without land cost)", and that is the number the seven bands read.
The trades use two more. Electrical, when it is not a flat miscellaneous row, is enclosed living area on a one- or two-unit dwelling or townhome and amperage on a commercial service — the schedule never prices electrical work by its value, which is why a service upgrade costs the same whether the building behind it is worth $300,000 or $3,000,000. Plumbing is bathroom and dwelling-unit counts for new construction and a third valuation — "the total dollar value of the complete plumbing installation including materials, fixtures, and all installation costs" — for everything else, a plumbing figure separate from the building valuation the same job also carries.
Who to contact
The office that issues the permit, with the details we have verified. Confirm current hours before travelling.
What these fees do not include
The list is not a disclaimer: on a new house the fees left out can outweigh the permit fee several times over. Every entry here is stated on the permit page as well.
Not included in our estimates
These figures are Las Cruces's building, electrical and plumbing permit fees from the 2020 Schedule of Fees, with the technology fees, the plan-check split, the expedited option and the tripling for unpermitted work. They are not a total project cost, and they exclude:
- Mechanical — the schedule's own three bands on material value ($50 / $100 / $100 plus $5 per $1,000 or fraction), named on the plumbing page as the ladder it shares, and roofing (the building schedule applies "per the applicant's valuation") and demolition ($0 with the building permit, $50 interior non-load bearing, $175 all other).
- Site work: grading ($100 under an acre, $250 to three acres, then $250 plus $25 an acre, and $425 plus $10 an acre above ten), floodplain review ($150), the site cleanup fee ($1,000 plus cost), rock retaining walls (5% of construction value), right-of-way permits (5% of construction value), traffic review ($50 control review, $175–$350 for occupied lanes, $85 an hour for impact analysis), and the erosion, storage and temporary-equipment rows that carry no fee "at this time".
- Signs ($45 attached, $70 pole, $100 monument, $250 site-plan groups, billboards and real-estate signs, face changes free), fire systems (head-count ladders from $120 to $640 plus $200 per hundred, alarm devices $160–$320, hoods $80, after-hours at $60 an hour) and the mobile home installation permit ($75, zoning and floodplain only).
- Certificates and other building fees: change of occupancy ($45 without inspection, $100 with), permit reinstatement (25% of the building permit fee), a temporary certificate of occupancy (the greater of $100 or 25% of the fee) and a same-day certificate ($100).
- Inspection charges beyond reinspection: after-hours at $60 an hour with a two-hour minimum, partial inspections at $45, the $150 charged for a second or more reinspection on the same team, and fire after-hours the same $60 an hour. The $45 reinspection is the one modelled here.
- The revision/addendum fee ($45 per reviewer) and every land-use and administrative review application fee — rezonings, plats, subdivisions, variances, street names, addressing — which are charged for reviews rather than for permits.
- The UNAPPROVED OR NON-PERMITTED variance fees ($100 to $2,000), assessed before a variance request will be heard — a board's fee, not a permit's.
- Fee waivers and the infill incentive: fees are not waived except where the Municipal Code allows it, and qualifying infill projects may be reimbursed the cost of permit fees on a certificate of occupancy, with reimbursements above $5,000 needing City Council approval.
- Anything charged by another authority — Doña Ana County, the State of New Mexico, the utility's own service charges, and the "Utility Fees" section the plumbing fee's cross-reference points at, which this resolution does not contain.
Official sources for this jurisdiction
The documents these figures are transcribed from. Where a source contradicts itself we keep both readings and say so on the permit page.
- OrdinanceCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25 from the City's own document portal, which serves the resolution as a text-extractable PDF. Adopted August 17, 2020; the resolution's title states it is "to be effective September 1, 2020" and its enactment clause repeats the date. The whole fee schedule is Exhibit "A": general information and contact block, administrative fees (technology fees, expedited review, revision fees), building permit fees (the $0.20 residential rate, the commercial valuation process, plan check, the Fee Table and the scope and local-area modifiers), the ICC-derived valuation tables, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, roofing, demolition and other building permit fees, site permit and grading fees, floodplain, rock walls, signs, fire systems, mobile home installation, inspection fees, right-of-way, traffic, land-use and administrative review application fees, the unpermitted-work variance fees, and a historic preservation section marked "to be developed". Every rate modelled on this site comes from this one document.