‘HOW ARE WE HERE WHEN WE’RE THERE?’
Confusion over where Santa Teresa ends and Sunland Park begins has residents worried
SUNLAND PARK — When she retired two years ago, Penny Gray paid a premium for the view from her southern New Mexico home, a valley vista of rooftops sloping up to the bald Franklin Mountains of West Texas.
She also paid for what she felt was an exclusive address in Santa Teresa, the unincorporated enclave on which the Governor’s Office has lavished money and attention, thanks to a growing industrial base and busy port of entry.
Despite what her deed says, Gray would later learn she didn’t buy a home in Santa Teresa. She bought in Sunland Park, the city that, despite recent improvements to its finances, has in the three decades since its incorporation frequently been a den of corruption and poor governance.
She isn’t alone in her dismay over the discrepancy between where her home title says she lives and where she actually resides.
A Journal review found that 20 percent of deeds for 120 homes in three neighborhoods in Sunland Park list Santa Teresa addresses with no mention of Sunland Park anywhere on the documents.
Gray believes she was — there is no other word for it, she says — tricked into a Sun-
land Park address.
“When I talked to real estate agents, I was emphatic I wanted to live in Las Cruces or Santa Teresa,” she said. “Why would anyone want to move to a city with such a bad reputation? I would never have gotten out of the car if I knew I was in Sunland Park.”
Two Sunland Park city councilors have been arrested in recent months on drug and alcohol charges, and a third is allegedly under FBI investigation for his business dealings.
Their alleged illicit activity follows the turmoil of the 2012 mayoral election, when one candidate videotaped a political rival receiving a lap dance and then blackmailed him to drop out of the race. The state took over the city’s finances in 2012 after a special audit turned up numerous violations, and the state only handed the reins back to city officials last year.
At the same time, the unincorporated area known as Santa Teresa has flourished, with new businesses filling a growing industrial park as investment at the border has increased and infrastructure has improved.
Some residents, particularly those whose property documents list a Santa Teresa address and make no mention of Sunland Park, may end up believing they live in Santa Teresa when they actually live in Sunland Park — a confusion that has potential financial and political consequences for homeowners and the region.
Hot housing market
People are moving by the hundreds to this corner of Doña Ana County in southern New Mexico.
According to real estate agents and residents, the new neighborhoods are packed with Border Patrol agents and customs officers who work in the increasingly busy New Mexico and West Texas sector; retirees and working families who want to escape El Paso’s higher taxes; and others lured by the jobs in Santa Teresa’s industrial base.
But all the new residential construction — with the exception of one area inside a Santa Teresa subdivision that surrounds a now-bankrupt country club — is in Sunland Park, which has annexed the new developments, often at the behest of developers.
In a new neighborhood called The Grove — marketed online as Santa Teresa with no mention that the neighborhood is in Sunland Park — residents appear to live alternately in one community or the other, according to their deeds. Five of 16 property titles on one street list a Santa Teresa address; on another street, four of 13 property titles list a Santa Teresa address. Why? “I had the same question,” said Dominic Magaletti, a customs officer who owns a home with a Santa Teresa address in The Grove, where workers are painting newly built houses. “How are we here when we’re there?”
The city of Sunland Park and the unincorporated area known as Santa Teresa rub shoulders along a road that runs northwest of the U.S. Mexico border. Both are bedroom communities of El Paso and are just under an hour’s drive from the county seat of Las Cruces.
The “old” Sunland Park of trailers and modest homes, panaderías (bakeries) and auto body shops with hand-painted signs in Spanish is being eclipsed in size by the “new” Sunland Park of $200,000-plus stucco homes in new neighborhoods — the area often marketed by developers and real estate agents as Santa Teresa.
Median income in the “census-designated place” that is Santa Teresa is more than $41,000, 46 percent higher than the median income in Sunland Park of about $28,000, according to the Census Bureau.
Shifting demographics
More than 80 percent of Santa Teresa residents have a high school degree or greater, while slightly more than half of Sunland Park residents say the same, according to census figures.
“All these homes we’re selling, the income level, the education level and the demographics are going to be dramatically changed,” said Mark Schwartz, a builder representative who sells homes in the new Valencia Park neighborhood. “They are educators, vice principals, Border Patrol and customs. I think you are going to see a big change in Sunland Park in the next five years. People are going to change their voting styles.”
A home address can determine where and in which elections a resident may vote; what property and gross receipts taxes a homeowner pays; where the kids go to school.
For Gray and Magaletti, there are intangibles that matter as much, such as where they tell people they live.
On a deed, “in Texas you have to list the city, if the property is in an incorporated city. That’s not true in New Mexico,” said Bob Fields, president of Sierra Title Company of New Mexico. “From what I’ve heard, some of that (marketing) may have been done purposely. Sunland Park has such a bad reputation.”
Albuquerque real estate attorney Edward Roibal echoed that, in New Mexico, the legal description of property on a deed must show only the lot, block, subdivision name and county in which the deed is recorded. It does not require listing a municipality, even when a property is within a city’s limits.
But, he said, if Sunland Park properties are intentionally marketed or sold as Santa Teresa, that could be misleading.
“Intentional misrepresentation involved in the sale of property can be illegal,” he said, “but proving the intention can be difficult if the entire situation is confusing.”
Property descriptions on real estate circulars, the Las Cruces Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service and websites like Zillow market some homes in Sunland Park as Santa Teresa. Numerous home titles extend that marketing to officialdom.
Some say the lines are blurred. For example, the U.S. postal ZIP code that corresponds to Santa Teresa overlaps into Sunland Park.
Scott Winton, a homebuilder with Winton and Associates, and a resident of the Edgemont subdivision where Gray lives, said: “Santa Teresa isn’t a political jurisdiction. It’s a ZIP code. It’s a land development. The ZIP code itself covers an area larger than what is the unincorporated area.”
He added: “What sounds more attractive, Santa Teresa or Sunland Park? If you have a choice, then you are going to market the one that is most attractive. We’re not trying to misrepresent. People’s perception of what is Santa Teresa is much larger than even the ZIP code. Santa Teresa is not a place. It’s an area.”
Winton, as well as real estate agents, homebuilder representatives and title agents who spoke with the Journal, said they let buyers know when their home is in Sunland Park and will be subject to the city’s higher tax rate, even with a Santa Teresa address. Besides the deed, other documents presented at closing show the taxing jurisdictions.
“I try to make sure everybody knows what’s going on,” said Lee Rogers, a Santa Teresa-based real estate agent. “And if I have to tell them this story, I do it.”
‘Lot of fragmentation’
As Roibal noted, legal property descriptions do not include city names because city limits can change.
What is today called Santa Teresa may one day be Sunland Park. Sunland Park Mayor Javier Perea has articulated his vision for a single municipality run by his city’s government.
“There is a lot of fragmentation in this particular region and if we want to see it develop sustainably, and smartly, we do need to bring a unified voice for the region,” he said.
Efforts to disband Sunland Park and incorporate Santa Teresa recently hit dead ends.
Gray spent two months knocking on doors for signatures to get a public vote on disincorporating Sunland Park — which would have resolved her concerns, she said. The petition fell 13 signatures short of the 1,165 needed.
With that effort at a standstill, Gray said she may explore legal recourse.
Sunland Park’s government could undergo big changes in March, when the mayor’s post and four City Council seats will be on the ballot.
“We have been going out and getting people registered to vote,” Gray said. “I’ve had people tell me, ‘But I’m in Santa Teresa.’ I had people tell me in my subdivision. I tell them, ‘No, you’re in Sunland Park.’ People looked at me like they wanted to cry. It’s just a big shame.”