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Five Favorite Santa Fe Restaurants

If you’re a Santa Fean, you tend to frequent the dining places that are oriented a bit more toward locals. It just kinda happens that way. So these are not the trendy spots or the touristy standby stuff, but rather the reliable, everyday places whose owners have figured out a formula for doing almost everything right, almost every time, for the people who will come back and look at them funny if they don’t. Without further ado:

CounterCulture

The name is actually somewhat descriptive of the place. CounterCulture is a very social, close-quarters kind of place where you almost invariably run into one or two people you know. It’s located in an spare metal building at the corner of Cerillos and Baca street. It and the food (and the quality of it) has not changed in 25 years. That’s a good thing. To order: I often go for the Cowboy Bowl, which is an always-yummy blend of black beans, both green and red chile, a flour tortilla the size of Montana, bacon, sour cream, and an egg (though I hold back one or two of those things). The French toast at CounterCulture is not to be trifled with either. The spring rolls are some of the best I’ve had, should you be there for lunch. Order the cinnamon rolls — made only on the weekends — at your own risk. They are notoriously good. 930 Baca Street No. 1.  Website here.

La Choza

This brings up the broad and deep subject of New Mexican food, and I’ll avoid delving too deep into that. Suffice it to say that La Choza’s red chile is (in my opinion and by consensus) reliably among the best in town. The dishes are not (despite the now-heavy proportion of tourist traffic here) oriented toward Iowa farmers and wandering Oklahomans, but are aimed square at the local who won’t notice the chile unless it eats the finish off the table. La Choza is the real deal. However, it’s hard to get into, and Heather and I have therefore turned that into an art. For dinner, in general, you gotta go early. So skip lunch and get there at 4:30 when they open. If it makes you feel like your hair’s turning blue, deal with it. If you want to be sneaky, order something to pick up and park in one of the curb-service (really!) spots against the fence. To get in at lunch, go at 11:30 during shoulder season. During the high seasons, it ain’t happening. Things to get: the blue corn burritos, smothered in (extra) red, with garlic bread and (for me) vegetarian posóle on the side. The apple pie is insane. Respectable margaritas. La Choza is the sister restaurant of the Shed, which is now overrun. 905 Alarid Street.  Website here.

Dolina

I was skeptical of Dolina when it first opened, if only because it took the place in a funky little building of another old favorite, Clafoutis, which moved across town and is now (woe unto me) in a strip center. Dolina’s menu is genuinely eclectic, with some eastern European dishes (which are quite good) and outstanding coffee and espresso drinks. But the real attraction at Dolina is the local vibe. As at Pasqual’s, there’s a community table, which is a great place to sit if you’re up for a lively conversation. Dolina’s pastries and bakery things are some of the best in town. To order? The green chile & cheese hash browns are de rigeur. The French toast is likely the best in town. Breakfast grains are great. And just try to escape the front door without getting something from the pastry case. Parking at Dolina is kindof an aspirational thing, so bring your patience and walk a little. 402 North Guadalupe. Website here. 

Escondido

Our default “nice” restaurant is Escondido, the wonderful brainchild of Fenando Ruiz, who apparently whopped somebody or other’s can on some Cooking Network thing. Obviously, I pay close attention to that stuff. What does Escondido do right? Pretty much everything. The menu is inventive. The dishes are not New Mexican but have a Mexican tilt, with a mere wink to NM. The service is reliably prompt and courteous. If you’re up for a nice, original meal and a good bottle along with it, Escondido is your place. It’s off the beaten path, on Agua Fria, away from the hordes. To order: I love the vegetarian version of the Chile En Nogada (below). 1101 Paseo Corazon, Suite 100. Website here. 

Cafecito

A relatively new arrival in town, situated in the Baca Railyard area, just around the block (for you old timers) from where Captain Marble used to be. Cafecito has a South American/Argentinian bent, but its home in a modern, crisp, clean glass, timber, corrugated metal and concrete building is something of a juxtaposition. Easy (for the most part) to get in to, Cafecito has become a reliably hip local gathering place. The empanadas are the real deal, and though they don’t have 20 different varieties, you’d have to try to fail if you order these. For breakfast or lunch, the panqueque con dulce de leche will likely result in your reaching a level of contentment you didn’t think you could hit. 922 Shoofly Street. Website here.

Another installment of the restaurant chronicles coming soon.

It’s a Buyer’s Market in Santa Fe

One thing I’m always careful to do when looking at the market is to check my own perceptions with those of other brokers and more importantly, to check them against market data. For about six weeks now, it’s felt as if there’d been a slowdown, roughly concurrent with the start of the Iran war. For some time, though, the data didn’t scream out at me and it appeared that we were still in our normal cycle.

But now the data’s clear, and it looks like the normal cycle is a little kinked.

Usually, there’s a steady increase in both listings and sales as we move into the summer, It all peaks in the fall. But this year, we have seen pretty significant drop-off in pending sales in April, down to the level we normally see in midwinter. We don’t have May data yet, but it has felt softer still. See the chart below for the pending sales data. That dip you see on the far right of the chart is indeed something of an aberration. That’s ‘supposed’ to happen in November.

Pending Home Sales: Santa Fe Association of Realtors MLS, Three Years Ended April 30, 2026

Of course, one has to compare similar time periods and keep all else the same to arrive at a valid conclusion, so I looked at active listings for the three years ended April 30, 2026. Here, listing numbers continue to climb in their normal fashion.

So we have listings increasing at the usual rate and pending sales stalled like a ’69 Camaro in rush hour. This spells opportunity for buyers and indeed, throughout May, I have felt a softness in pricing that we don’t usually feel except in midwinter.

Home Listings: Santa Fe Association of Realtors MLS, Three Years Ended April 30, 2026

The market seems to be inviting buyers to try to take advantage of the disparity between inventory levels and sales to come to an attractive deal. At least that’s how I read it.

To view a few of my recent sales, click here. To search the Santa Fe inventory, click here.

The Most Important Thing To Do When Listing Your Santa Fe Home

It’s Probably Not What You Think

It has nothing to do with price, or positioning, or cosmetics, or curb appeal, or presentation. It has to do with integrity and self preservation.

It’s fair to say that most home sellers don’t realize that the process of selling can be fraught with liability. My view is that most sellers also don’t have a firm handle on just how common suits surrounding failure to disclose property defects are. Thankfully, most people do know that the seller’s disclosure is important and that “you should disclose stuff.”

But generally, sellers don’t understand exactly how liability unfolds in a transaction.

The Seller’s Disclosure is Your Friend

The things sellers must do to avoid disclosure liability can make them a little uncomfortable, ironically. Let’s say you’ve lived in your home for nine years and have been super diligent about maintenance and repairs. But recently, you learned of a little roof problem that you haven’t yet taken care of. And because it seemed pretty minor, you thought it would be a little silly to disclose it, since after all, nothing’s actually gone wrong yet.

And then let’s say that in the course of the sales process, the buyer hired a general inspector. And he took a look at the roof. But perhaps the buyer’s broker didn’t recommend having a roofing professional look at the roof, so the little defect went undiscovered during the transaction.

Whew! Right?

Wrong. A serious defect that’s undisclosed and undiscovered in inspections is potentially dangerous.

A Defect That’s Uncovered In Inspection Is, In Effect, Disclosed

Let’s also say that your closing date was in early July and that on July 21, one of Santa Fe’s super-concentrated, freakish thunderstorms parked itself over your old house, complete with hail and an insane rainfall rate. And that defect developed into a gap large enough for all that water to penetrate, flooding the home, sparking mold growth and causing structural damage. This type of scenario, unfortunately, is relatively common. In this case, the buyer has fairly simple recourse. All he or she has to do is prove that you were aware of the defect, but that in all the conversations regarding the property and on the seller’s disclosure form, you and your broker kept quiet, because you didn’t think it would be a big deal.

This is a nightmare liability scenario for a seller. Santa Fe real estate lawyers will tell you that disclosure cases are really not worth pursuing unless the damage reaches close to six figures, and in this hypothetical case, it very well could.

Bummer. So you see where I’m going.

It’s Far Better to Over-Disclose

The wisest course is to disclose everything you can think of to disclose. Then, have documentation ready to show what your course of action on a particular item has been, and be absolutely thorough and up front about it. Most buyers would much rather see that there’s been a articular problem but that it was professionally handled and repaired, with full documentation, than hear “No, nothing really.” And besides, you’ll be surprised how easy it actually is to cough it all up. Liability can’t creep in if you are fully and utterly and annoyingly honest. So the next time you hear a listing broker say “you don’t really have to put anything there,” on a particular field on the seller’s disclosure form, run like hell! In fact, that broker may not know it, but if there’s awareness of the defect on his part, he may also be liable too.

New Mexico Forms Do Us No favors

Unfortunately, NMAR disclosure forms are notoriously poorly designed, actually encouraging sellers not to disclose anything. Even the brand-spanking-new new form, released March 25, still has these sporty little check boxes that, in effect, encourage sellers to claim “I don’t know of anything.” It’s terrible design and contributes to the problem:

But don’t be tempted!

If you want to mitigate your legal risk in a transaction, you will do the opposite and disclose everything you know of.

If you were to list with me, in fact, we would have not one, not two, but multiple conversations around the general issue of disclosure for the following reasons: 1) it’s just better to follow such a practice from an ethical standpoint, and 2) a large portion of my job is protecting you from liability during the course of a transaction. As you contemplate a sale and seek to avoid liability, brokers who know how to guide the those difficult conversations and are rigorous about property disclosure can keep you out of the courtroom and protect you from loss.

View my recent sales here.

View a few hand-selected listings here.

Snowshoeing in Santa Fe!

Not too long ago, I wrote about the ease of skiing in New Mexico, which by now has gotten to feel like something of a throwback. There aren’t that many places where you can throw your stuff in the car and sit on a lift chair in 45 minutes. But downhill’s only part of the draw of wintersports in Santa Fe. 

If you’ve never been snowshoeing, you owe it to yourself to give it a try while your’re here. I love it for some of the same reasons I love cycling. When you’re on a bike versus in the car, you absorb so much more of the environment, of the air, the shadows, the feel of the road, the cool, the heat, the feel of a fast descent — it’s sensory magic. And snowshoeing, like riding, lets you feel that you are in a natural environment and not sliding by it on slippery boards. 

One doesn’t have to learn a bunch of new skills or pay $140 for a lift ticket. It’ll just cost you the gas. Head down to REI in the Railyard when you’re here and get some advice on the best snowshoes for your weight and height. You can even rent them. Grab a buddy, and next time there’s a snowfall of about 8” to 24” up on the mountain, GO! One does need a few winter safety skills in knowing how to keep warm, how to avoid overexertion, and how to make sure your base layer stays dry, but aside from that – if you can hike, you can snowshoe. 

And the beauty will floor you. If you’ve got about a foot of fresh powder on the trail, it can be jawdroppingly gorgeous.

I used to go with my yellow lab Maisy, who’s in a few of these photos, and she too has a blast.

For your first jaunt, I would go up to the Aspen Vista trail, the trailhead for which starts at about 10,000 feet — about 15 miles from the intersection or Ski Valley Road and Bishop’s Lodge Road. Aspen Vista is a forest service double-track maintenance trail for the antennae at the top of Tesuque peak, so you can’t lose it. It’s quite wide. And none of the grades are steeper than about 6%. In other words, it’s an ideal snowshoe trail. If you think it may not be that much of a thrill, you’re thinkin’ wrong.

And if you need a snowshoe buddy, give me a call. As with any winter sport, especially when you’re in a remote area – always go with a friend.

Santa Fe Markets in A 20-Year Context

Almost every one of my clients knows I’m a data nerd. It’s not just because I am a nerd (as Heather reminds me), but because I believe it’s important to view the Santa Fe real estate markets in a context that’s free of emotion if your aim is to know what’s happening on behalf of your clients. Many brokers tend to conflate their own experience with what the broad market’s doing, and that’s often an emotional thing and not valuable. Data can keep you out of trouble!

I originally wrote this in the Fall of 2025 and am somewhat intentionally not updating the data for this version, if only to restate the point that the residential markets in Santa Fe, right now, are reassuringly normal.

A Welcome Step Down from Pandemic Highs

When I looked at sales for 2025 through late November, it looked like the numbers would settle close to last year’s. And indeed they did. A tad lower. Respectable. But take a look at 2021, with its twin stimuli of buyers fleeing crowded population centers and artificially low mortgage rates fueling a boom. The nadir came in 2009 as the credit-driven financial crisis took hold and lending virtually came to a halt. So when I get questions from potential buyers in Santa Fe, I always place the numbers in the context of the Santa Fe market having normalized after the adrenaline-fueled pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. This cooling is healthy, in my view. Market fundamentals are quite steady, with several demand drivers. So far, in 2026, we had our usual slow winter start. But in April, listing and purchase activity has picked up.

It always does as we head into summer.

The Drivers of Santa Fe Demand Are Still in Place

It’s interesting to try to understand what the 2025 numbers mean in hindsight. For one, there’s still pent-up demand from the mortgage-rate lock-in effect (I wrote on that here) and that’ll continue until the sub-4% mortgage inventory depletes. That’s a positive influence, though its effect in the $1.2 million and up price bracket is muted because about half of those buyers pay cash here. More importantly: Santa Fe’s position as one of the leading resort markets means that we enjoy strong demand when other markets don’t. When this was originally written in the Fall, I thought we might see (should rates stay where they are at about 6.25%) a similar year in terms of volume, rather than some sudden change in either direction. Indeed that has been what has taken place. Rates jumped up to 6.50% and are now back around 6.30%.

Whither Prices?

Regarding prices: There is an annual (and temporary) winter mushiness in Santa Fe, from which we are now emerging. Several factors may support prices climbing through 2026, though maybe at less frenetic pace than over the past three years of shortage. Our market’s free of potential distortions, both those related to credit, to mortgage rates (now that they’ve have been allowed to find a natural level), to potential overbuilding, etc. In fact, the effect of threatened tariffs is still constraining new-home building, and that’s a potentially positive influencing factor on prices. Do note, though, that this market is extremely intolerant of pricing mistakes on the high side. A seller who prices too high will be punished. Two years ago you could slip by and maybe get your price; now, not so.

Is the rest of 2026 going to be another Goldilocks market? Perhaps. It’s fairly relaxed at the moment for most buyers and sellers and “normal” is probably an apt word.

The Dangers of Overpricing in a Soft Market

You May Wind Up With Less

It seems a little counterintuitive, and many sellers are reluctant to believe it. Overpricing your home can mean you’ll wind up with less money in the end. It almost certainly will mean your transaction may be stretched from weeks to months or even years. There are a few things at work when this happens. Most often, a seller has an emotional attachment to his or her home (as all of us do) and believes it to be worth more money because, well, they want it to be. It may be that they’ve invested hard-earned funds in updates and want to see all that bear fruit. But most often it’s based on emotion and perhaps a misperception of how markets work.

Negative Perception Can Kill a Sale

In a neutral or soft market, overpricing almost always means your home will just sit. An analogy: when you’re trying to sell a car, and you price it too high, you won’t get calls. Just silence. It’s the same with real estate. You won’t get showings. The first thing that’ll happen is that brokers note to themselves: “that place is overpriced.” And after a while they’ll look at the number of days it’s been on market. Then thought creeps in: “what’s wrong with that place, anyway?” So: the first result is inactivity. This alone can be fatal. Then doubt creeps in about the quality of the property. And if it sits for too long, those doubts collectively morph into something resembling a stigma. That can be the kiss of death. The transaction price is then forced lower, sometimes far lower, because the market perception of the property is now negative.

A Benefit of Pricing Well

Pricing appropriately, using research and hard data to support the listing number, has a few benefits you might not think of. The first is that it increases the number of eyeballs that view your property online — often doubling or tripling the sum. This is crucial. If you’re priced below a certain benchmark (For example: $745,000, so you can appear in searches up to $750,000), the property may appear in many more online searches. More searches mean more showings. More showings means more potential for offers. And if you’re appropriately priced or even strategically underpriced, you may find yourself with multiple offers that bid the purchase price well above the list price. I recently had a home close $125,000 (or 9.1%) above its $1,375,000 list price. This was a much better result than pricing it at $1,600,000 could have yielded, and the clients were thrilled. A skilled broker can handle this situation deftly. And in the end, it’s a much less painful experience to negotiate upwards than it is to be forced by market reality to go in the other direction.

A Silly Way to Raise Revenue

It’s hard to overstate how inflammatory the issue of the “mansion tax” has been in Santa Fe. The city of Santa Fe has attempted, in an effort to raise revenue to dedicate to affordable housing, to impose a transfer tax of 3% of any sale amount over $1,000,000, with the tax nominally to be paid by the buyer. So for example a purchaser of a $1,300,000 home would owe $9,000 ($300,000 x .03) tax at closing.

There has indeed been great consternation and gnashing of teeth.

My first impression of learning of this effort was that it was a stupid way to raise revenue. It is. Wouldn’t it be more effective to impose a broad gross receipts or sales tax on all residents? Of course it would be. But voters would never approve that. So backers took aim at what they believed to be a narrow and vulnerable demographic group. It was a clever strategy. It worked. And voters approved it.

But there’s a problem.

Transfer taxes on real property in New Mexico are illegal. State statute on that issue is clear. A lower court ruled earlier this year in a summary judgement that the tax was unlawful (a summary judgement is a judge’s ruling before an issue goes to a jury that there is no question regarding the law as it applies to a particular matter).

And indeed, in this matter, there is not.

But there was an issue in making the ruling stick. The litigant in the case was the Santa Fe Association of Realtors (SFAR), and no harm was done to SFAR in this instance. As the chief litigant, SFAR lacked standing, and therefore the lower court’s ruling was recently reversed by an appeals panel.

The appeals court did not, however, take issue with the lower court’s finding that the transfer tax is unlawful. It is. The court, in effect, communicated that if the litigants desire is for the lower-court ruling to stick, plaintiffs with standing must be a party to the suit. For those opposed to the tax, this is actually a positive development. Why? It won’t be hard to find plaintiffs with standing. Anyone who pays the tax in this interim period (buyer or seller) will have been harmed by the unlawful tax and will therefore have standing.

And a few of them will choose to litigate, I imagine.

Whether a temporary injunction is put in place or not, it seems likely that plaintiffs with standing will appeal the recent ruling and therefore make the lower-court’s finding stick. How long that will take is unknown, but at that point, it’ll be back to the drawing board and in my estimation, the city will revise its strategy to raise revenue for and dedicate revenue to a worthy cause.

(There are multiple perspectives on this issue and mine may not prove correct, so if you’d like to discuss, reply.)

What’s The Latest News on Santa Fe Real Estate?

Is This a Goldilocks Market?

When I write on the residential markets, I’m always careful to look at market-wide numbers before penning any anecdote based on my own experience or feel. Why? Market-feel stories are invariably based on a small sample size, and while they may seem super amazingly perceptive and brilliant to the author, may not provide value. And as I sat down to review a few metrics before writing this, a word crept into mind: “unremarkable.”

Unremarkable, But Good

The 2025 Santa Fe residential market for homes over $1,000,000 has been wavy. We’ve had up months and we’ve had down months versus a year ago. For example, inventory builds a little, then it’s absorbed, then it builds. October (see below) appears to have been one of those months when it builds. Unremarkable, but good. By the way, you can find my July, 2025 article on higher inventory here.

The number of residential sales over $1,000,000 has grown, but there’s nothing to suggest the type of distortion to give buyers or sellers pause. It looks like October will be weaker than September (see below; September’s always strong) but it’ll prove more active than the winter months do. The accompanying price softness that comes with winter can work in buyers’ favor, incidentally. Again, unremarkable, but good.

Goldilocks? Just Right?

Listing activity for homes over $1,000,000 slowed for the month, as we’d expect, following the usual seasonal pattern. Why is that pattern so pronounced here? It’s simple: there are much fewer out-of-town buyers in the fall and winter. Listing activity adjusts to meet the demand.

Is it a Goldilocks market Santa Fe right now? It very well may be. The next six months or so will tell us. Hang around for November’s update and better yet, shoot me an e-mail, give me a call, or text with questions. My contact page is here.

Fall: My Fave Time of Year in The Fe

I love fall in Santa Fe for so many reasons. The weather’s pretty much always drop-dead gorgeous. The color both in town and up in the mountains is magnificent. But for me, it’s more about the feel of the place. Downtown gradually empties of the hordes who occupy us in late summer. It slowly it begins to feel like our place again.

Every morning, I roll into downtown aiming for my auxiliary latte and see a few locals hanging out, chatting. It’s nice and easy. I almost always stop at Mud Hut Coffee on Marcy, across from the library, and take Allie (my giant fluffy sheepdog) in for a doggie treat while I wait on my three-shot 2% masterpiece of engineering.

Indeed, fall in Santa Fe is magical, and why more people don’t come here during October is a mystery to me. But I’m not going to write in to The New Mexican to complain!

The Mud Hut: it’s so Santa Fe

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