Fairways Condos in Rio Rancho, NM

Fairways Condos is a 171-unit condominium community off Country Club Drive SE, in the older southeast quarter of Rio Rancho. Anyone shopping Fairways Condos homes for sale is looking at something Rio Rancho doesn't have much of. This is a city built almost entirely on single-family lots. Attached, association-maintained product is scarce here, and that scarcity shapes who shows up when a unit opens.

Where it actually sits

The association describes its own boundaries plainly: The Greens on the north, Chamisa Estates on the south, Country Club Drive on the east, and the old golf course on the west. Eighteen buildings, all inside 87124, all in Sandoval County. The street names give away the history. Nicklaus Drive runs a block away. Country Club Drive is the front door. This corner of town was platted when the golf course was the whole selling point.

Practically speaking, you're a short drive from Southern Boulevard, which is the retail spine of southeast Rio Rancho. The Albertsons at Country Club Center, the Walmart Supercenter, the Premiere 14 theater, the usual pharmacies. A stretch of newer fast-casual and coffee has filled in along Southern over the last few years. Haynes Community Center and Park on Grande Boulevard SE has a seasonal pool, ballfields and horseshoe pits, and it's the closest real public recreation.

You're up on the West Mesa here, a few hundred feet above the Rio Grande valley. East-facing units and second floors tend to get the Sandia view, which is worth asking about before you fall for a floor plan.

The condos themselves

These are mid-1970s buildings and they read like it. Stucco, two stories, low rooflines, small private patios, mature trees that have had fifty years to fill in. Nobody will confuse them with Pueblo Revival. Units run one and two bedrooms, generally somewhere between about 800 and 1,150 square feet, with no attached garages in most of the complex.

Condition is the whole game here. Fifty-year-old buildings mean the interiors vary enormously unit to unit. Some have been taken down to studs with new windows, new HVAC and a real kitchen. Others still have original everything. Two units in the same building can be genuinely different properties, and the price spread reflects that. Look at the live listings on this page to see what's open, and walk more than one.

The complex is built out. There is no new construction here and there won't be.

The golf course question

This is the conversation I have with every buyer at Fairways, and you should have it too. That golf course on the western boundary closed in 2016 as Club Rio Rancho, took fire damage in 2019, and has sat empty since. It is roughly 281 acres of nothing behind you.

In September 2025 the Rio Rancho city council approved the Chamisa Hills Master Plan for that land, a mixed-use project at 500 Country Club Drive SE with several hundred homes, a business park, retail and trails. The vote was postponed twice before it passed and the neighborhood associations around it were split. Some backed it. The North Nine Neighborhood Association supported development in principle while pushing hard on long-term upkeep and funding. Residents raised traffic, drainage, open space and neighborhood character.

My honest read: the empty course has been a drag on this whole pocket for a decade, and something built and maintained is better than something abandoned. But approval is not a finished project. If you buy here, buy the condo you're standing in, not the master plan. Ask the association where the current phasing stands before you write an offer.

The association runs the place, and it shows

Fairways Condominium Association keeps an on-site office right in the complex on Country Club Drive SE and is registered with the City of Rio Rancho. It's hands-on in the way small condo associations tend to be. Board meetings are held monthly, with an annual membership meeting each February, and the schedule is published rather than word-of-mouth.

Dues here cover more than most Rio Rancho buyers are used to. Grounds, the pool and clubhouse, insurance on the common structure, road maintenance in the complex, and utilities are handled at the association level, which is why the monthly figure looks high next to a single-family HOA in Loma Colorado or Cabezon. It isn't really comparable. You're paying for exterior maintenance you'd otherwise pay for yourself.

The covenants are specific and enforced. Vehicles are capped with permit tags issued by the association, and there's a pet limit with a size restriction on dogs. If you have two large dogs and three cars, this isn't your community, and better to know that now than at closing. Anyone who wants a landlord-free yard-work-free arrangement and doesn't mind rules tends to be happy here.

Schools are Rio Rancho Public Schools. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary on Nicklaus Drive SE is essentially around the corner, with Lincoln Middle on Lema Road SE and Rio Rancho High on Loma Colorado Road NE.

Who it suits

First-time buyers who want out of renting. People downsizing who are done with a yard. Buyers who work in Rio Rancho or at the Intel side of town and want a short commute. Southern Boulevard runs you east to NM-528 and down to Paseo del Norte and I-25 from there, so the Albuquerque commute is manageable without being short.

It suits you less if you need a garage, a private yard, or quiet certainty about what gets built to the west.

Units at Fairways turn over a few at a time and they're rarely alike, so it pays to watch the list rather than wait for the right one to appear. Browse every available condo in the community below, and reach out if you'd like to see what the difference between a remodeled unit and an original one really looks like in person.