Drive along High Resort Boulevard past the soccer fields and you're driving past what used to be a golf course. Not overgrown rough, not a dormant fairway waiting for a new tenant. Actual bare ground. The Rio Rancho Country Club that gave this neighborhood its name shut down in 2016 owing the city close to $360,000 in unpaid utility fees, and its 27,000-square-foot clubhouse burned to the ground in the fall of 2019. For most of a decade, the 281 acres behind Greystone Ridge, The Enclave, and half a dozen other gated streets sat there doing nothing.
That matters more than it sounds like it should, because a lot of High Resort listings still lean on the word "resort," and a lot of buyers touring homes along that boulevard are being shown backyards that back up to open space with mountain views, without anyone mentioning that the open space has a name, a developer, and a zoning approval now attached to it.
The Name Outlived the Resort
High Resort was built around a country club in the way a lot of Sun Belt subdivisions were built in the 1980s and 90s, with the golf course as the organizing amenity and the streets curling around its fairways. That's still visible in the street grid today. What's not visible anymore is the golf.
The course cycled through names and owners for years, most recently as Club Rio Rancho, before closing for good. A resident quoted by the Rio Rancho Observer described what used to be a par-3 with mountain views as now just a route his grandkids' bikes and his own golf cart use to cut through the neighborhood. The land became, in practical terms, a very large vacant lot in the middle of an established residential area, and it stayed that way through multiple ownership changes and one failed attempt to sell off half of it for housing.
What "Backs to Open Space" Doesn't Tell You Anymore
If you've looked at listings in Greystone Ridge, Greystone Pointe, Renaissance, or The Islands, you've probably seen the phrase "backs to open space" or a reference to unobstructed mountain views. Through 2024, that was an accurate description of a fairly stable situation. A decade of inactivity has a way of looking permanent.
It isn't. In September 2025, the Rio Rancho Governing Body approved the Chamisa Hills Master Plan, a zoning framework that turns the old course into roughly 300 new homes, a business park, and a mixed-use town center. Some of that acreage will stay open. A lot of it won't. Whether a specific home's current view holds up depends entirely on which piece of the old course it backs to, and that's a question a listing sheet won't answer for you.
The Plan That Took Three Tries to Pass
The path to approval wasn't quick or quiet. The city's Planning and Zoning Board recommended the master plan on April 8, 2025, sending it to the Governing Body for a public hearing that May. Councilors delayed the vote after a packed meeting of residents raising concerns about traffic, drainage, and long-term maintenance of the open space. The vote was pushed to August, then postponed again to September 11, when the Governing Body finally approved it.
The developer is Albuquerque-based Steve Chavez, operating as RR Mesa LLC, the same team behind the Mesa Del Sol development where Netflix has been expanding its studio campus. Consensus Planning's Jim Strozier presented the framework. What it lays out, according to reporting from nm.news, includes a roughly 74-acre Luxeview Estates section with about 110 single-family lots, a 38-unit senior housing section called Sierra Vista, 70 single-family homes in a section called Vida Moderna, 84 townhomes in Nueva Esperanza, and a 62-acre open-space section called Eastview Heights. At the center, where the old clubhouse once stood, sits a 17-acre town center called La Joya de Rio Rancho, planned with retail, restaurants, coffee shops, and a public plaza.
Years, Not Months
None of this is close to breaking ground. Rio Rancho's development services director told the Planning and Zoning Board that platting, site planning, and permitting would take one to three years before any construction could start. Mayor Gregg Hull said the same thing in blunter terms at the September vote, telling residents it would be a few years before anyone breaks dirt on a house. A May 2026 retrospective in the Rio Rancho Observer confirmed the land was still sitting vacant, describing golf as still "a question mark" almost ten years after the course closed.
For a buyer today, that timeline cuts both ways. The uncertainty that kept the land empty for a decade is resolved. There's a real plan, a real zoning designation, and a developer with a track record. But the disruption that plan will eventually bring, new streets, new rooftops, possibly a commercial corridor, is still a matter of years, not an immediate concern for anyone closing on a home this fall.
What the Price Spread Is Actually Measuring
High Resort's current listings span a wide range, from townhomes in the mid-$200,000s to custom single-family homes near $700,000, and that spread isn't just about square footage. Sale-price tracking updated this fall puts the neighborhood's median at $412,500 over the trailing twelve months, up 10 percent from the year before, with homes typically selling in about 51 days against a 58-day national average.
That median sits between two very different products. On one side are the smaller, older homes built when the course was still active, priced for buyers who want the location and schools without paying for a golf-course pedigree. On the other are the custom homes in gated sections like Greystone Ridge, built with the assumption of permanent open space behind them, priced accordingly. The Chamisa Hills approval doesn't erase that gap, but it does mean the premium attached to "backs to open space" now depends on a map most buyers haven't seen, not a description on a listing sheet.
What to Check Before You Write an Offer
A few things are worth confirming before you get attached to a specific lot in this corridor.
- Which section of the old course the home actually backs to. Eastview Heights is designated to stay open space. Luxeview Estates, Vida Moderna, and Nueva Esperanza are not.
- Whether the home sits in a section that negotiated protections. The Enclave HOA secured a commitment that the golf course area adjacent to its neighborhood would be designated open space rather than higher-density R4 housing, and the plan's West Nine section carries a required 65-foot buffer and single-story height limit specifically because neighboring homeowners pushed for it during the approval process.
- How long-term maintenance of the open-space sections is funded. The approved plan includes a five-year, $400,000 bond for trail and landscape improvements. After that, upkeep shifts to a new homeowners association whose funding structure hadn't been fully detailed as of the most recent public reporting.
None of this shows up in an MLS description. It shows up in city council minutes and master plan documents, which is exactly why it's worth asking a local agent to walk through before you get too far into a transaction.
FAQ
Is there still an active golf course in High Resort? No. The course that gave the neighborhood its name closed in 2016, and the clubhouse burned down in 2019. The land has been vacant since.
When will construction on the old golf course start? No firm date has been announced. City officials said at the September 2025 approval that platting and permitting would take one to three years, and reporting from spring 2026 confirmed the land was still undeveloped.
Does this affect every home in High Resort the same way? No. Some sections, like Eastview Heights, are designated to remain open space. Others are zoned for new single-family homes, townhomes, or the town center. The impact on any given property depends on which section it borders.
If you're weighing a home in this corridor and want to know exactly which side of the Chamisa Hills plan a specific lot falls on, that's a conversation worth having before you write an offer, not after. Property Partners, Inc. works this corridor regularly and can walk you through what a specific address actually backs up to.
