Capitan, New Mexico.
Typical home $252,097 (+4.0% in a year). Ruidoso, NM metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$42 (+3%) since Dec 2023.
- 1 year
- Up $9,602 +4%
- $242,495$252,097 since Sep 2025
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Capitan$1,323
- New Mexico$1,658
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Capitan, NM rose 4.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Capitan, Lincoln County, New Mexico
Capitan is a village of 1,391 people in Lincoln County. Half its households earn more than $52,864 a year and half less, against $53,303 across Lincoln County. 94% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 6% are rented. Unemployment in Lincoln County was 4.6% in August 2026, and the county had 1.0% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Lincoln County work in schools and health care, then restaurants and hotels.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Capitan is a small village in Lincoln County, New Mexico, where nearly everyone owns the home they live in. Household incomes sit a little below the county's, and the typical home value is modest. Winters are cold and snowy, summers are warm, and the year as a whole is fairly dry.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with restaurants, hotels and entertainment, professional and business services, and shops also employing many people. Across Lincoln County, the largest workplaces include Lincoln County Medical Center, Ruidoso Schools and Walmart. The typical commute is fairly long, and few people work from home.
Things to do. Fort Stanton, a historic fort, and the Fort Stanton – Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area, a protected area, are both a short drive away, as is Bonito Lake, a reservoir. Ski Apache, a ski area, is a longer drive away.
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- 28 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What people in Lincoln County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Lincoln County had 6,713 jobs in 2025, 1.0% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 50° and lows near 24°; warmest in June, with highs near 87° and lows near 51°. About 27 inches of snow and 17 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Capitan weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Lincoln County
- Lincoln County Medical CenterCritical access hospital284FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters245
- Ruidoso SchoolsSchool district242FTE
- Village of RuidosoGeneral services departments, government235
- United SupermarketsSupermarket128
- Eastern New Mexico University Ruidoso Branch Community CollegeTwo-year college100
- Capitan SchoolsSchool district70FTE
- Forest ServiceFederal government · Department of Agriculture53
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 6 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 693 people in all across the county; Capitan has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) and federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- WildfireVery high
- LightningVery high
- Inland floodingVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Capitan’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Lincoln County and the Ruidoso, NM metro.
Capitan home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Capitan$252,097
- New Mexico$315,812
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Capitan14
Zip codes with a Capitan address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Capitan — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.