Lamy home wins big in Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association’s 2025 event

Luxury homebuilder Mark Schwebel has seen many views throughout his 45-year career, but it was the view from 17 Vista Bella in Lamy that stole his heart.

Schwebel spent the last five years designing and constructing a home that recreated and maintained the feeling he felt standing on the home’s formerly empty lot for the first time in 2019.

“I tried to grab on to the spirituality and the vibe of the land, because it really was a spectacular view,” Schwebel said. “I didn’t want to mess (it) up.”

Years of planning and crafting paid off when the home was declared the winner of the 2025 Haciendas: A Parade of Homes Grand Hacienda and Best Kitchen awards a little over two weeks ago. The annual event, facilitated by the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association, is in its 33rd year of showcasing northern New Mexico’s custom-built homes.

“It’s pretty cool. I’ve been building for 45 years and I never really won anything,” said Schwebel, who started his career as a carpenter in New York City and moved to New Mexico roughly seven years ago. “To win the Grand Hacienda award, it’s really an honor.”

Big Art Building Corp., Schwebel’s northern New Mexico-based luxury homebuilding company, started construction on the Lamy home in February 2024, and finished it in July of this year.

The property was on the market the entire construction period, said Tara Earley, the associate broker responsible for the listing along with Ricky Allen. The pair are managing partners of the Ricky Allen & Tara Earley Real Estate Group, which operates under Sotheby’s International Realty.

The home first hit the market at roughly $3.5 million and dropped down to $2.9 million in February. Just last week, the property went under contract with someone from the film industry, Earley said.

The 4,400-square-foot home features three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a three-car garage, a wine cellar and two gas fireplaces — all sitting on a little under 13 acres that overlook miles of the Galisteo Basin and mountains. The home is about 30 minutes southeast of Santa Fe.

Many of the new build’s design elements — including cantilevered steel beams, expansive glass windows, natural wood and stone — have been sourced from around the world. Each of the property’s bathrooms features exotic stones from Mexico, Turkey and Italy, the listing says.

The award-winning kitchen is centered around a massive island and features Brazilian stone countertops, Italian stone floors and walls, and custom cabinetry made by Big Art Building’s cabinet shop in Santa Fe.

Schwebel, who ironically named his first company Mr. Kitchen in the early ’80s, described the kitchen as “very warm, handcrafted and easy to use.”

Schwebel, also named the 2024 Haciendas: A Parade of Homes’ Natural Materials winner, personally drove as far as Lake Tahoe to pick up wood for the home’s white fir ceilings, according to Earley.

“Each element has been meticulously crafted to highlight the surrounding beauty while creating a warm, luxurious environment,” the home’s listing says.

Earley and Schwebel both emphasized the warmth of the home as a unique detail, considering many contemporary homes present a colder feel.

“It is not a hard-edge contemporary. It’s a very soft, organic contemporary,” Earley said, adding Schwebel’s skills of utilizing natural materials “really shines through in this house.”

From Martha Stewart’s kitchen in the ’80s to the foothills of Santa Fe County today, Schwebel estimates he has designed upward of 2,000 single-family dwellings throughout his career. And yet, Schwebel said he considers the Lamy home “probably the best job I’ve ever done.”

“The process keeps getting refined with every house that I build,” Schwebel said. “You never stop learning.”