New Hampshire Landlord-Tenant Laws
Local rent regulation in New Hampshire
No New Hampshire statute expressly addresses local rent control — state law neither authorizes municipalities to adopt rent-stabilization ordinances nor expressly prohibits them from doing so.
Verified August 12, 2026 · Full New Hampshire rent-increase rules →
New Hampshire Security deposits
New Hampshire caps security deposits at one month's rent or $100, whichever is greater, and the landlord must return the deposit within 30 days after the tenancy ends, with a written itemized list — backed by receipts or estimates — for anything withheld.
New Hampshire Rent increase notice
New Hampshire landlords must give written notice of the amount and effective date of a rent increase at least 30 days before it takes effect — that is the express condition in RSA 540:2, IV for making a tenant's refusal to pay the higher rent 'good cause' for eviction.
New Hampshire Late fees
New Hampshire sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period for apartments and houses — the state's landlord-tenant chapters never mention late fees, so the lease governs, bounded only by ordinary contract-law limits on penalty clauses.
New Hampshire Entry notice
New Hampshire sets no fixed entry-notice period — the statute instead bars a landlord from willfully entering a tenant's home without prior consent except to make emergency repairs, and requires the tenant to allow access for repairs and other normal ownership functions at a reasonable time after 'notice which is adequate under the circumstances.' The practical shape: a landlord who wants in for a routine repair, inspection, or showing gives circumstance-appropriate notice and the tenant may not unreasonably refuse, but if the tenant does refuse, the landlord's lawful remedies are a court order or, for true emergencies, direct entry — the statute expressly limits non-consensual entry to those two paths.
New Hampshire Eviction process
New Hampshire requires good cause to evict most residential tenants, so the first question is not how long the notice is but whether the landlord has a statutory ground at all: for 'restricted property' - which under RSA 540:1-a means every residential rental except a single-family house whose owner owns no more than 3 of them, a unit in an owner-occupied building of 4 units or fewer, and a single-family house a bank took by foreclosure - RSA 540:2, II lets the owner terminate 'only for one of the following reasons,' and the landlord then serves a written eviction notice of 7 days (nonpayment, substantial damage, health-or-safety behavior, or a cotenant accused of domestic violence) or 30 days for everything else, and files a possessory action in the circuit court district division.
New Hampshire Application fees
New Hampshire regulates rental application fees through a disclosure-and-refund rule rather than a dollar cap: before collecting any fee at application or renewal a landlord must disclose the amount in writing along with any requirement to pass a criminal background and credit check, and where the applicant is not rented the unit the landlord must return everything beyond the documented cost of those checks and reasonable administrative costs within 30 days.
New Hampshire mobile home park laws
New Hampshire's Regulation of Manufactured Housing Parks law, RSA chapter 205-A, covers residents who own their home and rent a lot in a park of two or more manufactured houses: lot rent may rise only after 60 days' written notice carrying a written explanation, a tenancy may be ended only for six statutory reasons, and closure or a change of use takes 18 months' notice.
Lot-rent, closure, park-sale and home-sale rules with statute citations →
New Hampshire Fair Market Rents (FY 2026) — HUD's benchmark rents for every New Hampshire metro area and county.
How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official NH General Court site (gc.nh.gov, the redirect target of www.gencourt.state.nh.us): every section these answers rest on read at least twice via independent URLs — the merged chapter pages (540-mrg.htm read twice via independent paths, 540-A-mrg.htm, 540-B-mrg.htm) plus each individual section page (540-A:1, :2, :3, :4, :5, :6, :7, :8; 540:1-a, :2, :3, :9; 540-B:10; 205-A:6) read in full for verbatim quotes, with all figures matching across reads (greater-of one month/$100 cap, 30-day return from termination, one-year interest trigger with 3-year request cycle, double-damages penalty, 6-month unclaimed-deposit rule, 540-A:5 small-landlord exemption, consent-based entry with adequate-under-the-circumstances notice, 540:2 IV 30-day rent-increase notice, new 540:2 II(i) 60-day end-of-lease notice effective 2026-07-01). Negative checks (no late-fee or grace-period statute, no rent control, no express preemption) run against the full text of RSA chapters 540, 540-A, and 540-B plus a gc.nh.gov-restricted search. Session-law identities pinned by cross-referencing official source lines with bill records: 2025 ch. 263 = HB 60 (signed 2025-08-01, eff. 2026-07-01), 2025 ch. 176 = HB 309 (eff. 2026-01-01), 2024 ch. 9 = HB 261. 2026-session check on 2026-07-11: HB 1336 vetoed 2026-07-02; HB 1598 signed week of 2026-07-06, effective 90 days after passage, flagged as pending; dead bills HB 95 (2023) and HB 1362 (2024) debunked from contemporaneous reporting.