Can a landlord charge for a pet in New Hampshire, and what does the law require for an assistance animal?

Not every landlord — an owner-occupied or unit-count exemption takes some landlords outside at least one of these rules.

The money rules bind most, but not all, New Hampshire landlords. The security-deposit chapter does not count as a landlord a person who rents out a single-family residence and owns no other rental property, or a person renting units in an owner-occupied building of five units or fewer, except for a unit in that building occupied by someone 60 or older (section 540-A:5, paragraph I). Outside the chapter there is no deposit ceiling, no trust duty, no thirty-day return and no double-damages remedy, so a pet deposit or a non-refundable pet fee is unregulated there. Manufactured-housing-park space and manufactured housing are expressly inside the chapter. The assistance-animal rules bind differently: the fair-housing accommodation duty binds every landlord, because the act's owner-occupied exemptions are written against a different section, and the service-animal access right reaches every housing accommodation except a single-family residence letting out no more than one room. State- or federally-financed housing for the elderly and manufactured-housing parks each carry their own pet rules, stated as separate rows below.

Yes — no pet figure exists, but a pet deposit is a security deposit however it is named and counts inside the general deposit cap.

No New Hampshire statute mentions a pet deposit; the state does not need one, because the definition is wide enough to catch it. A security deposit means all funds in excess of the monthly rent which are transferred from the tenant to the landlord for any purpose (section 540-A:5, paragraph II), and money handed over because of a pet is money transferred for a purpose. So a pet deposit is a security deposit, it sits inside the single ceiling of one month's rent or $100 whichever is greater, and a pet deposit charged on top of a full one-month deposit is unlawful. Everything else in the chapter follows it: the trust duty, the receipt stating the amount and where the money is held, interest after a year, return within thirty days with an itemized list, and, for a failure to return, damages equal to twice the deposit plus any interest due. A failure on the cap, the receipt or the trust duty is treated as a violation of the state consumer-protection act instead. Two housing classes are different and are stated as their own rows: state- or federally-financed housing for the elderly has its own pet damage deposit ceiling, and a manufactured-housing park is inside this cap but carries its own rules about what may be charged for a pet at all.

Refundability: Refundable, and held in trust. Money taken as a pet deposit is a security deposit, which continues to be the money of the tenant, must be held in trust and may not be mingled with the landlord's own funds or become an asset of the landlord (section 540-A:6, paragraph II(a)). It earns interest at the regular savings rate once held a year or longer, and must be returned within thirty days of the end of the tenancy with an itemized list of damages excluding reasonable wear and tear (section 540-A:7).

The general deposit cap it sits against: A landlord may not demand or receive any security deposit in an amount or value in excess of one month's rent or $100, whichever is greater (section 540-A:6, paragraph I(a)). Where the lease calls for quarterly or less frequent rent, the deposit taken in addition to the first rent payment may still not exceed one month's rent. The figure has not changed since 2014, and the deposits page carries the cap with its trust, interest and return rules.

Where the rule switches off or on: The whole chapter switches off for a person who rents out a single-family residence and owns no other rental property, and for a person renting units in an owner-occupied building of five units or fewer — except for any individual unit in that building occupied by a person 60 years of age or older, which stays inside (section 540-A:5, paragraph I). For an excluded landlord there is no ceiling on a pet deposit at all.

No for a non-refundable pet fee, which a general or specific rule bars. Recurring monthly pet rent is not addressed by any New Hampshire statute.

Within a covered tenancy a non-refundable pet fee cannot exist. Any move-in money is a security deposit whatever the lease calls it, it must come back within thirty days less allowable deductions, and a lease clause saying otherwise is void. Monthly pet rent is a different question and New Hampshire says nothing about it: no cap, no authorization, no reasonableness test. There is no statutory schedule of fees and no disclosure duty. The park rule is the strictest thing in New Hampshire law on this subject and is stated as its own row: in a manufactured-housing park a charge for pets is unlawful unless the park establishes that services are rendered and expenses are actually incurred because of the pets.

Monthly pet rent: Recurring monthly pet rent is not addressed by any New Hampshire statute. The security-deposit definition catches funds in excess of the monthly rent transferred to the landlord, which on its text is move-in money rather than a monthly charge billed as rent, so a monthly pet charge is left to the lease. There is no cap, no authorization and no reasonableness standard for it.

A one-time pet fee: A one-time move-in pet fee cannot survive as a fee. It is funds transferred to the landlord for a purpose, so it is a security deposit by definition; it must be returned within thirty days of the end of the tenancy, less damages, unpaid rent and other lawful charges that remain unpaid; and a fee already paid is not a charge that remains unpaid. It also consumes part of the tenant's single one-month-or-$100 allowance.

How far the non-refundable-fee rule reaches: The bar is not a general prohibition on non-refundable fees of the kind some states enacted; it is the reach of the security-deposit chapter itself, and three sections do the work together. The definition catches all funds in excess of the monthly rent transferred for any purpose (section 540-A:5, paragraph II); the chapter requires the money back within thirty days with only limited deductions (section 540-A:7); and any provision in a lease by which the tenant purports to waive a right under the chapter is void (section 540-A:8, paragraph III), which is what a clause labeling a pet fee non-refundable tries to do. The consequences are that the bar reaches move-in money and not a monthly charge, and that it does not reach a landlord the chapter excludes — a single-family-only owner, or an owner-occupied building of five units or fewer, except a unit occupied by someone 60 or older.

No — no statute requires a lease to state a pet policy, and no written-rules provision governs one.

In the private market there is nothing: no duty to say whether pets are allowed, no statutory default when the lease is silent, no procedure for changing a pet rule during the term, no limit on the number of animals and no condition a landlord may not impose. Both landlord-tenant chapters were read end to end and neither contains the words pet, pets, animal or dog. New Hampshire has no counterpart to the states whose law says that silence in the lease means no pet restrictions; silence is governed by the lease and the common law. Two housing classes are governed, and each is stated as its own row below: in state- or federally-financed housing for the elderly the landlord must let the tenants vote on whether companion animals are allowed, and the tenants then set the building's pet rules with management input; in a manufactured-housing park the park may make rules about the number or type of pets per site, but only for new tenants and newly added pets, and may not order the removal of a pet the tenant already had permission to keep except to protect health and safety.

Yes.

No New Hampshire statute restricts a landlord's breed, size or weight rule, and none bars one either. The word breed appears in twelve sections of the whole code, and every one is fish and game, agriculture, rabies or scrapie, pet-vendor transfer certificates or animal fighting; the one dog-classification use is a guard-dog definition that is expressly breed-neutral — any breed of dog of either sex — and belongs to a subdivision about commercial establishments, not tenancies. There is no breed mandate for subsidized housing either: the elderly-housing subdivision limits species and number rather than breed, allowing dogs, cats, caged birds and aquarium fish and one companion animal per apartment except birds and fish. The state's dangerous-dog machinery is conduct-based, and the power it gives a city or town over dogs is keyed to conduct as well, never to breed. Nothing in state law bars a landlord from refusing an assistance animal on breed, because no breed rule exists to carve an exception out of; the species limit that does exist runs the other way, since a service animal in New Hampshire must be a dog.

Yes — a disability-title housing right, with no documentation rule. The operative rules are statutory. State law incorporates a federal statute or codified regulation by reference.

The express right is narrow and it is about access, not money: it is lawful for any service animal to accompany its handler or trainer into any public facility, housing accommodation or place of public accommodation to which the general public is invited, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law and applicable alike to all persons (section 167-D:4). The chapter sets no documentation rule, no charge rule and no answer deadline, and its species limit means the right reaches a dog and nothing else. Beside it sits the fair-housing duty, which uses the federal act's own words: it is a civil rights violation to refuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services when such accommodations may be necessary to afford a person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling (section 354-A:11, paragraph III(b)). That clause names no animal, and it is what an emotional support animal claim runs on in New Hampshire, together with the federal rules — the state's own animal chapter excludes emotional support from the definition of work or tasks on purpose and by amendment. The 2026 comfort-dog chapter adds an access right for a certified public safety comfort dog to enter a housing accommodation while the team is performing or traveling to or from official duties, which is a working-visit right rather than a right to keep the dog at home, and that chapter carries no penalty section at all.

Who it binds: Every landlord owes the reasonable-accommodation duty, and that is the opposite of what the exemption list in the fair-housing act suggests. The act's exemptions — a qualifying private sale of a single-family home, a building of not more than four families where the owner lives in one of them, and the rental of a room or rooms in an owner-occupied private home — open with the words nothing contained in section 354-A:10 shall prohibit, and the disability provisions, including the duty to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services, are in section 354-A:11, which stands on its own. The chapter was read through for any provision extending those exemptions to the disability section and there is none. So an owner-occupied duplex and an owner letting a room both owe the accommodation duty. The service-animal access right has its own and narrower scope: it reaches any publicly assisted housing accommodation and any property used or designed as a home, residence or sleeping place, but not a single-family residence whose occupants rent out no more than one room (section 167-D:1), and the chapter also carries an exclusion aimed at distinctly private clubs and religious educational facilities. The deposit chapter's five-unit exclusion is a third and different line, and it governs money rather than animals.

No state text sets a documentation standard for an assistance animal in housing.

New Hampshire sets no documentation rule of any kind. Nothing says what a landlord may ask for, who may write a letter, whether a telehealth visit counts, how long a treatment relationship must have run, whether an online certificate is worth anything, whether a landlord may require its own form or demand medical records, or whether and how fast a landlord must answer a request. The whole code returns no occurrence of the phrases assistance animal or support animal, and the state's own animal chapter contains no documentation section. What a landlord may ask about an assistance animal in New Hampshire is governed by the federal rules. The one documentation duty in state law belongs to a housing class and to the tenant rather than the landlord: in state- or federally-financed housing for the elderly a tenant who keeps a companion animal must give management a veterinarian's certificate that the animal is in good health and, for a cat or dog, that it has been neutered or spayed.

Under state law, yes — no state text bars a charge for an assistance animal; the federal rules alone govern it.

No New Hampshire statute bars a landlord from charging a pet deposit, a pet fee or pet rent for a service animal or any other assistance animal. The service-animal chapter grants access and says nothing about money anywhere in it. One sentence is often quoted as though it were a charge bar and it is not: the fair-housing act says a landlord may not increase for persons with a disability any customarily required security deposit, but that sentence sits inside the subparagraph about a disabled tenant's right to make physical modifications at their own expense, beside the landlord's right to require restoration and to negotiate an interest-bearing escrow account for the cost of it. Read in place it bars a disability-based deposit increase tied to modifications; it is not an animal rule. What actually stops a charge for an assistance animal in most New Hampshire tenancies is the federal rules, together with the state duty to make reasonable accommodations. New Hampshire is one of the few states with no charge clause at all, and saying so plainly is more useful than implying a state bar that does not exist.

An offense or sanction that reaches a misrepresentation made to obtain housing: a misdemeanor, reaching the person claiming the animal. The text names no venue and no court has construed its reach, so it reaches housing by its general words.

It is unlawful to fit an animal with a collar, leash, vest, sign or harness of the type that represents the animal to be a service animal, or with a service-animal tag, or to request such a tag, if the animal is not a service animal; and it is unlawful to represent that one has a disability or is a service animal trainer in order to acquire a service animal, or to impersonate a person with a disability by word or action for the purpose of receiving service-dog accommodations or service-animal gear (section 167-D:8, paragraphs II and IV). A violation of any provision of the chapter is a misdemeanor (section 167-D:10). The offense names no place, so it reaches a claim made to a landlord as readily as one made anywhere else, and the chapter's own access right names a housing accommodation; no New Hampshire court has construed how far it runs. No warning is required first. The offense reaches the person making the claim only: New Hampshire places no duty and no penalty on anyone who writes a letter, and no licensing board in the state has a duty about one.

The landlord-side offense: Yes, in the same chapter and carrying the same misdemeanor: it is unlawful for a person, directly or indirectly, to prohibit, hinder or interfere with a service animal's handler or trainer who otherwise complies with the limitations applicable to people without disabilities, and it is unlawful to willfully interfere with a service animal (section 167-D:8, paragraphs I and III). A landlord who blocks a handler is inside those words.

Where the words leave the reach open: Two gaps a reader should know about. The chapter sets the offense class but no figure — the penalty section makes a violation of any provision of the chapter a misdemeanor, with a class A misdemeanor only for injuring a service animal badly enough that it cannot return to service, and the fine ceilings live in the general criminal-penalty statute rather than here. And the 2026 comfort-dog chapter declares it unlawful to represent or fit a dog as a certified public safety comfort dog when it is not, but that chapter carries no penalty section anywhere, so the prohibition stands without a stated sanction.

Who enforces it: Prosecuted as an ordinary misdemeanor; there is no civil penalty, no forfeiture, no eviction ground and no licensing consequence. On a conviction for harming a service animal the court may order restitution to the person or agency that owns the animal for veterinary bills, the replacement cost if the animal cannot return to service, and the handler's or trainer's lost salary for the period the animal is out of service (section 167-D:10, paragraph III).

Yes, within the powers state law names in this row.

New Hampshire grants municipalities power over dogs and says nothing at all about local rules on pets in rental housing. A city or town may license, muzzle vicious dogs as the dangerous-dog section defines them, and restrain dogs, with a penalty ceiling of $50 and a limit to dogs owned or kept in that place; cities may also regulate the keeping of dogs and their running at large, and towns may act on domestic animals in public places. Every grant is keyed to an animal's conduct, never to its breed. There is no preemption of any kind: neither landlord-tenant chapter carries a preemption or supersession clause about local ordinances, and the one supersession clause that exists is about conflicting federal law in federally owned or subsidized housing. Nothing authorizes and nothing forbids a New Hampshire municipality to regulate pet deposits, pet rent or pet policies in tenancies, and no New Hampshire city has done so. Two statutes point the other way and are worth knowing: a tenant keeping a companion animal in elderly housing must abide by any local ordinances affecting the custody of certain companion animals, and the state's emergency companion-animal sheltering policy defers to local ordinances on how many animals a sheltered family may bring.

Localities may regulate the keeping or licensing of animals: The local governing body may make additional bylaws and regulations about the licensing, muzzling of vicious dogs as the dangerous-dog section defines them, and restraining of dogs, and may set penalties of not more than $50 for a breach. Those bylaws must relate only to dogs owned or kept in that city or town, and the added license fee may not exceed $1. Dogs hunting, competing, exhibiting, training for those activities with their owner, or guarding, working or herding livestock are exempt. Text: RSA 466:39 · 466:39; see also 466:30-a, V.

Localities may regulate the keeping or licensing of animals, a second instrument: A city may by ordinance regulate the keeping of dogs and their running at large, require them to be licensed, and authorize the destruction of dogs kept or running at large contrary to the ordinance, provided no bylaw or ordinance is repugnant to the constitution or the laws of the state. Text: RSA 47:17, XI.

Localities may regulate the keeping or licensing of animals, a third instrument: A town may make bylaws about the going at large of horses and other domestic animals in any public place in the town, which is the grant a town uses where it has not adopted, or has rescinded, the state dogs-at-large section. Text: RSA 31:39 · I(b).

State- or federally-financed housing for the elderly (RSA 161-F:30 to :33): pet deposit — capped. This class is public housing financed by the state or the federal government to provide living accommodations for people 60 or older, and it does not include nursing homes or high-rise apartment buildings. Three things are different there. The building must let its tenants decide: on a petition of ten percent of all the tenants, the housing must permit a vote, and a simple majority of those voting decides whether tenants may have companion animals, with six months between votes and no later vote displacing an animal an earlier vote allowed. If the vote goes in favor, the tenants adopt the building's pet rules with input from management. If companion animals are permitted, a tenant who wants one must post a damage deposit with management of not more than one and one-half times a month's rent — the only pet-specific deposit figure in New Hampshire law, and one that sits awkwardly beside the ordinary ceiling of one month's rent or $100, a tension no New Hampshire authority resolves. The tenant's own duties are set out: a signed agreement with someone other than another tenant to act as caretaker if the tenant cannot care for the animal, and to let management act on that agreement if the animal is neglected or abused; a veterinarian's certificate that the animal is in good health and, for a cat or dog, that it has been neutered or spayed; total responsibility for the animal's care and cleanliness; no more than one companion animal per apartment, except birds and aquarium fish; and compliance with local ordinances. A companion animal here means only a dog, cat, caged bird or aquarium fish. Complaints about a tenant's companion animal are handled like any other tenant complaint. Text: RSA 161-F:30 to 161-F:33 · 161-F:30, I-II; 161-F:31; 161-F:32; 161-F:33, I-V.

Manufactured-housing park lots (RSA 205-A:2): pet deposit — counts inside the general deposit cap; the written-rules or mid-term-change section governs a pet rule. Park space and manufactured housing are expressly inside the security-deposit chapter, so the ordinary ceiling of one month's rent or $100 applies to a deposit in a park. What is different is the charge rule, and it is the strictest in New Hampshire law: a park may not make or enforce a rule that imposes a charge for pets unless the park owner or operator establishes that services are rendered and expenses are actually incurred because of the existence of the pets. The park may make rules governing the number or type of pets per site, but only rules that at the time of implementation affect new tenants and the addition of pets by current residents, and the penalty for breaking such a rule may not exceed $10 per month after thirty days' notice. A park may not require a tenant to dispose of a pet the tenant had prior permission to keep, unless that is necessary to protect the health and safety of other tenants, and nothing requires a park to permit pets other than those that stay entirely within the manufactured housing and normally need no outside facilities. Separately, a park entrance or other fee may not exceed three months' rent for the space, and no fee of any kind may be charged unless for services actually rendered. A violation can bring a $500 civil penalty and other damages in the district court, and also counts as an unfair trade practice. Text: RSA 205-A:2 · I, VIII(c), VIII(d), XI. Text: RSA 540-A:5 · I, III.