How much notice is required to raise the rent in New Hampshire?

Verified July 11, 2026 All New Hampshire topics →

Pending legislation — not yet law. The rules on this page reflect current law only. The following bills would change it if enacted:

HB 1598 (2026) — Eviction-process overhaul (compromise between NH Legal Assistance and landlord groups): caps discretionary eviction stays at 60 days (75 with special circumstances), requires tenants to raise affirmative defenses/counterclaims early, adds pre-hearing evidence-exchange rules and unauthorized-occupant removal procedures. Amends RSA 540:13, 540:13-c, 540:14, 540-A:2, 540-A:4 VII, and rewords RSA 540-A:3 V while keeping the entry standard 'notice which is adequate under the circumstances' verbatim — no change to the fields encoded here.Status: Passed both chambers (Senate 2026-05-14, House concurrence 2026-05-21); enrolled 2026-06-04. Official gc.nh.gov docket checked 2026-07-11 shows general status PASSED with NO signing entry and NO chapter number yet — press reports of a signing the week of 2026-07-06 (InDepthNH, 2026-07-10) are ahead of the official record. Effective 90 days after passage per the bill — approximately early October 2026 if signed, so NOT law on 2026-07-11. Re-check the docket for the signing entry and chapter number next session. (checked 2026-07-11).
HB 1336 (2026) — Would have created a 'regulated conditional deposit' letting landlords collect up to one additional month's rent beyond the RSA 540-A:6 one-month security-deposit cap from applicants failing standard screening criteria (credit, income, eviction history), with disclosure and re-screening rights.Status: Passed both chambers; VETOED by Gov. Ayotte 2026-07-02 (veto message: would impede access to housing and lacked clarity on how long landlords could hold the funds). Not law; an override attempt is possible at the fall 2026 veto day — re-check then. (checked 2026-07-11).

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.

The rule is built into the eviction machinery rather than standing alone: a tenant who rejects a properly noticed increase can be evicted for that refusal, while an increase noticed short of 30 days cannot be enforced. For most multi-unit rentals ('restricted property') New Hampshire is a good-cause eviction state, but two paths still discipline the market: single-family homes of small owners and owner-occupied buildings of four or fewer units can be terminated on a simple 30-day notice with no cause, and since July 1, 2026 a landlord may decline to renew any 12-month-or-longer lease with 60 days' written notice. There is no rent control anywhere in the state, no limit on the size or frequency of increases, and no cap tied to increase size — the tiered-notice figures floating around online come from bills that died. Manufactured-housing park tenants are the exception: lot-charge increases need 60 days' written notice with an explanation and a mediation option.

New Hampshire rent increase notice at a glance

Notice — month-to-month	30 days
Varies by increase size	Not addressed by statute
Fixed-term leases	Rent is locked during a fixed term as a matter of contract. At term end, NH law changed on 2026-07-01: under new RSA 540:2, II(i) (2025 ch. 263, HB 60) a landlord of restricted property may decline to renew a lease whose original or renewed term totals 12 months or more, without other good cause, by giving written non-renewal notice at least 60 days before the term ends and filing any possessory action within 6 months of expiry; such a no-fault termination may not be reported as an 'eviction' on tenant-screening reports (new paragraph VIII). A renewal offer at higher rent still needs the 30-day 540:2, IV notice to make refusal good cause.
Statewide rent control / stabilization	No
Rent control details	No rent control exists anywhere in New Hampshire — no statewide scheme and no municipal ordinance. There is no express statutory preemption either; municipalities simply lack enabling authority under New Hampshire's Dillon's-rule framework, which is why enabling bills keep being filed and killed: HB 95 (2023) was rejected by the House 301-63 in March 2023, and HB 1362 (2024) (municipal rent-stabilization enabling with a 120-day notice scheme) died Inexpedient to Legislate on 2024-02-15.
Local rent control preempted	Not addressed by statute
Frequency limits	Not addressed by statute

Notes and caveats

notice_days_month_to_month = 30 is EXPRESS statutory text (540:2, IV: 'written notice of the amount and effective date of the rent increase at least 30 days prior to the effective date'), not a termination-notice derivation — but page copy should explain the NH mechanism: the notice is the precondition for treating refusal as good cause under 540:2, II(e), and for nonrestricted property (single-family houses of owners with 3 or fewer such houses, owner-occupied buildings of 4 or fewer units, foreclosure-held houses — 540:1-a) the landlord can alternatively just terminate with the same 30-day notice under 540:3, II, so 30 days is the floor either way. The proviso is settled law (last relevant amendment 2013 ch. 48; the 2024 ch. 9 = HB 261 amendments to 540:2 concerned domestic-violence protections). STALE-SOURCE HEADLINE: 2025 ch. 263 (HB 60, signed 2025-08-01) took effect 2026-07-01 — ten days before this verification — adding 540:2, II(i) end-of-lease non-renewal (12-month-plus leases, 60 days' written notice, possessory action within 6 months) and paragraph VIII (no-fault terminations are not reportable 'evictions'); pre-July-2026 guides calling NH a no-end-of-term good-cause state are stale. Dead-bill debunks: the '60 days for restricted property / 6 months for increases over 15% / 120-day municipal notice' tiers circulating in search results are from HB 95 (2023, killed 301-63) and HB 1362 (2024, ITL 2024-02-15) — never law; the official chapter contains none of that language (verified across two independent fetches of the merged chapter). local_control_preempted null per NV precedent: preemption is structural (Dillon's rule, no enabling statute), not express. Manufactured-housing variance: RSA 205-A:6, I requires 60 days' written notice with explanation for any disclosed-charge increase plus notice of voluntary mediation, and I-a mandates a bold-print mediation-rights statement (51% petition, increase over $15/month). frequency_limits null: verified negative, full sweep of RSA 540 and 540-A.

Statute citations

NH RSA 540:2 I, II(e), II(i), IV, V, VIII Official source
NH RSA 540:3 II Official source
NH RSA 540:1-a I, II Official source
NH RSA 205-A:6 (manufactured housing parks) I, I-a Official source

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 load-bearing section read at least twice via independent URLs — the merged chapter pages (540-mrg.htm fetched twice via upper- and lowercase 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) captured raw via curl 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.