The other New Hampshire laws that reach your association.
New Hampshire keeps its association law in two places and almost nothing in between: a detailed Condominium Act, and one 2023 section in the non-profit chapter. So the provisions that matter most to owners are often filed somewhere else entirely — a flag right in the chapter about state ceremonies, a construction-defect procedure in the consumer chapter, and the Attorney General’s bureau that actually enforces the Condominium Act. Those are here, along with the things people confidently believe about New Hampshire HOA law that the statutes do not say.
Read the scope note before you rely on an absence. Every statement on this page was tested by full-text search against the 27 New Hampshire chapters hosted on this site that carry text — 1,071 sections, comprising every chapter the Condominium Act and its neighbours cross-reference, the whole of Title XLVIII’s conveyancing chapters, and the chapters the tables of contents for Titles XXVII, XXXI and XLVIII showed were the only places a subject could live. That is a real search and it is not the whole RSA. Where this page says New Hampshire has no law about something, it means no such provision appears in those chapters, and it says so rather than hedging or overclaiming.
RSA 356-B:47-a is well known and it only binds a condominium unit owners’ association. The wider rule is in a chapter almost nobody looks at — RSA 3-E, the state flag code — and it is written broadly enough to reach a subdivision declaration.
RSA 3-E:3 says that “No rule, ordinance, or agreement of any kind by a person, municipality, or other entity shall prohibit the flying of the United States flag from a private residence owned, rented, or used by a private person.” The second sentence preserves the association’s room to manage it: “Reasonable restrictions regarding the size of the flag or the manner in which the flag is displayed may be adopted and enforced.” A covenant is an agreement and a homeowners’ association is an entity, so on the face of the section a flat prohibition on flying the flag from a home does not survive it, while a rule about size, bracket and placement does. Read that as what the words say rather than as a settled outcome: RSA 3-E has three sections and none of them supplies a penalty, a remedy or a route to enforce the right — unlike the condominium version, which sits inside a chapter the Attorney General administers.
RSA 3-E:2 adopts the federal flag code, 4 U.S.C. sections 1 through 10, as the flag code for New Hampshire, which is the standard the condominium provision measures display against.
If your association is preparing a claim against the developer or a contractor over water intrusion, roofs, decks or siding, this chapter comes first and skipping it stops the case. RSA 359-G:3: if a homeowner files an action without first complying, on application by a party the court or arbitrator shall stay the action, without prejudice, until the requirements are met — and no attachments against the contractor may be granted until the stay expires.
It applies to associations, not just individual owners. RSA 359-G:2, II defines “homeowner” to include an association that contracts with a contractor, and paragraph V defines “residence” to include “common areas and improvements that are owned or maintained by an association or by members of an association”.
The clock. RSA 359-G:4, I: written notice of claim, served by certified mail return receipt requested or in hand, no later than 60 days before starting an action, describing the defect in detail and enclosing the evidence you hold. II: the contractor has 30 days to respond — offering to settle, proposing an inspection, or wholly rejecting the claim. IV: if an inspection is proposed you have 15 days to give access. V: within 15 days of the inspection the contractor must make a written offer or state that it will not proceed. X: you accept within a reasonable time and no later than 30 days, and silence is a rejection. XII: serving the notice tolls the limitation period for 60 days — but it does not revive a period that already expired and does not extend a statute of repose.
Paragraph IX is the risk. If you reject an offer and the eventual judgment is worth less than that offer, the contractor is deemed the prevailing party for the purpose of taxing costs.
New Hampshire has no HOA regulator, no ombudsman and no licensing scheme for community managers. What it has is a bureau inside the Department of Justice. RSA 356-B:48 provides that the chapter “shall be administered and enforced by the consumer protection and antitrust bureau, department of justice, established in RSA 21-M:9”.
That is the same bureau that takes complaints under RSA 358-A, which matters because RSA 358-C:4, VI routes every debt collection violation into RSA 358-A as well. Its powers over condominium registrations run from RSA 356-B:59 to RSA 356-B:65 — investigations, cease and desist orders, revocation, penalties and a civil remedy. Note how the powers split. RSA 356-B:59, III, RSA 356-B:60 and RSA 356-B:61 are written against any person who violates any provision of the chapter, and “person” is defined at RSA 356-B:3 to include an association — so a board that breaches the open-meeting or records sections is within their reach in terms. What is declarant-only is the back end: revocation of a registration (RSA 356-B:62), the penalty for the registration subdivision (RSA 356-B:64) and the purchaser’s civil remedy (RSA 356-B:65). In practice the bureau’s condominium work is registration work, so do not expect it to run a minutes dispute for you.
RSA 292:8-m, II bars a homeowners’ association that the planning board approved from being dissolved under RSA 292:9 or RSA 292:10-a “prior to a hearing under RSA 676:2 before that same planning board or land use body”. The purpose is easy to see: a subdivision was usually approved on the footing that an association would maintain roads, drainage or open space, and dissolving it strands those obligations on somebody.
What is worth knowing is what RSA 676:2 actually says. It is headed “Joint Meetings and Hearings” and it governs how an applicant for a local permit may petition two or more land use boards to hold a joint meeting or hearing, who chairs one, and that each board still renders its own decision. It does not itself describe a dissolution hearing or set a procedure for one. We reproduce both sections rather than reconciling them, and if you are facing this question the section to take to a lawyer is the cross-reference itself.
The memorandum that perfects a condominium assessment lien under RSA 356-B:46 is recorded in the registry of deeds under RSA 478, and RSA 356-B:46, II requires it to be indexed in the general index to deeds and identified as a lien for condominium assessments — so it is findable by name, not buried.
When you pay, RSA 356-B:46, VI releases the lien “in the same manner as required by RSA 479:7 for mortgages”. That section is worth reading for its deadline: RSA 479:7, II gives the holder 60 days after satisfaction, on tender of reasonable charges, to cause the discharge to be recorded, and requires written confirmation of the discharge within the same 60 days to whoever made the final payment. Recording fees may be charged to you only if you had written disclosure that they would be.
Not every New Hampshire community is a condominium or a non-profit corporation.
RSA 301-A, consumers’ co-operative associations, is the chapter a resident-owned community may be organised under. Its voting rule is near-absolute: RSA 301-A:24 provides that each member “shall have only one vote”, distributed one vote per natural person or member, and that a member association votes strictly one member one vote “regardless of the number of shares held”. The one door left open is for member organisations, whose voting rights the certificate of organization may prescribe. The bylaws may allow absentee ballots.
RSA 303, proprietors of common lands, is an old chapter that still carries a working association skeleton — bylaws (RSA 303:1), meetings (RSA 303:2), officers (RSA 303:3) and assessments. RSA 303:6 lets the proprietors at a legal meeting vote to raise what is needed to defray proprietary charges and choose persons to assess and collect, with every proprietor’s interest in the common lands liable for it. Its voting is share-weighted on a sliding scale under RSA 303:5, which is the opposite of the one-vote rules in RSA 292:6-b and RSA 301-A:24.
RSA 205-A regulates manufactured housing parks, and for residents of one it does work the HOA chapters do not. RSA 205-A:6, I requires full written disclosure of all terms before a tenancy and forbids raising a disclosed charge without an explanation and at least 60 days written notice. Paragraph I-a requires the increase notice to carry, in 10 point bold face, a statement that residents may obtain mediation at the park owner’s cost if at least one adult from 51 percent of the homeowners petitions and the increase exceeds $15 per month. Paragraph IV forbids a late fee on any rent paid in full within 7 calendar days of the due date.
RSA 508:4, I is the general rule: except as otherwise provided by law, all personal actions other than slander or libel may be brought only within 3 years of the act or omission complained of — with a discovery rule, so where the injury and its causal relationship could not reasonably have been discovered at the time, the three years run from discovery.
RSA 508:2 covers real property: 20 years for an action to recover real estate, and 5 years where the right is based on a possibility of reverter, right of re-entry or executory interest — which pairs with RSA 477:3-b, the section that voids most of those interests outright.
Other clocks live in their own chapters and are shorter: 180 days to file a discrimination complaint with the Commission for Human Rights and 3 years for the court alternative (RSA 354-A:21, 354-A:21-a); 6 months to perfect a condominium assessment lien (RSA 356-B:46); and 2 years from discovery, capped at 6 years from first payment, under RSA 356-A:16.
Two sections of the Condominium Act send the Attorney General to RSA 541-A, and they are the only two that do. RSA 356-B:49, III lets him exempt a condominium “in accordance with rules adopted by him pursuant to RSA 541-A”, and RSA 356-B:52 requires whatever “additional information required by rules adopted by the attorney general, pursuant to RSA 541-A” full and fair disclosure needs. Both most affect a buyer. RSA 541-A is the Administrative Procedure Act, and it is the chapter that decides how such a rule is proposed, noticed, commented on and adopted, and what happens when one expires.
The rules themselves are published separately from the statutes. This site hosts statutory text only, so a question that turns on the wording of a rule rather than of a section needs the rule itself.
Discrimination and intimidation are different wrongs with different chapters. RSA 354-B:1 gives everyone the right to exercise and enjoy their constitutional and statutory rights “without being subject to actual or threatened physical force or violence against them or any other person or by actual or threatened damage to or trespass on property”, where the conduct is motivated by race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, or disability. Paragraph II makes it unlawful to interfere or attempt to interfere with those rights.
Note that this list includes sexual orientation and gender identity in the operative sentence — which is not true of every list in RSA 354-A, and is one reason to read both chapters rather than assume they match.
Many states void a covenant that prohibits a solar energy system, or give an owner a statutory right to install an electric vehicle charger, hang laundry, or display a political sign. Nothing of the kind appears in the 27 New Hampshire chapters hosted here. Searched across all 1,071 held sections, the word solar appears in exactly three — RSA 477:49, 477:50 and 477:51 — and those create a solar skyspace easement, a voluntary bargain between two landowners about shade, recorded like any other conveyance. It is not a right against your association, and RSA 477:50, I says in terms that no planning board may require a landowner to grant one.
The same search returns nothing at all for electric vehicle, charging station, clothesline, rain barrel, political sign, satellite or xeriscape. Antenna returns one hit, inside the statutory easement form at RSA 477:51, which exempts utility lines, antennas, wires and poles from the shadow restriction — not a right of any kind against an association. Terms searched for are set in italics here rather than in quotation marks, because a quotation on these pages means text taken from a statute and none of these words appears in one. The one display right New Hampshire does give a homeowner is the flag, and it is at the top of this page.
Outside a condominium, New Hampshire does not tell your association how to run itself. The chapter lists for the three titles where such an act would sit — XXVII (corporations and associations), XXXI (trade and commerce) and XLVIII (conveyances and mortgages of realty) — contain no planned-community or homeowners’-association act. The only general HOA provision in the state is RSA 292:8-m, and it does two narrow things.
What follows from that is worth spelling out. There is no statutory notice period before a fine, no right to a hearing before one, no cap on the amount, no records-inspection deadline for a member — the one records clock outside a condominium runs to a prospective purchaser, ten days under RSA 356-A:9-b — no open-meeting requirement, no budget ratification vote and no architectural review procedure — unless you are in a condominium, where RSA 356-B supplies most of them, or unless your own declaration and bylaws create them. In a New Hampshire subdivision, your recorded documents are not a formality; they are very close to the whole of the law that governs you.
It is often said that New Hampshire law forbids an extra charge for a service animal while making the owner liable for any damage the animal does. No section of RSA 167-D says either thing, and a search of all 27 held chapters for the terms turns up nothing that does.
The nearest real provision is about a town clerk, not an association: RSA 466:8, II provides that no fee shall be required for the registration and licensing of a service animal dog as defined in RSA 167-D:1, IV, on production of an identification card from a recognised dog training agency — or, for an owner-trained dog, proof that it meets the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners public-access standard and a letter from a health care professional. Paragraph III lets the owner elect permanent registration instead of annual renewal, paragraph IV requires the town to track it without making the owner take part in renewals, and paragraph V provides for a “G C D-Permanent Registration” tag from the governor’s commission on disability — which the same paragraph says is not to be used to verify an animal’s legitimacy.
Whether a housing provider may charge a pet fee or deposit for an assistance animal is a reasonable-accommodation question under RSA 354-A:11, III(b) and the federal Fair Housing Act, not a question this chapter answers.
New Hampshire’s condominium super-priority is real and it is narrow. Under RSA 356-B:46, I(a) the association’s perfected lien sits behind tax liens, earlier recordings and a first mortgage held by an institutional lender. Paragraph I(c) then lifts one piece of it in front of that mortgage: the regular monthly common assessments unpaid in the 6 months before the memorandum is filed, together with costs of collection including reasonable attorney’s fees.
Several limits travel with it. The priority piece excludes special assessments, late charges, fines, penalties and interest. It is conditional on notice to the owner and the lender within 70 days of the delinquency and a further 30 days’ warning before filing. And paragraph I(d) allows only one priority lien at a time. Two more sit in the same subparagraphs: the priority reaches only a residential unit’s regular monthly assessments, and it does not apply to a mortgage executed before the section took effect on 1 January 2011. If a payoff demand puts fines or a special assessment in the super-priority piece, those are the subparagraphs to quote back.
None of this applies to a pre-1977 building. RSA 479-A:22 has no carve-out at all: the association takes after tax liens and after all sums unpaid on a first mortgage of record, full stop.
Owners are often told that Robert’s Rules of Order apply only if the association adopts them. For a New Hampshire condominium it is the other way round. RSA 356-B:37, III provides that except as otherwise provided in the bylaws, meetings of the association “shall be conducted in accordance with the most recent edition of Roberts’ Rules of Order Newly Revised”.
So the statute supplies the procedure and the bylaws are what displace it. If a chair is cutting off debate or refusing a motion, the question is not whether the association ever adopted Robert’s Rules — it is whether the bylaws say something different.
General information, not legal advice. Statutory text throughout this tab is reproduced from the New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated as published by the General Court, which states that they include all changes and updates made up to December 2025, and may not reflect the most recent amendments. The absence statements on this page were tested by full-text search against the 27 chapters, 1,071 sections hosted on this site — not against the whole RSA — and are stated with that scope.