Free New Hampshire Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable New Hampshire residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to RSA 540 and RSA 540-A — the one-month deposit cap and the owner-occupied exclusion that switches it off, the consent-based entry rule, and the end-of-lease eviction ground in force since 1 July 2026.

New Hampshire RSA 540-A Restricted Property Rules Free PDF 2026 Edition

A New Hampshire residential lease agreement is the written contract governed by two short chapters of the Revised Statutes Annotated: RSA 540, headed Actions Against Tenants, which controls how a tenancy ends, and RSA 540-A, headed Prohibited Practices and Security Deposits, which controls the deposit and what a landlord may never do. A third chapter, RSA 48-A, supplies the minimum housing standards that a habitability defence is measured against. New Hampshire drafts differently from its neighbours. It caps the deposit at one month’s rent or one hundred dollars, whichever is greater, and then removes whole classes of small landlord from the deposit rules altogether. It fixes no hour count for landlord entry, requiring consent instead. It fixes no grace period and no late-fee ceiling. And it splits every rental in the state into restricted and nonrestricted property, which decides whether a landlord needs a reason to evict at all. On 1 July 2026 that last rule changed: the expiry of a lease of twelve months or longer is now itself a ground of eviction, on sixty days’ notice.

Complete the fields below to generate a New Hampshire residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. Every field you fill is written into the document, including the utility and snow allocations, the deposit account, the methamphetamine and utility-tariff statements and each disclosure you check, and the generated lease cites the controlling section of the Revised Statutes Annotated at each point. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening — and note that New Hampshire regulates the fee side of screening under RSA 540-A:3, VIII. Pair the signed lease with a New Hampshire move-in / move-out checklist, because the five-day condition list in RSA 540-A:6 is the record that makes an end-of-tenancy deduction defensible.

New Hampshire recognises the ordinary range — a fixed-term lease, a month-to-month tenancy at will, a room rental, a sublease, a roommate agreement and a commercial lease — but the distinctions that carry legal weight here are not the ones the form names suggest.

The first is between a written lease and a tenancy at will. RSA 540:1 supplies the background rule in a single sentence: “Every tenancy or occupancy shall be deemed to be at will, and the rent payable upon demand, unless a different contract is shown.” A written lease is that different contract. The practical consequence changed on 1 July 2026, because RSA 540:2, II(i) now gives a landlord an end-of-term ground of eviction that exists only where there is a lease of twelve months or longer. An oral or month-to-month arrangement forfeits it.

The second is between restricted and nonrestricted property under RSA 540:1-a, and it is the most important structural fact in New Hampshire landlord-tenant law. It decides whether the landlord needs a reason to end the tenancy. It is covered in full in its own section below.

The third is between a tenancy governed by RSA 540 at all and one that is not. RSA 540:1-a, IV excludes a long list from the chapter entirely, and two of the exclusions matter to ordinary residential landlords. RSA 540-B governs a shared facility — property rented for residential purposes with separate sleeping areas where each occupant shares a kitchen, dining area, bathroom or bathing area with the owner and has no rented right of sole personal use of them. RSA 540-C governs a vacation or recreational rental unit that is rented for vacation use at least one month a year and also let, in the off-season, to people who have no other residence. Both have their own termination and deposit rules, and neither uses the RSA 540 eviction process.

One drafting note. Nothing in New Hampshire law requires a residential lease to be notarized or witnessed. But an oral agreement for a term longer than a year runs into RSA 506:2, the statute of frauds, which requires an agreement that is not to be performed within one year to be in writing and signed by the party to be charged. If the parties intend a year or more, the year should be on paper — and after 1 July 2026 there is a second reason to put it there.

Restricted property is residential rental property that a landlord may only evict from for a listed reason. Nonrestricted property is everything else, and its owner needs no reason at all. RSA 540:1-a, I defines nonrestricted property as all real property rented for nonresidential purposes plus three categories of residential property:

• Single-family houses, if the owner of such a house does not own more than three single-family houses at any one time.
• Rental units in an owner-occupied building containing a total of four dwelling units or fewer.
• Single-family houses acquired by banks or other mortgagees through foreclosure.

RSA 540:1-a, II then defines restricted property as all other residential rental property. The consequence sits in RSA 540:2. Under paragraph I, the lessor or owner of nonrestricted property “may terminate any tenancy by giving to the tenant or occupant a notice in writing to quit the premises in accordance with RSA 540:3 and 5” — and no reason need be given or stated. Under paragraph II, the owner of restricted property may terminate only for one of the enumerated grounds.

Two points about that division are constantly missed. The first is that the four-unit owner-occupied line is not the same as the five-unit owner-occupied line in the security deposit chapter, and neither is the same as the “no other rental property” test that appears alongside it. A landlord who lives in a four-unit building is nonrestricted for eviction purposes and outside the deposit rules; a landlord who lives in a five-unit building is restricted for eviction purposes but still outside the deposit rules. The second is that everything other than the need for a reason applies to nonrestricted property in full: the notice periods in RSA 540:3, the specificity requirement, the service rules in RSA 540:5, the tenant’s pay-and-stay right in RSA 540:9, the retaliation defence in RSA 540:13-a and the fitness defence in RSA 540:13-d.

RSA 540:1-a, IV removes a long list of occupancies from the definition of a tenancy and provides that the whole of RSA 540 does not apply to them. A landlord who assumes the eviction chapter governs, and serves a notice under it, may be following the wrong process entirely. The list is:

• Rooms in rooming or boarding houses rented to transient guests for fewer than ninety consecutive days. The statute carries an anti-avoidance rule: where the owner directs an occupant to move from one room to another in the same house, or to another of the owner’s houses, the ninety-day count is not broken. A voluntary move made at the occupant’s own written request, after being told of the exemption, does break it, and the statute prescribes the wording of that request.
• Rooms in hotels, motels, inns, tourist homes and other dwellings rented for recreational or vacation use.
• Rooms in student dormitories, nursing homes, hospitals and any other facility licensed under RSA 151 or certified under RSA 126-A, and convents, monasteries, asylums or group homes.
• A single-family home in which the occupant has no lease and which is the primary and usual residence of the owner — the classic spare-room arrangement in the owner’s own house.
• Residential real estate under RSA 540-B, shared facilities.
• Vacation or recreational rental units under RSA 540-C.
• Residential units leased by a member of a fraternal or social organisation providing student housing in a structure the organisation owns and operates.
• Occupancies in which the occupant is hired to provide care or assistance for a person with disabilities. There the person with disabilities or their guardian may order the caregiver to vacate without legal process on not less than seventy-two hours written notice, provided a written agreement authorises summary ejection and any compensation owed beyond free housing is paid before the caregiver leaves.

A shared facility is worth pausing on, because the deposit rule is completely different. Under RSA 540-B:10 the owner may require a deposit “in an amount to be determined by the owner” — there is no cap. If the deposit exceeds the equivalent of thirty days’ rent, there must be a written instrument acknowledging receipt and explaining where the deposit will be maintained and when it will be returned. And if there is no written agreement at all, the deposit must be returned within twenty days after the occupant vacates. Termination under RSA 540-B:3 needs a written notice of thirty days for no reason, seven days for nonpayment, or seventy-two hours for damage to the premises, behaviour adversely affecting the health or safety of other occupants or the owner, or a material breach of the rental agreement. RSA 540-B:7 gives shared-facility occupants the RSA 540-A:4 remedies, provided the petition says the rental is governed by RSA 540-B.

One month’s rent or one hundred dollars, whichever is greater. RSA 540-A:6, I(a) puts it plainly: a landlord shall not demand or receive any security deposit in an amount or value in excess of one month’s rent or one hundred dollars, whichever is greater. Nothing prevents a written lease requiring quarterly or less frequent rent payments, but where it does, the deposit received in addition to the initial rent payment may still not exceed the equivalent of one month’s rent.

The definition is what gives the cap its bite. RSA 540-A:5, II says a security deposit means all funds in excess of the monthly rent which are transferred from the tenant to the landlord for any purpose. That is a functional test with no exceptions written into it, so a pet deposit, a key deposit, a cleaning deposit and last month’s rent collected at signing all count toward the same single ceiling. First month’s rent is rent and is not caught; last month’s rent taken up front is.

A bill of the 2026 session would have changed this. HB 1336 would have created a category called a “regulated conditional deposit”, letting a landlord collect up to an additional month’s rent from an applicant who did not fully meet the landlord’s screening criteria. It was vetoed on 2 July 2026, and would have taken effect on 1 January 2027. A veto-override session is scheduled for 19 August 2026 with the bill on the agenda, so a landlord reading this after that date should check the outcome. As matters stand the ceiling is unchanged. Our New Hampshire security deposit laws guide tracks it.

No, and the exception is large enough to swallow a great deal of New Hampshire’s housing stock. This is the single biggest gap in the competing coverage, and it sits not in an exemption section but inside a definition. RSA 540-A:5, I defines “landlord” for the security deposit subdivision and then removes two classes of owner from it:

Three things follow, and each of them changes what a lease can honestly promise.

First, the exclusion is total within its scope. A landlord outside the definition is not bound by the one-month cap, the signed receipt, the trust-account duty, the interest rule, the thirty-day return, the itemisation requirement or the double-damages remedy. RSA 540-A:5 through RSA 540-A:8 simply do not reach that tenancy. That is why this generator asks the questions it asks: a lease that recites a statutory cap which does not apply is not being cautious, it is being inaccurate, and it invites a dispute about which rules the parties actually agreed to.

Second, the single-family limb is narrower than it looks. It requires the landlord to own no other rental property at all. A landlord who lets out one house and one condominium is inside the subdivision for both. The unit-count limb is the more forgiving one: an owner-occupied building of five units or fewer, with no test of what else the owner holds.

Third, there is a carve-back, and no competing page anywhere mentions it. The exclusion does not apply to any individual unit occupied by a person sixty years of age or older. It operates unit by unit, not building by building. In an owner-occupied fourplex where one tenant is sixty-five, that unit is governed by the full deposit rules — cap, receipt, trust account, interest, thirty-day return and double damages — while the other three units are not. A landlord in that position is running two regimes in one building.

What the exclusion does not touch is just as important. It is written “for the purposes of this subdivision” and reaches no further. RSA 540-A:1 through RSA 540-A:4 — quiet enjoyment, the ban on utility shutoff and lockout, the entry rule, the seven-day storage duty, the application fee disclosure and the electronic payment rule — bind every landlord in the state. So does the whole of RSA 540, and so does RSA 48-A:14, which uses the wide RSA 540-A:1, I definition of landlord with no small-landlord exception at all.

In trust — but not necessarily in a separate account, and not necessarily in an interest-bearing one. RSA 540-A:6, II(a) provides that security deposits “continue to be the money of the tenant and shall be held in trust by the person with whom such deposit is made and shall not be mingled with the personal moneys or become an asset of the landlord” until RSA 540-A:7 is complied with.

Paragraph II(b) then permits what a great deal of secondary coverage denies: a landlord may mingle all security deposits held by that landlord in a single account held in trust for the tenants at any bank, savings and loan association or credit union organised under the laws of New Hampshire. There is no requirement of one account per tenant. There is no requirement that the account bear interest. What is forbidden is mixing tenant money with the landlord’s own.

Paragraph II(c) supplies a third route that almost nobody writes about. A bond written by a company located in New Hampshire and posted with the clerk of the city or town in which the premises are located, in an amount equivalent to the total value of the deposits the landlord holds on property in that municipality, exempts the landlord from paragraphs II(a) and II(b) altogether. A landlord using that route holds no trust account at all.

Then there is what happens when the building changes hands. RSA 540-A:6, III requires a landlord holding a deposit to turn it over — at the time of delivery of the deed or instrument of assignment, or within five days thereafter, or within five days after a receiver has qualified — to the grantee on a conveyance, the assignee on an assignment of the lease, the receiver in a foreclosure or other lien action, or the purchaser at a foreclosure sale where no receiver has qualified. The landlord must then notify the tenant by registered or certified mail, giving the name and address of the person who now holds the money. A landlord who does that, with any interest due, is relieved of liability, and the transferee becomes responsible for the return.

Only where the deposit is held for one year or longer. RSA 540-A:6, IV(a) requires a landlord who holds a deposit for a period of one year or longer to pay the tenant interest at a rate equal to the interest paid on regular savings accounts at the New Hampshire bank, savings and loan association or credit union in which it is deposited, running from the date the landlord received the deposit. Where deposits are mingled in a single trust account under II(b), the landlord pays the actual interest earned on that account proportionately to each tenant. A tenancy shorter than a year carries no interest obligation at all.

Two tenant rights hang off the same paragraph and they are worth putting in the lease. Under IV(b), on request the landlord must provide the name of the institution, the account number, the amount on deposit and the interest rate, and must allow the tenant to examine the security deposit records. Under IV(c), and notwithstanding the ordinary thirty-day return rule, a tenant may request the accrued interest every three years, thirty days before the expiration of that year’s tenancy, and the landlord must comply within fifteen days of the expiration of that year’s tenancy.

Thirty days from the termination of the tenancy. RSA 540-A:7, I: a landlord “shall return a security deposit to a tenant and pay the interest due, if any, within 30 days from the termination of the tenancy.” Note what the clock runs from. It is termination of the tenancy, not the day the keys come back, not the end of the stated lease term, and not the day the tenant supplies a forwarding address.

Where property damage exists beyond normal usage the landlord may subtract the cost of repair — but the statute is unusually demanding about how. The landlord must deliver a written, itemized list of any damages for which the landlord claims the tenant is liable, “which shall indicate with particularity the nature of any repair necessary to correct any damage and satisfactory evidence that repair necessary to correct these damages has been or will be completed.” The section then names what satisfies that evidentiary limb: receipts for purchased repair materials, and labour estimates, bills or invoices indicating the actual or estimated cost. A bare list of dollar figures is not compliance. That requirement is a New Hampshire distinctive, and it is the reason a documented move-in condition record matters so much — see our New Hampshire security deposit itemization form and the deposit return letter.

RSA 540-A:7, II applies the same particularity requirement to deductions that are not repairs. Where the lease requires the tenant to pay a share of an increase in real estate taxes during the tenancy, or where unpaid rent or other unpaid charges contained in the lease remain outstanding, the landlord may deduct them — on providing a written, itemized list of the claim which indicates with particularity the period for which the claim is made.

The sanction splits in two, and which half applies depends on which duty was breached. RSA 540-A:8, I is the section, and no ranking page separates its two limbs.

Limb one — the Consumer Protection Act. Under RSA 540-A:8, I(a), a landlord who does not comply with RSA 540-A:6, I, II or III — that is, the cap, the receipt and the five-day condition list notice, the trust and no-commingling duty, or the duty to hand the deposit over on a conveyance or foreclosure — “shall be deemed to have violated RSA 358-A:2”. That routes the tenant to RSA 358-A:10, I, which awards actual damages or one thousand dollars, whichever is greater, and requires the court to award as much as three times, but not less than two times, that amount for a willful or knowing violation, plus the costs of the suit and reasonable attorney’s fees. Any attempted waiver of those damages is void and unenforceable.

Limb two — double the deposit. Under RSA 540-A:8, I(b), a landlord who does not comply with RSA 540-A:6, IV or with RSA 540-A:7 — the interest rules, or the thirty-day return and the itemized list — “shall be liable to the tenant in damages in an amount equal to twice the sum of the amount of the security deposit plus any interest due under this subdivision, less any payments made and any charges owing for damages, unpaid rent, or share of real estate taxes as specified in RSA 540-A:7.” Read the arithmetic carefully: the multiplier applies to the deposit and interest together, and lawful deductions come off afterwards.

Two defences sit in RSA 540-A:8, II and neither is widely reported. A landlord “shall not be liable nor forfeit any rights if his failure to comply with said sections and paragraph is due to the failure of the tenant to notify the landlord of his new address upon termination of the tenancy”. And any deposit plus interest that remains unclaimed after six months from the termination of the tenancy becomes the property of the landlord, free and clear of any claim of the tenant, absent fraud. RSA 540-A:8, III then voids any lease provision by which the tenant purports to waive a right under the subdivision, with the single exception of the RSA 540-A:6, III(d) agreement about a transferred deposit.

New Hampshire fixes no hour count at all. It requires consent. This is the point most competing pages state backwards, and the difference is not cosmetic.

RSA 540-A:3, IV: “No landlord shall willfully enter into the premises of the tenant without prior consent, other than to make emergency repairs.”

RSA 540-A:3, V-d closes the argument: “Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, a landlord may only enter a tenant’s dwelling unit without the consent of the tenant: (a) To make emergency repairs pursuant to paragraphs IV and IV-a; or (b) If the landlord has obtained an order authorizing the entry from a court of competent jurisdiction pursuant to RSA 540-A:4.” There is no third route, and no quantity of advance notice creates one.

So where does the famous phrase come from? RSA 540-A:3, V, and it governs the tenant’s side of the bargain: “No tenant shall willfully refuse the landlord access to the premises to make necessary repairs, or to perform other reasonable and lawful functions commonly associated with the ownership of rental property, at a reasonable time after notice which is adequate under the circumstances.” That is a standard for when a tenant may not refuse, not a notice a landlord may serve and then let themselves in on. What is adequate is fact-sensitive: more for a non-urgent inspection or a showing, less for a repair the tenant asked for last night.

The practical sequence in New Hampshire is therefore: ask, in writing, with as much notice as the circumstances allow and a reasonable proposed time. If consent is refused unreasonably, the landlord’s remedy is a petition under RSA 540-A:4, not a key. The statute even makes that route safe to use — RSA 540-A:4, IX(c) provides that the ordinary damages do not apply “to petitions brought in good faith by a landlord or a tenant to determine whether a request for entry under RSA 540-A:3, V is reasonable and lawful.” Either side may ask the court to settle the question without exposure. Our New Hampshire notice to enter property form and landlord entry laws guide follow the same structure.

There are two timed exceptions and they run the other way. RSA 540-A:3, IV-a provides that emergency repairs include entry “to evaluate, formulate a plan for remediation of, or engage in emergency remediation of an infestation of rodents or insects, including bed bugs, provided such infestation-related emergency entry took place within 72 hours of the time that the landlord first received notice of the infestation.” Once that window closes, it is no longer an emergency entry. And RSA 540-A:3, V-b(b) contains the only fixed notice period in the entire chapter: a tenant may not willfully refuse access to evaluate whether bed bugs are present, after the landlord has received notice that they are present in a unit adjacent to or directly above or below the premises, provided the landlord gives forty-eight hours’ written notice.

Anything outside the court process, and the price is set by the Consumer Protection Act rather than by the landlord-tenant chapters.

RSA 540-A:2 opens with the general prohibition: no landlord shall willfully violate a tenant’s right to quiet enjoyment of the tenancy or attempt to circumvent lawful procedures for eviction pursuant to RSA 540. RSA 540-A:3 then names the specific acts:

• Utility shutoff (paragraph I). No landlord shall willfully cause, directly or indirectly, the interruption or termination of any utility service being supplied to the tenant — including water, heat, light, electricity, gas, telephone, sewerage, elevator or refrigeration — whether or not the utility service is under the control of the landlord — except for such temporary interruption as may be necessary while actual repairs are in process or during temporary emergencies.
• Lockout (paragraph II). No landlord shall willfully seize, hold, or otherwise directly or indirectly deny a tenant access to and possession of the rented or leased premises, other than through proper judicial process.
• Seizing goods (paragraph III). The same, as to the tenant’s own property.

What it costs is set out in RSA 540-A:4, IX(a): any landlord or tenant who violates RSA 540-A:2 or any provision of RSA 540-A:3 “shall be subject to the civil remedies set forth in RSA 358-A:10 for the initial violation, including costs and reasonable attorney’s fees incurred in the proceedings. Each day that a violation continues after issuance of a temporary order shall constitute a separate violation.” RSA 358-A:10, I supplies the measure: recovery is actual damages or one thousand dollars, whichever is greater, with as much as three times but not less than two times that amount for a willful or knowing violation, plus costs and reasonable attorney’s fees, and injunctive relief without bond.

Three carve-outs narrow it in particular cases, and one floor raises it. Under IX(b), a landlord who violates the seven-day storage duty in RSA 540-A:3, VII is subject only to actual damages plus costs and fees. Under IX(f), a landlord who violates the application-fee rule in RSA 540-A:3, VIII is subject only to returning all monies the applicant provided, plus court costs. Under IX(d), violations of paragraphs V-a, V-b, V-c and X sit outside the ordinary damages entirely. And under IX(e), where the landlord unlawfully dispossessed or locked the tenant out and has re-let the premises or has a new tenant in them, damages “shall not be less than three thousand dollars”, capped at what IX(a) would otherwise give.

RSA 540-A:4 also makes the remedy genuinely usable, which is unusual. There is no filing fee. The plaintiff may proceed without legal counsel. A peace officer or the sheriff’s department serves process, billed as the court directs. The clerks supply the forms. The court holds a hearing within thirty days of filing or within ten days of service, whichever occurs later, and makes its best efforts to decide the same day as the hearing. On a showing of an immediate threat of irreparable harm the court may issue temporary orders with or without notice, with any ex parte order reviewable within five days of a written request. A frivolous or purely harassing petition costs the plaintiff the other side’s costs and reasonable attorney’s fees.

And there is a follow-on protection. RSA 540-A:4, XI: “No action for possession may be maintained by the landlord against a tenant who proves a violation of RSA 540-A:3 except for nonpayment of rent, violation of a substantial obligation of the rental agreement or lease, or violation of this subdivision within 6 months of an action instituted under this subdivision by a tenant; nor shall the landlord take any other action in reprisal.”

Thirty days in all residential cases, and seven days only for four named grounds. RSA 540:3, II says it exactly that way: “For all residential tenancies, 30 days’ notice shall be sufficient in all cases; provided, however, that 7 days’ notice shall be sufficient if the reason for the termination is as set forth in RSA 540:2, II(a), (b), (d), or (h).”

Those four are: (a) neglect or refusal to pay rent due and in arrears, upon demand; (b) substantial damage to the premises by the tenant, members of the household or guests; (d) behaviour of the tenant or family members which adversely affects the health or safety of other tenants or the landlord or the landlord’s representatives, or a failure to accept suitable temporary relocation due to lead-based paint hazard abatement under RSA 130-A:8-a, I; and (h) a remaining cotenant or occupant who is the accused perpetrator of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking resulting in a termination under RSA 540:11-b.

Everything else takes thirty days — and that expressly includes failure to comply with a material term of the lease, which is RSA 540:2, II(c) and is not on the seven-day list. Several ranking templates publish a seven-day notice for any lease violation, and a landlord who follows them serves a bad notice. Our New Hampshire notice to cure or quit and seven-day pay rent or quit notice are drawn to the correct periods.

Two further requirements sit in the same section. RSA 540:3, III: “The eviction notice shall state with specificity the reason for the eviction.” RSA 540:3, IV: where it is based on nonpayment, the notice must inform the tenant of the right, if any, to avoid the eviction by paying the arrearages and liquidated damages under RSA 540:9.

Service is easier here than in most states. Under RSA 540:5, I a demand for rent or an eviction notice “may be served by any person and may be served upon the tenant personally or left at his or her last and usual place of abode.” Proof is a true and attested copy accompanied by an affidavit of service, and the statute adds that the affidavit need not be sworn under oath. RSA 540:5, II requires the circuit court to publish forms; a landlord need not use them, but “a valid demand for rent or eviction notice shall include the same information as is requested and provided on such forms.” A demand for rent may be served at any time after the rent becomes due and prior to or simultaneously with the eviction notice, and RSA 540:8 forbids demanding a greater sum than the whole rent in arrears.

Since 1 July 2026, yes — on restricted property as well, and this is the biggest change to New Hampshire eviction law in decades. It is also the change that no ranking template carries; several still state flatly that a New Hampshire landlord may never decline to renew without good cause, which was true before that date and is not true now.

2025 New Hampshire Laws chapter 263, enacted as HB 60 and signed on 1 August 2025, added a new subparagraph to RSA 540:2, II with a delayed commencement of 1 July 2026. Subparagraph (i) makes the following a ground of eviction: for a lease the original term of which is twelve months or longer, or a lease of less than twelve months which has been renewed for a total period of twelve months or longer, the expiration of the term of the lease — provided that:

• The landlord has provided the tenant with written notice at least sixty days in advance of the termination date of the lease term that the lease will not be renewed and that the tenant must vacate the rental property at the end of the lease term; and
• The landlord has filed a possessory action within six months of the lease expiring.

Both conditions are mandatory and both are easy to fail. The sixty days runs backwards from the termination date of the lease term, not from whatever date the landlord would like possession, so a notice served sixty days before the desired move-out but only thirty days before the term expires does not qualify. And the six-month filing window is a hard limit: a landlord who lets a holdover drift on past it has lost this ground and must find another. The statute expressly preserves the tenant’s defence of retaliatory eviction under RSA 540:13-a and the tenant’s protections from discrimination under RSA 354:10. Our New Hampshire notice of non-renewal form is built to the sixty-day rule.

The same act added RSA 540:2, VIII, which is a tenant protection and a genuinely novel one. A no-fault termination of tenancy — defined as any termination under RSA 540:2, II(i) — “shall not be considered an eviction for the purposes of rental applications and tenant screening reports by the lessor or the lessee”, and the court handling it must note in its documentation that the termination was at no fault of the tenant. It does not limit a landlord’s ordinary due-diligence inquiries about a prospective tenant. The practical effect is that a tenant who loses a home to a non-renewal should not carry an eviction record into the next application.

For restricted property, RSA 540:2, II is a closed list, and a notice that states a reason outside it is bad on its face:

• (a) Neglect or refusal to pay rent due and in arrears, upon demand.
• (b) Substantial damage to the premises by the tenant, members of the household, or guests.
• (c) Failure of the tenant to comply with a material term of the lease.
• (d) Behaviour of the tenant or family members which adversely affects the health or safety of other tenants or the landlord or the landlord’s representatives, or failure to accept suitable temporary relocation due to lead-based paint hazard abatement under RSA 130-A:8-a, I.
• (e) Other good cause.
• (f) The unit contains a lead exposure-hazard the owner will abate by methods other than interim controls or encapsulation, by any method reasonably expected to take more than thirty days, or by removing the unit from the residential rental market.
• (g) Willful failure by the tenant to prepare the unit for remediation of an infestation of insects or rodents, including bed bugs, after receipt of reasonable written notice of the required preparations and reasonable time to complete them.
• (h) A remaining cotenant or occupant who is the accused perpetrator of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking resulting in a termination under RSA 540:11-b.
• (i) Since 1 July 2026, expiration of the term of a lease of twelve months or longer, on the sixty-day and six-month conditions above.

“Other good cause” carries two riders that pull in opposite directions and both are frequently missed. RSA 540:2, III requires that where the cause is based on the actions or inactions of the tenant, the household or guests, the landlord shall, prior to the issuance of the eviction notice, provide the tenant with written notice stating that in the future such actions or inactions would constitute grounds for eviction — served under RSA 540:5 or by certified mail. A conduct-based good-cause eviction with no prior warning fails. But RSA 540:2, V then defines the ground generously: other good cause “includes, but is not limited to, any legitimate business or economic reason and need not be based on the action or inaction of the tenant, members of his family, or guests.”

One further protection sits in RSA 540:2, VI: no tenancy may be terminated for nonpayment of rent where the tenant was forced to take over the landlord’s utility payments to prevent a service the landlord agreed to provide from being shut off, the arrears do not exceed what the tenant paid, and the tenant has receipts or other proof. And RSA 540:2, VII protects a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking from a restricted-property termination based solely on that status, lists five acceptable forms of written verification, requires the verification to be kept in strict confidence, allows a lock change at the tenant’s expense on production of a protective order, and lets the court evict only the accused party while the remaining tenancy continues undisturbed.

Yes, up to three times in twelve months. RSA 540:9, I provides that a possessory action based solely on nonpayment of rent shall be dismissed if two things happen. First, the tenant, at any time prior to the hearing on the merits, pays the landlord in cash, certified check, prepaid money order, electronic transfer or other guaranteed or immediately drawable funds: all rent due and owing through the time of payment, plus other lawful charges contained in the lease, plus fifteen dollars in liquidated damages, plus any filing fee and service charges the landlord incurred in connection with the action. Second, the landlord files a receipt of that payment with the court before the hearing date and states in writing that a copy went to the tenant. If the landlord fails to file the receipt the hearing proceeds anyway and the case is dismissed if the tenant proves the payment.

RSA 540:9, II caps it: a tenant may not defeat a nonpayment eviction using the section more than three times within a twelve-month period. Separately, RSA 540:13, VII lets a landlord accept an arrearage payment while the action is pending without creating a new tenancy, provided the landlord informs the tenant in writing of the intention to proceed with the eviction in spite of the acceptance. See our New Hampshire late rent notice and eviction notice laws guide.

RSA 540:12 to RSA 540:14 set out the mechanics, and several of the figures are worth a landlord knowing before filing. The writ of summons is accompanied by a court notice printed in no smaller than twelve-point type telling the tenant that an appearance must be filed by the return day; that no eviction occurs unless the court orders it, but an order may be granted if no appearance is filed; that a sound recording of the hearing may be requested on the appearance form; and that an appeal requires a notice of intent within seven days, a notice of appeal in the supreme court within thirty days, and payment of all rent as it comes due during the appeal.

The writ is returnable seven days from service by the sheriff. A landlord may join a claim for unpaid rent, and if so the court must consider the tenant’s defences, claims and counterclaims; if the tenant’s counterclaim equals or exceeds the arrears, judgment in the possessory action goes to the tenant. Any money judgment is capped at one thousand five hundred dollars, without prejudice to a further claim in a court of competent jurisdiction. Where the tenant files an appearance, a hearing is scheduled within ten days, with notice mailed no fewer than six days beforehand, and the court must issue a written decision setting out the basis for any contested ruling.

RSA 540:13-c currently allows the court to stay dispossession to a date not later than three months where justice requires it, on the tenant paying the former rent weekly in advance. That is about to change: 2026 New Hampshire Laws chapter 308 cuts the stay to sixty days from 8 October 2026, extendable to seventy-five only where the tenant proves the longer stay will cause no financial harm, damage or ongoing safety threat and that more time is needed for a reason such as age, familial status, disability or limited English proficiency — and any tenant default will preclude a discretionary stay altogether. The section below on effective dates sets out the rest of that act.

Three routes exist and two of them are statutory. Under RSA 540:11, a lessee may terminate by written notice in the same manner as the lessor, with the same effect for all purposes, and a month-to-month tenancy at will may be terminated by the lessee upon thirty days’ notice — “provided that if the date of termination given in the notice does not coincide with the rent due date, the lessee is responsible for the rent for the entire month in which the notice expires, up to the next rent due date, unless the terms of the lease provide otherwise.” That proviso is a New Hampshire distinctive, and it is the reason a New Hampshire notice to vacate should be timed to expire on a rent due date.

Under RSA 540:11-a, a lessee or tenant may terminate where they are a member of the armed services reserve called to active duty, a member of the national guard called to active duty, or a member of the armed services on active duty reassigned out of state. Notice must be given within seven days of receipt of the notice of call-up or reassignment, in writing and in accordance with the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, Public Law 108-189, section 305.

Under RSA 540:11-b, added in 2024 and effective 1 January 2025, a tenant may terminate where the tenant or a household member has, within the most recent one hundred and fifty days while residing at the premises, been a victim of domestic violence as defined in RSA 173-B, sexual assault as defined in RSA 632-A, or stalking as defined in RSA 633:3-a — or where within the same period an event occurs relative to a victim of past abuse that, in conjunction with the past abuse, causes the victim to fear for their safety. Verification may be a valid protective order, the initiation of legal action for one, a police report, written verification from a law enforcement official, victim’s advocate, attorney or health care provider, or a signed self-certification form supplied by the circuit court and modelled on the federal Violence Against Women Act forms. The verification, including the fact that the person is a victim, must be kept in strict confidence. The tenant must vacate within thirty days of giving notice, is liable for rent only through the date of termination or the date of actually vacating, whichever is later, and the security deposit stays applied to the rental until all tenants have vacated, at which point it is returned under RSA 540-A:7. Our New Hampshire breaking a lease guide covers the non-statutory routes.

Thirty days — and the rule gets there sideways. New Hampshire has no rent control, no cap on the size of an increase, and no section headed rent increase. What it has is RSA 540:2, IV: “A tenant’s refusal to agree to a change in the existing rental agreement calling for an increase in the amount of rent shall constitute good cause for eviction under paragraph II(e) of this section, provided that the landlord provided the tenant with written notice of the amount and effective date of the rent increase at least 30 days prior to the effective date of the increase.”

So the thirty days is the price of being able to treat a refusal as good cause — which, on restricted property, is the only practical route to imposing an increase at all. Serve less than thirty days’ notice and the refusal is not good cause, so the increase cannot be enforced by eviction. Our New Hampshire rent increase notice and rent increase laws guide use that period.

One limit bites hard and is almost never reported. RSA 540:13-b creates a rebuttable presumption of retaliation where an increase in rent — not merely an eviction — is instituted within six months of a protected tenant action. A landlord who raises the rent shortly after a code complaint or an RSA 540-A petition is presumed to be retaliating and must rebut it.

Whatever the lease says, because New Hampshire fixes neither a grace period nor a ceiling. Nothing in RSA 540, RSA 540-A or RSA 358-A requires a waiting period before a late fee may be charged, and nothing caps the amount of one. That is a genuine absence, not an oversight in this page, and it means a late fee here is a contract term. Like any liquidated-damages term it should bear a reasonable relationship to the loss it covers; a charge out of all proportion invites the argument that it is an unenforceable penalty rather than an agreed measure of loss.

The deepest-ranking New Hampshire landlord-tenant page currently publishes both a mandatory five-day grace period and a “reasonable” late fee of twenty dollars or twenty per cent of the rent, citing a chapter that has nothing to do with residential tenancies. Neither figure exists in New Hampshire law. The only statutory figures anywhere nearby are the fifteen dollars of liquidated damages a tenant must tender under RSA 540:9 to defeat a nonpayment eviction, and the returned-check charge in RSA 358-C:5.

That returned-check provision deserves a sentence of its own, because every competing page truncates it. RSA 358-C:5, I permits a creditor or debt collector to “charge and receive a check collection charge of not more than twenty-five dollars, unless otherwise expressly authorized by written agreement with the consumer.” The qualification is the whole point: twenty-five dollars is a default that a written agreement may vary, and RSA 358-C is a debt-collection chapter rather than a landlord-tenant cap. Our New Hampshire late fee laws guide goes further into it.

One rule about payment method is statutory and mandatory. RSA 540-A:3, X: “A landlord shall not require a tenant or prospective tenant to pay any amount due under a residential lease, renewal, or extension agreement solely via electronic funds transfer, including, but not limited to, any automatic, recurring electronic funds transfers. The landlord shall allow at least one other non-electronic form of payment for the purposes of this section.” It was added by 2025 New Hampshire Laws chapter 176 and took effect on 1 January 2026.

Not as a right — as a defence, with four conditions and an escrow. New Hampshire has no repair-and-deduct statute and no free-standing warranty-of-habitability section. It has RSA 540:13-d, headed Defenses to Violations of Fitness, and it is structured as a shield in a nonpayment case rather than as a sword.

Paragraph I: no action for possession based on nonpayment of rent may be maintained as to premises leased or rented for residential purposes, other than for vacation or recreation, if the premises are in substantial violation of the standards of fitness for health and safety set out in RSA 48-A or in local codes adopted under it, and the violation materially affects habitability — provided that:

• The tenant proves by clear and convincing evidence that, while not in arrears in rent, the tenant provided notice of the violation to the person to whom rent is customarily paid;
• The landlord failed to correct the violations within fourteen days of receipt of that written notice or, in an emergency, as promptly as conditions require;
• The violations were not caused by the tenant, a member of the tenant’s family or another person on the premises with the tenant’s consent; and
• Necessary repairs have not been prevented by extreme weather conditions or by the tenant’s failure to allow the landlord reasonable access.

The second condition is the one that catches tenants out: notice must be given while the tenant is current in rent. A tenant who stops paying first and complains afterwards has lost the defence.

Paragraph II sets out what the court does. It may continue the action for a reasonable time not exceeding one month to let the landlord remedy the violation, and on granting that continuance shall require the tenant to pay into court any rent withheld and any rent becoming due as it becomes due. If the violation is remedied within the continuance, the court dismisses the possessory action and either awards the withheld rent to the landlord or apportions it — paying the landlord the fair rental value of the premises while in the substantially defective condition, and awarding the remainder to the tenant as damages for the landlord’s breach of the warranty of habitability. If it is not remedied, the court enters judgment for the tenant and refunds all money deposited. Our New Hampshire habitability laws guide works through it in detail.

RSA 48-A:14 supplies the yardstick that RSA 540:13-d measures against, and it applies to a landlord “as defined by RSA 540-A:1, I” — the wide definition, with no small-landlord exclusion — renting in a municipality that has adopted no ordinance, code or bylaw of its own under the chapter. Where a municipality has adopted a code, that code governs and may be stricter. The eleven state standards forbid a landlord maintaining rented premises in which:

• The premises are infested by insects and rodents and the landlord is not conducting a periodic inspection and eradication programme.
• The premises are infested by bed bugs and the landlord is not conducting a periodic inspection and remediation programme — “remediation” meaning action that substantially reduces their presence for a period of at least sixty days.
• There is defective internal plumbing or a back-up of sewage caused by a faulty septic or sewage system.
• There are exposed wires, improper connectors, defective switches or outlets or other conditions creating a danger of electrical shock or fire.
• The roof or walls leak consistently.
• The plaster is falling or has fallen from the walls or ceilings.
• The floors, walls or ceilings contain substantial holes that seriously reduce their function or render them dangerous.
• The porches, stairs or railings are not structurally sound.
• Garbage or rubbish accumulates in common areas through the landlord’s failure to remove it or to provide sufficient receptacles — unless the tenant agreed to be responsible under the rental agreement and the landlord removed all garbage at the beginning of the tenancy.
• There is an inadequate supply of water, or the water-heating equipment is not operating properly.
• There are leaks in gas lines, or leaks or defective pilot lights in landlord-supplied appliances.
• The heating facilities are not properly installed, safely maintained and in good working condition, or are not capable of safely and adequately heating all habitable rooms, bathrooms and toilet rooms to at least an average of sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit — and, where the landlord supplies heat in consideration for the rent, the premises are not actually maintained at a minimum average room temperature of sixty-five degrees in all habitable rooms.

RSA 48-A:15 makes a breach a violation, with each continuing day after notice a separate offence, in municipalities that have established no public agency under RSA 48-A:3.

The landlord, unless the landlord proves the tenant was responsible. RSA 540:13-e is one of the clearest allocations of that cost in any state, and it puts the burden of proof where most templates assume it is not.

Paragraph II: “The landlord shall bear the reasonable costs of remediation of an infestation of bed bugs, but may recover those costs if the tenant is responsible for the infestation.” Paragraph I defines remediation as action taken by the landlord that substantially reduces the presence of bed bugs in a dwelling unit for at least sixty days — so a single treatment that does not hold is not remediation.

Paragraph III sets the recovery route. A landlord alleging tenant responsibility may bill the tenant, in writing, for the reasonable cost of remediation in the tenant’s own unit; and if within thirty days of the completion of remediation the tenant has neither paid nor entered into a repayment agreement, that failure is grounds for eviction for nonpayment of rent under RSA 540:2, II(a).

Paragraph IV is the part that matters most: in any such eviction or damages action, the landlord bears the burden of proving both that the tenant was responsible for the infestation and that the landlord offered the tenant the opportunity to enter into a reasonable repayment agreement. Paragraph V(a) then supplies a rebuttable presumption of tenant responsibility, but only in a narrow case: where, during the six months before the tenancy began and throughout it, there were no reports to the landlord or to a municipal health or housing authority of bed bugs in the tenant’s unit, or in units adjacent to or directly above or below it, or by previous tenants of a single-family home — and the tenant’s own report does not count as a report. Paragraph V(b) directs the court to weigh the totality of the evidence, including the extent of bed bugs elsewhere in the building before and during the tenancy, which unit they were first discovered in, what remediation the landlord had previously undertaken in and around the tenant’s unit, and whether the tenant had bed bugs where they lived immediately before.

Two related duties sit elsewhere. RSA 540-A:3, V-a: “No landlord shall willfully fail to investigate a tenant’s report of an infestation of insects, including bed bugs, or rodents in the tenant’s rented or leased premises, within 7 days of receiving notice of such alleged infestation from the tenant or a municipal health or housing code authority, or fail to take reasonable measures to remediate an infestation.” And RSA 540-A:3, V-c requires a tenant not to refuse reasonable written preparation instructions from the landlord or a pest control operator, given to an adult member of the household and in all cases at least seventy-two hours before remediation — with willful failure to prepare after reasonable written notice being a ground of eviction under RSA 540:2, II(g). New Hampshire requires no bed bug disclosure in a lease at all; it attaches its duties to conduct instead.

Five, plus a delivery duty — and two of them live in a chapter most landlords never open. New Hampshire’s statutory lease disclosure list is short by New England standards, which is exactly why the items that do exist get missed.

That is the entire statutory list. New Hampshire requires no radon disclosure, no flood disclosure, no mold disclosure, no bed bug disclosure, no asbestos disclosure, no smoking-policy disclosure and no shared-meter disclosure in a residential lease. The RSA 540:1-b agent-for-service filing is a filing with the municipality rather than a disclosure to the tenant, though the contact details belong in the lease anyway, because that is where an RSA 540:5 notice and an RSA 540-A:7 itemisation have to go.

Two conditional duties sit alongside. RSA 540-A:3-a provides that where a child tests positive for lead above the RSA 130-A:5, I standard the department of health and human services tests the water in the unit, and if lead in the drinking water exceeds the federal action level the landlord shall notify the tenant or prospective tenant and install on the kitchen faucet a filtering device certified to reduce lead by NSF International and the American National Standards Institute, following all standards for replacing the device and its cartridges. And RSA 130-A:5-d has required, since 1 July 2024, certification of lead safety before use as a residential rental unit for newly-constructed rental units within buildings erected before 1 January 1978 — meaning units converted from a use other than residential rental housing — and for newly-licensed day care facilities in such buildings.

More than most states, and none of it is a disclosure. RSA 130-A:6-a, II(a) makes eviction of a tenant based on the presence in the unit of a child who has tested positive for lead unlawful, with a rebuttable presumption that any eviction begun within six months of the owner receiving notice of a child’s elevated blood lead level — from the department, the child’s physician, or the child’s parent or guardian — is based on it. If a court so finds it must deny the eviction and award damages to the tenant under RSA 540:14, II.

RSA 130-A:6-a, IV makes a tenant’s refusal to permit access to inspect for lead exposure hazards good cause for eviction under RSA 540:2, II(e) — but only where the owner gives at least forty-eight hours’ prior written notice and the inspection is conducted at a reasonable time. That is one of the very few fixed notice periods in New Hampshire landlord-tenant practice.

RSA 130-A:8-a governs relocation where a hazard is found. A temporary relocation requires a safe, sanitary replacement dwelling free of interior lead exposure hazards, reasonable efforts to stay in the same elementary school district, rent no higher than the original unit, and payment of actual relocation costs capped at the tenant’s security deposit plus prepaid rent. A permanent relocation under paragraph II carries a striking requirement: before the family vacates, the owner shall return the tenant’s security deposit regardless of any rental arrears or the condition of the unit, plus all prepaid rent, with the deposit returned to the owner within forty-five days of reoccupancy. Re-renting a withdrawn unit without abating the hazard costs the evicted family one thousand dollars plus costs and fees; failing to honour the reoccupancy promise costs five hundred dollars.

Detectors are elsewhere again. RSA 153:10-a, I requires each multi-unit dwelling and rental unit to be equipped with automatic fire warning devices in accordance with NFPA 101 and NFPA 72, and carbon monoxide detection devices in accordance with NFPA 720 — except that a carbon monoxide device is not required in a unit with no attached garage that contains no appliance or device using a combustion method of burning solid, liquid or gas fuel; add a garage or such an appliance later and the device becomes required. Paragraph II-a: “The owner of the rental unit shall be responsible for maintaining the automatic fire warning device and carbon monoxide detection device in a suitable condition.” A stricter municipal ordinance or bylaw is preserved by paragraph VI.

New Hampshire publishes no list of forbidden lease clauses at all — and that absence is itself the rule. Where most states enumerate provision types and attach a penalty to including one, New Hampshire has two short anti-waiver sections and leaves it there.

RSA 540:28: “No lease or rental agreement, oral or written, shall contain any provision by which a tenant waives any of his rights under this chapter, and any such waiver shall be null and void.”

RSA 540-A:8, III: “Any provision in any lease or rental agreement by which the tenant is purported to waive any of his rights under this subdivision, except as provided in RSA 540-A:6, III(d), shall be void.”

RSA 358-A:10, I adds a third, from outside the landlord-tenant title: “Any attempted waiver of the right to the damages set forth in this paragraph shall be void and unenforceable.”

The consequence of a prohibited provision is therefore simply that the provision falls away while the rest of the lease stands. There is no multiple of rent for drafting one, no declaration that including it is an unfair trade practice, and no enumerated list to check against. The money in New Hampshire is attached to conduct, and it is attached hard: a violation of RSA 540-A:2 or RSA 540-A:3 carries the RSA 358-A:10 measure, with the three-thousand-dollar floor for a lockout where the unit has been re-let; a breach of the deposit cap, receipt, trust or transfer duties is itself an RSA 358-A:2 violation; and a breach of the interest rules or the thirty-day return is worth twice the deposit plus interest.

Working backwards from the statutes, the clauses that would fall are: any waiver of a right under RSA 540 or under the deposit subdivision; any clause purporting to let the landlord enter without consent otherwise than for emergency repairs or under a court order, which RSA 540-A:3, V-d forbids; any clause requiring rent to be paid solely by electronic funds transfer, which RSA 540-A:3, X forbids; any clause purporting to allow a deposit deduction without the RSA 540-A:7 itemised list and evidence of repair; any clause shortening the RSA 540-A:3, VII seven-day storage period or charging rent or a storage fee during it; and any attempted waiver of RSA 358-A:10 damages.

On attorney fees, New Hampshire is one of the plainest cases in the country: there is no rule either way. No statute bans a clause making a tenant pay a landlord’s legal fees, and no statute requires such a clause to run to the prevailing party. The fee provisions that do exist are statutory and asymmetric — RSA 358-A:10, I awards a prevailing plaintiff costs and reasonable attorney’s fees on a consumer-protection claim, and RSA 540-A:4, X makes a party who brings a frivolous or purely harassing petition pay the other side’s costs and fees. Because RSA 540:28 voids any waiver of a RSA 540 right, and a one-sided fee clause invites that argument, the generator on this page offers a reciprocal prevailing-party clause, switched off by default, and says on the face of the lease that New Hampshire neither requires nor forbids it.

Yes, and it is wider than almost any other state’s, because it reaches a rent increase and a change of terms as well as an eviction.

RSA 540:13-a: except in cases where the tenant owes the landlord the equivalent of one week’s rent or more, it is a defence to any possessory action as to residential property that the action was in retaliation for the tenant:

• Reporting a violation, or reporting in good faith what the tenant reasonably believes to be a violation, of RSA 540-A or an unreasonable and substantial violation of a regulation or housing code — to the landlord or to any board, agency or authority having powers of inspection, regulation or enforcement as to the reasonable fitness of the property for health or safety.
• Initiating an action in good faith under RSA 540-A, or availing themselves of the procedures of RSA 540:13-d.
• Meeting or gathering with other tenants for any lawful purpose. Tenant organising is protected conduct in its own right.

RSA 540:13-b then creates the presumption. Unless the court finds that the tenant’s report, complaint, action or organising was primarily intended to prevent an eviction, a rebuttable presumption of retaliation arises when any possessory action, increase in rent, or any substantial alteration in the terms of the tenancy is instituted by a landlord within six months after: the landlord received notice of the alleged violation, whether from the tenant directly or from the enforcing body; the landlord completed the repairs or otherwise successfully remedied the violation; the landlord received notice that the tenant had initiated an RSA 540-A action; or the landlord discovered activity protected by RSA 540:13-a, III.

Note the second trigger. The six months can run from the day the landlord fixed the problem, not merely from the day the complaint arrived — so a landlord who repairs promptly and raises the rent four months later is still inside the window. Under RSA 540:14, II, where the tenant successfully raises the defence, damages of not more than three months’ rent may be awarded to the tenant. And RSA 540-A:4, XI supplies a separate six-month bar after a tenant proves an RSA 540-A:3 violation.

Three dates bracket this page, and a landlord or tenant reading it should know which side of each they are on.

And a fourth date is a negative one. HB 1336 of the 2026 session, which would have allowed a landlord to collect an additional month’s rent as a “regulated conditional deposit” from an applicant who did not fully meet the screening criteria, was vetoed on 2 July 2026. A veto-override session is set for 19 August 2026 with the bill on the agenda. Until then, and unless the veto is overridden, the deposit ceiling remains one month’s rent or one hundred dollars, whichever is greater.

Every claim below was checked against the section’s own text before it was written here. Several of the ranking pages contradict not only the statute but each other, which is usually the first sign that nobody opened the section.

• “The deposit rules apply to every landlord.” New Hampshire’s security deposit rules do not apply to every landlord, and the exception is enormous. RSA 540-A:5, I provides that a person who rents a single-family residence and owns no other rental property, or who rents units in an owner-occupied building of five units or less, is not a landlord for the purposes of the deposit subdivision at all — so the one-month cap, the signed receipt, the trust-account duty, the interest rule, the thirty-day return and the double-damages remedy simply do not reach that tenancy. It has a carve-back that no competing page anywhere mentions: the exclusion does not apply to any individual unit occupied by a person sixty years of age or older, so in an owner-occupied fourplex a single older tenant’s unit is inside the rules while the rest of the building is outside them.
• “Landlords with more than six units face special deposit rules.” There is no six-unit rule in New Hampshire deposit law, and the two rankers who claim one contradict each other. One asserts that a landlord who owns more than six rental properties may take no more than one hundred dollars regardless of the rent; another asserts that a landlord who owns more than six units may take one month’s rent or one hundred dollars and must use a separate escrow account. Neither figure nor either duty appears anywhere in RSA 540-A. The cap in RSA 540-A:6, I(a) is one month’s rent or one hundred dollars, whichever is greater, for every landlord the subdivision reaches, and the only unit thresholds in New Hampshire landlord-tenant law are the five-unit owner-occupied exclusion in RSA 540-A:5, I and the four-unit owner-occupied definition of nonrestricted property in RSA 540:1-a, I(b).
• “The deposit must sit in a separate interest-bearing escrow account.” New Hampshire does not require the deposit to be held in an interest-bearing or separate escrow account. RSA 540-A:6, II(a) requires the money to be held in trust and not mingled with the landlord’s personal money, and II(b) then expressly permits the landlord to mingle all tenants’ deposits in a single trust account at any New Hampshire bank, savings and loan association or credit union. RSA 540-A:6, II(c) offers a third route entirely: a bond written by a company located in New Hampshire and posted with the city or town clerk exempts the landlord from the account requirement altogether. Interest is owed only where the deposit is held for one year or longer, under RSA 540-A:6, IV(a).
• “Give twenty-four or forty-eight hours’ notice before entering.” New Hampshire has no twenty-four-hour or forty-eight-hour entry notice, and the pages that publish one have inverted the statute. RSA 540-A:3, IV forbids a landlord willfully entering without prior consent other than for emergency repairs, and RSA 540-A:3, V-d then says that notwithstanding any other provision a landlord may enter without consent only for emergency repairs under paragraphs IV and IV-a or under a court order obtained pursuant to RSA 540-A:4. The words “notice which is adequate under the circumstances” come from RSA 540-A:3, V, which governs the tenant’s duty not to willfully refuse access at a reasonable time — they are not a notice period the landlord may serve and then let themselves in on. The single fixed period in the chapter is the forty-eight hours’ written notice in RSA 540-A:3, V-b(b) for evaluating whether bed bugs are present after a report in an adjacent, upstairs or downstairs unit.
• “A lockout carries a one-thousand-dollar civil penalty.” The remedy for a lockout, a utility shutoff or an unlawful entry is not a one-thousand-dollar civil penalty. RSA 540-A:4, IX(a) routes the violation to RSA 358-A:10, which awards actual damages or one thousand dollars, whichever is greater, and requires the court to award as much as three times but not less than two times that amount for a willful or knowing violation, plus the costs of the suit and reasonable attorney’s fees, with any attempted waiver void. Each day a violation continues after a temporary order is a separate violation. And RSA 540-A:4, IX(e) sets a separate floor of not less than three thousand dollars where the landlord dispossessed or locked the tenant out and has re-let the premises or has a new tenant in them.
• “Any lease violation gets a seven-day notice.” A material lease breach in New Hampshire takes thirty days’ notice, not seven. RSA 540:3, II provides that thirty days’ notice is sufficient in all residential cases and that seven days is sufficient only where the ground is RSA 540:2, II(a) nonpayment, (b) substantial damage, (d) conduct adversely affecting health or safety or refusal of lead-abatement relocation, or (h) a remaining cotenant accused of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. Failure to comply with a material term of the lease is ground (c), and it is not on that list. Several ranking pages publish a seven-day notice for any lease violation.
• “A New Hampshire landlord can never refuse to renew without cause.” Since 1 July 2026 a New Hampshire landlord can decline to renew a long lease without fault, and no ranking page says so. RSA 540:2, II(i), added by 2025 New Hampshire Laws chapter 263, makes the expiration of the term of a lease originally twelve months or longer — or a shorter lease renewed to twelve months or longer — a ground of eviction even for restricted property, provided the landlord gave written notice at least sixty days in advance of the termination date that the lease will not be renewed and the tenant must vacate, and files the possessory action within six months of the lease expiring. The paired RSA 540:2, VIII provides that such a no-fault termination is not to be treated as an eviction on rental applications or tenant screening reports, and requires the court to note in its documentation that the termination was at no fault of the tenant. Pages still stating flatly that a New Hampshire landlord may never refuse to renew without good cause are describing the law as it stood before 1 July 2026.
• “There is a five-day grace period and a twenty per cent late-fee ceiling.” New Hampshire has no mandatory grace period and no statutory late-fee cap, and the deepest-ranking page publishes both. It asserts a mandatory five-day grace period and a reasonable late fee of twenty dollars or twenty per cent of the rent, citing a chapter that has nothing to do with residential tenancies. No provision of RSA 540, RSA 540-A or RSA 358-A fixes a grace period or a maximum late fee. The only statutory figure anywhere near the subject is the fifteen dollars of liquidated damages a tenant must tender under RSA 540:9, I(a) to defeat a nonpayment eviction, and the twenty-five dollar check collection charge in RSA 358-C:5, I — which is itself only a default, because the same sentence adds “unless otherwise expressly authorized by written agreement with the consumer”, a qualification every ranking page drops.
• “A New Hampshire lease needs a radon or flood notice.” RSA 477:4-a is not a lease disclosure. Its own opening words are “Prior to the execution of any contract for the purchase and sale of any interest in real property which includes a building, the seller, or seller’s agent, shall provide the following notification to the buyer” — the radon, arsenic, lead, PFAS and flood notification. Paragraph II adds that nothing in the section creates or places any liability on the seller or seller’s agent for failing to give it. New Hampshire’s neighbouring sections do the opposite and say so on their face: RSA 477:4-g and RSA 477:4-h are each headed “Prior to Sale, Transfer, Lease, or Rental” and expressly bind a lessor. A New Hampshire lease therefore requires no radon disclosure and no flood disclosure, and any page that lists one has read the sale statute onto a lease.
• “Bed bugs are the tenant’s problem.” The cost of remediating bed bugs falls on the New Hampshire landlord by statute. RSA 540:13-e, II provides that the landlord shall bear the reasonable costs of remediation but may recover them if the tenant is responsible — and RSA 540:13-e, IV puts the burden of proof on the landlord to establish both that the tenant was responsible and that a reasonable repayment agreement was offered. Remediation is defined as action that substantially reduces their presence for at least sixty days, the tenant has thirty days from completion to pay or agree a plan, and a rebuttable presumption of tenant responsibility arises only where there were no reports of bed bugs in the unit or the units around it in the six months before the tenancy and throughout it. New Hampshire requires no bed bug disclosure in a lease at all.
• “Retaliation only matters for evictions.” New Hampshire’s retaliation presumption reaches a rent increase, not just an eviction. RSA 540:13-b creates a rebuttable presumption of retaliation where a possessory action, an increase in rent, or any substantial alteration in the terms of the tenancy is instituted within six months after the landlord received notice of an alleged violation, completed the repairs, received notice of a RSA 540-A action, or discovered that the tenant had been meeting or gathering with other tenants for a lawful purpose. RSA 540:13-a lists tenant organising as protected conduct in its own right, and RSA 540:14, II lets the court award the tenant damages of up to three months’ rent. The presumption does not apply where the tenant owes the equivalent of one week’s rent or more.
• “A tenant can simply withhold rent until repairs are done.” Withholding rent for repairs in New Hampshire is a defence with four conditions, not a right. RSA 540:13-d, I lets a tenant defend a nonpayment possessory action on the ground that the premises substantially violate the RSA 48-A standards of fitness and the violation materially affects habitability — but only where the tenant proves by clear and convincing evidence that notice was given while not in arrears, the landlord failed to correct within fourteen days of written notice, the violation was not caused by the tenant’s household, and repairs were not prevented by extreme weather or by the tenant refusing access. The court then continues the case for up to one month, orders the withheld rent paid into court, and on remedy apportions it between the fair rental value of the defective premises and damages to the tenant.
• “A room in a shared house follows the same rules.” A shared-facility rental in New Hampshire is not covered by the deposit rules or the eviction process at all. RSA 540:1-a, IV(e) removes RSA 540-B property from RSA 540, and RSA 540-B:3, IV says the 540-B process applies in place of the RSA 540 eviction process. Under RSA 540-B:10 the owner may require a deposit in an amount the owner determines, with no statutory cap; a written instrument acknowledging receipt and explaining where the deposit is held and when it is returned is required only if the deposit exceeds thirty days’ rent; and where there is no written agreement the deposit must be returned within twenty days after the occupant vacates. Termination is by written notice of thirty days for no reason, seven days for nonpayment, or seventy-two hours for damage, health-and-safety behaviour or a material breach.
• “An itemised list of deductions is enough.” The RSA 540-A:7 itemised list must be backed by evidence of the repair, not merely by a list of amounts. The statute requires “a written, itemized list of any damages for which the landlord claims the tenant is liable, which shall indicate with particularity the nature of any repair necessary to correct any damage and satisfactory evidence that repair necessary to correct these damages has been or will be completed” — naming receipts for purchased repair materials and labour estimates, bills or invoices showing the actual or estimated cost. Ranking summaries describe an itemised list and stop there.
• “Every deposit mistake is worth double.” Missing the thirty-day deposit deadline and breaching the deposit cap are punished differently in New Hampshire. RSA 540-A:8, I(b) makes a failure to comply with the interest rules in RSA 540-A:6, IV or with the return rules in RSA 540-A:7 worth twice the sum of the deposit plus interest, less payments made and lawful charges. RSA 540-A:8, I(a) treats a failure to comply with RSA 540-A:6, I, II or III — the cap, the receipt, the trust duty or the duty to hand the deposit over on a sale or foreclosure — as a violation of RSA 358-A:2 instead, which carries the consumer-protection measure of actual damages or one thousand dollars, whichever is greater, doubled to trebled for a willful violation, plus fees. RSA 540-A:8, II also gives the landlord two defences no ranker mentions: no liability where the tenant never supplied a new address, and unclaimed deposits becoming the landlord’s property six months after termination absent fraud.
• “Restricted property just means an apartment.” New Hampshire’s eviction rules turn on whether the property is restricted or nonrestricted, and the categories are not what the rankers say. RSA 540:1-a, I makes a single-family house nonrestricted only where the owner does not own more than three single-family houses at any one time, and makes rental units nonrestricted where they sit in an owner-occupied building of four dwelling units or fewer; foreclosed single-family houses held by banks or other mortgagees are nonrestricted too. Everything else residential is restricted, and RSA 540:2, II limits its termination to the enumerated grounds. The owner of nonrestricted property needs no reason at all under RSA 540:2, I.

• Reciting the statutory deposit cap in an owner-occupied fourplex. RSA 540-A:5, I takes that landlord outside the whole subdivision — unless a tenant is sixty or older.
• Assuming the sixty-year-old carve-back applies building-wide. It operates unit by unit.
• Calling last month’s rent something other than a deposit. RSA 540-A:5, II catches all funds in excess of the monthly rent, for any purpose.
• Issuing a receipt that names only the amount. RSA 540-A:6, I(b) requires it to specify the place the deposit will be held.
• Skipping the five-day condition list notice because the tenant paid by check. RSA 540-A:6, I(c) removes the receipt, not the notice.
• Holding deposits in the operating account. Mingling with the landlord’s own money is what RSA 540-A:6, II(a) forbids; mingling tenants’ deposits together is expressly allowed.
• Paying deposit interest on a nine-month tenancy. RSA 540-A:6, IV(a) owes interest only after one year.
• Refusing to show the deposit records. RSA 540-A:6, IV(b) gives the tenant a right to examine them on request.
• Running the thirty days from the day the keys came back. RSA 540-A:7 runs from termination of the tenancy.
• Sending a list of dollar figures. RSA 540-A:7 wants particularity plus evidence the repair has been or will be completed.
• Forgetting the deposit on a sale. RSA 540-A:6, III gives five days and requires registered or certified mail notice to the tenant.
• Entering on twenty-four hours’ notice. RSA 540-A:3, IV requires consent; RSA 540-A:3, V-d allows only emergency repairs or a court order.
• Treating a pest emergency entry as open-ended. RSA 540-A:3, IV-a limits it to seventy-two hours from notice of the infestation.
• Serving a seven-day notice for a lease breach. RSA 540:3, II gives thirty days for RSA 540:2, II(c).
• Writing “breach of lease” and nothing more on the notice. RSA 540:3, III requires the reason with specificity.
• Evicting for conduct-based good cause with no prior warning. RSA 540:2, III requires a written warning first, served under RSA 540:5 or by certified mail.
• Serving a non-renewal sixty days before the desired move-out. RSA 540:2, II(i) measures the sixty days back from the termination date of the lease term.
• Letting a holdover drift. RSA 540:2, II(i) requires the possessory action within six months of expiry.
• Raising the rent on twenty days’ notice. RSA 540:2, IV needs thirty days before the effective date for a refusal to be good cause.
• Raising the rent four months after fixing a reported code defect. RSA 540:13-b runs its six months from the date of the remedy as well as the complaint.
• Requiring rent by online portal only. RSA 540-A:3, X requires at least one non-electronic option.
• Charging an application fee with no written disclosure first. RSA 540-A:3, VIII requires it, and refunds anything above documented actual cost within thirty days.
• Disposing of a departed tenant’s belongings on day two. RSA 540-A:3, VII gives seven days of reasonable storage with no fee chargeable.
• Billing a tenant for bed bug treatment without proving responsibility. RSA 540:13-e, IV puts that burden on the landlord.
• Skipping the RSA 540:1-b agent filing. An out-of-state owner who has not filed faces a presumption that RSA 510:4 service was good.
• Never sending the tenant a signed copy. RSA 477:7-b requires delivery within thirty days and makes failure a violation.
• Copying a radon or flood notice from a purchase and sale form. RSA 477:4-a applies to a sale, not a lease.
• Leaving snow allocation out of the lease. Harmless today; from 1 July 2027 the RSA 540:28-a default fills the gap on renewal.

A well-drafted lease decides who wins a dispute; screening decides whether there is one. New Hampshire’s remedies put real money on the outcome — twice the deposit for a botched return, a consumer-protection floor of one thousand dollars for a prohibited practice, three thousand for a lockout where the unit has been re-let, up to three months’ rent for a retaliatory filing — and almost all of them turn on the landlord’s own compliance long before the tenant’s conduct is reached. Verifiable income, a clean payment history and no prior eviction filings remain the strongest predictors of a quiet tenancy. Note two New Hampshire wrinkles. RSA 540-A:3, VIII regulates the fee side of screening: disclose the amount and any background and credit check requirement in writing before collecting anything, and refund whatever exceeds documented actual cost to an unsuccessful applicant within thirty days. And since 1 July 2026 RSA 540:2, VIII keeps a no-fault termination off a screening report, so an applicant who lost a home to a non-renewal should not be carrying it as an eviction. Our tenant screening report covers credit, eviction filings, criminal background and employment verification. Screen first, paper the tenancy with this lease, and keep our New Hampshire pet and assistance animal guide and tenant screening laws guide to hand.

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