New Hampshire HOA Board Elections

Section 1: Overview, how board elections are governed in New Hampshire

New Hampshire handles condominium board elections one way and everything else another. A detailed condominium statute governs the condominiums. For the non-condominium planned communities, the state leaves elections to the recorded covenants, the bylaws, and general corporate law — there is no comprehensive planned-community statute. The New Hampshire Condominium Act, RSA chapter 356-B, sets the framework: it creates the condominium, the unit owners' association, and the board of directors, and it spells out meetings, quorums, voting, and how to remove a director.¹ Planned communities get no such machinery. Their elections run on the recorded declaration and the association bylaws, and where the association is incorporated, the Voluntary Corporations and Associations statute, RSA chapter 292, supplies the bare corporate scaffolding.²

New Hampshire has not adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act. The Condominium Act is the state's own work, and it carries none of UCIOA's board-governance or declarant-control features. The court structure stands out too: New Hampshire has no intermediate appellate court, so trial-level disputes move through the Superior Court — with the Circuit Court handling certain civil matters — and appeals go straight to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. The bottom line: New Hampshire is a condominium-statute state with no comprehensive planned-community statute, so the first move in any board-election question is to figure out which body of law applies. The sections that follow lay out the framework, the mechanics, and the recent activity in the legislature and the courts.

Section 2: The election framework

2A. The New Hampshire Condominium Act and condominium board elections

The Condominium Act controls condominium board elections. It defines the board of directors as the governing body named in the condominium instruments, and it requires the bylaws to cover the election of officers to the board — their qualifications, the manner of election and removal, their powers and duties, and the length of their terms.³ The Act also fixes a few structural rules outright: once declarant control ends, the unit owners must elect a board of at least three members, a majority of them unit owners, and the board elects its officers unless the declaration hands that choice to the owners.⁴

Statute stages the declarant-control period and the moment owners first join the board. The condominium instruments may let a declarant appoint and remove officers and board members, but that authority expires at the time limit set in the instruments, or once units representing three-quarters of the undivided common-area interests have been conveyed — whichever comes first.⁵ RSA 356-B:40 then sets the owner-election milestones. No later than 60 days after one-quarter of the units that may be created are conveyed to owners other than a declarant, those owners must elect at least one member and not less than 25 percent of the board. No later than 60 days after one-half are conveyed, they must elect not less than half the board. And declarant control ends no later than the earliest of four triggers: 60 days after 60 percent of the units are conveyed, two years after the declarant stops selling in the ordinary course, two years after the last development right is exercised, or a recorded voluntary surrender.⁴

What the Act fixes — minimum board size after the transition, the end of declarant control, default quorums, the removal standard, and the proxy rules — it states as floors or defaults. The rest it leaves to the declaration and bylaws: term length, term limits, staggering, how candidates are nominated, and the vote needed to win. This is a statute of its own design. It is not UCIOA, and it is not a prescriptive-procedure regime like California's Davis-Stirling Act. It requires no secret ballot, no independent inspector of election, and no fixed timeline for nominating candidates or distributing ballots in a director election.

2B. Planned communities: no statute, covenants and corporate law

New Hampshire has no planned-community statute and no statutory election machinery for non-condominium homeowners' associations. For these communities, the recorded covenants — the declaration — and the association bylaws are the primary source of board-election rules. They control board size, terms, nominations, quorum, balloting, and removal.

Where a planned-community association is incorporated, which is common, the Voluntary Corporations and Associations statute supplies limited corporate scaffolding rather than an election code. RSA 292:6 governs how the association adopts and amends its bylaws; it vests the power to amend in the board unless the members reserve it, and it lets the bylaws carry any management provision that does not conflict with the law or the articles.⁶ RSA 292:6-b gives each board member and each voting member no more than one vote, and it grants members voting rights only as the articles or bylaws provide.⁷ One HOA-specific provision does exist. RSA 292:8-m, added by HB 42 (2023), Chapter 114, Laws of 2023, and effective January 1, 2024, requires a two-thirds majority to amend bylaws, budgets, or contracted property management when a single person acquires more than 50 percent of the votes after developer control ends, and it bars the dissolution of a planning-board-approved HOA before a land-use hearing.⁸ What RSA chapter 292 does not supply is detailed machinery for director elections, terms, or vacancies; the articles and bylaws handle those.

To decide which framework applies, a manager confirms whether the community is a condominium created under RSA 356-B — through recorded condominium instruments — or a planned community governed by its covenants, and then checks the association's incorporation status with the Secretary of State.

2C. Bylaws and corporate law as the operational rulebook

For planned communities, the bylaws set board size, terms, staggering, nominations, quorum, and balloting mechanics, read against the recorded covenants. The order of precedence depends on the community type. For condominiums, the Condominium Act wins any conflict with the declaration or bylaws; the declaration and bylaws then govern whatever the Act leaves open, followed by the association's rules. For planned communities, the covenants come first, then the bylaws, then any gap-filling defaults from the Voluntary Corporations and Associations statute, then the rules. Common-law contract and property doctrine fills whatever the bylaws and statute leave silent.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has confirmed how these layers fit together for incorporated condominium associations. In Sanborn v. 428 Lafayette, LLC, the Court held that a condominium association that voluntarily incorporates answers to both the Condominium Act and the Voluntary Corporations and Associations statute — including on governance matters such as electing directors and allocating votes — and that the bylaws cannot negate the corporate statute.⁹ The operational takeaway does not change: before quoting any New Hampshire board-election rule, a manager first determines whether the community is a condominium under the Act or a planned community governed by its covenants and bylaws, and whether it is incorporated.

Section 3: Election mechanics

The table below states each mechanic by community type and cites the source that governs it. For planned communities, no statute addresses most of these mechanics; the recorded declaration and bylaws set them.

A. Eligibility and nominations

For condominiums, the Act sets only a structural floor on eligibility: once declarant control ends, a majority of the board must be unit owners, and officers must be unit owners only if the condominium instruments say so.⁴ Every other qualification — good standing, residency, and the like — comes from the bylaws, not the statute. The Act prescribes no nomination method, so nominations are contractual, governed by the declaration and bylaws. For planned communities, both eligibility and nominations are entirely contractual, set by the covenants and bylaws, with no HOA-specific statute imposing anything.

B. Notice, annual meeting, and quorum

For condominiums, the association must meet at least once a year, and the bylaws must name an officer to give notice at least 21 days before any annual or regularly scheduled meeting and at least 7 days before any other meeting.¹⁰ The default quorum for a unit owners' association meeting is more than 33 1/3 percent of the votes; the bylaws may lower it to no less than 25 percent, or raise it for associations with fewer than 25 units.¹³ For planned communities, no HOA statute addresses meeting frequency, notice, or quorum — the declaration and bylaws set them.

C. Voting methods, proxies, and ballots

For condominiums, owners may vote in person or by proxy, directed or undirected, and the choice belongs to the owner; no one may cast undirected proxies exceeding 10 percent of the votes in a condominium of more than 20 units, or a majority of the votes in one of 20 units or fewer.¹¹ The Act also lets owners vote without a meeting, by paper or electronic ballot, on certain matters, with a return deadline of no fewer than 10 days.¹² It mandates neither cumulative voting nor a secret ballot for director elections; the bylaws make those calls. For planned communities, voting methods are contractual, and the corporate statute supplies only a one-vote-per-member default where the association is incorporated.⁷

D. Terms, vacancies, removal, and recall

For condominiums, the statute does not address director term length, term limits, or staggering; the bylaws set them.³ The board may fill a mid-term vacancy for the unexpired portion of the term or until the next regularly scheduled election.⁴ Removal is statutory: at a meeting with a quorum, owners may remove any board member or owner-elected officer, with or without cause, if the votes for removal exceed the votes against — provided the subject appeared in the meeting notice and the member had a reasonable chance to speak. Declarant-appointed members are protected from owner removal during declarant control.¹⁴ For planned communities, terms, vacancies, and removal are contractual or corporate — set by the covenants, the bylaws, and the corporate statute, not by any HOA-specific statute.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

New Hampshire does not legislate heavily on association board elections. The one recent change that bears directly on them is a 2024 amendment to the condominium proxy rules; the courts have stayed quiet on the question, and the controlling case still dates to 2016.

A. Recent bills

B. Recent New Hampshire Supreme Court rulings

No New Hampshire Supreme Court opinion from the past 36 months squarely decides a condominium or planned-community dispute over board elections, declarant-control transition, director removal, or election voting. The condominium opinions from this window deal with other matters, such as convertible land and limited common areas. The controlling New Hampshire authority on board-election governance is still Sanborn v. 428 Lafayette, LLC, 168 N.H. 582 (2016).

C. Active legislative debates

Recent sessions have produced recurring proposals that would touch association governance. The most notable are HB 1645 (2024), "Establishing a condominium dispute resolution board," sponsored by Rep. Almy, which proposed a state board with a $250 filing fee and died in committee, and HB 1523 (2026), which would amend RSA 292:8-m to require homeowners' associations to keep financial and governance records and to give members access to documents within five days of a request, enforced by the Department of Justice's Consumer Protection and Antitrust Bureau.¹⁶ No comprehensive planned-community election statute has passed, and New Hampshire's legislative activity aimed specifically at board elections stays limited.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

New Hampshire belongs to the group of states that have a condominium statute but no comprehensive planned-community statute. So planned-community board elections run on recorded covenants, bylaws, and general corporate law rather than a dedicated election code. That sets New Hampshire apart from the UCIOA states — Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, Nevada, Vermont, and Washington — which apply one uniform framework across common-interest communities, and from prescriptive-procedure states such as California, where the Davis-Stirling Act requires secret ballots, independent inspectors of election, and fixed timelines. New Hampshire also differs in its structure: a single-tier appellate system, with no court between the Superior Court and the Supreme Court. For a multi-state operator moving into New Hampshire, the practical rule is to confirm at the outset whether a community is a condominium under RSA 356-B or a planned community governed by its covenants and bylaws — and to remember that appeals travel straight to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

HOA Weekly's New Hampshire board-election coverage updates each quarter as the legislature and the courts act. Federal frameworks reach New Hampshire associations no matter what the state framework says — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the FCC's OTARD rule among them.

1. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. ch. 356-B (Condominium Act) (table of contents), New Hampshire General Court ↩
2. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. ch. 292 (Voluntary Corporations and Associations) (table of contents), New Hampshire General Court ↩
3. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:35 (Contents of the Bylaws), New Hampshire General Court ↩
4. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:40 (Members of the Board of Directors and Officers), New Hampshire General Court ↩
5. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:36 (Control by the Declarant), New Hampshire General Court ↩
6. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 292:6 (Bylaws; Organization), New Hampshire General Court ↩
7. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 292:6-b (Voting), New Hampshire General Court ↩
8. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 292:8-m (Homeowners' Associations) (added 2023, ch. 114, eff. Jan. 1, 2024), New Hampshire General Court ↩
9. Sanborn v. 428 Lafayette, LLC, 168 N.H. 582 (2016), New Hampshire Supreme Court opinions index ↩
10. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:37 (Meetings), New Hampshire General Court ↩
11. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:39 (Voting), New Hampshire General Court ↩
12. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:39-a (Voting Without a Meeting), New Hampshire General Court ↩
13. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:38 (Quorums), New Hampshire General Court ↩
14. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:40-b (Removal of Officers and Directors), New Hampshire General Court ↩
15. Laws of 2024, ch. 222 (H.B. 1129), amending N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:39, IV (eff. Jan. 15, 2025), New Hampshire General Court ↩
16. New Hampshire General Court, Bill Status (H.B. 1645, 2024; H.B. 1523, 2026) ↩