Key Findings

• RSA 356-B, the New Hampshire Condominium Act, governs condominium associations. The state has not adopted UCIOA.
• Non-condominium HOAs answer to their recorded CC&Rs, to the voluntary-corporation rules of RSA 292, and to common-law contract and property doctrine.
• RSA 356-B:46 generally puts the association's assessment lien behind a first mortgage. A narrow six-month super-priority exists, but only if the association meets strict statutory conditions.
• Mortgage lenders foreclose non-judicially under RSA 479:25. Associations must go to court, win a judgment, and force a sale that carries a one-year redemption right under RSA 529:26.
• Once a lender completes a proper power-of-sale foreclosure, New Hampshire grants no statutory right to redeem.

Section 1 — Overview: How HOA foreclosure works in New Hampshire

New Hampshire foreclosures usually skip the courtroom. The state runs a non-judicial, power-of-sale system, it relies on a Condominium Act rather than UCIOA, it leaves planned communities to their own recorded covenants, and it operates with no intermediate appellate court.^1,2 Here is the distinction that matters most: the power of sale belongs to mortgage lenders. Condominium associations do not get one. When an association wants to collect, it has to take its assessment lien to court.³

RSA 356-B, the New Hampshire Condominium Act, controls how condominium associations form, govern themselves, levy assessments, and assert liens. For any condominium created on or after September 10, 1977, it replaces the older Unit Ownership of Real Property Act.⁴ The planned-community side looks different. New Hampshire never passed a comprehensive statute for it, so non-condominium homeowners associations take their direction mainly from recorded covenants, conditions, and restrictions, with the nonprofit-corporation provisions of RSA 292 and ordinary common law filling the gaps.⁵

When a mortgage goes into default, RSA 479:25 lays out the path. The lender publishes and mails notice, the borrower keeps the right to ask the Superior Court to stop the sale, and the process ends at a public auction — with no statutory window to redeem afterward.^6,7

Federal law sits on top of all of it. Under Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP, a firm that does nothing more than carry out a non-judicial foreclosure mostly falls outside the FDCPA's definition of a debt collector, while the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act and the Bankruptcy Code's automatic stay can each freeze or slow a case.⁸ The sections that follow walk through the statutory framework, the step-by-step sequence, the latest activity in the legislature and the courts, and where New Hampshire lands on the national map.

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Section 2 — The statutory framework

2A. The New Hampshire Condominium Act (RSA 356-B)

RSA 356-B reaches every condominium and condominium project in the state, and for anything created on or after September 10, 1977, it supersedes RSA 479-A, the New Hampshire Unit Ownership of Real Property Act.⁴ The statute borrows much of its architecture from the Uniform Condominium Act of 1977, but do not confuse it with the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act — New Hampshire has not adopted UCIOA.⁹

The Act spells out the core vocabulary, defining the "unit owners' association," the "common areas," the "common expenses," and the "condominium instruments," that last phrase covering the declaration, the bylaws, and the site and floor plans together.¹⁰

RSA 356-B:46 creates the association's lien for unpaid assessments. It secures the unpaid common-expense assessments charged to a unit, and a judgment enforcing it sweeps in costs, reasonable attorneys' fees, and interest.¹¹ To perfect that lien, the association records a verified memorandum in the registry of deeds within six months of the assessment coming due — and it can lose the lien entirely if an owner requests a statement of what's owed and the association fails to deliver one within ten business days.¹¹

The New Hampshire Supreme Court put the priority plainly in Pinewood Estates, quoting RSA 356-B:46, I(a): the perfected lien stands "prior to all other liens and encumbrances except ... sums unpaid on any first mortgages or first deeds of trust ... securing institutional lenders." In other words, it normally ranks below a first mortgage.¹²

RSA 356-B:46, I(c) opens one narrow door: a conditional six-month super-priority. For the regular monthly assessments that went unpaid in the six months just before the association files its lien memorandum — plus collection costs and reasonable attorneys' fees — the lien can leapfrog the first mortgage.

But the association earns that priority only if it follows the script. It must notify both the owner and the institutional first mortgagee, by certified and first-class mail, within seventy days of any delinquency, that the account is at least sixty days past due, and it must give the lender at least thirty days' warning before it files the memorandum.¹¹

As the Court framed it in Pinewood Estates, an association "may ... gain limited priority over a first mortgage for six months of unpaid assessments if the association follows the procedure provided in RSA 356-B:46, I(c)."¹²

The priority leaves out special assessments, late charges, fines, penalties, and interest. It reaches only mortgages signed on or after January 1, 2011. And an association can hold just one priority lien at a time.¹¹ Notably, RSA 356-B sets no minimum debt an association must reach before it moves to enforce.¹¹

2B. The CC&R-primary framework for planned communities

For planned communities, New Hampshire offers no statute to match RSA 356-B.⁵ That makes non-condominium homeowners associations CC&R-primary: the recorded declaration of covenants, conditions, and restrictions runs the show, setting the assessment obligations, the lien rights, and whatever enforcement remedies exist.¹³ When such an HOA assesses, liens, or forecloses, its authority flows from that recorded contract — not from any dedicated law.¹³

Most associations in the state incorporate as nonprofits, and when they do, RSA 292 — the Voluntary Corporations and Associations statute — supplies the governance backbone: formation, bylaws, board authority, voting, and dissolution all run through it.¹⁴

A 2023 amendment added RSA 292:8-m. It demands a two-thirds majority to amend bylaws, budgets, or property-management contracts whenever a single person picks up more than fifty percent of the votes after the developer's control ends, and it requires a planning-board hearing before certain HOA dissolutions.¹⁵

Past the declaration and RSA 292, common-law contract and property doctrine takes over the work of interpreting and enforcing covenants — including the basic rule that a covenant lien's reach and priority depend on the recorded instrument and on ordinary first-in-time principles, unless some statute says otherwise.¹³

2C. Power-of-sale foreclosure, redemption, and federal overlays

In New Hampshire, a mortgage foreclosure runs mainly through the statutory power of sale under RSA 479:25. The lender publishes notice once a week for three straight weeks, with the first notice landing no fewer than twenty days before the sale, and it serves or mails notice to the borrower at least twenty-five days out — or at least forty-five days out when the loan is a residential mortgage.⁶

The borrower can petition the Superior Court to stop the sale, but here is the catch: skip that petition before the sale happens, and you forfeit any later challenge to whether the foreclosure was valid.⁶ A lender can instead foreclose by court action, though few choose that route.¹⁶

And once a power-of-sale foreclosure is done properly, New Hampshire gives no statutory right to redeem afterward — the borrower can only redeem by paying off the debt before the gavel falls.⁷

Disputes move through the New Hampshire Superior Court, and civil appeals head straight to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. There is no intermediate appellate court in between. The Supreme Court takes most appeals as of right, though it keeps some discretion over which cases get full review.²

Federal law overlays the state's procedure. Under the FDCPA, a third-party collector that duns an owner before foreclosure is doing debt-collection work — but in Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP, 586 U.S. 466 (No. 17-1307), a unanimous opinion Justice Breyer delivered on March 20, 2019, the Court held that "a business engaged in no more than nonjudicial foreclosure proceedings is not a 'debt collector' under the FDCPA, except for the limited purpose of §1692f(6)."⁸ That carve-out never reaches a New Hampshire condominium or HOA lien foreclosure at all: because associations lack a power of sale and must sue in Superior Court, an attorney who regularly collects through that litigation is a fully covered debt collector under Heintz v. Jenkins, 514 U.S. 291 (1995) — the Obduskey safe harbor is reserved for the separate mortgagee power-of-sale track.²⁶

The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act layers on stays and protections for active-duty servicemembers — including a § 3953 requirement that any sale proceed under a court order, a protection Congress made permanent for one year post-service in 2018. Whether an association's assessment lien even counts as "security in the nature of a mortgage" triggering § 3953 is an open question nationally, but New Hampshire's mandatory judicial route sidesteps the risk either way: an association's court-ordered execution sale under RSA 529 already supplies the court order § 3953(c)(1) calls for.²⁷ And the automatic stay under 11 U.S.C. 362 stops foreclosure cold the moment an owner files for bankruptcy.¹⁷

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Footnotes

1. New Hampshire Municipal Association, Mortgage Foreclosures and Property Tax Liens (most New Hampshire foreclosures proceed without judicial oversight) ↩
2. New Hampshire Judicial Branch, Supreme Court Opinions (no intermediate appellate court; most appeals as of right) ↩
3. Marcus, Errico, Emmer & Brooks, P.C., New Hampshire Condo Associations Need Foreclosure Authority (associations lack power of sale; court-ordered sheriff's sale carries a one-year redemption and does not extinguish the first mortgage) ↩
4. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:2, Application (chapter supersedes RSA 479-A for condominiums created on or after September 10, 1977) ↩
5. RunHOA, New Hampshire State Laws (no comprehensive HOA act; governance via covenants and RSA 292) ↩
6. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 479:25, Sale Under the Power (publication and mailed-notice requirements; right to petition Superior Court to enjoin sale) ↩
7. Amy Loftsgordon, New Hampshire Foreclosure Process, Lawyers.com/Nolo (New Hampshire has no law allowing redemption after a nonjudicial foreclosure, citing RSA 479:18) ↩
8. Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP, 586 U.S. 466 (2019) (a business engaged in no more than nonjudicial foreclosure is not a "debt collector" under the FDCPA except for the limited purpose of 15 U.S.C. § 1692f(6)) ↩
9. Brief of Community Associations Institute as Amicus Curiae, New Hampshire Supreme Court No. 2016-0357 (RSA 356-B derived from the Uniform Condominium Act (1977)) ↩
10. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:3, Definitions (unit owners' association, common areas, common expenses, condominium instruments) ↩
11. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:46, Lien for Assessments (paragraphs I(a), I(c), III, VIII, IX, X; perfection, conditional six-month super-priority, and notice procedure) ↩
12. New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority v. Pinewood Estates Condominium Ass'n, No. 2015-0514 (N.H. Sept. 20, 2016) (RSA 356-B bars claim for pre-foreclosure assessments where I(c) procedure not followed; declaration provision void as contrary to RSA 356-B:46) ↩
13. Amy Loftsgordon, HOA and COA Foreclosure Laws in New Hampshire, Nolo (HOAs governed by nonprofit-corporation law and CC&Rs; citing RSA 356-B:46) ↩
14. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. ch. 292, Voluntary Corporations and Associations (corporate-governance backbone for nonprofit associations) ↩
15. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 292:8-m, Homeowners' Associations (two-thirds majority to amend governing documents on majority-vote acquisition; planning-board hearing before certain dissolutions; source: 2023, 114:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2024) ↩
16. Chambers and Partners, Real Estate Litigation 2025 — New Hampshire (RSA 479:25 non-judicial power of sale is standard; judicial methods under RSA 479:19 take more than one year) ↩
17. New Hampshire Judicial Branch, Complaint to Enjoin Foreclosure Sale (state foreclosure forms and procedure) ↩
18. New England Condominium, Q&A: Helpless in New Hampshire? (association may conduct a sheriff's sale under RSA 529 with a one-year redemption) ↩
19. New Hampshire HB178 (2023), Relative to the Enforcement of Condominium Liens for Assessments (would have added RSA 356-B:46, XI enforcing via RSA 479:25 and RSA 479:26; status: dead) ↩
20. Marcus, Errico, Emmer & Brooks, Collecting Delinquent Condominium Fees in New Hampshire (foreclosed former owner retains personal liability for pre-foreclosure assessments) ↩
21. New Hampshire HB1172 (2024), Relative to Meetings of Condominium Boards and Committees (signed July 3, 2024; Chapter 118; eff. Jan. 1, 2025) ↩
22. New Hampshire HB1129 (2024), Relative to the Authority to Vote by Proxy in a Condominium Association (signed July 19, 2024; Chapter 222; eff. Jan. 15, 2025) ↩
23. N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 356-B:70, Repealed by 2024, 322:5, VI, eff. Jan. 1, 2025 (chapter 356-B table of contents) ↩
24. Moda v. Fernwood at Winnipesaukee Condominium Ass'n, 2024 N.H. 65, No. 2023-0268 (N.H. Nov. 26, 2024) (unit expansion into limited common area requires consent of all adversely affected unit owners under RSA 356-B:19, I) ↩
25. New Hampshire HB383 (2025), Relative to the Authority of Condominium Boards and Unit Owners to Create and Amend Condominium Instruments ↩
26. Heintz v. Jenkins, 514 U.S. 291 (1995) (attorneys who regularly collect debts through litigation are covered "debt collectors" under the FDCPA) ↩
27. 50 U.S.C. § 3953; Pub. L. 115-174, § 313 (2018) (Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act — SCRA § 3953 post-service foreclosure protection made permanent at one year) ↩