New Hampshire HOA Insurance Requirements

Section 1: Overview, how HOA insurance is regulated in New Hampshire

New Hampshire imposes association insurance obligations on condominiums through the state-specific New Hampshire Condominium Act, but non-condominium planned communities have no comprehensive statutory insurance mandate and rely on the recorded declaration.¹ The condominium insurance section is RSA 356-B:43, which requires that the condominium instruments compel the association, board, or managing agent to obtain a master casualty policy and a master liability policy.¹ Non-condominium planned communities have no dedicated statute and no statutory insurance mandate; their insurance is set by the recorded covenants, conditions, and restrictions, with corporate-formality scaffolding from the New Hampshire voluntary corporations statute, RSA 292.³ The Condominium Act is a state-specific statute rather than the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act or the 1982 Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, so its insurance provision must be read from the actual text.² Fidelity (crime) coverage and directors-and-officers (D&O) liability coverage aren't statutory mandates in New Hampshire; they're typically driven by the declaration or by secondary-market lender requirements.¹ Within the national picture, New Hampshire is a state-specific condominium-statute state whose planned-community insurance resembles the covenant-primary states, and it has no intermediate appellate court, so civil insurance disputes move from the Superior Court directly to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.⁶ The sections that follow set out the statutory framework, the coverage allocation between association and owner, recent activity, and where federal requirements sit on top of state law.

Section 2: The statutory insurance framework

2A. The condominium insurance mandate

The condominium insurance provision is RSA 356-B:43, within Subdivision III (Unit Owners' Associations) of the New Hampshire Condominium Act.² The Act is a state-specific statute, not the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act and not the 1982 Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, which means its insurance content should be read from the section itself rather than inferred from a uniform-act model.¹ The section provides that the condominium instruments, including those for small condominiums, shall require the unit owners' association, or the board of directors or managing agent on behalf of the association, to obtain three things.¹ First, a master casualty policy affording fire and extended coverage in an amount equal to the full replacement value of the structures within the condominium, or of such structures that in whole or in part comprise portions of the common areas.¹ A 2016 amendment added a backstop: an association that doesn't obtain a master casualty policy covering common areas causes each unit owner to share equally in the replacement cost to repair common areas to the extent damage would have been covered, and where damage is confined to one or a few limited common areas, only the unit owners in each area share that cost.¹ Second, a master liability policy, in an amount specified by the condominium instruments, covering the association, the board, the managing agent, their agents and employees, and all unit owners and other occupants.¹ Third, such other policies as the condominium instruments may require, including workers' compensation insurance, motor-vehicle liability insurance, and specialized policies.¹

Because the statute is state-specific, several features found in the Uniform Condominium Act Section 3-113 are absent from the New Hampshire text and shouldn't be attributed to it. RSA 356-B:43 sets a full-replacement-value standard for the master casualty policy, but it contains no commercial general liability dollar minimum, no "reasonably available" qualifier, no improvements-and-betterments exclusion, and no structured deductible-and-proceeds allocation scheme.¹ The liability amount is left to the condominium instruments rather than fixed by statute.¹ On application of proceeds, the section does contain a reconstruction rule: unless the unit owners vote to terminate the condominium under RSA 356-B:34, the proceeds of the master casualty policy shall be used to repair, replace, or restore the structure or common area damaged by casualty.¹ The section also requires that written notice of any policy obtained, and of any change or termination, be furnished promptly to each unit owner.¹ On deductibles, the statute is silent, so the deductible and any charge-back to a unit owner are governed by the declaration rather than by a statutory formula.¹

2B. Planned communities and the absence of a statutory mandate

Non-condominium planned-community associations in New Hampshire have no dedicated statute and therefore no statutory insurance mandate; their insurance is set entirely by the recorded declaration.³ The order of precedence differs by community type. For a condominium, the analysis runs from the New Hampshire Condominium Act — to the extent it speaks to insurance — then the declaration, then the bylaws, then the rules.² For a planned community, there's no overriding insurance statute, so the declaration is the primary source and the controlling document.³ Where a planned-community association is incorporated, RSA 292 (Voluntary Corporations and Associations) supplies corporate scaffolding for director conduct and indemnification, and RSA 292:8-m, added effective January 1, 2024, adds narrow guardrails on super-majority voting and dissolution, but none of this creates an insurance requirement.³ The practical implication is direct: for a planned community, the coverage analysis begins and ends with the declaration and any lender requirements, because there's no statutory floor to fall back on.³

2C. The declaration, corporate law, and the federal and market overlay

For condominiums, the declaration retains substantial power because RSA 356-B:43 leaves the liability amount, the deductible, and any additional policies to the condominium instruments.¹ For planned communities, the declaration is the sole source. Fidelity (crime) insurance and D&O liability insurance aren't statutory mandates in New Hampshire; in practice they're set by the declaration or required by a lender.¹ RSA 292 permits a corporation to indemnify its directors and officers, but it doesn't require the association to carry insurance, so a claim that New Hampshire statute mandates D&O coverage would be incorrect.⁴ The federal and secondary-market overlay operates as a separate layer that frequently exceeds any state-law floor. Under Fannie Mae Selling Guide B7-3-03, the lender or servicer must verify that the property insurance coverage amount is at least equal to 100 percent of the replacement cost value of the project improvements, including common elements and residential structures, and the same topic caps the master property deductible at 5 percent of the coverage amount.⁵ Fannie Mae requires fidelity/crime coverage for condominium projects, subject to exceptions such as projects of 20 units or fewer, and accepts a state's statutory fidelity requirement in place of its own where one exists.⁷ Fannie Mae requires a master flood policy where any part of a project sits in a Special Flood Hazard Area.⁸ FHA condominium project approval likewise requires hazard, liability, and flood coverage, and fidelity coverage for projects of more than 20 units at the greater of three months of aggregate assessments plus reserves or the state-law minimum.⁹ These lender and federal conditions drive fidelity, flood, and property decisions, including for planned communities that have no statutory floor. The New Hampshire market context also shapes real coverage decisions: severe winter perils such as heavy snow load and ice dams, limited coastal windstorm exposure along the short Atlantic coastline, and riverine flood exposure that brings the National Flood Insurance Program into play, all of which affect availability and cost but aren't statutory HOA mandates.¹⁰

Section 3: Coverage allocation and compliance obligations

A. Association coverage obligations

For a condominium, the condominium instruments must require the association to carry a master casualty policy at full replacement value and a master liability policy in the amount the instruments specify; this obligation is mandatory in the sense that failure to insure common areas shifts the replacement cost onto the unit owners.¹ For a planned community, whatever the association must carry is set by the declaration; there's no statutory floor, so the obligation is contractual, not statutory.³

B. Coverage allocation between association and owners

The master casualty policy in a condominium covers the structures and common areas at replacement value, but the statute doesn't extend the master policy to the interior finishes, improvements and betterments, or personal property inside a unit.¹ The allocation of interior responsibility is set by the declaration and bylaws, which is why an individual unit owner policy — an HO-6, or walls-in policy — fills the gap between the master policy and the owner's own property, and loss-assessment coverage on that policy responds when the association passes a shared cost to owners.¹ This allocation applies to condominiums under the Act and, by contract, to planned communities under their declarations. The most common reader error is assuming the master policy covers the unit interior or owner improvements; it doesn't, unless the declaration says so.

C. Deductibles, proceeds, and repair-or-replace

RSA 356-B:43 doesn't set a deductible or assign who bears it, so the default is whatever the declaration provides, and many declarations allow the association to charge the master-policy deductible back to the owner in whose unit a loss originates.¹ On proceeds, the Act is explicit: master casualty proceeds must be used to repair, replace, or restore the damaged structure or common area unless the owners vote to terminate the condominium under RSA 356-B:34, which creates an affirmative obligation to rebuild.¹ Owner loss-assessment exposure arises where a loss exceeds coverage, falls below the deductible, or where the association failed to insure the common areas, in which case the unit owners equally share the replacement cost.¹ For planned communities, deductible and proceeds treatment is contractual under the declaration, not statutory.³

D. Fidelity, D&O, and disclosure

Fidelity (crime) and D&O coverage are declaration-driven or lender-driven rather than statutory; a New Hampshire condominium isn't required by RSA 356-B:43 to carry either, though Fannie Mae and FHA commonly require fidelity coverage as a financing condition.¹ On disclosure, the Act requires that written notice of any policy obtained, changed, or terminated be furnished to each unit owner, and the resale provision at RSA 356-B:58 lets a purchaser demand insurance information before the contract date, both of which apply to condominiums but not to planned communities.¹ A planned community's disclosure and certificate obligations exist only if the declaration creates them.³

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill enacted or pending in the past 24 months has amended RSA 356-B:43 or imposed a new association insurance mandate. The nearest live measure addresses the property-insurance market that association master policies draw on rather than the coverage an association must buy.

A separate 2025 condominium bill, HB 383, which would have treated registered rules as condominium instruments, was found inexpedient to legislate and didn't advance; it didn't concern insurance directly.¹²

B. Recent appellate rulings

A review of New Hampshire Supreme Court opinions from July 2023 through July 2026 found no decision squarely addressing condominium association insurance obligations, coverage allocation, deductible disputes, or casualty proceeds under RSA 356-B.⁶ Condominium cases in the window turned on other issues, such as common-area boundaries and declaration amendments, rather than the master policy. The absence of recent appellate law means the 2016 and 2020 amendments to RSA 356-B:43 haven't yet been construed by the Court, and boards should read the statute together with the declaration rather than relying on case-law gloss.

C. Active legislative debates

The most material recent pressure on New Hampshire association insurance is market-driven rather than statutory: reinsurance cost, winter-peril loss experience, and property-insurance availability are the live concerns, reflected in the HB 1056 study proposal and in the New Hampshire Insurance Department's July 2025 finding that as of 2022, 64 companies were writing homeowners policies in the state, with every county having access to at least 60 insurers and written premium up 26.2 percent over 2018 to 2022.¹⁰

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

New Hampshire occupies a middle position among the states. It isn't one of the condominium-statute states that adopt the Uniform Condominium Act or the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act with the full Section 3-113 insurance machinery, and it isn't one of the comprehensive prescriptive states such as Florida (Chapter 718) or California (Davis-Stirling), which set detailed association insurance duties. Its condominium statute is state-specific, imposing a real but comparatively spare master-casualty and master-liability mandate, while on the planned-community insurance question it resembles the covenant-primary states such as Alabama and Arkansas, where the declaration governs and there's no comprehensive HOA insurance statute. New Hampshire also has no intermediate appellate court, so civil insurance disputes move from the Superior Court directly to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. For a multi-state operator entering New Hampshire, condominium obligations follow the state-specific RSA 356-B, planned-community coverage is declaration-driven, and severe winter perils are a New Hampshire-specific market factor. New Hampshire hasn't amended the RSA 356-B insurance provisions since 2020, and no bill in the current window changes them.

HOA Weekly updates its New Hampshire Insurance Requirements coverage quarterly as the legislature and the New Hampshire Supreme Court act and as the property-insurance market shifts. Federal frameworks, including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, the National Flood Insurance Program, and FHA fair-housing accommodation rules, also apply to New Hampshire associations regardless of the state framework, with fuller treatment to follow once that coverage is built out.

1. RSA 356-B:43, Insurance, New Hampshire General Court ↩
2. RSA Chapter 356-B, Condominium Act, Table of Contents, New Hampshire General Court ↩
3. RSA 292:8-m, Homeowners' Associations, New Hampshire General Court ↩
4. RSA Chapter 292, Voluntary Corporations and Associations, Table of Contents, New Hampshire General Court ↩
5. Fannie Mae Selling Guide B7-3-03, Master Property Insurance Requirements for Project Developments ↩
6. New Hampshire Supreme Court, Orders and Opinions ↩
7. Fannie Mae Selling Guide B7-4-02, Fidelity/Crime Insurance Requirements for Project Developments ↩
8. Fannie Mae Selling Guide B7-3-06, Flood Insurance Requirements for All Property Types ↩
9. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Condominium Project Insurance Coverage requirements, Handbook 4000.1 ↩
10. New Hampshire Insurance Department, New Hampshire Homeowners Insurance Market Remains Strong, July 17, 2025 ↩
11. New Hampshire HB 1056 (2026), commission to study reinsurance impacts on property insurance ↩
12. New Hampshire HB 383 (2025), condominium instruments, found inexpedient to legislate ↩