The emergency exception, and its limits

Paragraph III lets a board skip the ratification wait entirely. Where the board determines by a two-thirds vote of the board that an emergency exists, "The special assessment becomes effective immediately." Prompt notice to owners is required, and the funds are limited to the purposes named in the vote.

Paragraph IV defines the trigger narrowly. An emergency means a situation requiring immediate action because of a danger to structural integrity, a threat to life or safety, a court order, or unforeseen legal proceedings — and, critically, one that could not reasonably have been anticipated when the budget was prepared.

That last clause is the one that disciplines the exception. A roof that has been failing for six years is not unforeseen. A board that defers a known capital problem and then declares an emergency when it becomes urgent has manufactured the condition it is invoking, and the statute's own words are the argument against it.

Two further limits worth noting: the two-thirds is a vote of the board, not the owners, and the money is fenced to the purposes in the resolution. A board cannot declare an emergency for a structural repair and spend the proceeds on something else.

What this means in practice for a New Hampshire board

It means the board holds the initiative and owners hold a veto that is hard to exercise. Both halves of that have consequences.

For a board: the process requirements are not optional and they are the vulnerable part. Adopt the proposed budget. Circulate summaries within 30 days. Schedule the meeting inside the 10-to-60-day window. A board that skips a step and relies on the high rejection threshold has an adopted budget with a procedural defect in it, and the defect is what an owner challenges.

For an owner: organizing a rejection is a membership-wide exercise, not a meeting-day exercise. Turning out the people who already agree with you accomplishes nothing if the total falls short of two-thirds of the whole. The only version that works is contacting owners who will not attend.

Why this is the live grievance in New Hampshire condominium law

The threshold moved once, and owners noticed. A 2016 change shifted budget rejection from a simple majority to a two-thirds supermajority of all owners, and swept special assessments in alongside it. The practical effect, as argued by critics including at least one sitting state representative in published commentary, was to make owner rejection close to impossible.

That is the backdrop to the condominium statute review the 2026 session set in motion. If any provision of RSA 356-B is reopened, this threshold is a strong candidate.

A claim to stop repeating

Machine-generated and search-optimized "New Hampshire HOA law" pages assert that a 2024 bill capped capital-improvement special assessments at 5 percent of budgeted gross expenses without unit-owner approval, codified here.

We read the section. There is no percentage cap in RSA 356-B:40-c. No figure limits what a board may propose. What limits a board is the ratification process above and the emergency definition in paragraph IV — and the declaration, which may impose a higher rejection threshold but which the statute does not require to impose a cap.

A board told it may not assess above 5 percent without a vote is being told something the statute does not say. So is an owner told they have that protection.

What to watch next

The condominium statute review. Nothing on the 2027 House legislative service request list as filed uses the word "condominium" in its title, so a 2027 amendment would have to come from a newly elected member filing from around November 4, or from a senator in December.

Watch also the reserve pressure arriving from outside Concord. From January 4, 2027 a condominium project must allocate 15 percent of budgeted assessment income to replacement reserves, up from 10 percent, to stay eligible for conventional financing without a current reserve study. That is a budget increase arriving through the mortgage market, and it will be adopted under exactly the process described here.