Why the distinction is not academic

The difference between a rule and a condominium instrument is the difference between something a board adopted and something recorded against the land.

Condominium instruments — the declaration, the bylaws, the site and floor plans, recorded under RSA 356-B — bind successors, are discoverable by a title search, and carry the interpretive weight the courts give recorded documents. Board rules bind members through the authority the instruments delegate to the board, and their enforceability depends on that delegation.

A statute that promoted recorded rules into instruments would have given rule-based enforcement — and rule-based fines — a firmer footing than they currently have in New Hampshire. That did not happen. The enforceability of a New Hampshire association's rules still runs through the declaration's delegation of rulemaking authority, and a rule that exceeds it is vulnerable.

The 51 percent question it would have settled

Amendment thresholds are governed by the declaration, and New Hampshire declarations vary widely — two-thirds, three-quarters, 80 percent, sometimes with mortgagee consent layered on top. High thresholds in a community with chronic non-participation can make a declaration practically unamendable.

HB 383 would have imposed a statutory floor of 51 percent. Its failure leaves each association's threshold where its declaration put it, which for many New Hampshire condominiums means a document that cannot realistically be changed.

The other item on that circulating list is also false

The same list asserts a 5 percent cap on capital-improvement special assessments without unit-owner approval. We read RSA 356-B:40-c, the section where such a cap would live. There is no percentage cap in it. Its source note records two enactments and no more: 2016, 311:2, effective August 1, 2016, and 2018, 186:1, effective August 7, 2018. Nothing from 2024, 2025 or 2026 touched it.²

What the section actually provides is a different protection, and it is worth stating precisely because it is the real one:

Budgets. "The board of directors, at least annually, shall adopt a proposed budget," circulate summaries within 30 days, and schedule a meeting 10 to 60 days later. The budget takes effect unless two-thirds of all unit owners, or a larger number the declaration specifies, reject it.

Special assessments. The board may propose one through the same ratification process, effective unless owners reject it on the same threshold.

The emergency exception. Where the board determines by a two-thirds vote of the board that an emergency exists, "The special assessment becomes effective immediately," with prompt notice required and funds limited to the purposes in the vote. An emergency means a situation requiring immediate action for a danger to structural integrity, a threat to life or safety, a court order, or unforeseen legal proceedings that could not reasonably have been anticipated when the budget was prepared.

Note what the rejection threshold does. Two-thirds of all unit owners is not two-thirds of those voting, and abstention therefore counts as support for the budget. In a community with ordinary turnout, owner rejection is arithmetically very hard — which is the live owner-side grievance underneath New Hampshire's condominium debate, and the opposite of a 5 percent cap on what a board may assess.

How to check a New Hampshire bill yourself

Worth including because the error is so common. The General Court publishes a bill docket for every measure, and the docket's final action line is definitive. The phrases that mean a bill is dead: "Inexpedient to Legislate" followed by a floor action, "Refer for Interim Study," "Died on Table," and "DIED, SESSION ENDED."

One trap: the bill-status URL's id= parameter is an internal record number, not the bill number. Fetching the record whose id happens to equal 383 returns an unrelated bill. Search by bill number rather than constructing the URL.

What to watch next

Nothing on this. Rep. Almy's 2026 filings include no successor to HB 383, and the 2027 House legislative service request list as filed contains no bill using the word "condominium" in its title.

The place a condominium-instruments question would now be raised is the condominium statute review the 2026 session set in motion alongside the registration-threshold legislation.