What late fees can a landlord charge in New Hampshire?

Verified July 11, 2026 All New Hampshire topics →

Pending legislation — not yet law. The rules on this page reflect current law only. The following bills would change it if enacted:

HB 1598 (2026) — Eviction-process overhaul (compromise between NH Legal Assistance and landlord groups): caps discretionary eviction stays at 60 days (75 with special circumstances), requires tenants to raise affirmative defenses/counterclaims early, adds pre-hearing evidence-exchange rules and unauthorized-occupant removal procedures. Amends RSA 540:13, 540:13-c, 540:14, 540-A:2, 540-A:4 VII, and rewords RSA 540-A:3 V while keeping the entry standard 'notice which is adequate under the circumstances' verbatim — no change to the fields encoded here.Status: Passed both chambers (Senate 2026-05-14, House concurrence 2026-05-21); enrolled 2026-06-04. Official gc.nh.gov docket checked 2026-07-11 shows general status PASSED with NO signing entry and NO chapter number yet — press reports of a signing the week of 2026-07-06 (InDepthNH, 2026-07-10) are ahead of the official record. Effective 90 days after passage per the bill — approximately early October 2026 if signed, so NOT law on 2026-07-11. Re-check the docket for the signing entry and chapter number next session. (checked 2026-07-11).
HB 1336 (2026) — Would have created a 'regulated conditional deposit' letting landlords collect up to one additional month's rent beyond the RSA 540-A:6 one-month security-deposit cap from applicants failing standard screening criteria (credit, income, eviction history), with disclosure and re-screening rights.Status: Passed both chambers; VETOED by Gov. Ayotte 2026-07-02 (veto message: would impede access to housing and lacked clarity on how long landlords could hold the funds). Not law; an override attempt is possible at the fall 2026 veto day — re-check then. (checked 2026-07-11).

New Hampshire sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period for apartments and houses — the state's landlord-tenant chapters never mention late fees, so the lease governs, bounded only by ordinary contract-law limits on penalty clauses.

The $15 figure some sources cite is not a late fee: it is the fixed liquidated-damages amount a tenant pays (plus arrears and filing costs) to cancel a nonpayment eviction under RSA 540:9, usable at most three times in 12 months. The one real statutory grace period lives in manufactured-housing law: park owners may not charge any late fee on lot rent paid in full within 7 calendar days of the due date (RSA 205-A:6, IV, effective July 1, 2019). Two newer wrinkles touch payment mechanics rather than fees: since January 1, 2026 a landlord cannot require rent be paid solely by electronic transfer and must accept at least one non-electronic method, and rental application fees above documented screening costs must be refunded within 30 days when the applicant is not rented to.

New Hampshire late fees at a glance

Statutory cap	No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes)
Mandatory grace period	None mandated statewide
Must be in the lease	Not addressed by statute
Daily fees	Not addressed by statute for conventional rentals; a daily fee is a lease-drafting matter bounded by contract-law penalty doctrine and, for lease charges pursued in eviction, the 'other lawful charges contained in the lease' framing of RSA 540:9, I(a).
Reasonableness standard	No statutory standard for conventional residential tenancies — RSA chapters 540, 540-A, and 540-B never regulate late-fee amounts or timing (negative sweep run against the full text of all three chapters). Enforceability rests on ordinary NH contract and liquidated-damages principles (a fee must approximate actual loss rather than punish), with the Consumer Protection Act (RSA 358-A) as a backstop for oppressive practices.

Notes and caveats

statutory_cap and grace_period_days both null — verified negatives: full-text sweeps of RSA 540 (all sections listed on the official merged page), RSA 540-A (540-A:1 through :8), and RSA 540-B found no late-fee cap, grace period, or fee-structure rule for conventional tenancies. must_be_in_lease null: no statute conditions late fees on a written lease; the agreement requirement is contract law (540:9, I(a) presupposes 'other lawful charges contained in the lease'). Traps: (1) RSA 540:9's $15 is eviction-cure liquidated damages, not a late-fee cap or grace period — and the cure right is capped at 3 uses per 12 months (540:9, II); (2) the manufactured-housing 7-day grace (205-A:6, IV, added 2019 ch. 59 effective 2019-07-01) applies ONLY to manufactured-housing-park rent — do not generalize it to apartments, and do not omit it when describing park tenancies; (3) RSA 540-A:3, X (HB 309, 2025 ch. 176, effective 2026-01-01) bans electronic-only payment mandates — new enough that 2025 guides miss it; (4) RSA 540-A:3, VIII (2024 ch. 46, effective 2025-01-01) regulates application fees (disclosure plus refund of any excess over documented background/credit-check and reasonable administrative costs within 30 days if the unit is not rented to the applicant). No NH appellate decision fixing a residential late-fee formula was found. 2026-session check: no late-fee bill among the landlord-tenant bills tracked (HB 1336 deposits — vetoed; HB 1598 eviction procedure — signed, pending).

Statute citations

NH RSA 540:9 I(a), II Official source
NH RSA 205-A:6 (manufactured housing parks) IV Official source
NH RSA 540-A:3 X Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official NH General Court site (gc.nh.gov, the redirect target of www.gencourt.state.nh.us): every load-bearing section read at least twice via independent URLs — the merged chapter pages (540-mrg.htm fetched twice via upper- and lowercase paths, 540-A-mrg.htm, 540-B-mrg.htm) plus each individual section page (540-A:1, :2, :3, :4, :5, :6, :7, :8; 540:1-a, :2, :3, :9; 540-B:10; 205-A:6) captured raw via curl for verbatim quotes, with all figures matching across reads (greater-of one month/$100 cap, 30-day return from termination, one-year interest trigger with 3-year request cycle, double-damages penalty, 6-month unclaimed-deposit rule, 540-A:5 small-landlord exemption, consent-based entry with adequate-under-the-circumstances notice, 540:2 IV 30-day rent-increase notice, new 540:2 II(i) 60-day end-of-lease notice effective 2026-07-01). Negative checks (no late-fee or grace-period statute, no rent control, no express preemption) run against the full text of RSA chapters 540, 540-A, and 540-B plus a gc.nh.gov-restricted search. Session-law identities pinned by cross-referencing official source lines with bill records: 2025 ch. 263 = HB 60 (signed 2025-08-01, eff. 2026-07-01), 2025 ch. 176 = HB 309 (eff. 2026-01-01), 2024 ch. 9 = HB 261. 2026-session check on 2026-07-11: HB 1336 vetoed 2026-07-02; HB 1598 signed week of 2026-07-06, effective 90 days after passage, flagged as pending; dead bills HB 95 (2023) and HB 1362 (2024) debunked from contemporaneous reporting.