How does a New Hampshire landlord lawfully end a tenancy, and when may a tenant leave early?

New Hampshire splits its rental market in two and the split decides whether a landlord needs a reason. Nonrestricted property means a single-family house where the owner does not own more than three single-family houses at a time, a rental unit in an owner-occupied building of four dwelling units or fewer, and a single-family house a bank or other mortgagee took by foreclosure. Restricted property means every other residential rental, and that is where the good-cause requirement and the 60-day non-renewal notice apply. A separate list sits outside the tenant chapter altogether, so none of this page reaches it: rooms rented to transient guests for fewer than 90 consecutive days in a rooming or boarding house, hotel, motel, inn, and tourist-home rooms rented for recreational or vacation use, student dormitories, nursing homes, hospitals, group homes and similar facilities, convents and monasteries, an owner-occupied single-family home where the occupant has no lease, residential real estate and vacation units governed by their own chapters, fraternal and social-organization student housing, and live-in caregivers, who may be told to leave on 72 hours' written notice with no court process at all.

The reader counts. A landlord who owns three or fewer single-family houses is outside the good-cause requirement for those houses; a fourth house brings all of them inside. An owner who lives in the building is outside it if the building has four dwelling units or fewer; a fifth unit brings it inside. A bank or mortgagee that took a single-family house through foreclosure is outside it. Everything else is restricted property from the first day of the tenancy, with no waiting period, no tenure threshold, and no local opt-in. Nothing turns on the date the lease was signed.

The switch changes: every answer on this page.

Landlord: 30 days (counted forward from the day the notice is delivered). Tenant: 30 days.

The 30 days run forward from service, and nothing in the chapter ties the ending date to the end of a rental period or to a rent-due date. The tenant's section confirms it from the other side: it contemplates a termination date that does not coincide with the rent-due date, and rather than voiding such a notice it makes the tenant responsible for the rent for the entire month in which the notice expires, up to the next rent-due date, unless the lease says otherwise. So the tenancy ends on the date the notice sets, and only the money follows the rent cycle.

The termination date may fall on any day.

A lease may not change the period. A lease or rental agreement, oral or written, may not contain any provision by which a tenant waives a right under the tenant chapter, and any such waiver is void. That bar runs one way: it protects the tenant's rights, so a lease cannot shorten the tenant's 30 days or cut down the rent-liability limit that goes with a departure, but nothing stops the parties agreeing to a longer period. The one term the statute itself makes variable is the whole-month rent charge when a tenant's notice expires off the rent-due date, which applies unless the lease provides otherwise.

A statute requires the landlord's and tenant's periods to be equal, or bars a lease from imposing a longer period on one side.

Source of the period: a termination-notice statute states it.

New Hampshire does not legislate a month-to-month notice period as such. One section supplies the ground for ending a tenancy and another supplies the days, and the days are the same for every residential tenancy: 30 days is sufficient in all cases, under RSA 540:3, paragraph II. There is no week-to-week variant and no tier by tenure, building type, or how long the tenant has lived there; the shorter 7-day notices in the same paragraph attach only to four grounds that are all for-cause and belong to the eviction page, and the rent-period-keyed notice in paragraph I is for nonresidential property only. The tenant's side is symmetric in form: a tenant may end the lease by written notice in the same manner as the landlord, and the notice has the same effect for all purposes, with 30 days sufficient for a tenancy at will or from month to month. The notice must state with specificity the reason for ending the tenancy, and that duty attaches even where no reason is required. What differs between the two sides is money, not days: a tenant whose 30 days expire on a date that is not the rent-due date owes the rent for that whole month up to the next rent-due date unless the lease says otherwise.

Yes: a statute bars no-cause termination or non-renewal for covered tenancies across the state once its coverage conditions are met.

How a tenancy comes inside the rule: coverage turns on the building or property type.

Who is covered: Every residential rental in the state except three categories, and coverage starts on the first day of the tenancy. Outside the requirement are a single-family house where the owner does not own more than three single-family houses at a time, a rental unit in an owner-occupied building of four dwelling units or fewer, and a single-family house acquired by a bank or other mortgagee through foreclosure. The owner of one of those may end any tenancy with the ordinary 30 days' written notice and no reason at all. Everything else is restricted property and needs a ground. A further list of occupancies, from transient rooming-house guests to nursing homes to live-in caregivers, sits outside the tenant chapter entirely and is described under coverage.

No-fault grounds: Three routes end a restricted-property tenancy without any fault by the tenant. The lease-expiration ground, in force since July 1, 2026, lets the landlord end a lease whose original term is 12 months or longer, or a shorter term renewed to a total of 12 months or longer, at the end of that term, provided the landlord gave written notice at least 60 days before the termination date that the lease will not be renewed and that the tenant must leave, and provided the possessory action is filed within six months of the lease expiring. The lead-hazard ground applies where the unit contains a lead exposure hazard the owner will abate by methods other than interim controls or encapsulation, by any method reasonably expected to take more than 30 days, or by taking the unit off the residential rental market. And other good cause, which the statute defines as including any legitimate business or economic reason and expressly says need not rest on anything the tenant did or failed to do, carries the rest, including an owner move-in, which has no ground of its own by name. The written-warning step that precedes an other-good-cause termination applies only where the cause is the conduct of the tenant, the tenant's family, or guests, so it does not attach to a business or economic reason.

Local ordinances: no statute or decision addresses them. The tenant chapter says nothing about local just-cause or eviction ordinances. There is no preemption clause, no statement that the chapter occupies the field, and no express authorization of a local measure. The chapter's references to municipalities are to a landlord's agent filing with the town or city clerk, to rent vouchers paid by a county or municipality, and to municipal health, housing, building, and fire code enforcement, none of which touches local regulation of terminations. The one supremacy clause in the chapter runs the other way, to federal law: federal provisions for rental units owned, operated, or subsidized by the federal government supersede the chapter where the two are inconsistent, and apply alongside it where they are not. The state's posture on local rent regulation is carried on the rent-increase page.

New Hampshire has the country's oldest statewide good-cause regime, and it turns on property type rather than on how long the tenant has lived there. The owner of nonrestricted property may end any tenancy by written notice to quit with no reason given. The owner of restricted property may end a tenancy only for one of the grounds the statute lists: unpaid rent after demand; substantial damage to the premises by the tenant, the household, or guests; failure to comply with a material term of the lease; behavior that adversely affects the health or safety of other tenants or of the landlord, or refusal of a suitable temporary relocation during lead-paint abatement; other good cause; a lead exposure hazard the owner will abate in stated ways, including taking the unit off the rental market; a wilful failure to prepare the unit for treatment of an insect or rodent infestation, bed bugs included, after reasonable written notice and time; a remaining co-tenant or occupant who is the accused perpetrator in a survivor's termination; and, since July 1, 2026, the expiration of a lease term of 12 months or longer on 60 days' notice. Whichever ground is used, the notice is the ordinary written notice to quit and the period is 30 days, except that four of the grounds carry 7 days and belong to the eviction page. Two further rules are easy to miss: where other good cause rests on the conduct of the tenant, the household, or guests, the landlord must first give a written warning that repeating it would be grounds for eviction, served in the ordinary way or by certified mail; and a tenant's refusal to agree to a rent increase is itself good cause, provided the landlord gave written notice of the amount and the effective date at least 30 days before the increase was to take effect.

A statute requires notice before a fixed term ends, or notice of non-renewal (60 days).

The landlord of restricted property must give the tenant written notice at least 60 days before the termination date of the lease term, saying that the lease will not be renewed and that the tenant must leave at the end of the term. Two conditions travel with the number and both decide the outcome. The lease must have an original term of 12 months or longer, or a shorter term renewed to a total of 12 months or longer, so a genuine six-month lease that has never been renewed is outside the ground and its expiry is not by itself a reason to end the tenancy. And the landlord must file the possessory action within six months of the lease expiring; that is a condition of the ground, not a limitation period on the notice. The owner of nonrestricted property owes no 60-day notice at all, only the ordinary 30 days. Nothing in the ground affects a tenant's defense of retaliatory eviction or a tenant's protections against discrimination.

After the term, a statute supplies what a holdover becomes. Unless a different contract is shown, every tenancy or occupancy in New Hampshire is a tenancy at will with the rent payable on demand, so a tenant who stays on with the landlord's consent holds at will rather than under a month-to-month periodic tenancy. There is no statute converting a holdover into a new tenancy on the acceptance of rent. The two rent-acceptance rules the chapter does have run the other way and protect the landlord's position: while a possessory action for unpaid rent is pending the landlord may accept the arrears without creating a new tenancy, provided the landlord tells the tenant in writing of the intention to go on with the eviction, and a payment made under a court-supervised payment agreement does not establish a new tenancy either.

For restricted property, a lease of 12 months or longer no longer simply ends: the expiration of the term became a ground for ending the tenancy on July 1, 2026, and the landlord must give 60 days' written notice of non-renewal and file within six months of expiry. A no-fault termination under that ground is not to be treated as an eviction for the purposes of rental applications and tenant screening reports by either side, and the court must note in the papers that the termination was at no fault of the tenant, though a landlord may still make ordinary inquiries about a prospective tenant. For nonrestricted property nothing has changed: the term ends and the landlord gives the ordinary 30 days' notice without a reason. One question the statute does not answer, and this page will not answer for it, is whether the 30-day notice to quit may run inside the 60-day non-renewal notice or must follow it; neither section says, and the only rule in the chapter about serving two notices together was drafted for a rent demand. New Hampshire has no statute requiring a reminder before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect.

A person who stays after a written notice to quit holds the property without right, and the owner, the landlord, or a purchaser at a mortgage foreclosure sale may recover possession through the summary possessory action. The underlying status, absent a contract saying otherwise, is a tenancy at will. Where the landlord conveys an estate occupied by a tenant at will or at sufferance, the new owner steps into the same rights and remedies the seller would have had.

Damages: No statutory enhancement: the landlord recovers ordinary rent or use and occupancy.

New Hampshire has no statutory holdover penalty. There is no double rent, no treble damages, no percentage cap a lease may charge, and no enhanced measure for a bad-faith holdover; the words do not appear in either chapter. The only doubling anywhere near this subject is the penalty for a wrongfully withheld security deposit, which is a deposits matter. What the landlord recovers instead is ordinary: a money judgment in the possessory action itself, capped at $1,500 and without prejudice to a later suit for anything more; and, where the tenant files a plea of title or appeals and the landlord then wins, the court assesses the landlord's damages, exemplary or otherwise, including just compensation for the use and detention of the property and for any injury to it. That last measure is discretionary and depends on a plea of title or an appeal, so it is not a holdover multiplier and should not be read as one.

Unsettled: the appellate court has expressly left the question open.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

Whether a lease may waive the duty is not settled.

New Hampshire has no answer to this question, and saying so is the honest position. No statute imposes a duty to mitigate: the word does not appear in either the tenant chapter or the prohibited-practices chapter, and the tenant chapter says expressly that nothing in it prevents a landlord from pursuing a remedy at common law. On the court side, the Supreme Court has said what a landlord may do without saying what a landlord must do. Where a tenant gives up possession and the landlord accepts that as a surrender, the tenant stops owing rent; absent that acceptance, taking the property back and even re-letting it to someone else does not end the tenant's obligation to pay. In 2005, changing the older rule that treated lease covenants as independent, the court said in terms that the effect of the change on the mitigation doctrine was not clear and was not before it. So the permission is settled and the duty is not. No New Hampshire authority states a standard the landlord would have to meet, and none allocates the burden of proof either way. Every decision on the point arose from a commercial lease, and none construes the residential tenant chapter, so a landlord or tenant arguing the question in New Hampshire today is arguing from first principles. The chapter says nothing about a lease clause accelerating the remaining rent, and nothing about whether a lease may address mitigation.

No statute addresses a fee a landlord may charge for ending a lease early; the general damages rules govern.

New Hampshire has no early-termination fee statute, no cap on a lease-break charge, no re-letting fee, and no liquidated-damages regime for a broken residential lease, and no statute caps the damages a landlord may recover after a tenant leaves early. The fee-like figures in the two chapters are all something else: the filing fee and service charges a tenant repays to cure an unpaid-rent eviction, the $15 in liquidated damages that goes with that cure, a municipal fine for failing to file an agent designation, and the rules on rental application and renewal fees. Two statutory money rules do bear on an early exit, and they are the ones to know. A tenant whose 30 days' notice expires on a date other than the rent-due date owes the rent for that entire month up to the next rent-due date, unless the lease provides otherwise. And a tenant who ends the lease as a survivor of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking owes rent only through the date of termination or the date of actually leaving, whichever is later. Against that, the anti-waiver rule voids any lease clause by which a tenant gives up a right under the chapter, so a charge cannot be used to cut down either of those rules. Neither chapter delegates any rulemaking, and no state agency holds landlord-tenant rulemaking authority, so there is no administrative fee rule.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, a statutory right to end the lease; military service beyond the federal act, state orders or National Guard duty are covered and a deployment or transfer threshold below the federal act's; death of the tenant, no statute.

Domestic violence and related grounds: a victim may end the lease on notice.

Who qualifies: The tenant or a household member. Three covered offenses, each defined by pointing at another chapter: domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Human trafficking is not named anywhere in either chapter, so New Hampshire is a three-offense state. The right has two limbs. The first is available where the tenant or a household member, within the most recent 150 days living at the current premises, has been a victim of one of the three. The second is New Hampshire's own and has no close equivalent nearby: where, within the most recent 150 days, an event occurs that, together with past abuse, causes the tenant or a household member who is a victim of that past abuse to fear for their safety.

Documentation: Five routes, and any one of them is enough. Written verification that the victim has obtained a valid protective order against the perpetrator; written verification that the victim has started a court action to obtain one; written verification that the victim reported the violence to a law enforcement agency; written verification from a law enforcement official, a victim's advocate, an attorney, or a health care provider that the person is a victim; or a signed self-certification form provided by the circuit court. The self-certification route is what makes New Hampshire unusual, because it puts a court-issued form modeled on the federal Violence Against Women Act certifications in the hands of every private-market tenant rather than only tenants of federally assisted housing. The form carries a statement swearing the facts are true and accurate to the best of the person's knowledge, and a warning that false statements may carry criminal penalties including perjury. The same five routes support the separate protection against being evicted because of victim status.

Window: 150 days; the incident or documentation must fall within that window before the notice. The 150 days apply to both limbs and look backwards from the notice: on the first limb the victimization must fall inside them, and on the second the new event that causes the fear must. Read the first limb closely, because the 150 days modify the household member's residence at the current premises as well as the violence, which is what the phrase about being a victim within the most recent 150 days residing at the current premises does. The statute states no tolling and no extension for a tenant who could not act in time.

Notice: The statute sets no minimum notice and no waiting period. The lease ends by the notice itself, given with one of the five accepted forms of verification; what the statute fixes is a deadline at the other end, because the tenant must leave within 30 days of giving the notice, or at any other time the landlord and tenant agree. Publishing that 30 days as a notice period would invert the rule.

Rent owed: The departing tenant is liable, where solely or jointly liable under the lease, only for rent owed through the date of termination or the date the tenant actually leaves, whichever is later. The security deposit stays applied to the rental of the premises until all tenants have left, and is then returned under the ordinary deposit rules.

Cost to the tenant: No fee, penalty, or forfeiture attaches to the termination. The one cost the statute does put on the tenant is the lock change, which is made at the tenant's expense.

Other tenants on the lease: the perpetrator's tenancy can be ended while the lease continues for the other tenants. New Hampshire neither releases the other tenants nor ends the lease for everyone. It removes the person accused. If the court finds grounds to evict the tenant or household member accused of the violence, it may enter judgment against that person alone and let the tenancy of the rest of the household continue undisturbed, and the writ of possession must say in terms that it may be used only to remove the person the judgment ran against. Once that judgment is final the landlord may bar the accused person from the unit and from the landlord's property, and a return after written notice of the bar is a trespass. From the landlord's side the loop closes with a ground of its own: where a lease has been ended by a survivor and the accused perpetrator is a remaining co-tenant or occupant, that is itself a reason to end the remaining tenancy, on 7 days' notice.

Locks: The victim may require the landlord to change the locks. The right depends on a court order, not on the termination. A tenant who has obtained a protective order granting possession of the dwelling to the exclusion of one or more other tenants or household members may ask for the lock to be replaced or re-keyed at the tenant's own expense. Given a copy of the order, the landlord must comply and must not give copies of the new keys to the person the order restrains or excludes. A landlord who changes or re-keys the lock this way is not liable for damages resulting directly from doing so.

Later screening: no protection against reporting or characterization; a narrower bar applies. The protection is a bar on ending the tenancy, not a shield in later screening, and the difference matters. A landlord of restricted property may not end a tenancy solely because the tenant or a household member is a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, proved by the same five forms of verification. It works as an affirmative defense once the landlord has filed, so it does not stop the case being brought, and it answers only four of the grounds: substantial damage, breach of a material lease term, health-or-safety behavior, and other good cause. It does not answer unpaid rent, the lead-hazard grounds, the infestation ground, the accused-perpetrator ground, or the lease-expiration ground. Nothing in the termination statute stops a survivor's termination being reported or characterized in a tenant screening report. The screening protection New Hampshire does have is keyed to the lease-expiration ground rather than to victim status: a no-fault termination under that ground is not to be treated as an eviction in rental applications and screening reports, and it reaches a survivor only where the termination happened to run through that ground.

The landlord must keep the victim's documentation or status confidential.

Deadline to move out: The tenant must leave within 30 days of giving the notice, or at any other time the landlord and tenant agree on. The statute does not say what happens to a tenant who stays past it; a landlord in that position is back to the ordinary grounds and notices.

The landlord's side: The landlord may require one of the five forms of written verification, and must then keep it, including the fact that the person is a victim, in strict confidence; it may be passed on only with the tenant's written consent, where it is relevant and reasonably necessary in an eviction hearing or a hearing about ending housing assistance, or where some other law requires it. Nothing in the protection stops an eviction for unpaid rent, and the landlord may still proceed on any ground unrelated to the violence. The landlord may seek judgment against the accused person alone, bar that person from the property once the judgment is final, and, where the accused perpetrator remains as a co-tenant or occupant after a survivor's termination, end that remaining tenancy on 7 days' notice.

Since January 1, 2025 a New Hampshire tenant may end the lease as a survivor, and before that date the state had no such right at all. The tenant or a household member must have been a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking within the most recent 150 days at the current premises, or a new event within the most recent 150 days must, together with past abuse, have caused fear for their safety. The tenant gives written notice with one of five forms of verification, any one of which suffices, including a self-certification form the circuit court provides. There is no waiting period: the lease ends, and the tenant must leave within 30 days of the notice or at an agreed later time. Rent is owed only through the termination or the actual departure, whichever is later, no fee or penalty may be charged, and the deposit stays applied until all tenants have left. A separate part of the same chapter protects a survivor from being evicted solely because of victim status, gives a lock-change right where a protective order grants exclusive possession, requires the landlord to keep the verification in strict confidence, and lets the court remove the accused person alone while the rest of the household stays.

Military service: State orders or National Guard duty are covered and a deployment or transfer threshold below the federal act's.

When the state rights attach: The state right comes with a deadline the federal act does not have: the notice of termination must be given within 7 days of receiving notice of the call to active duty or of the reassignment out of state. A service member who lets those 7 days pass has lost the state right and is left with the federal one. The state active-duty provision is written against the older federal citation, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act, which Congress replaced in 2003 and renumbered in 2015; the reference is to the superseded citation of the same body of law, not to something else.

New Hampshire adds to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act in two ways and narrows it in a third. Under RSA 540:11-a a tenant may end a lease or rental agreement when the tenant is a member of the armed services reserve called to active duty, a member of the national guard called to active duty, or a member of the armed services on active duty who is reassigned to a location out of the state. The first two carry no minimum order length, where the federal act's trigger for a serving tenant is a permanent change of station or a deployment of at least 90 days; the third is narrower in geography but has no 90-day floor either. The notice must be given within 7 days of receiving the orders, and the mechanics are routed back to the federal act's own lease-termination section, so for a monthly-rent lease the termination takes effect 30 days after the first date the next rent is due following proper delivery of the notice. The state adds no effective-date rule, no proration rule, and no damages of its own, and the right runs to the service member; a spouse or dependent has no independent right under this section. Separately, RSA 110-C:2 gives a person called by the governor to active duty for 30 days or more as a member of the state guard, the national guard, or the militia the same civil protections, rights, privileges, benefits, and relief as if called to federal active duty, which carries the federal lease-termination right into state active duty that the federal act does not reach, and adds a fee award to the prevailing party in an action to enforce it.

Death of the tenant: No statute gives a right to end the lease on the tenant's death.

Two statutory shapes apply. The landlord serves a notice of belief and the tenant has a window to respond. Rent default plus stated conduct, such as removing belongings.

Answering the presumption or notice: There is no fixed window. The presumption is rebuttable, and the tenant's route is a petition under the prohibited-practices chapter, which carries no filing fee and needs no lawyer; the court hears it within 30 days of filing or 10 days of service, whichever is later. The abandonment notice the landlord serves must itself tell the tenant about that petition and about the right to collect personal property.

New Hampshire does not end a tenancy by absence, and there is no waiting period after which the landlord may simply take the unit back. What the statute creates is a defense: relinquishment or abandonment of possession answers a tenant's petition under the prohibited-practices chapter, which is how a landlord who retakes a unit and changes the locks without going to court defends that step. Relinquishment means the landlord holds a statement signed by each adult tenant saying possession is given up with no intent to return. Abandonment means all tenants have physically left without intent to return, and it is presumed only where the landlord has given all tenants a written property abandonment notice, both by leaving it at the premises and by sending it certified mail to the last known address of at least one adult tenant, and at least two of four conditions are present: all adult tenants gave written notice of a date to leave and that date has passed, a notice from one adult tenant with lawful possession under a protective order being enough; all keys have been returned, which includes leaving them in the unit; the tenants have removed all or the majority of their belongings and what remains is inconsistent with continued use; or rent has gone unpaid for more than 91 days, provided the landlord supplied ordinary and reasonable verification of rental information to any agency assisting the tenant when asked, and did not refuse a payment offered by an assisting agency. So 91 days of unpaid rent is never enough on its own. The notice is a prescribed form: the statute prints it in at least 12-point type under the heading Notice of Property Abandonment, with the reasons to be circled and the landlord's signature. The abandonment defense does not cancel the landlord's duty to store the tenant's belongings with reasonable care for 7 days, counted from the day after the notice is served. What happens to property left behind after that is covered separately from this page.

A notice ending a residential tenancy may be served by any person, with no sheriff, constable, or process server required. It is delivered to the tenant personally or left at the tenant's last and usual place of abode. Proof is a true and attested copy of the notice with an affidavit of service, and the statute says in terms that the affidavit need not be sworn under oath. The certified-mail route in the same section applies to commercial rental property and should not be read as a residential requirement. Two related notices have their own methods: the written warning that must precede an other-good-cause termination based on conduct may be served in the ordinary way or by certified mail, which is the only place the chapter allows certified mail for a residential landlord notice, and the property abandonment notice must be both left at the premises and sent by certified mail.

Electronic delivery: the termination statute is silent on it.

What the notice must contain: The notice must state with specificity the reason for the eviction, and that duty attaches to the notice rather than to the ground, so it binds even where the landlord needs no reason at all because the property is nonrestricted. A notice based on unpaid rent must also tell the tenant of any right to avoid the eviction by paying the arrears and liquidated damages. The circuit court supplies forms for a demand for rent and an eviction notice at the clerks' offices and on the Judicial Branch website, and a landlord is not required to use them, but a valid notice must include the same information the forms request and provide, so the form is the content standard even for a notice the landlord drafts. For residential leases that were in effect on July 1, 2006, a notice to quit counts as an eviction notice under the section.

New Hampshire legislates against the federal layer more openly than most states. The tenant chapter carries its own conflict-of-laws section: federal provisions relating to rental units owned, operated, or subsidized by the federal government supersede the chapter where they are inconsistent with it, and apply alongside it where they are not, which is why a tenant in assisted housing here reads the federal good-cause layer on top of the state one. The survivor statute defines its paperwork by pointing at federal law, requiring the circuit court's self-certification form to be modeled on the state housing finance authority's forms under the Violence Against Women Act and to carry the same information the federal regulation requires, which extends federal-style machinery to the whole private market even though the federal act supplies no lease-termination right of its own. The state military termination right routes its mechanics back to the federal servicemembers act rather than restating them. And on the public-housing side, the state's general 30-day residential notice equals rather than undercuts the federal residual notice, so the federal rule allowing a shorter state period does not come into play for a no-cause termination.

The federal CARES Act 30-day notice to vacate for covered properties, as read in this state's courts: no state appellate decision construes it. No New Hampshire appellate decision construes the CARES Act's 30-day notice provision. The federal provision itself is unrepealed, so it still applies to covered dwellings in New Hampshire; what is missing is any state ruling on how far it reaches. One limit on this answer is worth stating: the published collections of New Hampshire opinions read for it thin out after about 2008, so a more recent decision could exist without having been found. (Appellate picture read as of September 2, 2026.)

Matte v. Shippee Auto, Inc., 152 N.H. 216 (N.H. 2005) (Supreme Court of New Hampshire; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): The court abandoned the rule that treated a lease's covenants as independent of one another, and then said in terms that the effect of doing so on the duty to mitigate damages was neither clear nor before it, leaving the question open. The case arose from a commercial lease of premises used by an auto dealership, so it says nothing directly about a residential tenancy; it is the decision that keeps New Hampshire's mitigation question unsettled.

RAL Automotive Group, Inc. v. Edwards, 151 N.H. 497 (N.H. 2004) (Supreme Court of New Hampshire; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): Where a tenant gives up possession and the landlord accepts that as a surrender, the tenant is no longer liable for rent under the lease; absent that intent, however, taking the premises back and even re-letting them to a third party does not end the tenant's obligation to pay, because the landlord-tenant relationship and liability on the lease covenants do not depend on each other. The court added that the mitigation doctrine applies only against a party who is seeking damages. The case arose from a commercial lease of car-dealership premises.

Novak v. Fontaine Furniture Co., 84 N.H. 93 (N.H. 1929) (Supreme Court of New Hampshire; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): The root New Hampshire authority on surrender: where the landlord accepts the tenant's relinquishment of possession as a surrender, the tenant is not liable for rent falling due afterwards, and where the landlord does not, bringing suit promptly is itself enough to tell the tenant that liability on the covenant is being insisted on, even without notice of an intention to re-let. The case arose from a commercial lease of a furniture company's store.