New Hampshire charges the same deed twice, and your mortgage sets the price

The New Hampshire Exemption, and the Conditions That Void It

Start with what RSA chapter 78-B actually reaches. The tax is imposed on the transfer itself, not on a sale, and RSA 78-B:1-a, II spells out that a "contractual transfer" includes a deed from an individual to a business entity and a deed from an interest holder to an organization in which he owns an interest. Both of those describe a landlord deeding a rental into their own LLC. There is no argument that the transaction is simply outside the chapter.

The exemption is RSA 78-B:2, XXII, and it is written as a pair of conditions rather than a category. It exempts "a transfer of title from the owners of an entity to the entity, or from the entity to the owners of the entity; provided that: (a) No consideration is exchanged for the transfer of the real estate; and (b) The direct or indirect owners of the parties to the transfer remain the same before and after the transfer of the real estate, the respective ownership percentages of each are identical, and the combined assets and liabilities of the transferor and transferee remain the same except with respect to the real estate."

Read (b) slowly. It runs in both directions, so it covers the deed back out of the LLC as well as the deed in, and it requires the percentages to be identical. Which means the deed that moves the property and brings in a co-owner at the same time is not the deed this paragraph exempts.

Condition (a) is the one a mortgage destroys. RSA 78-B:1-a, IV provides that where the property exchanged includes the assumption of an obligation by the transferee, the value of the consideration shall be no less than fair market value as determined under RSA 78-B:9, III. So the LLC taking title subject to your loan is treated as having paid the property's full value, consideration has plainly been exchanged, and RSA 78-B:2, XXII stops applying. Note the difference from states that would tax you on the outstanding balance: New Hampshire's deeming rule goes to the value of the real estate, so the equity you built up is inside the base too.

The tax is collected through the register of deeds for the county the property sits in, so the exemption claim is made at recording rather than argued later. On our side, one honesty note about sourcing: everything above comes from the General Court's own publication of the statutes. We could not corroborate any of it against the Department of Revenue Administration, because revenue.nh.gov returned an access-denied error to every request we made, including the real estate transfer tax FAQ and the CD-57-S instructions. If your facts are close to the line, the Department is still the office to ask. We just could not read what it says in public.

We could not establish whether counties or municipalities in New Hampshire levy a transfer tax of their own on top of this deed. Nothing in the state chapter authorises one generally, but that is not the same as confirming none exists. A local act can sit outside the chapter we searched. Ask the register of deeds for the county the property sits in.

New Hampshire also taxes transfers of a controlling interest in an entity that owns real property, which is aimed at the obvious workaround, selling the LLC rather than the building. How far it reaches varies: some states apply it to any realty-holding entity, others only above an ownership threshold or only to commercial property, so whether it touches a residential rental is a question for the state’s own rules rather than something to assume in either direction.

Authority: RSA 78-B:2, XXII (see also RSA 78-B:2, XXI). gc.nh.gov

Does the Transfer Reset Your Property Tax in New Hampshire?

No. New Hampshire does not cap a property’s assessed value at what you paid for it, assessments track market value on the assessor’s own cycle regardless of who holds title. A deed from you to an LLC you own does not change the assessment, because there was never an acquisition-date value locked in to lose. This is the part of the California story that gets copied onto pages about states where it simply does not apply.

The mechanics are worth knowing because one line in the statute looks alarming and is not. RSA 75:8-a requires assessors and selectmen to reappraise all real estate in the municipality to full and true value "at least as often as every fifth year," and RSA 75:8, I requires annual adjustments so that assessments stay "reasonably proportional within that municipality." RSA 75:8, II then does list a change of ownership as one of the things that should prompt a look: assessors "shall consider adjusting assessments for any properties that: ... (b) Changed in ownership." But the standard they must apply is full and true value under RSA 75:1, not the price written on the instrument, and a deed into your own LLC for no money gives an assessor no new evidence of what the property is worth.

What does end is New Hampshire's person-based property tax relief, and this catches owners converting a former home. RSA 72:29, VI defines ownership for the veterans' tax credit and the elderly, blind and disabled exemptions to "include those who have placed their property in a grantor/revocable trust or who have equitable title or the beneficial interest for life in the subject property." That is a closed list of permitted holding forms, and a limited liability company is not on it. RSA 72:29, II separately confines those benefits to the property the claimant "occupies as his principal place of abode," so a property that is already a rental had lost them before the LLC was ever drafted.

Separately, and this catches people converting a former home into a rental: the benefits that turn on owning and occupying the property as your residence, a homestead exemption, an owner-occupancy credit, a residential assessment rate, are not things an LLC occupies a home to earn. Where the property still carries one, the deed puts it at risk, and the bill goes up whether or not the assessment itself moves. Which benefit is at stake, and on what terms, is a question for the assessor in the county the property sits in.

Authority: RSA 75:8; RSA 75:8-a; RSA 72:29, VI, gc.nh.gov

Moving a Property You Already Own Into the LLC in New Hampshire

1. 1

   Settle the mortgage question before anything is drafted

   This is the whole decision. If the LLC will take the property subject to an existing loan, RSA 78-B:1-a, IV treats the consideration as no less than the property's fair market value, and RSA 78-B:2, XXII's requirement that no consideration be exchanged fails. Find out from your servicer, in writing, whether the loan can be paid off, left in place, or refinanced into the company, because the answer changes what the deed costs by orders of magnitude.

2. 2

   Test both limbs of RSA 78-B:2, XXII against your own facts

   Condition (a) requires that no consideration is exchanged. Condition (b) requires that the direct or indirect owners are the same before and after, that their respective ownership percentages are identical, and that the combined assets and liabilities of transferor and transferee are unchanged except as to the real estate. If you were planning to add a spouse, a child or a partner to the ownership, doing it in the same instrument is what breaks limb (b).

3. 3

   Form the LLC and get its ownership on paper first

   The exemption is measured by who owns what on each side of the deed, so the operating agreement and the membership record need to exist and match before the conveyance, not after. Formation itself is ordinary, RSA chapter 304-C treats a company that will hold rentals no differently from any other.

4. 4

   Record at the register of deeds and make the exemption claim there

   The transfer tax is collected through the register of deeds for the county the property sits in, so the claim is made at recording. Take the formation documents and the ownership record with you. If the property is in one county and you live in another, it's the property's county that matters.

5. 5

   Move the meals and rentals license if you rent short-term

   A license under RSA 78-A:4 is issued for a place of business and names an operator, and RSA 78-A:4-a requires the license number to appear in every advertisement for the rental. Once the LLC owns the property, both the license and the listings need to reflect it. Nothing prompts you to do this, which is why it's the step most often left undone.

One LLC Per Property, or One for the Portfolio?

New Hampshire has no series LLC statute, so separating properties means a separate LLC for each one.

New Hampshire's LLC act is RSA chapter 304-C, in Title XXVIII, and it has no series article. We searched the General Court's own merged text of the entire chapter: the word "series" appears once, in a voting provision reading "Separate voting by voting groups is required by each class or series of membership rights that", a class-of-equity usage that has nothing to do with segregating assets. New Hampshire has not enacted the Uniform Protected Series Act either. Separating properties here means separate companies, full stop.

What makes that decision unusually expensive in New Hampshire is not the annual cost of the entities. It is the deeds. Every property you move is its own contractual transfer under RSA 78-B:1-a, II, taxed on both sides under RSA 78-B:4, III, and measured at fair market value under RSA 78-B:1-a, IV if the receiving company takes it subject to a loan. A landlord splitting four financed rentals into four companies is not running one exemption analysis, but four, and if any of them fails, the bill on that one is computed on the whole building rather than on the equity moved. Owners who go this route generally sequence it around refinancing rather than doing it all in one afternoon, because the mortgage is the variable that decides the cost.

One practical wrinkle: the tax is collected at the register of deeds for the county where each property sits, so a portfolio spread across counties means the same exemption claim made at several different counters.

Practically, that leaves the familiar trade-off. Separate LLCs mean separate filing fees, separate annual reports, separate registered agents and separate bank accounts, every year, for as long as you hold the properties. One LLC holding several properties means one set of costs and one pool of assets exposed to a claim arising at any of them. Which side of that you land on is a function of how much equity is in the portfolio, and it is worth pricing the recurring cost before deciding, our New Hampshire LLC cost breakdown has the per-entity figures.

What Creditors Can Reach, What the New Hampshire Statute Says

The reason to hold a rental in an LLC is usually to keep a claim arising at the property from reaching everything else you own. The reverse question matters just as much and gets far less attention: if someone wins a judgment against you personally, can they reach the rental inside the LLC? That is what a state’s charging-order provision decides.

New Hampshire's LLC act permits a court to foreclose on the interest of a sole member, and bars it where the company has more than one member, and most rental LLCs are single-member.

RSA 304-C:126 is the section, and it is one of a small number of LLC acts in the country that writes single-member companies a worse rule in terms. Paragraph IV sets the general position: "Except as provided in paragraphs VI and VII, a charging order is the sole and exclusive remedy by which a judgment creditor of a debtor-member may satisfy a judgment from a debtor-member's membership rights or from the assets of a limited liability company." Paragraph V(a) then makes execution on a member's rights unavailable against a multi-member company outright, while paragraph V(b) makes it unavailable against a single-member company only "[e]xcept as provided in paragraph VI."

Paragraph VI is that exception. If a judgment creditor "shows to the satisfaction of a court of competent jurisdiction that distributions under a charging order in respect of the limited liability company interest of a debtor-member of a single-member limited liability company will not satisfy the judgment within a reasonable time, a charging order shall not be the sole and exclusive remedy," and "[u]pon such a showing, the court may order the sale of the debtor-member's membership rights under an execution sale."

Paragraph VI(c) lets the creditor make that showing either when it applies for the charging order or at any time afterwards. Paragraph VII states the consequence plainly: the purchaser "shall obtain all of the member's membership rights and not merely the rights of an transferee," the purchaser "shall become the member of the limited liability company," and "[t]he debtor-member whose membership rights have been sold shall cease to be a member." The section never uses the word foreclose. It does not need to.

Two further paragraphs matter to a landlord. Paragraph VIII preserves consensual security interests, fraudulent-transfer law and "the equitable principles of veil-piercing, equitable lien, or constructive trust, or other equitable principles not inconsistent with this section." Paragraph IX reaches out of state: "In any action in a court of this state in which a judgment creditor seeks a charging order against a member or transferee of a foreign limited liability company, this section shall apply." So the common plan of forming the company somewhere with a stronger statute and holding New Hampshire property through it does not, on the face of paragraph IX, take the case out of RSA 304-C:126 when the action is brought in a New Hampshire court. We are quoting the section, not forecasting what any court would make of the "reasonable time" showing on your facts.

We are reporting what the section says, not what a court would do with your facts. Outcomes turn on how the LLC was capitalised, how it has been operated and what the creditor is owed, and none of that is something a page can assess. If the answer above is load-bearing for you, it is a question for a New Hampshire attorney.

Authority: N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. Section 304-C:126, gc.nh.gov

Three Problems No State Transfer Rule Solves

These land the same way in New Hampshire as everywhere else. One because it is federal law, two because they are contracts you signed. Which is exactly why they get left off state pages. They are also the three most likely to actually cost a landlord money, so they are here rather than buried.

The due-on-sale point is the one that generates the most bad advice. The Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, at 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), bars a lender from enforcing a due-on-sale clause on nine categories of transfer of residential property of fewer than five dwelling units. The one people cite is the eighth: a transfer into an inter vivos trust in which the borrower is and remains a beneficiary and which does not relate to a transfer of rights of occupancy in the property. Neither that paragraph nor any of the other eight names a transfer to a limited liability company. The protection quoted for an LLC transfer is written for trusts, and the occupancy qualifier is the limb that matters most to a landlord, because a rental is occupied by someone else.

One honest caveat on that list. The ninth category is open-ended. It reaches any other transfer described in regulations issued under the Act, at 12 C.F.R. § 591.5(b), so it is a list that can be extended by regulation rather than a closed set fixed by the statute. We have not read those regulations end to end, and say so rather than describing the statute as more settled than we checked.

In practice lenders often do not call a loan when payments keep arriving, and that is genuinely what usually happens, but “usually not enforced” is a different thing from “not permitted,” and only one of them is a plan. The way to find out is to ask your servicer for written consent before you record, not after.

Which deed you use is a decision, not a formality. A quitclaim deed transfers whatever interest you happen to have and warrants nothing, which is why it is the cheap default for a transfer between yourself and your own company, and why title professionals warn against it. It can leave a gap in the chain of title that surfaces years later when you sell or refinance, and because it warrants nothing it gives the LLC no recourse against you if a defect turns up. A warranty deed carries the covenants across. Which one is appropriate depends on how the property was acquired and what your title history looks like, and it is a question worth asking before the deed is drafted rather than after it is recorded.

Tell your title insurer before you record. An owner’s title policy insures the person named in it. Convey the property to an LLC and the insured owner and the record owner are no longer the same. Which is the fact pattern in which coverage gets argued about at the worst possible moment, when a claim is already live. Some insurers will endorse an existing policy across to the entity, sometimes for a modest fee; some will not, and a new policy means a new premium on the current value. Either way it is a phone call before the deed rather than a discovery afterwards, and it belongs in the same budget as the tax above.

On the fourth thing people ask about: beneficial ownership reporting. Under 31 C.F.R. § 1010.380, a “reporting company” is an entity formed outside the United States and registered to do business in a State, and paragraph (c)(2)(xxiv) separately exempts any entity created by filing with a Secretary of State. A rental LLC you form in New Hampshire is therefore exempt and files no beneficial ownership report. Pages telling you to file within 30 days of formation are describing the rule as it stood before March 2025. The exception runs the other way: an LLC formed in another country and registered to do business in New Hampshire does still report. More on what compliance actually requires →

Does New Hampshire Make You Register the Rental?

Not for a long-term tenancy. New Hampshire does run a statewide registration through the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration, under RSA 78-A:4, but it is scoped to a category a conventional residential lease does not fall into. If you rent to a tenant on an ordinary lease, there is nothing to file with the state, and nothing that changes when the deed moves to the LLC. What follows sets out what the registration does cover, so you can check your own arrangement against it.

The license has nothing to do with long-term landlording and everything to do with how long your guests stay. RSA 78-A:4, III provides that "[n]o person shall engage in serving taxable meals, renting rooms, or renting motor vehicles without first obtaining the license required by this section," and RSA 78-A:4, I requires the operator to register each place of business with the Department, which then issues a meals and rentals license for each one. Licences "expire on June 30 in each odd-numbered year," so this is a renewal you diary rather than a one-off.

The reach into ordinary houses comes from the definitions rather than the license section. RSA 78-A:3, VII defines a "hotel" as an establishment holding itself out to the public by offering sleeping accommodations for rent and expressly "includes, but is not limited to, inns, motels, tourist homes and cabins, ski dormitories, ski lodges, lodging homes, rooming houses, furnished room houses, boarding houses, private clubs, hostels, cottages, camps, chalets, barracks, dormitories, and apartments." RSA 78-A:3, XXIII defines a short-term rental as "the rental of one or more rooms in a residential unit for occupancy for tourist or transient use for less than 185 consecutive days."

Cross the 185-day line and the occupant becomes a "permanent resident" under RSA 78-A:3, XV, which is why a conventional twelve-month lease needs no state license at all. RSA 78-A:4-a adds a rule people miss until an inspector finds the listing: any advertisement for a short-term rental, in print or online, "shall include the meals and rooms license number of the operator." After the deed, that license and that listing need to name the LLC.

We could not confirm whether a fee is charged for the license. RSA 78-A:4 prescribes none in its text, and the Department's fee schedule was among the pages that returned an access-denied error to us, so we would rather tell you the gap exists than print a guess.

gc.nh.gov

If You Rent Short-Term in New Hampshire

A short-term let is a different tax animal from a twelve-month tenancy, and the LLC has nothing to do with it. The lodging tax follows the stay, not the owner.

New Hampshire catches booking platforms without ever using the phrase marketplace facilitator. RSA 78-A:3, XIII defines an "operator" as any person operating a hotel or receiving gross rental receipts "whether as owner or proprietor or lessee, or otherwise," and then adds that "[t]he term operator shall include a rental facilitator and a room facilitator."

RSA 78-A:3, XIX-a defines a room facilitator expansively enough to cover any site with "any right, access, ability, or authority to offer, reserve, book, arrange for, remarket, distribute, broker, resell, coordinate, or otherwise facilitate occupancy." RSA 78-A:6, III then puts the collection duty on the operator. The base is wider than the rent you set: "rent" includes "any fee, service, or other charge required to be paid by the occupant to a room facilitator" under RSA 78-A:3, XVII(a), so the platform's own service fee is taxed too.

One caveat we would rather flag than bury. Chapter 78-A contains no local-option section, New Hampshire has no general sales tax, and we found no municipal rooms tax authority anywhere, but that is a negative established from the absence of an enabling provision rather than from anything affirmatively saying a town may not levy one. We would call it a medium-confidence no rather than a certainty.

A platform collecting the state tax does not always cover every local tax on the same booking, and it never covers a booking taken directly. If you take reservations off-platform as well, that is where the exposure sits.

Authority: RSA 78-A:6, I, gc.nh.gov

Who to Ask in New Hampshire

Three offices, and they don't overlap. The register of deeds for the county where the property sits collects the real estate transfer tax before the deed goes on record, which makes that counter the place your RSA 78-B:2, XXII claim actually gets tested, call ahead and ask what documentation they want with an entity transfer.

The Department of Revenue Administration administers both the transfer tax and the meals and rentals license; be aware that revenue.nh.gov blocked every automated request we made, so if its pages won't load for you either, the phone and the physical office are the route rather than a sign that the guidance doesn't exist. For anything about the assessment itself, the municipal assessing office or the board of selectmen is the right call, because RSA 75:8 puts the adjusting duty on them rather than on any state agency.

Forming the LLC Itself

Nothing about the formation process changes because the LLC will hold rental property, the articles, the registered agent requirement and the annual filing are the same as for any other New Hampshire LLC. The walkthrough lives in the formation guide rather than being repeated here.

How to start an LLC in New Hampshire →

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