New Hampshire · Law checked October 19, 2026

New Hampshire tax sale: your deadline, your office, your money

Behind on property taxes in New Hampshire? Your house can be sold at a tax sale — here's how much time you have to stop it. Your house was sold at a tax sale in New Hampshire? The extra money from the sale may be yours to claim — and there's a deadline. Both answers are on this page, from the statute.

Count my New Hampshire deadline

How New Hampshire sells

The machine, in four lines

Door one: getting the house back (redemption)

Redemption in New Hampshire runs until the deed is issued — Any time before the tax deed is given — and the collector cannot give the deed until 2 years after the lien was executed. If the town refuses the deed (for liability or public-interest reasons), redemption stays open indefinitely Statute-verified

What it costs to redeem: The full recorded lien amount + interest at 14% per year from the lien date + redemption and mortgagee-notice costs. Partial payments toward redemption are a statutory right (RSA 80:71).

Source: RSA 80:69; 80:76

Before any sale: your quieter doors

Payment plans: Partial payments in redemption are a statutory right (RSA 80:71) — returned to you if a deed is later given anyway.

Deferrals (senior / veteran / disability): None found in the sources read.

Door two: the extra money (surplus)

Who holds the money: the Municipality (paid directly to an easily identified sole owner; otherwise by interpleader in Superior Court).

Your claim window: On resale of tax-deeded property, the town's recovery is limited to back taxes, interest, costs and penalty — the excess goes to the former owner and lienholders. The town's distribution duty and your right to repurchase run 3 years after the deed is recorded (RSA 80:89) — and New Hampshire's supreme court held in Polonsky v. Town of Bedford that a scheme letting a town keep all equity raises a taking, so do not treat year 3 as a clean wall without advice. Statute-verified

If nobody claims it: In an interpleader with no valid claims, funds may be decreed to the municipality; the statutory duty ends after 3 years (subject to the Polonsky litigation above).

Source: RSA 80:88; 80:89

The county figure rule. This page gives you the law — the window, the formula, the office. The exact payoff or surplus figure lives in the Town/city tax collector's books and changes as interest runs. Ask that office for the figure, in writing, and keep the letter.

Included in the $49 TaxSaleDecoded Kit

  • The surplus claim pack: how to prove the house was yours (deed records, address history, ID), the claim-form path in your state, and what to do when the county says it has no record of your money
  • The redemption playbook: your state's window and cost formula worked step by step, who to pay, how to prove you paid, and the traps in the payoff figure (added fees and interest)
  • The heirs page: the house was a parent's — what changes, which papers prove you are an heir, and the point where it stops being simple
  • The scam shield: how surplus-recovery companies work, the fee caps your state sets for them, and the assignment papers you should never sign
  • The lookback module: what Tyler won, what Pung limited (the extra money is the sale price minus the debt — not your home's value), and the dated state lookbacks, including Illinois claims that die in July 2028

Get the TaxSaleDecoded Kit — $49

One payment of $49. No subscription. The kit is a web page you can return to and print — the claim pack, the redemption playbook, the heirs page, and the scam shield.

All 50 states · The surplus, explained · Redemption, explained