Welcome to this month’s edition! Back in May, my monthly Newsletter was a summary of the state of New Hampshire Land Use Reforms. I recapped the state’s plan to attack the housing market crisis with two strategies:
- Strategy #1 was to find a way to provide state funding to support affordable housing.
- Strategy #2 was to push land use reforms to force towns to relax their zoning and codes to make it easier to provide more housing for developers and investors.
There have been some updates to both, some positive, some negative. Some of the bills are technical, but the general recap is below:
UPDATE ON STRATEGY #1 – PROVIDE STATE FUNDING FORAFFORDABLE HOUSING
Assuming you believe that the state needs more housing, which is the popular belief, this update isn’t positive. New Hampshire’s Senate and House of Representative are both under Republican control. Both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree that housing is an important issue, they are divided on what the approach should be. Democrats are advocating that $5M be allocated to help fund affordable housing now while Republicans are saying the state budget cannot currently afford to allocate anything towards housing. In fact, the most recent budget proposal assumes state layoffs, termination of programs and increased fees. Given the republican majority, it doesn’t seem like any money will be given to affordable housing soon.
UPDATE ON STRATEGY #2 – PROVIDE ZONING RELIEF TO MAKE ITEASIER TO BUILD HOUSING
Good news, this one is slightly more positive. There are a ton of senate and house bills, all in various stages of approval. I’ve provided a very quick summary of what each bill contains and then a chart to show where each bill currently stands in the approval process.
- Senate Bill 74 – Requires state departments to report permitting activity to legislature every year.
- Senate Bill 84 – Restricts the ability to zone lots bigger than 88,000 square feet (or 22,000 square feet if it’s serviced by town water and sewer) as single-family lots.
- Senate Bill 110 – Simplifies state terrain permitting process and fees.
- Senate Bill 166 – Mandates that resident-owned communities can access financial information on the association, much like purchasers of condos can.
- Senate Bill 170 – Among other things, this bill altered the timelines town have to perform an initial planning review.
- Senate Bill 174 – Restricts town’s abilities to consider the number of bedrooms when approving a water and septic application.
- Senate Bill 185 – Requires an investigation and a report to the NH Real Estate Commission within 90 days of receiving a complaint of professional misconduct.
- Senate Bill 188 – Authorized third parties to certify documents for inspections and speed up development.
- Senate Bill 281 – Prohibits towns from denying permits for properties next to class VI railroads under certain conditions.
- Senate Bill 282 – Allows for residential buildings up to four floors to have only one stairway under conditions already established bythe state building code.
- Senate Bill 283 – Standardizes how floor-area-ratios are calculated.
- Senate Bill 284 – Restricts parking ratios to be larger than 1 space to 1 unit.
- House Bill 309 – Restrict landlords from requiring tenants from paying electronically.
- Senate Bill 457 – Prohibits towns from limiting bedroom occupancy to less than two occupants per bedroom.
- House Bill 2 – Allows lease expiration as a reason for eviction and restricts foreign investors from owning property near military facilities.
- House Bill 92 – Administrative policy to require anyone who serves both planning and zoning boards to recuse themselves from voting.
- House Bill 296 – Authorizes local governments to build buildings along private roads and requires zoning board to take an appeal within 30 days instead of at their discretion.
- House Bill 309 – Prohibits landlords from requiring electronic payment from tenants.
- House Bill 342 – Allows property owners to build without a variance if the density falls within the conformed density of the neighborhood.
- House Bill 410 – Restricts town’s ability to use “extraordinary restriction of residential property” unless there is a publicsafety issue.
- House Bill 413 – Extends five-year exemption for subdivision plats to seven years and extends development from two to three years.
- Senate Bill 437 – Administrative policy to discharge all undischarged mortgages in which the term is not stated to be discharged.
- House Bill 577 – Requires that towns allow ADUs
- House Bill 617 – Increases the Homestead right values for homeowners
- House Bill 631 – Requires towns to allow multi-family residential development on commercially zoned land if there is appropriateinfrastructure to support it.
- House Bill 685 – Requires towns to allow the construction of manufactured housing in residentially zoned areas.
As a quick business update, we closed on two properties last month in Manchester and Milford but as always, we’re looking for 3-50 unit properties in Southern New Hampshire. If you know if anyone looking to sell, we’d love to talk to them.