Land · New Hampshire tax lien guide

Portsmouth tax sales, New Hampshire

Verified

Portsmouth's record is unusual because tax deeding itself is unusual there: the Deputy City Attorney told the Planning Board on April 18, 2024 that the city had deeded three properties through the tax deeding process, which was out of the ordinary, each held by a different partnership entity, with deed records reaching back to the 1990s and two of the partnerships not registered with the Secretary of State. The meeting is a plain English walk through the end of the New Hampshire pipeline: the city was entitled by statute to recoup the unpaid taxes, there was significant equity above that amount which had to be returned to the prior owners, the money from any sale would be placed in escrow, and the city would file an interpleader action in Superior Court, exactly the RSA 80:88 mechanism. Four disposition options were put on the table, public auction, appraisal and city offer, auction with a city bid, and identified bidder with a purchase option, and public auction was described as the most common route to fair market value. What the record does not contain is a completed step: no auction date, no listing, and no closing for the three properties appears in official sources, so this record verifies the deed and the deliberation, not a sale.

Selling office: City of Portsmouth Tax Office, Revenue Administrator and Tax Collector Amy Wentworth, City Hall, 1 Junkins Avenue, Portsmouth, NH 03801, phone (603) 610-7244.

Next sale: No sale announced. No auction, sealed bid, or negotiated sale of the three tax deeded properties (508 Richards Avenue, 150 Bartlett Street, 323 Islington Street) is published on cityofportsmouth.com or portsmouthnh.gov. Disposition was under discussion at the Planning Board work session of Thursday, April 18, 2024.

No date to calendar. Watch the City Council and Planning Board agendas on portsmouthnh.gov for a disposition decision on the three named properties, and ask the Tax Office directly; there is no sale calendar to monitor.

Dates and deadlines

Sources: City of Portsmouth, Planning Board Minutes, April 18, 2024 (Disposition of Tax Deeded Real Estate). City of Portsmouth, Tax Office. City of Portsmouth, Tax Deferral for Elderly or Disabled (Tax Collector process page citing RSA 80). Confirm with the selling office before relying on any date on this page: sales move, terms change, and parcels are pulled up to sale day.

Research Portsmouth parcels before you bid

A sale list gives you the parcels, the date, and the opening terms. It does not give you the owner, the value, or the rest of the picture: liens, foreclosure status, and parcel history. PropertyRadar is the data platform for that layer. It carries owner records, assessed and market values, foreclosure and tax data, and property history for parcels across Portsmouth, searchable by address, owner, or county, including parcels that never reach a sale list.

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How New Hampshire tax liens work

• New Hampshire collects delinquent real estate taxes through its cities and towns under the tax lien procedure in RSA 80:58 to 80:91, which each municipality adopts locally. There is no tax sale and no auction of liens.
• Taxes are a lien on the real estate. If all taxes are not paid in full by December 1 after assessment, the collector, after at least 30 days notice of impending lien by certified mail (RSA 80:60), executes a lien in favor of the municipality itself and reports it to the county register of deeds within 30 days (RSA 80:61 and RSA 80:64). Only a municipality, a county, or the state may hold the lien (RSA 80:63).
• Interest runs at 8 percent per annum on taxes unpaid after December 1 (RSA 76:13), and at 14 percent per annum on the whole recorded lien amount from the date the lien is executed (RSA 80:69). Mortgagees of record are notified within 60 days after execution (RSA 80:65).
• Anyone with a legal interest may redeem at any time before a deed is given, by paying the lien amount with 14 percent interest and the statutory costs; partial payments are allowed and are refunded if redemption is not completed (RSA 80:69 and RSA 80:71).
• After 2 years from execution, and after at least 30 days further notice to the owner and to mortgagees (RSA 80:77 and RSA 80:77-a), the collector deeds the property to the municipality (RSA 80:76). A municipality may refuse a deed over environmental or other liability concerns, which leaves the lien and the redemption right in effect indefinitely.
• The municipality may then sell the tax deeded property, under governing body authority, at public auction or by advertised sealed bids, or in another manner as justice may require (RSA 80:80). Most larger New Hampshire municipalities auction through a retained auctioneer.
• Before any offering, the former owner must be notified at least 90 days ahead and may repurchase by paying all back taxes, interest, costs, and the statutory penalty (RSA 80:89).
• On a municipal sale, the municipality may keep only the back taxes, interest, costs, and penalty defined in RSA 80:90, which includes a penalty of 10 percent of the equalized assessed value. Any excess must be paid to the former owner, through a Superior Court interpleader or, where there are no record lienholders and the owner is easily identified, by direct payment (RSA 80:88). This surplus rule dates from 1998; New Hampshire enacted no amendment responding to Tyler v. Hennepin County.

How buying works in Portsmouth

NOT PUBLISHED: Portsmouth offers no tax deeded property sale and publishes no bidder registration rules.

• There is no lien auction to bid at New Hampshire never puts its liens in front of investors: the lien is executed to the municipality and stays there. Do not budget for a lien sale, a certificate, or an interest rate auction in this state. The investable event is the municipality's sale of tax deeded real estate, two or more years after the tax year that started the process.
• Deposits are due in full, in bank funds, at the sale The auction packets in this set require non refundable deposits, commonly 1,000 dollars to 15,000 dollars per property depending on value, in cash or by bank or certified check at the sale, with no personal checks. The balance, plus a buyer's premium of 7.5 percent or 10 percent, is due within 30 days at most sales (45 days at Manchester), and the sale is not final until the municipality confirms it.
• The former owner moves before you do By statute the former owner gets notice at least 90 days before the offering and can take the property back by paying the full RSA 80:90 amount. Nashua's current authorization says its listed properties are auctioned only if the prior owner does not repurchase. A listed property can therefore disappear before sale day for reasons that have nothing to do with bidding.
• The deed is thin and the property is as is Conveyance is by deed without covenants or by quitclaim deed, the property is sold as is, where is, some properties are occupied with eviction left to the buyer, and there are no financing or title insurance contingencies in the Manchester terms. Price your diligence accordingly: the discount for title and condition risk is the deal.

Terms: what a bid actually costs

Tax deeded property that goes unsold

The three deeded properties are themselves the leftover: they sit in city ownership while the council decides how to dispose of them. Under RSA 80:80 the council may authorize a public auction or advertised sealed bids under paragraph II, retention for public uses under paragraph V, or another disposition as justice may require under paragraphs III and VI, and the former owners' repurchase right under RSA 80:89 must be honored before an offering for sale.

Before you bid

• Work the two year clock, not a sale calendar The pipeline is fixed by statute: lien in the spring after the December due date, deed after 2 years, municipal sale after that. The properties in any given auction trace to liens executed at least two years earlier, and the collector's office, not a calendar site, is the authority on what is coming.
• Read the auctioneer's packet for the actual terms Deposits, premiums, closing windows, and confirmation rights are set sale by sale in the bidder packet issued for the municipality. The packets for Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Rochester, Derry, and Salem sales in this set are the operative documents, and their terms differ in deposit size, premium, and closing period.
• Check whether the sale authority is current A governing body needs authorization to convey tax deeded property, and under RSA 80:80, IV the authority expires in one year unless it was granted indefinitely until rescinded. Nashua's Resolution R-25-221 is an indefinite grant effective December 31, 2025; a sale resting on a lapsed one year grant is a title question worth asking about before you bid.
• Understand what the municipality keeps The city's recovery on the sale is capped at back taxes, interest, costs, and the RSA 80:90 penalty, and any excess belongs to the former owner through the RSA 80:88 interpleader process. That cap is why minimum bids and confirmation rights appear in these sales, and why a very high bid does not buy the city anything extra.

Every New Hampshire jurisdiction in this set

One page per jurisdiction, each verified against the city or town's own publications and the current text of RSA 80. New Hampshire runs its tax liens municipally, with no lien auction anywhere in the state; this set is the 10 largest tax sale jurisdictions.

• Manchester tax sales
• Nashua tax sales
• Concord tax sales
• Dover tax sales
• Rochester tax sales
• Portsmouth (this page)
• Laconia tax sales
• Keene tax sales
• Derry tax sales
• Salem tax sales

Keep going

Once a deadline puts you in a sale, the Land Investor Due Diligence Toolkit is the checklist and bid worksheet to run on each parcel before you bid. The same desk runs Florida tax deed sales, Texas tax sales, Pennsylvania tax sales, Georgia tax sales, North Carolina tax foreclosure sales, Ohio tax foreclosure sales, Illinois tax lien sales, Michigan tax foreclosure sales, Arizona tax lien sales, California tax defaulted property sales, Colorado tax lien sales, South Carolina tax sales, Indiana tax lien sales, Tennessee delinquent tax sales, Wisconsin tax deed sales, Missouri tax sales, New Jersey tax lien sales, Maryland tax lien sales, West Virginia tax sales, Virginia tax sales, Oklahoma tax resale, Kansas tax foreclosure sales, Arkansas tax-delinquent land sales, Alabama tax sales, Kentucky certificate of delinquency sales, Mississippi tax land sales, Nevada tax deed sales, New Mexico delinquent property tax sales, Iowa tax lien sales, Nebraska tax certificate sales, Minnesota tax-forfeited land sales, Utah final tax sales, Washington tax foreclosure sales, Oregon tax foreclosure sales, Connecticut tax sales, Massachusetts tax title sales, Rhode Island tax sales, Vermont tax sales, New Hampshire tax lien sales and Maine tax lien sales, and the proven New York season, with the live membership, sits in the NY tax sale hub.