What rent you can actually carry, what a landlord will screen you on, and how both compare to what New Hampshire really costs.
The median across New Hampshire’s 14 FMR areas — unweighted by population, so it runs below what a typical resident of a metro pays. Pick a county for a local figure. Two-bedroom FMRs in this state range from $1,287 to $2,941. An FMR is the 40th percentile of gross rent, including tenant-paid utilities — so roughly 60% of units rent for more, and it is not directly comparable to an advertised rent that excludes utilities.
The honest break-even, including what selling costs and what the down payment would have earned if it stayed invested.
What actually reaches your account after federal tax, FICA, and your state's own brackets — with local income tax disclosed rather than guessed at.
Needs, wants, and savings as shares of your TAKE-HOME pay — not of gross, which is the version that never balances.
If your lease ends in December or January, the renewal letter arrives in September or October — and it arrives at the one time of year your landlord least wants the unit empty. Here is the arithmetic of a winter vacancy, what the law does and does not cap, what moving would actually cost you, and how to turn an 8% increase into a 4% one.
Nearly every deposit dispute is really one argument: is this damage, or is it wear and tear? Here is where the line actually sits, what the statutes permit, and the deadline that ends the argument before it starts.
Five gates, in order, each with a number you can compute. Includes the 50-state break-even table built from each state's own property tax, insurance and appreciation — and why that table is not a forecast.
The cash a move actually takes, split into what comes back and what never does — because a deposit and an application fee are different kinds of money and averaging them hides the real cost. Covers the lines people plan for and the ones they do not: the overlap month when two leases run at once, utility deposits, cleaning the old place, and unpaid time off. Gives you the total as a multiple of one month's rent so you can see whether yours is normal, a straight answer on whether your cash covers it, and a before-you-sign checklist built around the evidence that actually decides a deposit dispute.
New Hampshire guide
New Hampshire and New Jersey have exactly the same statewide two-bedroom fair market rent: $1,950 a month.
They do not have the same rent burden, and the difference is worth measuring precisely because it isolates one variable.
Same rent. Same required income. A 1.7-point difference in what it actually costs you. That gap is New Jersey's income tax, and it is $2,331 a year at that salary.
A note before you start. This is general education, not housing, legal or financial advice. Rent figures come from HUD's Fair Market Rents for FY2026, published under 24 CFR 888.113. An FMR is the 40th percentile of GROSS rent — rent plus tenant-paid utilities — for standard-quality units in a defined rent area, so roughly 60% of units cost more. HUD defines New Hampshire rent areas by TOWN rather than county, so the county figures below are this site's medians across towns, flagged as aggregates. Take-home figures are computed by this site's own tax engine for tax year 2026 on a single filer. New Hampshire landlord-tenant law is outside this dataset.
Third-highest in the country, tied with New Jersey and behind only Hawaii ($2,492) and Massachusetts ($2,067).
That surprises people. New Hampshire's rents sit in the same band as New Jersey's and above Connecticut's ($1,827), Rhode Island's ($1,729) and California's ($1,625) — the last of which is an artefact of California's unweighted 51-area median, but the first two are not.
The southern tier of New Hampshire is a Boston commuter market, and the rents reflect it.
This is the most useful thing on this page, because it isolates a variable that is usually confounded.
New Hampshire and New Jersey charge identical rent for a two-bedroom by HUD's measure. New Hampshire levies no income tax on wages; New Jersey levies a graduated one reaching 6.37% at ordinary professional salaries.
Read the full New Hampshire guide →17 min read · Updated 2026-09-01