4 University OF New Hampshire [Bulletin 290 



tween December 1 and the date of advertising. This also makes the sum- 

 maries less comparable. For these reasons this circular will emphasize the 

 trends in delinquency rather than the actual extent of delinquency. 



Extent of Survey 



Records were obtained in every county. Of the 235 incorporated towns 

 216 or 92 per cent were surveyed. All of the towns in seven counties were 

 completed. Hillsborough County was completed with the exception of the 

 urban townships of Manchester and Nashua, and Merrimack Cotmty with 

 the exception of the urban townships of Concord and Franklin. Only 59 per 

 cent of the towns in Rockingham County were surveyed. Data for the 

 year 1933 were incomplete for many towns because delinquent properties 

 had not generally been advertised and reported to the county Register of 

 Deeds during the early stages of this project. 



The New Hampshire Real Estate Tax System 



More than three- fourths of the average New Hampshire town and city 

 dollar comes from property taxes. Thus, taxes levied against farm real 

 estate is a major source of revenue in rural towns. State statutes provide 

 local tax collectors with powers to collect such taxes as are levied upon polls, 

 estates, and other classes of property. Upon neglect or refusal of tax payers 

 to pay the taxes assessed against them, the collector is authorized and re- 

 quired to distrain such property and sell at public auction in satisfaction of 

 the taxes due. 



All real estate is held for taxes assessed against the owner, and such 

 liens continue until one year from July 1 following the assessment. Under 

 recent emergency laws the period of the town lien was extended to October 

 1 for the years 1933 to 1936 inclusive. State laws provide that tax collectors 

 may advertise and sell delinquent real estate at any time between December 

 1 of the year of levy and the expiration of the lien. Within these limits 

 collectors have a right to use their own judgment as to the time of sale, but 

 in all cases they must post advertisements at least four weeks previous to the 

 date of sale. H persons against whom the property is assessed do not appear 

 and discharge the taxes plus costs and 10 per cent interest from December 1, 

 then the collector must proceed to sell at public auction as stated in the adver- 

 tisement. After sale any delinquent tax payer may redeem his property by 

 paying the purchaser the amount for which the land was sold plus costs and 

 12 per cent interest on the entire amount from the time of sale. A more 

 recent law was enacted in 1931 whereby it has been made mandatory upon 

 the tax collector to execute a deed after two years from the date of sale. 

 The main reason for this was to prevent the accumulation of properties held 

 by the towns and cities which had resulted in many cases in temporarily re- 

 moving a large amount of property from the tax yielding class. The result 

 has been the liquidation of many of these frozen assets (amounting in 1934 

 to approximately $16,000,000) and its replacement upon the tax list again as 

 property paying its own way. This has been done either by reselling proper- 

 ties acquired through tax collector deeds to the original owners on some plan 

 mutually advantageous to the town and the former owner, or by sale at public 

 auction to the highest bidder. In such a case all of the proceeds go into the 



