🎯 STRisker: Bulletin - Laconia, NH
Property Rights vs. Neighborhood Cohesion in Laconia’s STR Debate
Laconia’s STR Ordinance: Drawing New Lines
Laconia’s planning board has approved a proposed amendment to the city’s short-term rental ordinance, narrowing the districts where homes can be booked by visitors and raising the maximum rental period. The proposal now heads to the City Council for consideration at its March 9 meeting.
Key changes include excluding the residential single-family zoning district from permitted uses and raising the maximum consecutive rental nights from 14 to 28. Property owners in single-family districts who are not already permitted to operate STRs would need to seek a zoning variance—a higher bar than the current special exception.
Assistant Planning Director Tyler Carmichael explained the changes: “They want to increase the timeframe for short-term lodging from 14 days to 28 days. So if you’re renting a parcel for 27 days or less, it would be considered short-term lodging. The only other change … was that they remove [the] residential single-family [zoning district] from the permitted uses and from the special exception.”
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Ward 6 Councilor Mike Conant opposed the exclusion of single-family zones, arguing it unfairly burdens 20% of the city’s population. “We’re telling 20% of our population that they would have to jump through hoops … I just don’t think that we need to, nor should, take that right away,” Conant said. He added that the ordinance otherwise “gives it some more teeth, it gives reportability back to the planning board, and with that hopefully we can weed out the bad apples.”
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Mayor Mike Bordes also voiced opposition, citing his own experience with STRs. “For many people, short-term rentals are more than an economic statistic, they are a doorway into our community,” he said. “The proposed ordinance changes raise serious concerns about property rights. When government begins to dictate how often a homeowner can use their own property … we cross the line from reasonable regulation to overreach.”
Others supported the stricter rules. Ward 5 Councilor Steven Bogert said, “Everybody wants to say, ‘tourism, tourism, tourism,’ but we do have another side of our town … those folks live in residential, single-family homes. They want to sit in quiet and peace. … A variance is harder to get, and it should be in a residential single-family home development.”
The planning board approved the changes 4–1, with Conant opposed. The ordinance will return to council March 9, where residents can comment during the general public period.
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