Safest Counties in New Hampshire: 8 Ranked (2026)
The 8 New Hampshire counties where police report enough to the FBI to build a reliable rate, ranked by violent crime, with home prices, asking rents and incomes where available.
New Hampshire has 10 counties. Eight of them clear the reporting bar this page uses, and the gap between the quietest, Carroll at 88 violent offenses per 100,000, and the busiest, Cheshire at 151, is 1.7 to one. Beside each rate sits what homes there closed at over the last 12 months, from 34,726 closing records Resideline tracked across all 8 counties.
The crime rates here are built from the 1,319,629 residents those police agencies actually report on, over the months they reported. Each figure is a single county-wide figure, so treat this as a way to narrow a search rather than a verdict on any street.
We do not treat missing or conflicting crime data as zero. A county appears here only when its reporting clears our reliability threshold, and we set aside results that conflict materially with the state's own records. Whether a county is ranked depends on its crime reporting alone; whether it shows a price depends on whether Resideline tracked enough closings there.
The ranking
| # | County | Violent per 100k | Property per 100k | Median closed price | Median asking rent | Median income |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carroll | 88 | 679 | $485,000 | $2,100 | $90,255 |
| 2 | Rockingham | 98 | 682 | $600,000 | $2,600 | $119,559 |
| 3 | Grafton | 103 | 795 | $425,000 | $2,450 | $85,260 |
| 4 | Strafford | 103 | 815 | $450,000 | $2,150 | $82,816 |
| 5 | Merrimack | 124 | 796 | $448,643 | $2,000 | $95,305 |
| 6 | Belknap | 133 | 1,319 | $492,500 | $2,100 | $88,870 |
| 7 | Hillsborough | 140 | 909 | $501,105 | $2,100 | $105,060 |
| 8 | Cheshire | 151 | 1,116 | $375,000 | $1,795 | $81,728 |
A closer look at each county
1. Carroll County
At 88 violent offenses per 100,000, Carroll sits in the lowest quarter of the places on this list. That is below the median comparable US county, which records 245. Homes there closed at a median of $485,000, close to the middle of this list. Property crime is low too, at 679 per 100,000, the bottom quarter of this list and 0.6 times the median comparable US county. The median rental listing asks $2,100 a month.
2. Rockingham County
Rockingham's violent crime rate is 98 per 100,000 residents, the lowest quarter among the New Hampshire counties Resideline can measure. The median comparable US county records 245, so it is quieter than most of the country too. The median home closed at $600,000, roughly 128 percent of the middle figure for these counties. Quiet and costly at the same time, which is how most of the safest places on this list look. Median household income is $119,559, roughly 133 percent of the level across this list. Property crime is low too, at 682 per 100,000, the bottom quarter of this list and 0.6 times the median comparable US county. Resideline publishes a separate page for Derry, the market with the most tracked closings in this county's ZIP codes.
3. Grafton County
Police in Grafton reported 103 violent offenses per 100,000 people, putting it in the middle range of this list. That is below the median comparable US county, which records 245. At $425,000, its median closed price is unremarkable against the rest of this list. At $2,450 a month in asking rent, the gross return here is in the top quarter of the counties measured. Its property rate, 795 per 100,000, sits in the middle of these counties.
4. Strafford County
Strafford's violent crime rate is 103 per 100,000 residents, the middle range among the New Hampshire counties Resideline can measure. That is below the median comparable US county, which records 245. The median closed price, $450,000, sits near the center of the counties measured. Homes cost 5.4 times what the median household there earns, among the steepest ratios on this list. Its property rate, 815 per 100,000, sits in the middle of these counties. The median rental listing asks $2,150 a month. For prices at street level, see Dover, the market with the most tracked closings in this county's ZIP codes.
5. Merrimack County
At 124 violent offenses per 100,000, Merrimack sits in the middle range of the places on this list. That is below the median comparable US county, which records 245. At $448,643, its median closed price is unremarkable against the rest of this list. Local incomes go further here than almost anywhere else on this list, with homes at 4.7 times median household income. Its property rate, 796 per 100,000, sits in the middle of these counties. Asking rents run about $2,000 a month. Resideline publishes a separate page for Concord, the market with the most tracked closings in this county's ZIP codes.
6. Belknap County
Police in Belknap reported 133 violent offenses per 100,000 people, putting it in the middle range of this list. The median comparable US county records 245, so it is quieter than most of the country too. Homes there closed at a median of $492,500, close to the middle of this list. A typical home costs 5.5 years of the median household's income, near the top of this list. Theft and burglary are the larger problem: 1,319 property offenses per 100,000, 1.1 times the median comparable US county. The median rental listing asks $2,100 a month. For prices at street level, see Laconia, the market with the most tracked closings in this county's ZIP codes.
7. Hillsborough County
At 140 violent offenses per 100,000, Hillsborough sits in the highest quarter of the places on this list. The median comparable US county records 245, so it is quieter than most of the country too. The median closed price, $501,105, sits near the center of the counties measured. Buyers are paying up here regardless of the crime figure, which tells you the figure is not what they are pricing. Median household income is $105,060, roughly 117 percent of the level across this list. Its property rate, 909 per 100,000, sits in the middle of these counties. Resideline publishes a separate page for Manchester, the market with the most tracked closings in this county's ZIP codes.
8. Cheshire County
Cheshire's violent crime rate is 151 per 100,000 residents, the highest quarter among the New Hampshire counties Resideline can measure. The median comparable US county records 245, so it is quieter than most of the country too. Homes changed hands at a median $375,000, around 80 percent of what the rest of this list recorded. Against local incomes it is among the most affordable counties measured, at 4.6 times median household income. Its property rate of 1,116 per 100,000 is in the top quarter here, and 0.9 times the median comparable US county. At $1,795 a month in asking rent, the gross return here is in the top quarter of the counties measured. For prices at street level, see Keene, the market with the most tracked closings in this county's ZIP codes.
How to read this list
These figures describe whole areas. A quiet town and a rough district an hour apart carry the same number here, so the ranking is a starting point for a search rather than a description of any particular street.
Prices and rents are as of September 9, 2026, from closings and rental listings Resideline tracks over the previous 12 months; a price is shown where at least 100 closings were tracked and a rent where at least 50 listings were. Rent figures are the median asking rent on listings, not lease figures. Crime is the 2025 FBI Crime Data Explorer release, measured for the whole county over the months each agency reported, and violent crime means murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Household income is the Census SAIPE 2024 estimate of the county's median household income; population is the Census 2024 estimate. Where this page compares a rate with the median comparable US county, that figure (245 violent and 1188 property offenses per 100,000) is the median across the 874 US counties with at least 50,000 residents whose agencies reported on 90 percent or more of them for the year.
Sources and related pages
- •Crime: FBI Crime Data Explorer, agency-level offense counts for 2025, aggregated by county over the months each agency reported.
- •Income: Census SAIPE 2024, county median household income.
- •Population: Census county population estimates, vintage 2024.
- •Prices and rents: Resideline's tracked closings and rental listings, 12 months to September 2026.
- •Related: Safest counties by state; Does crime actually lower home prices?; New Hampshire housing market; Safest counties in Maine; Safest counties in Massachusetts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the safest county in New Hampshire?
Of the 8 New Hampshire counties measured here, Carroll County records the lowest violent crime rate at 88 offenses per 100,000 residents, against 245 for the median comparable US county. Homes there closed at a median of $485,000 over the last 12 months.
Is this every county in New Hampshire?
No. It covers 8 of the state's 10 counties, the ones where police agencies report at least 90 percent of the population to the FBI, the area has at least 50,000 residents, and the resulting rate falls inside the sanity bounds we apply. Whether Resideline has enough sales there decides only whether a price is shown. No place above 150,000 residents was excluded.
Is this crime rate for my neighborhood?
No. The FBI publishes these figures for whole counties, so every part of a county carries the same number here, from its densest district to its farmland. It is useful for narrowing a search and not a substitute for looking at a specific address.
Are these rents asking rents or lease rents?
They are the median asking rent on rental listings in the county over the last 12 months. That is what landlords advertised, a guide to the market rather than a lease figure.
About the author
Jeffrey Batista
Jeffrey Batista is the founder of Resideline, a real estate technology company building institutional grade valuation and investment analysis tools for real estate investors.
A software engineer with more than 10 years of experience, Jeffrey has worked across full stack development, infrastructure, data engineering, machine learning, and large scale systems. He left his engineering career to build Resideline full time.
Jeffrey is also a real estate investor with nearly a decade of hands on experience buying, renovating, managing, and analyzing residential properties. His experience on both sides of the industry, as an engineer and an investor, led him to build Resideline after seeing how fragmented and outdated many of the tools available to individual investors were.
Today, he leads the development of Resideline's proprietary data infrastructure, automated valuation models, rental analytics, and investment underwriting technology.