North Dakota Landlord-Tenant Laws
Local rent regulation in North Dakota
North Dakota law bars political subdivisions from adopting ordinances that would control the amount of rent charged for private residential or commercial property, except as to residential property the subdivision itself owns.
Cited to N.D.C.C. § 47-16-02.1 · Verified August 12, 2026 · Full North Dakota rent-increase rules →
North Dakota Security deposits
North Dakota caps security deposits at one month's rent, with three carve-outs: up to two months' rent may be accepted from a tenant convicted of a felony (as an incentive to rent to them), up to two months' rent may be demanded from a tenant who has a court judgment against them for violating a previous rental agreement, and a separate pet security deposit of up to the greater of $2,500 or two months' rent may be charged for a pet that is not a disability-related service or companion animal.
North Dakota Rent increase notice
North Dakota landlords must give month-to-month tenants at least 30 days' written notice before the end of a month to raise the rent, under an express change-of-terms statute (N.D. Cent. Code 47-16-07) that lets the landlord establish new 'terms, rent, and conditions' effective at the expiration of the month if the tenant stays.
North Dakota Late fees
North Dakota has no statute capping residential late fees and no statutory grace period — a 2025 bill to cap late fees (SB 2236, amending the rent-payment statute) failed in the Senate 7-39, so late charges remain purely a matter of the lease, policed only by North Dakota's liquidated-damages rule (advance damage-fixing clauses are void unless the amount is a reasonable pre-estimate where actual damages would be impracticable to fix) and by unconscionability review of residential rental agreements.
North Dakota Entry notice
North Dakota sets no fixed advance-notice period for landlord entry — instead, before a routine entry the landlord must (unless impractical) notify the tenant and obtain consent for a specific time, and the tenant's consent is presumed if the tenant does not object after getting notice of intent to enter at that stated time.
North Dakota Eviction process
To evict a residential tenant in North Dakota you serve a three-day written notice of intention to evict under N.D.C.C. 47-32-02, then bring an action of eviction in the district court for the county where the property is located; the summons must set the tenant's appearance not fewer than three and not more than fifteen days after the summons is issued.
North Dakota Application fees
North Dakota does not regulate residential rental application or tenant-screening fees at all: no statute caps the amount, ties it to the cost of a report, requires a receipt or a refund, or sets disclosure or denial-notice duties before or after money changes hands.
North Dakota mobile home park laws
North Dakota has no single manufactured-home-park tenancy act; the rules for a resident who owns the home and rents the lot sit in one section of the property-transfer title, N.D.C.C. § 47-10-28, alongside the park licensing chapter.
Lot-rent, closure, park-sale and home-sale rules with statute citations →
North Dakota Fair Market Rents (FY 2026) — HUD's benchmark rents for every North Dakota metro area and county.
Changes since last full verification
The Verified date above (July 11, 2026) marks the last time every figure on this page was verified end-to-end against official state sources. The changes below were published since then, each verified against the official source it names (what these dates mean).
- Correction, August 5, 2026 — North Dakota's uncontested-eviction timeline now correctly anchors the court-appearance window to issuance of the summons, as the statute and a 2025 North Dakota Supreme Court decision require, rather than to the filing date; in practice the two dates usually coincide, and no day counts changed.
How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text in the official North Dakota Century Code chapter PDFs on ndlegis.gov (t47c16.pdf read in full, t47c32.pdf sections 47-32-01/-02/-05, t09c08.pdf section 9-08-04), whose official currency page states the posted code reflects all changes approved by the 69th Legislative Assembly, current as of 2025-07-01. Every key figure (1-month deposit cap; 2-month felony and prior-judgment exceptions; pet deposit greater of $2,500 or 2 months; 30-day itemized return; 9-month interest threshold; treble damages; 30-day written change-of-terms notice covering rent; 25-day tenant termination after a change notice; one-calendar-month m2m termination; no entry-hour figure) was read twice independently — official PDF pass plus codes.findlaw.com mirror pass (current through 2024-01-01), reconciled verbatim, with deposit figures additionally matched against the current-law baseline reprinted in introduced HB 1272 (2025). Amendment history pinned from official session-law PDFs: 2015 ch. 312 (HB 1192, pet deposit subsection), 2017 ch. 316 (HB 1220, felony exception), 2019 ch. 379 (HB 1150, prior-judgment exception). 2025 regular-session sweep via official bill-overview pages: HB 1272 (inspections/deposits) failed House 41-47 on 2025-02-07; SB 2236 (late-fee cap amending 47-16-20) failed Senate 7-39 on 2025-02-04; SB 2237 (labor-commissioner oversight) failed 5-41; SB 2366 (notice of intention to evict) failed 8-37; SB 2238 (eviction-record sealing, now 47-32-05) enacted, signed 2025-03-26 — out of v1 topic scope. January 2026 special session (3 days) was Rural Health Transformation Program only; no regular session in 2026, next regular session January 2027. Negative findings (no late-fee statute, no entry-hour figure, no deposit-interest rate figure, no frequency limits) verified against the complete section-heading list of ch. 47-16 read from the official chapter PDF, run twice.