What this does to an association's screening

A clean search now means less than it did. The absence of an eviction record is consistent with a sealed one. A board treating “nothing found” as proof of no history is over-reading its own search.

It does not sweep anything else. The section reaches evictions for nonpayment of rent or damage to the leased premises. An eviction on other grounds is outside it, as is any other kind of record.

Seven years is a long screen anyway. Most tenant screening looks back three to seven years. An eviction old enough to be sealed is, for most purposes, already outside the window a board would weigh.

The bigger risk in association leasing screens

The sealing statute is a minor change. What sits alongside it is not, and a North Dakota board running its own screening should know about it.

In 2026 HUD withdrew two guidance documents that governed how criminal records may be used in housing decisions: the Office of General Counsel's 2016 guidance on applying Fair Housing Act standards to the use of criminal records, and the corresponding FHEO implementation memorandum. Both are gone, and HUD's own notices say the withdrawn documents “should not be relied upon as authoritative.”

What did not change is the Fair Housing Act. HUD's withdrawal notice says so directly: “Any actions that do not comply with the text of the Fair Housing Act continue to be subject to enforcement by the Department,” and complainants may file a civil action “within two years after the occurrence or termination of the alleged discriminatory housing practice.”

A board that reads “the guidance is withdrawn” as “the screening rules loosened” has reached the wrong conclusion from the right fact. The interpretive framework disappeared; the statute and the two-year private right of action did not.

What a North Dakota board can do

Check that you have leasing authority at all. Screening prospective tenants is a power the declaration either grants or does not. North Dakota supplies none by statute. Where the board has no screening authority, the safest position is the one the documents actually give it.

Write the criteria down, apply them to everyone, and keep the file. An unwritten standard applied case by case is the shape of a fair housing complaint. A written one, applied uniformly, with the paperwork retained, is the defence.

Do not build the criteria around records that may not be there. Between the sealing statute and ordinary record gaps, an eviction search is now a weaker signal. Verifiable current facts — income, references, the term of the proposed lease — are more defensible and more useful.

Remember what the resale statute already requires you to disclose. Since August 1, 2025, § 47-10-02.3(2)(m) makes “Notice of any homeowners' association or condominium project restrictions related to the leasing of a unit” part of the package an association must furnish within ten days of a seller's request. A leasing policy that exists only in board practice is a policy you now have to write down anyway.

Our North Dakota short-term rentals page covers rental restrictions generally, and our estoppel and resale page covers the disclosure packet.

What to watch next

Watch for HUD to reissue criminal-records guidance — its withdrawal notice says guidance “determined to be necessary will be reissued” — and for the outcome of the separate proposal to remove HUD's disparate-impact regulations, whose comment period closes October 9, 2026. Both land on the same screening decision.