North Dakota gave itself 67 things to study before 2027 and not one is an HOA
North Dakota gave itself 67 things to study before 2027 and not one is an HOA
2026-09-15 · North Dakota · Legislation · Reported — unconfirmed
North Dakota's legislature does its thinking between sessions. For the 2025-26 interim it approved 67 studies, appointed 39 committees and task forces, and assigned none of them a single question about homeowners associations, condominiums, common-interest communities or restrictive covenants.1
This matters more in North Dakota than it would elsewhere. The Legislative Assembly meets biennially, in odd-numbered years. There is no regular 2026 session. The interim is where the 2027 agenda is built.
What was approved
The Legislative Management's approved study directives for the interim, Legislative Council document 27.9003.02000, are introduced this way:
“The following table identifies the bills and resolutions prioritized by the Legislative Management for study during the 2025-26 interim under the authority of North Dakota Century Code Section 54-35-02 (20 required studies and 47 optional studies…)” — including the required appointment of five special committees or task forces and one optional study by a specially designated committee.
What is not in them
Searched across both the approved directives and the longer list that was under consideration but not approved, the following return zero hits: homeowner, condominium, common interest, restrictive covenant, covenant, planned community, townhouse, accessory dwelling, short-term rental, manufactured home, mobile home, declarant, property manager.
“Housing” appears exactly once in the approved directives, and it refers to inmate housing — Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation classification and placement. “Zoning” and “land use” appear only inside the advanced nuclear energy siting study.
There is no committee that would have taken it
The 2025-26 interim roster runs to 39 committees, task forces, subcommittees and advisory boards: Administrative Rules; Advanced Nuclear Energy; Agriculture and Water Management; Artificial Intelligence and Data Center; the Budget Section and its six divisions; a Child Custody Review Task Force; Education; Emergency Response Services; Employee Benefits Programs; Energy Development and Transmission; Government Finance with its regional jail and transportation subcommittees; Health Care; two higher education committees; Human Services; Information Technology; Judiciary; a Kratom Working Group; the Legacy and Budget Stabilization Fund Advisory Board; Legislative Audit and Fiscal Review; Legislative Management; Legislative Procedure and Arrangements; a Legislative Task Force on Government Efficiency; Protection and Victim Services; Rural Health Transformation; a Special Ad Hoc Policy committee; Special Education Funding; Tax Reform and Relief Advisory with its Property Tax Statement Subcommittee; Tribal and State Relations; and Water Topics Overview.
There is no housing committee, no property committee and no commerce committee.
The natural home for association law would be Judiciary. Its five studies are HB 1417 § 7 (court fines and fees), HB 1425 § 5 (pretrial services), HB 1549 § 6 (record sealing), HB 2015 § 9 (sentencing and parole) and HB 2334 § 2 (gaming organisation ownership). Its only bill draft, 27.0236.01000, is technical corrections.
One task force sounds relevant and is not: the Model Zoning Review Task Force reports to Agriculture and Water Management, and its charge is “the development of a new or updated model zoning ordinance related to animal feeding operations” under N.D.C.C. § 4.1-01-28.
What this tells a North Dakota board to expect in 2027
No association bill is being prepared through the ordinary channel. Interim committees produce bill drafts that arrive with a committee recommendation and a report behind them. Nothing in this interim will produce one on associations.
Anything that does appear will be a legislator's own bill. That is exactly the posture SB 2394 was in when it tried to create North Dakota's first general association governance chapter in 2025 — no interim study, no committee report — and it failed in the Senate 0 to 46.
The statutory position is stable into 2028 at least. With no interim work and no regular session until January 2027, the law your association operates under — a condominium act untouched since before 2025, no general association statute, one resale disclosure duty — is what you will be operating under for some time. Our North Dakota governing statute page covers what that consists of.
The pressure is coming from elsewhere. While the legislature studied nothing about associations, the reserve floor for condominium financing moved from 10 to 15 percent for loan applications dated on or after January 4, 2027; the appraisal award became effectively unreviewable in the federal circuit that covers North Dakota; and HUD withdrew the assistance-animal guidance every board had been using. None of that needed Bismarck.
The 2027 calendar, which is the actionable part
From the Legislative Council's tentative deadlines for the 70th Assembly:2
- November 25, 2026 — deadline for executive agencies and the Supreme Court to file bills
- December 1-3, 2026 — organisational session
- December 18, 2026 — deadline for legislators to prefile bills
- January 5, 2027 — session begins
- January 18, 2027 — House bill introduction deadline; January 25 for the Senate
- February 12, 2027 — deadline for constitutional amendments and study resolutions
Any North Dakota association bill for 2027 becomes visible between now and December 18, 2026. An association or a group of boards that wants something on that list — a fix to the safe-harbour cross-reference in § 47-10-02.3(4), say, which as enacted points at the definitions subsection — has until then to find a sponsor.
What to watch next
Watch the prefiled bill list as it fills through November and December. Watch also the one interim body doing homeowner-adjacent work: the Tax Reform and Relief Advisory Committee, which received bill draft 27.0244.01000 on the contents of a real estate tax statement in August 2026 and meets again September 29, 2026.
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