When a manager does need a licence

The line is not that association managers are exempt. It is that the licensing law is about transactions, and only transactional work crosses it.

A manager who lists, leases, or negotiates the lease of units for other people — for owners, as a rental agent — is doing something § 43-23-06.1(9) describes, and needs a licence for that activity. A manager who collects assessments and mows the common area does not.

There is also an owner-and-employee exemption at § 43-23-07(1)(a), covering a person or entity that is “a bona fide owner or lessor” performing those acts “with reference to property owned or leased by them,” and its “regular employees … when the acts are performed in the regular course of or as an incident to the management of the property and the investment therein.” An association leasing a unit it owns sits inside that.

What follows for a North Dakota board

No licence means no licence to lose, and that is the whole of the consequence. There is no complaint process, no disciplinary board, no fidelity-bond mandate imposed by a regulator, no continuing-education requirement, no trust-accounting rule, and nobody to call when the money is wrong. The association's contract is the entire framework.

Put the money controls in the contract, because no rule supplies them. Association funds in a separate account titled to the association, not commingled. Named signatories. A stated threshold above which the board approves an expenditure. Monthly statements delivered on a date. Bank access for at least one director independent of the manager.

Require a fidelity bond or crime policy, and name the association as the insured. Nothing in North Dakota law obliges a manager to carry one. Our North Dakota insurance requirements page covers what belongs in the association's own programme.

Write a records clause, and make it survive termination. With no regulator to order production, an association parting badly with a manager has only its contract. Specify what is the association's property — ledgers, minutes, contracts, plans, correspondence, the owner roster — and the number of days to return it. See our North Dakota records inspection page for what owners may then ask to see.

Check credentials that are voluntary but real. Industry designations exist and mean something about training. They are not licences, they carry no state discipline, and a manager holding one is still unregulated in North Dakota.

Remember the board does not delegate its duty. Whatever the manager does, the directors remain the fiduciaries. Where the association is incorporated under ch. 10-33, those duties come from the Nonprofit Corporation Act, not from any management standard. Our director qualifications page sets them out.

One loose end worth knowing about

The Real Estate Commission does administer a Subdivided Land registration programme — application, bond, consent to service of process, public offering statement, exemption letter, renewal. Whether it reaches condominium or planned-community offerings is not stated on the Commission's own page, and nothing found in this review resolves it. A developer registering a North Dakota project should ask the Commission directly rather than assume either way.

What to watch next

Nothing in the 2025-26 interim study list touches community association management, and the Commission adopted no rules in 2025 or 2026 — the most recent amendment anywhere in title 70 is dated January 1, 2023. The 70th Legislative Assembly convenes January 5, 2027, with prefiling closing December 18, 2026. A manager-licensing bill would have to originate with a legislator, without an interim committee behind it. The last time the legislature was asked to regulate associations at all, in 2025, it declined 46 to 0.