North Dakota's first HOA governance act died without a single vote
North Dakota's first HOA governance act died without a single vote
2026-09-15 · North Dakota · Legislation · Did not pass
North Dakota came closer than it ever has to a general homeowners association statute in 2025, and then defeated it unanimously. Senate Bill 2394 would have created an entire new chapter of title 47 governing association bylaws and boards of directors. On February 24, 2025 it failed on second reading in the Senate, yeas 0, nays 46.1 Not one senator voted for it. The Senate committee had already reported it back “do not pass,” 5-0-0, six days earlier.
It was introduced by Senators Wanzek, Sickler and Dwyer, and titled “A BILL for an Act to create and enact a new chapter to title 47 of the North Dakota Century Code, relating to association community bylaws and board of directors.”2
What it would have required
The bill's definition of “association” reached almost every community form in the state: “a nonprofit corporation, nonprofit limited liability company, or other entity of owners created to own or operate portions of an association community, in which membership is based upon owning or possessing an interest in real property.”
Mandatory bylaw content would have included a board with described powers and a selection and removal process, member meetings, “a written inquiry process for members, under which the board shall issue a response to any inquiry within thirty days,” an annual budget, “a formal reserve fund,” financial disclosures and compiled financial statements under generally accepted accounting principles, a requirement that members carry replacement-cost insurance, and an amendment procedure.
Boards would have had to consist of at least three members and “meet at least quarterly,” with notice given in the manner provided by the Nonprofit Corporation Act at § 10-33-68. And every association would have had to “consult legal counsel at least once every seven years to ensure the association's compliance with this chapter and the bylaws and to review the bylaws.”
The reserve provision was the most detailed thing in it
North Dakota has no reserve funding mandate, and the bill would have written one from scratch:
“The board shall manage a formal reserve fund to provide for necessary capital expenditures and deferred maintenance costs for all real property elements under association ownership. The amount to be reserved must be calculated using a formula based upon the estimated remaining useful life and estimated replacement cost or deferred maintenance expense of a deferred item. The association shall adjust replacement reserve assessments annually to reflect adjustments needed for inflation, changes in estimates, or extension of the useful life of a reserve item caused by deferred maintenance.”
Named components: roof replacement, exterior and interior building painting and maintenance, pavement resurfacing, and “any other item that has a deferred maintenance expense or replacement cost that exceeds ten thousand dollars.” A two-signature rule would have applied to board expenditures over ten thousand dollars, and association insurance would have had to cover replacement cost for all association-held real property elements, “updated annually to adjust for inflation.”
Our North Dakota reserve studies page explains what governs in the absence of that chapter, which is to say the declaration and nothing else.
Read it against what did pass
The same session, in the same title of the Century Code, enacted SB 2229 by 44-2 and 87-4 — the resale disclosure statute now at § 47-10-02.3. Both bills were before the Senate in February 2025. One asks an association to hand over its budget, its reserve balances and whether it uses a reserve study when a unit is sold. The other would have told the association to have those things in the first place.
North Dakota chose disclosure without governance. An association must now report whether it uses a reserve study; nothing requires it to fund reserves, meet quarterly, answer a member's written question, or produce financial statements to any standard. The disclosure law makes the absence visible at the closing table. It does not fill it.
What it means for a North Dakota board right now
Your bylaws are still the whole of your governance law. Quarterly meetings, inquiry response times, reserve formulas, expenditure controls — every one of those is a matter of your own declaration and bylaws, plus whatever the Nonprofit Corporation Act at chapter 10-33 supplies to an incorporated association. Nothing in the 2025 session added a floor beneath them.
The seven-year legal review is worth adopting voluntarily. It was the least burdensome provision in the bill and the one most likely to catch a bylaw that has quietly stopped matching the declaration, or a practice that stopped matching either.
The disclosure statute now audits you annually, in effect. Every sale in the community produces a packet that states your reserve balance, your budget, your year-to-date financials and whether you use a reserve study. Buyers, their agents and their lenders read those. That is a governance pressure with no statute behind it.
What to watch next
A 0-46 vote is not a close call that comes back next session unchanged. If association governance returns to the North Dakota agenda it will look different, and the first place it would surface is the prefiling window for the 70th Legislative Assembly, which closes December 18, 2026 ahead of a January 5, 2027 start. Nothing in the 2025-26 interim study list is studying the question, so any 2027 bill would arrive without an interim committee behind it — the same posture SB 2394 had.
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