Updated September 5, 2026. Quick answer: North Dakota’s statute does not itself set who may impose a special assessment or require any ownership vote; it delegates that entirely to each project’s declaration and bylaws, which the unit owners or their administrative body adopt and record. The Century Code fixes no statewide board-vs-vote rule or approval threshold.
Key statute: N.D.C.C. ch. 47-04.1 (Condominium Ownership of Real Property), esp. §§ 47-04.1-07, 47-04.1-11, 47-04.1-12
How North Dakota lets an association approve it
N.D.C.C. § 47-04.1-07 provides: “The unit owners of each project shall provide for the administration of each project. The unit owners or administrative body established by the unit owners shall provide by bylaws for the maintenance of common elements, limited common elements where applicable, assessment of expenses, payment of losses, division of profits, disposition of hazard insurance proceeds, and similar matters.” It adds “No modification of or amendment to the bylaws is valid unless set forth in an amendment to the declaration and unless the amendment is duly recorded.” The statute names no vote threshold for approving assessments; that mechanism is left entirely to each project’s own recorded bylaws.
The notice you’re owed
The only notice language in the chapter is tied to perfecting the association’s lien, not to warning owners before a special assessment is levied. N.D.C.C. § 47-04.1-11 states: “The notice of assessment shall state the amount of such assessment and other charges and the name of the record owner thereof. Such notice shall be signed by an authorized representative of the administrative body or as otherwise provided in the declarations and bylaws.” The statute is silent on pre-assessment notice timing or meeting notice; those terms, if any, come only from the project’s own documents.
Paying it: plan, interest, and late fees
The statute creates no general right to pay a special assessment in installments and sets no statutory interest rate or late-fee cap. N.D.C.C. § 47-04.1-11 allows the lien to include “any other charges thereon, such as interest, costs, and penalties, as such may be provided for in the declarations and bylaws”; the rate and terms are left to the individual project’s documents. Separately, § 47-04.1-12 lets an owner “remove their unit… from the lien by payment of the fractional or proportional amounts attributable to each of the units affected,” which detaches one unit from a multi-unit lien rather than creating a statutory installment plan.
N.D.C.C. § 47-04.1-11 makes an unpaid assessment for common expenses “a debt of the owner” that becomes “a lien upon the condominium assessed when the administrative body causes such assessment to be recorded” with the county recorder, released by a recorded satisfaction notice once paid; § 47-04.1-12 governs removing an individual unit from a lien reaching multiple units. The chapter references no judicial foreclosure procedure specific to this lien.
Does North Dakota require a reserve study?
No. Chapter 47-04.1’s sections (definitions, declaration recording and contents, bylaws and administration, liens, tax and assessment levy on units, political signs, lender amendment approval, EV charging stations) contain no reserve-study, structural-integrity, or funding-assessment mandate of any kind.
Honest gaps
North Dakota has NOT adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act; checking the official Title 47 chapter table at ndlegis.gov/cencode/t47.html confirms no chapter 47-18.1 exists (47-18 is Homestead). The sole condominium/HOA-relevant chapter is the older, bare-bones 47-04.1, and there is no separate North Dakota HOA or planned-community statute at all; non-condo HOAs appear to be governed only by their own CC&Rs and general nonprofit corporation law, not independently verified in this session. The ndlegis.gov PDF of ch. 47-04.1 could not be text-extracted, so verbatim quotes were read from codes.findlaw.com, a codified mirror; the chapter’s existence, section list, and titles were independently confirmed against the official ndlegis.gov site.
Source note. Read from https://ndlegis.gov/cencode/t47.html; https://ndlegis.gov/cencode/t47c04-1.html; https://codes.findlaw.com/nd/title-47-property/nd-cent-code-sect-47-04-1-07/; https://codes.findlaw.com/nd/title-47-property/nd-cent-code-sect-47-04-1-11/; https://codes.findlaw.com/nd/title-47-property/nd-cent-code-sect-47-04-1-12/ on September 5, 2026.
Related: HOA rules in a 55+ community · how a special-assessment foreclosure actually works · lump sum vs. a payment plan.
General information drawn from each state’s own statutes as read at its official legislature or code-publisher site (or a verbatim codified mirror where noted), not legal advice. Special-assessment law is state law, and every association’s own declaration and bylaws add rules on top of the statutory floor described here. We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice.