North Dakota Mobile Home Park Lease Law: What Operators Need to Include

What must a mobile home lot lease include in North Dakota?

North Dakota does not have a single statute that dictates the full content of a mobile-home-park lot lease. There is no state law requiring a signed written rental agreement or an itemized pre-move-in disclosure of every fee, charge, and rule. General lease formation, security deposits, and habitability are governed by the ordinary residential tenancy chapter, N.D.C.C. ch. 47-16, and mobile-home-park evictions run through ch. 47-32.

What North Dakota does have is a dedicated mobile-home-park tenant-protection statute, N.D.C.C. Section 47-10-28. It does not tell you how to draft the lease, but it imposes a set of mandatory limits and disclosures that override any conflicting lease language. In practice, those provisions are your real lease requirements: the summary you must hand the tenant, the terms you may not include, and the notice steps you must follow.

Treat Section 47-10-28 as a compliance floor layered on top of your written lease. Your lease can be more tenant-favorable, but it cannot charge more, prohibit less, or move faster than the statute allows. Because North Dakota amended and expanded these protections recently, confirm you are working from the current text before finalizing any lot-lease template.

Required written summary and disclosure under Section 47-10-28

The clearest disclosure duty is in subsection 9: a mobile home park owner shall provide a tenant with a summary outlining the tenant's lease and the rights and obligations of the tenant and mobile home park owner under state law. This is a plain-language summary of the deal and of the statutory rights on both sides, and it should accompany the lease itself rather than replace it.

Subsection 1 layers on operational disclosure duties for owners and purchasers of an existing park: provide the tenant a copy of the lease within ten business days of a request; give written notice of a change of park ownership within five business days; and furnish current information for the local office, a weekday telephone number, an emergency contact, and the responsible legal entity and property manager. These make sure the tenant always knows who the landlord is and how to reach them.

Because the state does not mandate a specific pre-occupancy fee schedule, the safe practice is to put every recurring and one-time charge in the written lease so nothing is disputed later. Anything not disclosed in writing is hard to enforce and invites a fight over whether it was ever part of the tenancy.

Prohibited lease terms and capped charges

Several parts of Section 47-10-28 function as prohibited-clause rules. Under subsection 2, an owner or purchaser of an existing park may not require a tenant who owns a mobile home located on the property to sell or transfer ownership of the home to the owner of the mobile home park, except as otherwise provided by law. A lease clause forcing the tenant to sell their home to the park is unenforceable.

Late fees are capped by subsection 11: no monthly late fee of more than ten percent of the monthly rent, and no daily late fee of more than five dollars per day. A lease that stacks larger or open-ended late charges violates the statute. On utilities, subsection 8 lets you pass through actual usage but bars charging more than the actual cost per unit amount paid by the landlord to the utility service provider, except for a reasonable administrative fee that may not exceed three dollars. You cannot mark up water, sewer, or other metered utilities beyond that three-dollar administrative fee.

These are not merely voidable clauses. Subsection 12 attaches a civil penalty for any violation of the section: not less than two thousand five hundred dollars but not exceeding the greater of ten thousand dollars or actual damages, plus actual attorney's fees and costs. A single non-compliant late-fee or utility clause, applied park-wide, can multiply into significant exposure.

Rule changes, notice, and the eviction disclaimer

Park rules are part of the tenancy, and Section 47-10-28 controls how you change them. Subsection 4 requires advance written notice of any modifications to park rules and regulations addressing sanitation and safety concerns at least thirty days before the modifications take effect, and subsection 5 requires at least thirty days' advance written notice before a rule requiring tongue-hitch removal or other dwelling modifications to meet housing or financing requirements. Under subsection 6, the existing rules stay in effect until the modified rules take effect.

Enforcement against a home that no longer complies is deliberately slowed. Subsection 3 requires that when park rules are modified, the owner give a tenant whose home fails to comply written notice of the failure to comply and provide the tenant three months to remedy the failure or vacate the premises before initiating an action for eviction. So a rule change involves both the 30-day advance notice to adopt the rule and a subsequent three-month cure window before eviction. Separately, subsection 7 restricts rent increases and requires 90 days' notice before a rent increase on a month-to-month agreement.

Finally, subsection 10 imposes a mandatory disclosure inside the eviction process itself: a notice of intent to evict must include clear, boldfaced language stating that the tenant does not have to vacate immediately and has the right to remain until a court issues an eviction order. Omitting that language, or misstating any of these notice periods in your lease, is itself a statutory violation.

Lease requirements at a glance in North Dakota

• No single lease-content statute
  North Dakota has no comprehensive law dictating lot-lease contents; general tenancy is N.D.C.C. ch. 47-16, and mobile-home-park protections live in N.D.C.C. Section 47-10-28.
• Written summary of rights required
  Subsection 9 requires the owner to give the tenant a summary of the lease and of both parties' rights and obligations under state law.
• Lease copy and ownership disclosures
  Subsection 1 requires a lease copy within ten business days of a request, notice of ownership change within five business days, and current contact and office information.
• No forced sale of the home
  Subsection 2 prohibits requiring a tenant who owns their mobile home to sell or transfer it to the park owner, except as otherwise provided by law.
• Late fees capped
  Subsection 11 caps late fees at ten percent of monthly rent plus no more than five dollars per day; larger or open-ended late charges are prohibited.
• Utility pass-through capped
  Subsection 8 limits utility charges to actual per-unit cost plus a reasonable administrative fee not exceeding three dollars; no markup beyond that.
• 30-day notice for rule changes
  Subsections 4 and 5 require at least 30 days' advance written notice for sanitation/safety rule changes and for dwelling-modification rules; existing rules stay in effect until then.
• Three-month cure before eviction
  Subsection 3 gives a non-conforming home owner three months to remedy or vacate after written notice before the park may start an eviction action.
• Boldfaced eviction disclaimer
  Subsection 10 requires an eviction notice to state in bold that the tenant need not leave immediately and may remain until a court issues an eviction order.
• Civil penalty for violations
  Subsection 12 imposes a civil penalty of at least two thousand five hundred dollars up to the greater of ten thousand dollars or actual damages, plus attorney's fees and costs.

Operator best practices in North Dakota

• Build a relationship with a North Dakota MHP attorney
  Section 47-10-28 was recently expanded and carries per-violation civil penalties plus fee-shifting; have a North Dakota mobile-home-park attorney review your lot-lease template and notice forms before rollout.
• Deliver the statutory summary with every lease
  Attach the subsection 9 plain-language summary of the lease and of both parties' statutory rights and obligations to every lot lease, and keep proof of delivery.
• Put every fee in writing
  Because the state does not mandate a set disclosure schedule, itemize all rent, utility, and late-fee terms in the written lease so nothing is charged that was not disclosed.
• Rebuild your late-fee and utility clauses to the caps
  Cap late fees at ten percent of monthly rent plus at most five dollars per day, and bill utilities at actual cost plus no more than a three-dollar administrative fee; audit any legacy leases that exceed these.
• Remove any forced-sale or transfer language
  Delete any clause requiring a home-owning tenant to sell or transfer their home to the park; such terms are void under subsection 2.
• Calendar the notice and cure periods
  Use a documented workflow for the 30-day rule-change notice, the 90-day rent-increase notice, and the three-month cure window so no eviction is started prematurely.
• Standardize the boldfaced eviction language
  Bake the subsection 10 boldfaced statement into your eviction notice template so it is never omitted.
• Keep contact and ownership disclosures current
  Maintain the local office, weekday phone, emergency contact, and property-manager information required by subsection 1, and send ownership-change notices within five business days.
• Verify you have the current statute text
  Confirm the version of Section 47-10-28 you are relying on is current, since the mobile-home-park protections have been amended; treat the statute as the floor and your lease as the detail layer.