Does North Dakota have an implied warranty of habitability?

Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it. Two statutes carry the duty, and they are of different vintages. N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13.1, added in 1977 on the uniform-act model, states the residential landlord's maintenance obligations; the older § 47-16-12, which had stated a lessor's duty to repair a dwelling, was repealed by the same 1977 act.

How long does a landlord have to make repairs in North Dakota?

No statutory day count — the notice and repair rules below govern. No day count exists anywhere in the leasing chapter. Three standards do the work instead.

Can a tenant repair and deduct in North Dakota?

Yes — authorized by statute — Limit: There is no cap of any kind. The statute states no dollar limit, no fraction-of-rent limit, no per-period or aggregate limit, and no frequency limit — the object of the sentence is the expense of the repair, unqualified.

Can a tenant withhold rent for repair problems in North Dakota?

No — no statute or decision provides a path — The leasing chapter contains no rent-withholding provision, no escrow, no rent-into-court procedure and no habitability counterclaim provision. Nor does it bar withholding — unlike states that prohibit it in terms, North Dakota is simply silent.

Can a landlord retaliate against a tenant who complains about repairs in North Dakota?

No retaliation statute and no judicial doctrine.

Can a lease make the tenant responsible for repairs in North Dakota?

Repairs may be delegated only within uniform-act-style limits. North Dakota has no express anti-waiver clause. Waiver is policed instead through unconscionability: § 47-16-13.3 lets a court refuse to enforce, sever, or limit the application of an unconscionable provision in a rental agreement, and separately lets it do the same with a settlement in which a party waives or agrees to forgo a claim or right under the residential maintenance sections or the rental agreement, if the settlement was unconscionable when made; the parties must be given a reasonable opportunity to present evidence as to its setting, purpose and effect.

What does North Dakota law require a landlord to repair?

Verified August 30, 2026 All North Dakota topics →

North Dakota requires a residential landlord to comply with building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety, make all repairs necessary to put and keep the premises fit and habitable, keep common areas clean and safe, maintain the supplied electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating and air-conditioning facilities and appliances in good and safe working order, provide and arrange for waste removal, and supply running water, reasonable hot water and reasonable heat.

Cited to N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13.1 (landlord obligations; maintenance of premises) subsections 1 to 6 and 11 more cited sources · Verified August 30, 2026

The remedy is unusually direct and unusually unrestricted: after notice of a defect the landlord ought to repair, and a reasonable time in which the landlord neglects to do it, the tenant may repair the premises and deduct the expense from the rent, recover the cost in any other lawful manner, or vacate and stop owing rent. The statute sets no dollar cap, no fraction-of-rent cap, no frequency limit, no writing requirement, no receipts, no contractor requirement and no day count of any kind. What North Dakota does not have is a rent-withholding or escrow procedure — and the eviction statute bars counterclaims except as a setoff, so a tenant who simply stops paying is exposed on a three-day nonpayment ground with little room to raise the condition. North Dakota also has no landlord-tenant retaliation statute; the leasing and eviction chapters contain no general protection for a tenant who complains about repairs.

North Dakota habitability & repairs at a glance

Where the duty comes from	Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it
Duty source details	Two statutes carry the duty, and they are of different vintages. N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13.1, added in 1977 on the uniform-act model, states the residential landlord's maintenance obligations; the older § 47-16-12, which had stated a lessor's duty to repair a dwelling, was repealed by the same 1977 act. Alongside it sits § 47-16-13, a survivor of North Dakota's original civil code, which gives a tenant the repair-and-deduct, cost-recovery and vacate elections. No North Dakota decision recognizing a common-law implied warranty of habitability in a lease was located; the implied-warranty case law the state does have concerns the sale of a house by a builder-vendor, which is a different doctrine.
Who is covered	Statewide — no coverage split
Where the repair standards live	The statute itself lists specific standards
What must be kept in repair	Section 47-16-13.1(1) lists six duties for a landlord of a residential dwelling unit: comply with the requirements of applicable building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety; make all repairs and do whatever is necessary to put and keep the premises in a fit and habitable condition; keep all common areas in a clean and safe condition; maintain in good and safe working order and condition all electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and other facilities and appliances, including elevators, supplied or required to be supplied by the landlord; provide and maintain appropriate receptacles and conveniences for the removal of ashes, garbage, rubbish and other waste incidental to occupancy, and arrange for their removal; and supply running water and reasonable amounts of hot water at all times and reasonable heat, subject to three exceptions. Where the code duty is greater than any of the others, the landlord's duty is measured by the code. The list is the whole of it, and what it leaves out matters as much as what it contains: North Dakota states no smoke-alarm duty, no carbon monoxide duty, no lock or security duty, no weatherproofing duty and no vermin or pest duty. Air conditioning appears only as equipment the landlord supplied or was required to supply, never as something the landlord must provide.
Heat standard type	A duty to supply heat or maintain temperatures while the unit is occupied
Heat standard details	North Dakota states a heat duty but no temperature and no seasonal window: the landlord must supply running water and reasonable amounts of hot water at all times and reasonable heat. Three exceptions are written into the same subdivision — where the building that includes the dwelling unit is not required by law to be equipped for that purpose; where the unit is so constructed that heat or hot water is generated by an installation within the tenant's exclusive control and supplied by a direct public utility connection; and, in a provision original to North Dakota, where the water or heat is unavailable due to supply failure by a public utility. That third exception is unusual and is worth reading carefully, because it moves an outage caused upstream of the building outside the landlord's duty entirely.
Headline repair day count	No statutory day count — the notice and repair rules below govern
Notice and repair-window rules	No day count exists anywhere in the leasing chapter. Three standards do the work instead. For the repair-and-deduct and vacate elections, the trigger is notice from the tenant of dilapidations which the landlord ought to repair, followed by the landlord neglecting to repair within a reasonable time — the statute does not require that notice be in writing, states no waiting period, and specifies no form. For the residential maintenance duties, a reasonable time is allowed to remedy noncompliance, and the allowance is written to cover the fit-and-habitable, common-areas, facilities, waste-removal and water-and-heat duties only; the building-and-housing-code duty is left out of it. For termination before the end of the term, the standard is that the landlord did not fulfill the obligations within a reasonable time after request — a request, not a notice, and again with no writing requirement. Any specific number attributed to North Dakota habitability notice is not in the statute. Three days does appear in North Dakota landlord-tenant law, but in the eviction chapter and running the other way: an eviction may be brought where the tenant fails to pay rent for three days after it is due, on three days' written notice of intention to evict.
Repair and deduct	Yes — authorized by statute — Limit: There is no cap of any kind. The statute states no dollar limit, no fraction-of-rent limit, no per-period or aggregate limit, and no frequency limit — the object of the sentence is the expense of the repair, unqualified. North Dakota's repair-and-deduct is among the least restricted in the country, which is the opposite of what most summaries say about it. — The remedy is one short section with two conditions and three elections. If within a reasonable time after notice from the tenant of dilapidations which the landlord ought to repair the landlord neglects to do so, the tenant may repair the premises and deduct the expense of the repair from the rent, recover it in any other lawful manner from the landlord, or vacate the premises and be discharged from further payment of rent or performance of other conditions. Nothing else is required: notice need not be in writing, no waiting period or day count is stated, no receipts or documentation are called for, no licensed or independent contractor is required — the statute says the tenant may repair — there is no structural or major-systems exclusion, and there is no requirement that the tenant be current on rent. Two cautions belong with the figure. The section speaks of lessee, lessor and premises and is not limited to residential dwelling units the way the 1977 residential maintenance section is. And it is an old general-leasing provision on which no North Dakota decision was located, so how it works alongside the later and more specific residential sections has not been settled by a court.
Rent withholding or escrow	No — no statute or decision provides a path — The leasing chapter contains no rent-withholding provision, no escrow, no rent-into-court procedure and no habitability counterclaim provision. Nor does it bar withholding — unlike states that prohibit it in terms, North Dakota is simply silent. The silence is less comfortable than it sounds, because the eviction chapter closes the door from the other side. An eviction action may not be joined with any other action except for rents and profits accrued or for damages arising from the defendant's possession, and no counterclaim can be interposed in such an action except as a setoff to a demand made for damages or for rents and profits. If the court finds for the landlord it shall enter judgment for immediate restitution of the premises, and a hardship showing buys a stay of the special execution of not more than five days. Add the three-day nonpayment trigger and the three-day notice of intention to evict, and a tenant who stops paying over conditions is exposed quickly and has a constrained forum in which to raise them. The repair-and-deduct election is the safer route precisely because it operates as an offset before rent goes unpaid.
Termination over habitability failures	Yes — a statute states the right — Two independent routes exist. Under § 47-16-13, a tenant who has given notice of dilapidations the landlord ought to repair and waited a reasonable time may simply vacate the premises, and is then discharged from further payment of rent or performance of other conditions — no notice period, no writing requirement and no court step is stated. Under § 47-16-17, the tenant may terminate the lease before the end of the agreed term when the landlord does not fulfill the landlord's obligations, if any, within a reasonable time after request, as to placing and securing the tenant in quiet possession, putting the property into good condition, or repairing it. The same section also allows termination where the greater part of the property leased — or the part that was, and that the landlord had reason to believe was, the material inducement to the tenant — perishes from any cause other than the tenant's ordinary negligence. Separately, a tenant evicted according to law remains liable for rent for the remainder of the term, though the landlord must mitigate.
Essential-service remedies	No distinct treatment beyond the general duty — North Dakota gives essential-service failures no separate treatment. Running water, hot water and reasonable heat sit inside the general duty list, subject to that list's own exceptions including the public-utility supply failure, and their failure runs on the same reasonable-time standard and the same three elections as any other dilapidation. There is no accelerated clock, no right to buy substitute services as such — beyond the general power to repair and deduct — no substitute-housing provision, and no diminution-of-rental-value action of the kind uniform-act states supply. A tenant seeking the difference in value would have to plead it as ordinary damages.
Retaliation protection	No retaliation statute and no judicial doctrine
Damages, penalties, and defenses	The residential maintenance sections carry their own remedy pair. Any party aggrieved under §§ 47-16-13.1 through 47-16-13.6 may recover appropriate damages, with an express duty on the aggrieved party to mitigate; and any right or action those sections provide is enforceable by action, with the court permitted to award reasonable attorney's fees to the prevailing party. Note the shape of that fee provision — it is discretionary and it runs to whichever side prevails, unlike the tenant-only fee clauses common elsewhere, so litigation risk in North Dakota runs both ways. The statutes also run in the landlord's favor in places: if the rental agreement is terminated the landlord has a claim for possession and for rent and a separate claim for actual damages for breach, and a tenant evicted according to law is liable for rent for the remainder of the term subject to the landlord's duty to mitigate. The tenant's own duties are enumerated — comply with code obligations primarily imposed on tenants that materially affect health and safety, keep the occupied part clean and safe as conditions permit, remove waste periodically, keep plumbing fixtures clean as their condition permits, use facilities and appliances reasonably, avoid deliberate or negligent destruction or defacement and not knowingly permit it, and not disturb neighbours' peaceful enjoyment — and a breach of them is the landlord's usual answer to a conditions claim. There is no access-refusal defense in the residential maintenance sections; landlord entry is governed by a separate provision.
Can the duty be waived or shifted	Repairs may be delegated only within uniform-act-style limits
Waiver and delegation rules	North Dakota has no express anti-waiver clause. Waiver is policed instead through unconscionability: § 47-16-13.3 lets a court refuse to enforce, sever, or limit the application of an unconscionable provision in a rental agreement, and separately lets it do the same with a settlement in which a party waives or agrees to forgo a claim or right under the residential maintenance sections or the rental agreement, if the settlement was unconscionable when made; the parties must be given a reasonable opportunity to present evidence as to its setting, purpose and effect. Delegation follows the familiar uniform-act pattern. For a single-family residence the parties may agree in writing that the tenant will perform the landlord's waste-removal and water-and-heat duties, plus specified repairs, maintenance tasks, alterations and remodeling, but only if the transaction is entered into in good faith. For any other dwelling unit the parties may agree that the tenant will perform specified repairs, maintenance tasks, alterations or remodeling only if the agreement is in good faith, is set out in a separate writing signed by the parties and supported by adequate consideration, does not cover work necessary to cure noncompliance with the waste-removal duty, and does not diminish the landlord's obligations to other tenants. That last carve-out is worth reading exactly as written: it protects the waste-removal duty, not the building-and-housing-code duty that the uniform act's own version protects. The landlord may not treat performance of a single-family delegation agreement as a condition of any obligation under the rental agreement.
Leading court decisions	This page rests on the statutes cited below
Local rules	Local building and housing codes materially affecting health and safety are the first of the landlord's statutory duties, and where that duty is greater than any of the others it measures the landlord's obligation — so a city code can raise the standard above the general fit-and-habitable line. One detail is easy to miss: the statute's allowance of a reasonable time to remedy noncompliance is written to cover the other five duties and leaves the code duty out of it. The leasing chapter says nothing about local regulation of habitability generally; its one preemption provision is about rent control, barring a political subdivision from controlling the rent charged for private residential or commercial property.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, North Dakota Habitability & Repair Laws (verified August 30, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/habitability/north-dakota/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Notes and caveats

North Dakota does have repair-and-deduct, and it is uncapped — Summaries of North Dakota tenant law often say the state provides no repair-and-deduct remedy, or attach a cap to it. Both are wrong. Section 47-16-13 gives it in plain terms, and the section is short enough that the absence of limits can be read off the words themselves: no dollar figure appears in it, the object of the deduction is the expense of the repair without qualification, and there is no frequency limit, writing requirement, receipt requirement, contractor requirement, structural exclusion or rent-current condition. The only two conditions are notice of dilapidations the landlord ought to repair and the landlord's neglect to repair within a reasonable time.
No number belongs in North Dakota's notice rules — There is no fourteen-day, thirty-day or any other habitability clock in the leasing chapter. The standards are notice, a reasonable time, and — for termination before the end of the term — a request followed by a reasonable time. Any specific figure attributed to North Dakota habitability notice comes from another state's statute. Three days is a real North Dakota figure, but it belongs to the eviction chapter and runs against the tenant: nonpayment becomes a ground three days after rent is due, and the notice of intention to evict is three days.
There is no retaliation statute — North Dakota is one of the few states with no landlord-tenant anti-retaliation provision at all: neither the leasing chapter nor the eviction chapter protects a tenant who complains about conditions, and no North Dakota judicial doctrine supplying such a defense was located. One narrow provision does use the word: § 47-16-17.1, the domestic-abuse lease-termination section, bars a person from denying a dwelling to, or otherwise retaliating in the rental of a dwelling against, someone who exercised the early-termination right that section creates, with statutory damages of one thousand dollars. It is tied to that termination right and does nothing for a repair complaint.
Withholding is not barred — but the eviction rules make it risky — It is true that no North Dakota statute prohibits a tenant from withholding rent. It does not follow that withholding is safe. Section 47-32-04 provides that no counterclaim can be interposed in an eviction action except as a setoff to a demand made for damages or for rents and profits, and directs judgment for immediate restitution where the court finds for the landlord, with a hardship stay capped at five days. A tenant who stops paying is therefore in a fast proceeding with a narrow opening in which to argue the condition. Deducting the cost of a repair already made is a different posture, because it is an offset rather than a default.
Two repair sections, different ages and different reach — The repair-and-deduct section and the residential maintenance section are not two halves of one scheme. Section 47-16-13 descends from the state's original civil code and speaks of lessee, lessor and premises, without limiting itself to residential dwelling units; § 47-16-13.1 was added in 1977 on the uniform-act model and applies expressly to a landlord of a residential dwelling unit. No North Dakota decision construing the older section was located, so their interaction is unsettled. One more trap sits nearby: § 47-16-12, which once stated the lessor's obligation to repair a dwelling, was repealed in 1977 and any source citing it for a landlord duty is citing a dead section.
The warranty cases are about buying a house — Searching for a North Dakota implied warranty of habitability turns up decisions about the sale of a home by a builder-vendor rather than about leases — Powers v. Martinson, 313 N.W.2d 720 (N.D. 1981), is the one this record checked, and its warranty discussion runs through cases on whether the warranty covers new versus used homes. It is a sale doctrine. A North Dakota tenant's rights come from the statute.
What the duty list leaves out — The landlord's obligations are the six subdivisions and nothing more. North Dakota states no smoke-alarm duty, no carbon monoxide alarm duty, no lock or security duty, no weatherproofing duty and no vermin or pest-control duty in this chapter, and air conditioning appears only as equipment the landlord supplied or was required to supply. Those absences are real and should not be filled in from a neighbouring state's list. Note too the state's own addition on the other side: the heat and water duty does not apply where the water or heat is unavailable because of a supply failure by a public utility.

Common questions: North Dakota habitability & repairs

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Does North Dakota have an implied warranty of habitability?: Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it. Two statutes carry the duty, and they are of different vintages. N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13.1, added in 1977 on the uniform-act model, states the residential landlord's maintenance obligations; the older § 47-16-12, which had stated a lessor's duty to repair a dwelling, was repealed by the same 1977 act.
How long does a landlord have to make repairs in North Dakota?: No statutory day count — the notice and repair rules below govern. No day count exists anywhere in the leasing chapter. Three standards do the work instead.
Can a tenant repair and deduct in North Dakota?: Yes — authorized by statute — Limit: There is no cap of any kind. The statute states no dollar limit, no fraction-of-rent limit, no per-period or aggregate limit, and no frequency limit — the object of the sentence is the expense of the repair, unqualified.
Can a tenant withhold rent for repair problems in North Dakota?: No — no statute or decision provides a path — The leasing chapter contains no rent-withholding provision, no escrow, no rent-into-court procedure and no habitability counterclaim provision. Nor does it bar withholding — unlike states that prohibit it in terms, North Dakota is simply silent.
Can a landlord retaliate against a tenant who complains about repairs in North Dakota?: No retaliation statute and no judicial doctrine.
Can a lease make the tenant responsible for repairs in North Dakota?: Repairs may be delegated only within uniform-act-style limits. North Dakota has no express anti-waiver clause. Waiver is policed instead through unconscionability: § 47-16-13.3 lets a court refuse to enforce, sever, or limit the application of an unconscionable provision in a rental agreement, and separately lets it do the same with a settlement in which a party waives or agrees to forgo a claim or right under the residential maintenance sections or the rental agreement, if the settlement was unconscionable when made; the parties must be given a reasonable opportunity to present evidence as to its setting, purpose and effect.

Citations

N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13.1 (landlord obligations; maintenance of premises) · subsections 1 to 6 (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13 (when lessee may repair or vacate premises) · subsections 1 to 3 (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13.2 (tenant obligations) (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13.3 (unconscionability) (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13.5 (damages; duty to mitigate) (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13.6 (enforcement by action; attorney's fees to the prevailing party) (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. § 47-16-13.7 (liability for rent after eviction; mitigation) (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. § 47-16-17 (when lessee may terminate lease) · subsections 1 and 2 (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. ch. 47-16 (Leasing of Real Property, complete chapter) (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. § 47-32-04 (eviction actions not joinable; counterclaims only as a setoff) (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. § 47-32-01 (when eviction is maintainable, including the three-day nonpayment ground) · subsection 4 (verified 2026) Official source
N.D.C.C. § 47-32-02 (appearance; three days' notice of intention to evict) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the complete text of N.D.C.C. ch. 47-16 (Leasing of Real Property, all 64 sections) and ch. 47-32 (Eviction, all six sections) in the official Century Code chapter files published by the Legislative Assembly. Because those files carry no per-section history or source lines, currency was established from the Legislative Assembly's own session record instead: the session navigation for the 69th Legislative Assembly, the Governor's convening orders for the January 2026 and September 2026 special sessions, and the complete bill lists published for both — nineteen bills and five bills respectively, each list read in full.