North Dakota taxes nothing on the deed. What it wants is a disclosure, not a payment

North Dakota Charges No Transfer Tax on the Deed

There is no transfer tax to plan around in North Dakota, so the useful content here is what the recording actually involves and how confident we are in the absence.

We checked it two ways. First from the statutes: N.D.C.C. chapter 11-18 governs county recorders, and it sets a flat per-document fee in § 11-18-05 and requires the consideration certification in § 11-18-02.2 without attaching any tax to either. § 11-18-05(1)(a) prices deeds, mortgages "and all other instruments not specifically provided for" by page count, with a step up past six pages and a small per-page addition past twenty-five.

Second from the agency side: we enumerated the Office of State Tax Commissioner's own inventory of tax types, individual, corporate, fiduciary, S corporation and partnership income, withholding, locally and centrally assessed property tax, sales and use, telecommunications, and the excise, special and other taxes covering alcohol, cigarette and tobacco, coal, motor fuel, oil and gas severance, the prepaid wireless 911 fee, motor vehicle excise, aircraft excise, music performing rights and the intermediate care provider assessment. No tax on the transfer of real property appears anywhere on that list.

The piece a landlord actually has to handle is the certification. § 11-18-02.2(1) puts the duty on the grantee or the grantee's agent, and gives two ways to discharge it: state the full consideration paid, or designate one of the exemptions in subsection 6 that the grantee believes applies. On a deed from you to an LLC you own there is typically no consideration to state, which is what makes the exemption designation the live question at the counter. The recorder's office for the county the land sits in is who to ask which designation fits, and the answer costs nothing to obtain.

Because there is no conveyance tax, there is also nothing in North Dakota that taxes a transfer of a controlling interest in an entity that owns real property. Selling the LLC rather than the building raises income tax and title questions, but not a state conveyance tax, because there is none to sidestep.

ndlegis.gov

Does the Transfer Reset Your Property Tax in North Dakota?

No. North Dakota does not cap a property’s assessed value at what you paid for it, assessments track market value on the assessor’s own cycle regardless of who holds title. A deed from you to an LLC you own does not change the assessment, because there was never an acquisition-date value locked in to lose. This is the part of the California story that gets copied onto pages about states where it simply does not apply.

North Dakota assessors revalue every parcel every year to a market standard, so a related-party deed has nothing to reset. N.D.C.C. § 57-02-27.1(1) directs that "[a]ll assessors and boards of equalization shall place the values of all items of taxable property at the true and full value of the property except as otherwise specifically provided by law," and § 57-02-01 defines that standard without any reference to a sale price: "'True and full value' means the value determined by considering the earning or productive capacity, if any, the market value, if any, and all other matters that affect the actual value of the property to be assessed." § 57-02-27(3) adds that the assessor "shall value each article or description by itself, and at such sum or price as the assessor believes the same to be fairly worth in money." There is no cap on assessment growth and no change-of-ownership uncapping event in the chapter.

What a landlord will actually feel is the primary residence credit, and only if the property was their home. N.D.C.C. § 57-02-08.9(1) allows a credit "against the property tax due on the taxpayer's parcel of primary residential property," and primary residential property means residential property certified as a primary residence under § 57-02-01.2. That certification requires the dwelling to be, as of the assessment date, "[o]wned by one or more individuals, either directly or through a beneficial interest in a qualifying trust," "[u]sed as a residence," and "[o]ccupied as a primary place of residence by an owner."

A limited liability company is not an individual and is not a qualifying trust, so a dwelling titled in an LLC cannot be certified and the credit ends. The separate homestead credit at § 57-02-08.1 is a different programme with its own gate. It is confined to a person "sixty-five years of age or older or permanently and totally disabled" claiming a reduction on "the person's homestead", and it is not a general owner-occupancy benefit that every North Dakota homeowner holds.

Separately, and this catches people converting a former home into a rental: the benefits that turn on owning and occupying the property as your residence, a homestead exemption, an owner-occupancy credit, a residential assessment rate, are not things an LLC occupies a home to earn. Where the property still carries one, the deed puts it at risk, and the bill goes up whether or not the assessment itself moves. Which benefit is at stake, and on what terms, is a question for the assessor in the county the property sits in.

Authority: N.D.C.C. §§ 57-02-27.1, 57-02-01; § 57-02-08.9 and § 57-02-01.2, ndlegis.gov

Moving a Property You Already Own Into the LLC in North Dakota

1. 1

   Ask the county recorder which certification the deed needs

   N.D.C.C. § 11-18-02.2(1) puts the duty on the grantee to certify on the face of the deed either the full consideration paid or one of the exemptions in subsection 6. On a transfer to an LLC you own there's usually no consideration, so which exemption designation applies is the practical question, and the recorder's office answers it for free before you present the instrument.

2. 2

   Get written lender consent before you record

   North Dakota takes nothing on the deed, which means the only real cost of this transfer is the one your loan documents create. Ask the servicer in writing about a conveyance to a limited liability company you own, and get the answer before the deed goes to the recorder rather than after.

3. 3

   Record the deed and pay the flat filing fee

   The charge under N.D.C.C. § 11-18-05(1)(a) is priced by page count and not by the value of the property, so a deed on a modest rental and a deed on an expensive one cost the same. There's no transfer tax return, no stamp and no statement of value beyond the certification itself.

4. 4

   Tell the assessor if the property was ever your home

   The primary residence credit under N.D.C.C. § 57-02-08.9 requires certification under § 57-02-01.2, which asks that the dwelling be owned by one or more individuals directly or through a qualifying trust and occupied as a primary residence by an owner. An LLC is neither, so the credit ends with the deed. Better to have that on the assessor's record than to discover it on a bill.

5. 5

   If you're using series, decide the record-keeping question yourself

   N.D.C.C. § 10-32.1-102(4) prints its three conditions joined by "; or," so the text does not clearly require separate books for every series the way Ohio's and Oklahoma's statutes do. We could not resolve the conjunction against the enrolled session law. Keeping separate records anyway costs you a bookkeeping habit; not keeping them stakes the shield on a reading of a semicolon.

6. 6

   Sort out the lodging permit before the first booking, if it's short-term

   The Tax Commissioner's guideline says the homeowner is responsible for acquiring a sales and use tax permit and for collecting and remitting the tax, and that a lodging marketplace takes that over only if the contract with it says so. Read your platform's North Dakota terms rather than assuming, then register with the Tax Commissioner and check the city's lodging tax separately.

One LLC Per Property, or One for the Portfolio?

North Dakota authorises series LLCs, so one filing can hold several properties in separate series.

North Dakota's series provision is worth reading carefully, because it is not the statute most sources assume it is. It sits at N.D.C.C. § 10-32.1-102, at the very end of the LLC chapter, and it is a single-section Delaware-style provision rather than the Uniform Protected Series Act. There is no "protected series" terminology in it, no registered series, no protected-series designation filed with the Secretary of State and no separate series filing. Subsection 1 lets an operating agreement establish a designated series of members, managers, transferable interests or assets with separate rights, powers or duties, or a separate business purpose.

Subsection 3 states the shield: the debts and liabilities of a particular series are "enforceable against the assets of the series only" and not against the company's other assets, any other series, or a member. Subsection 6 is the one that matters to a landlord: a series "may, in its own name, contract, hold title to assets including real, personal and intangible property, grant liens and security interests, and sue or be sued." Title to a rental can be held by the series itself.

One caution about the record-keeping condition set out below, and it is a real one. Subsection 4 lists three conditions for the shield: separately maintained records accounting for the series' assets; an operating agreement that specifically provides for the limitations on liabilities; and notice of the limitations in the articles of organization. In the chapter text published by the Legislative Branch those three are joined by "; or" after the second, which means that as printed they read as alternatives rather than as a cumulative list.

Ohio, Oklahoma and Delaware all write their versions conjunctively. North Dakota's does not read that way on the page. We could not resolve it: the official chapter PDF carries no source or history notes, and the mirrors that would show the enrolled session law were unavailable to us. So do not take from this page that North Dakota law requires separate books for each series. It may, and the safe course is obviously to keep them, but the printed text does not clearly say so and we are not going to pretend it does.

One more gap, honestly labelled. Subsection 14 authorises the Secretary of State to "adopt rules reasonable and necessary to address requirements related to the secretary of state for registration and continuing existence of the series limited liability companies established under this section." We did not check the administrative code for any fee adopted under that authority. The absence of a series filing fee on this page means not established, not confirmed free, call the Secretary of State's business division before you budget on it.

ndlegis.gov

What Creditors Can Reach, What the North Dakota Statute Says

The reason to hold a rental in an LLC is usually to keep a claim arising at the property from reaching everything else you own. The reverse question matters just as much and gets far less attention: if someone wins a judgment against you personally, can they reach the rental inside the LLC? That is what a state’s charging-order provision decides.

North Dakota's LLC act makes the charging order the exclusive remedy, and says so for single-member LLCs specifically.

North Dakota's legislature answered the question in the statute, which most legislatures did not. N.D.C.C. § 10-32.1-45 makes the charging order the exclusive remedy, rules out foreclosure by name and then says in terms that the section reaches one-owner companies.

Subsection 1 sets up the remedy with a procedural detail worth noting. The application requires "notice to the limited liability company of the application" before a court may enter a charging order against the transferable interest. Subsection 6 does the closing work: "This section provides the exclusive remedy by which a person seeking to enforce a judgment against a member or transferee may, in the capacity of judgment creditor, satisfy the judgment from the transferable interest of the judgment debtor. a. No other remedy, including foreclosure of the transferable interest or a court order for directions, accounts, and inquiries that the debtor member might have made, is available to the judgment creditor that is attempting to satisfy the judgment out of the judgment debtor's interest in the limited liability company. b. No creditor of a member or transferee has any right to obtain possession of or otherwise exercise legal or equitable remedies with respect to a property of the company."

Subsection 7 is one sentence and it is the one most states leave unwritten: "This section applies to single member limited liability companies and limited liability companies with more than one member." A rental LLC with a single owner is the default structure, and North Dakota's legislature put it inside the section rather than leaving it to be argued about. That is what the statute says. It is not a statement about how any particular company would fare, which depends on how the entity was capitalised, how it has been operated and what is owed. None of which a page can assess.

We are reporting what the section says, not what a court would do with your facts. Outcomes turn on how the LLC was capitalised, how it has been operated and what the creditor is owed, and none of that is something a page can assess. If the answer above is load-bearing for you, it is a question for a North Dakota attorney.

Authority: N.D.C.C. § 10-32.1-45, ndlegis.gov

Three Problems No State Transfer Rule Solves

These land the same way in North Dakota as everywhere else. One because it is federal law, two because they are contracts you signed. Which is exactly why they get left off state pages. They are also the three most likely to actually cost a landlord money, so they are here rather than buried.

The due-on-sale point is the one that generates the most bad advice. The Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, at 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), bars a lender from enforcing a due-on-sale clause on nine categories of transfer of residential property of fewer than five dwelling units. The one people cite is the eighth: a transfer into an inter vivos trust in which the borrower is and remains a beneficiary and which does not relate to a transfer of rights of occupancy in the property. Neither that paragraph nor any of the other eight names a transfer to a limited liability company. The protection quoted for an LLC transfer is written for trusts, and the occupancy qualifier is the limb that matters most to a landlord, because a rental is occupied by someone else.

One honest caveat on that list. The ninth category is open-ended. It reaches any other transfer described in regulations issued under the Act, at 12 C.F.R. § 591.5(b), so it is a list that can be extended by regulation rather than a closed set fixed by the statute. We have not read those regulations end to end, and say so rather than describing the statute as more settled than we checked.

In practice lenders often do not call a loan when payments keep arriving, and that is genuinely what usually happens, but “usually not enforced” is a different thing from “not permitted,” and only one of them is a plan. The way to find out is to ask your servicer for written consent before you record, not after.

Which deed you use is a decision, not a formality. A quitclaim deed transfers whatever interest you happen to have and warrants nothing, which is why it is the cheap default for a transfer between yourself and your own company, and why title professionals warn against it. It can leave a gap in the chain of title that surfaces years later when you sell or refinance, and because it warrants nothing it gives the LLC no recourse against you if a defect turns up. A warranty deed carries the covenants across. Which one is appropriate depends on how the property was acquired and what your title history looks like, and it is a question worth asking before the deed is drafted rather than after it is recorded.

Tell your title insurer before you record. An owner’s title policy insures the person named in it. Convey the property to an LLC and the insured owner and the record owner are no longer the same. Which is the fact pattern in which coverage gets argued about at the worst possible moment, when a claim is already live. Some insurers will endorse an existing policy across to the entity, sometimes for a modest fee; some will not, and a new policy means a new premium on the current value. Either way it is a phone call before the deed rather than a discovery afterwards, and it belongs in the same budget as the tax above.

On the fourth thing people ask about: beneficial ownership reporting. Under 31 C.F.R. § 1010.380, a “reporting company” is an entity formed outside the United States and registered to do business in a State, and paragraph (c)(2)(xxiv) separately exempts any entity created by filing with a Secretary of State. A rental LLC you form in North Dakota is therefore exempt and files no beneficial ownership report. Pages telling you to file within 30 days of formation are describing the rule as it stood before March 2025. The exception runs the other way: an LLC formed in another country and registered to do business in North Dakota does still report. More on what compliance actually requires →

Does North Dakota Make You Register the Rental?

Probably not, but this is the weakest answer on the page. We found no statewide rental registry in North Dakota and no state agency asserting one, but that is an absence of evidence rather than a statute saying there is no duty, and the state’s own publications were not reachable well enough to close it. Treat registration as a municipal question, and ask the city or county the property sits in rather than relying on this.

This is the weakest finding on the page and we would rather say so than dress it up. Our basis for saying North Dakota has no statewide rental registration is a single source: the Attorney General's tenant rights page, which is the state's consumer-facing statement of the landlord-tenant relationship. It describes the landlord's duties as to "keep the building up to code and any common areas safe," "provide garbage containers and garbage removal" and "install smoke detectors in each unit," and says a landlord may not "lock you out, cut off the utilities, or confiscate your belongings." It names no registration, license or filing with any state agency.

What we did not do: we did not read N.D.C.C. chapter 47-16, the leasing chapter, directly, and we could not reach a North Dakota housing agency page, the Attorney General's consumer-resources landlord-tenant path returned a 404 and the tenant rights path is the live one. An absence established from one consumer page is thin evidence. Treat it as a reason to ask your city rather than as a conclusion you can rely on, and ask the city anyway: rental registration in North Dakota, where it exists, is municipal.

attorneygeneral.nd.gov

If You Rent Short-Term in North Dakota

A short-term let is a different tax animal from a twelve-month tenancy, and the LLC has nothing to do with it. The lodging tax follows the stay, not the owner.

The platform answer above is the surprising one, and it is the opposite of the default in most states. The Tax Commissioner's lodging guideline leaves the duty on the homeowner: "The homeowner may contract with a lodging marketplace to facilitate the rental of their home. The homeowner is still responsible for the collection and remittance of tax unless their contract with the lodging marketplace indicates the lodging marketplace is responsible for remitting the tax." Read that as written, the shift happens by contract, if at all, and the default sits with you. If you have assumed your booking platform handles North Dakota tax because it handles it elsewhere, the thing to check is what your agreement with that platform actually says about North Dakota.

The rest of the guideline is unusually direct about short-term rentals of houses. It lists "[r]esidential short-term rentals" and "[v]acation home rentals" among lodging facilities, and states that "[r]enting a house, apartment, a portion of a home, or a room in a home for less than 30 days is a taxable lodging rental. The homeowner is responsible for acquiring a sales and use tax permit, collecting, and remitting the tax due on the short-term rental of their home." The permit is a separate step from the tax, and it is the step people skip.

On the long-stay line, the guideline requires unbroken occupancy by the same people: "Lodging accommodations occupied by the same individual or individuals for a period of 30 or more consecutive days are exempt from sales and lodging taxes. To qualify for the exemption, an individual must maintain continuous occupancy." A stay that resets between guests does not get there. And local tax stacks separately, "City lodging and restaurant taxes should be charged in addition to sales and use tax when applicable based on location."

Authority: N.D.C.C. ch. 57-39.2; Office of State Tax Commissioner, Sales Tax: Hotels, Motels, and Lodging Facilities Guideline, tax.nd.gov

Who to Ask in North Dakota

The county recorder for the county the land sits in is the office for the deed. That's where the § 11-18-02.2 certification is made and where the flat filing fee is paid, and it's the right place to ask which subsection 6 exemption designation fits a conveyance to an entity you own. The county or city assessor handles the assessment and the primary residence credit certification under N.D.C.C. § 57-02-01.2, so if the property was your home, that office is who to tell and who can confirm when the credit ends.

The Office of State Tax Commissioner administers sales and use tax on short-term lodging, issues the permit the lodging guideline requires and publishes the local city and county lodging tax rates. The Secretary of State's business division handles the LLC itself, and is the only source for whether any rule or fee has been adopted under the series rulemaking authority in § 10-32.1-102(14). For rental registration or licensing, the answer is your city, and given how thin the statewide negative is, that call is worth making rather than assuming.

Forming the LLC Itself

Nothing about the formation process changes because the LLC will hold rental property, the articles, the registered agent requirement and the annual filing are the same as for any other North Dakota LLC. The walkthrough lives in the formation guide rather than being repeated here.

How to start an LLC in North Dakota →

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