Site control and due diligence — North Dakota

"Demonstrated site control" -- no named instruments, no minimum term

Section 5(B) of the 2027 plan is the entire site-control threshold requirement, in full: the Applicant must "provide evidence that the Applicant, or Applicant's affiliate, currently has, and is contractually able to maintain throughout the entirety of the application period, site control for the entirety of the project's anticipated scope," and "an as-developed site plan must accompany the application." That is the whole rule. There is no enumerated list of acceptable instruments the way Texas names exactly three (a recorded deed or 45-year lease, a lease-option with a 45-year minimum term, or a contract or option to purchase), and no stated minimum option or lease length at all.

That absence cuts two ways. It gives an applicant more flexibility to structure site control around whatever a particular North Dakota seller or tribal land arrangement actually requires, since nothing in the plan forecloses a given instrument type. But it also means there is no bright line to check a draft option or contract against before submission -- "contractually able to maintain" site control "throughout the entirety of the application period" is a standard the Agency will apply at its own discretion, not a checklist an applicant can tick off independently. The plan's own pattern elsewhere -- Section 7(L)'s advice to "begin a dialog with the Agency well ahead of application submission" before seeking Preserve Existing Affordability points -- suggests the same approach is prudent here: confirming a specific site-control instrument will satisfy Section 5(B) before relying on it is a conversation with NDHFA staff, not something this plan's text alone resolves.

No Phase I, no title commitment, no appraisal -- a verified absence, not an oversight to assume around

This is a genuine, checked finding, not an inference from silence: neither the 2027 Allocation Plan nor NDHFA's companion LIHTC Compliance Manual contains the phrase "Phase I," "title commitment," "title insurance," or "appraisal" anywhere in either document's text. Compare that to Texas, where a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment is a named, universal requirement under 10 TAC Section 11.205(1) with no funder exception, or California, where title and environmental clearances are threshold items with their own regulatory citations. North Dakota's own threshold list simply does not reach either topic as an NDHFA-imposed application requirement.

The closest the plan comes is buried inside the Capital Needs Assessment requirement in Section 5(K), and it only applies to "application packages involving rehabilitation, adaptive reuse, or acquisition of an existing building which will, in-whole or in-part, remain an asset of the project" -- new construction on vacant land has no equivalent requirement at all. Where the CNA does apply, it "must consider the presence of environmental hazards such as asbestos, lead paint and mold on the site," which functions as a narrow, building-focused environmental review rather than the site-wide Phase I ASTM-standard assessment other states mandate outright.

Environmental review in the federal NEPA sense does appear in the plan -- but only as a cross-cutting compliance obligation tied to a specific funding source, not a universal LIHTC threshold item. Section 5(E)'s Development Team requirements state that an application "including the use of HOME and/or HTF funding" should demonstrate the team's "experience with, or working knowledge of, all federal cross-cutting requirements including, but not limited to, Section 3, Women-owned and Minority-owned Business Enterprise contracting practices, Davis-Bacon and related acts, environmental review, Section 504 and ADA requirements, lead-based paint mitigation, Uniform Relocation Act, and property condition requirements." A pure 9% or 4% LIHTC deal with no HOME or National Housing Trust Fund dollars layered in triggers none of that -- environmental review under this plan is a HOME/HTF-driven obligation, not a standing LIHTC one.

None of this means a North Dakota deal can actually skip a Phase I, a title commitment, or an appraisal in practice. Construction lenders, tax credit investors, and syndicators routinely require all three regardless of what any state QAP demands, and USDA Rural Development debt -- common on rural North Dakota deals -- carries its own environmental and appraisal requirements independent of NDHFA. The distinction that matters for diligence budgeting is narrower but real: these are private-market and federal-funder requirements layered on top of the North Dakota LIHTC program, not NDHFA application thresholds in their own right, which means their timing and scope are set by whichever lender or investor is in the capital stack, not by this plan.

The flood-hazard gate is generic -- nothing in NDHFA's own materials singles out the Red River Valley

Section 3(B)(4)'s unsuitable-site list flags sites that "are in a flood hazard area or wetlands," full stop -- the same four-word standard applies whether the site sits in Fargo's Red River Valley, which carries a well-documented, decades-long flood history and hosts a major ongoing federal-state diversion project, or in a part of the state with no comparable flood record at all. Nothing in either the 2027 plan, the 2026 plan, or the Compliance Manual names the Red River, Cass County, Fargo, or any other specific geography in connection with flood risk. This is worth stating plainly rather than filling the gap with outside knowledge: NDHFA's own published materials treat flood-hazard exposure as a single statewide, undifferentiated exclusion criterion, discretionary and curable like the rest of Section 3(B)'s list, and a developer screening a Red River Valley site needs to pull FEMA flood maps and consult the local floodplain administrator independently -- this plan does not do that analysis for them, region-specific or otherwise.

One adjacent, verified data point worth knowing: Section 12 of the plan gives NDHFA broad emergency flexibility that could matter to a flood-affected project after an award, stating that "in the event of a major natural disaster, the Agency may disregard any section of the Plan, including point scoring and evaluation criteria, that interferes with an appropriate response." That is disaster-response flexibility for the Agency's own administration of the program, not a site-screening standard -- it says nothing about how a specific parcel's flood exposure is evaluated at application.

Infrastructure, broadband, and the utility letters

Section 5(D) requires evidence that "appropriate infrastructure (i.e. roads, curb, gutter, etc.) and utilities (i.e. water, sewer, electricity, natural gas, Broadband Infrastructure, etc.) are in-place, or are able to be put in-place, and have adequate capacity to absorb the proposed project," typically satisfied with letters from the relevant utility company or municipal office. Where required infrastructure is not currently available on or adjacent to the site as of the Application Closing Date, the applicant needs a letter from the local jurisdiction confirming "that no adequate infill opportunities exist within the community" -- a real, easy-to-miss diligence item for a greenfield site outside city limits.

The broadband piece is genuinely North Dakota-specific and easy to overlook: the plan requires that "Projects must install Broadband Infrastructure to all units and common area community rooms," verified by "a letter from the project architect confirming the inclusion of Broadband Infrastructure is within the project's plans," defined against the FCC's broadband speed standard in effect at the time pre-construction estimates are generated (currently 25 Mbps download / 3 Mbps upload). That is an architect deliverable that needs to be scoped into the design team's diligence work early, not a document that can be assembled after the fact.

A separate, rural-specific diligence item: any application proposing new or existing USDA debt must include "written confirmation from the regional USDA officer which verifies any progress made on an initial transfer request and/or the approval of any proposed debt additional to the existing USDA debt" (Section 5(L)). Given how much of North Dakota's rural multifamily stock already carries USDA Rural Development financing, this is a real diligence-timeline item on any acquisition or refinance deal outside the four largest cities, and it runs on USDA's own regional-office timeline, not NDHFA's.

The market-study clock, self-scoring, and the 2-point cure for a missing item

Section 5(J)'s market study has to be "completed within six (6) months of Application Close Date," done "at the Developer's, or affiliate of the Developer's, expense by an acceptable disinterested party," and built to NCHMA's current model content standards unless NDHFA authorizes a deviation. Section 5(M) separately requires a self-scoring narrative laying out exactly how many points the applicant is claiming in each category and why -- effectively requiring the applicant to pre-adjudicate its own score before the Agency does.

The plan is explicit that a gap in the threshold package is not automatically fatal: "Applications missing any Threshold Requirement(s) after an Application Cycle's Closing Date will have a reasonable time to submit the missing Threshold Requirement(s); however, a 2-point scoring deduction will be assessed for each missing Threshold Requirement." In a competitive round with a 55-point minimum and a single $3.7 million pool, a 2-point deduction is rarely fatal on its own -- but stacking two or three missing items (an incomplete CNA, a stale market study, an unresolved site-control gap) can plausibly push a borderline application below the cutoff, which makes the threshold list something to complete in full before the Closing Date rather than treat as curable on the Agency's grace period by default.

Where this leaves diligence budgeting

The honest summary: North Dakota's own program asks for less, in writing, than most of the states in this library, and what it does ask for is phrased with the kind of "Agency discretion" language that shifts real risk onto the applicant's own judgment about what will satisfy an NDHFA reviewer. That does not shrink the actual diligence workload -- lenders, investors, and (on rural deals) USDA still require the Phase I, the title work, and the appraisal this plan doesn't -- but it does mean the North Dakota LIHTC application itself is not the forcing function for that work the way it is in Texas or California. EZFeasi has no North Dakota diligence-tracking, hazard, or flood-map data loaded today.