North Dakota puts the whole private sale on one certificate and then does something no neighbouring state does: it makes you take the plates off before the car leaves. The registration dies at that moment by statute, the buyer drives away on nothing but a dated bill of sale for five days, and the same plate goes back onto whatever you buy next - credit or no credit, refund never. Titles are issued centrally in Bismarck, the fee is five dollars, and not one signature in an ordinary sale goes near a notary. Here is the whole thing, taken from the North Dakota Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Division's own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a North Dakota titleThe department publishes a colour-coded sample of its own certificate. This walks the seller's half of it, box by box, using NDDOT's own colours.Open the walkthrough →Open the Motor Vehicle Registration Manual at the odometer page and paragraph B tells you the federal disclosure covers vehicles "if they are less than 10 years old". That sentence is a decade out of date, and the table printed directly beneath it on the same page contradicts it: for every year from 2020 to 2030 the disclosure runs on model year 2011 and newer, then 2012 and newer in 2031, and so on to 2016 and newer in 2035. The certificate of title, the department's colour-coded sample and the title application all carry the current rule. Only the manual paragraph carries the old one.
So the working question is not how old the car is - it is what model year is printed on it. Model year 2011 or newer means the odometer block on the certificate must be completed by you and countersigned by the buyer certifying the mileage you stated. Model year 2010 or older means the block stays empty, and no separate mileage sheet is wanted either. The block on the certificate says it in capitals: COMPLETE IF MODEL YEAR IS 2011 OR NEWER.
Model year 2011 or newer: Fill in the reading in whole miles and mark the certification. The new owner then signs and prints their name beneath it, certifying the mileage stated - the manual makes that countersignature part of the transfer, not an optional courtesy.
Model year 2010 or older: Nothing to complete. Leave the block alone rather than writing the word exempt into it; a mark that does not belong on the certificate is an alteration, and the alteration rule here is unforgiving.
A truck rated over 16,000 pounds gross vehicle weight: Outside the disclosure whatever its year, by the same federal rule the manual quotes. A metric cluster is not exempt - the manual converts it for you, kilometres multiplied by 0.6214, and requires the original certification from whoever performed the conversion.
North Dakota Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Division, odometer disclosure
You, the seller: Part 1 of the certificate is yours, and the manual's instruction is short: Part 1 must be signed by the seller or transferors, and a title in a company's name must be countersigned. You also write the buyer in - their legal name and address typed or printed legibly, because the department reads Part 1 as the record of who the vehicle went to. If the car is model year 2011 or newer you complete the odometer certification while you are there. No part of that goes before a notary.
The buyer: The buyer's half is Part 3, the Purchaser's Certification and Application, which they sign to certify the purchase price and to apply for the new certificate. They have thirty days from receiving the title to get it to the Motor Vehicle Division with the five-dollar transfer fee, and NDCC 39-05-17 lets the department suspend or revoke a registration when they do not.
AND or OR. One word on the face of the certificate decides how many signatures a sale needs, and North Dakota prints the choice as three boxes. Or means either owner can sign alone. And means both must. And/Joint Tenants with Right of Survivorship means both while both are living, and the survivor alone afterwards on production of a certified copy of the death certificate.
The manual works the same examples out longhand for its counter staff, right down to how a company signs - an agent of the company must sign and indicate their title and the business name. It adds one rule that catches people who have married or divorced since the car was bought: a name change during ownership does not change how you sign, and you must sign using the name that appears on the title.
Printed across the foot of every North Dakota certificate of title: ERASURES, ALTERATIONS OR MUTILATIONS VOID THIS TITLE. The department's own checklist repeats it as a requirement on the buyer's side - no write-overs, cross-outs, or mutilations. There is a cure, and it is heavier than the mistake: a notarised Statement of Error, Correction, or Alteration, signed by you where the error is the buyer's name, the date of sale, the selling price or the odometer reading, and by whoever made the mark for anything else. A defaced certificate additionally needs a notarised affidavit stating the reason.
North Dakota Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Division, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
Six documents cover an ordinary North Dakota sale: the three numbered parts of the certificate itself, published loose as well as printed on the title, plus the bill of sale, the damage disclosure the seller must sign for almost any modern car, and the combined application the buyer files.
A North Dakota lien is released on the face of the certificate, in a band printed under the owner's block. These two are what you need when the lender holds the title, will not write on it, or has already taken the car back.
Lost in the post, never arrived, marked by a slip of the pen, or printed with the wrong mileage. North Dakota separates all four, and three of the four are notarised.
A small estate skips probate on one sworn affidavit - $100,000, thirty days elapsed, no personal representative appointed anywhere - and the department will not look at a will.
A car with no certificate at all runs a documented route through the Bismarck central office, and it is the only place in a North Dakota sale where an inspection appears.
The plate came off the car by law. These two decide where it goes next: onto your replacement vehicle with whatever credit is left, or back to the department with the title when the vehicle was destroyed.
NDCC 39-04-36(1) is one sentence and it does two things at once: whenever ownership of a registered vehicle is transferred, the registration of the vehicle expires and the transferor shall remove the number plates. There is no moment in a North Dakota sale when a live registration sits on a car you no longer own. The manual restates it for the counter - the vehicle will be considered unlicensed, and the buyer pays a full year's licence fee when they apply, less any credit they may have of their own.
What the unused months are worth is a credit, never cash. One twelfth of the annual fee for each month of the registration period remaining after the month of the transfer, applied against the registration on your replacement vehicle, claimed with a $5 plate or credit transfer fee. The Registration Manual sets the boundaries hard: available credit can be used towards only one replacement vehicle, any excess above that vehicle's registration fees is lost, and there are no refunds available. Only licence fees move - the public transportation fund charge, the abandoned motor vehicle disposal fee and the motorcycle education fee do not.
And you do not get to keep the plate in a drawer and buy fresh ones. Subsection 2 requires the transferor to use a number plate previously removed, regardless of whether there is any licence fee credit remaining on it. The plate you took off the car you just sold is the plate that goes on the next one. If you have lost it in the meantime, a replacement is $5.
So how does the buyer get home on an unplated car? Legally, and on nothing. The same statute gives the transferee five days from the date of purchase to operate the vehicle with no plate and no registration, provided dated evidence of ownership is in the vehicle - the manual accepts a dated bill of sale or a dated copy of the certificate of title. Beyond that the department sells itself a solution: a self-issuing 75-day temporary registration permit for North Dakota residents, obtained online. Transferred plates may not go on the replacement vehicle until it is registered and the new registration card has arrived.
No notice of sale, no release of liability, no seller's report of any kind. We enumerated all 337 rows of the department's forms index, read the manual's Title Transfer, Plate With Owner and Sale of a Motor Vehicle sections end to end, and searched Century Code chapters 39-04 and 39-05 for the phrases: there is no such filing and no statute sets a deadline for one. What ends the seller's exposure is physical rather than clerical - the registration expired the moment ownership passed and the plates came off the car in your hand.
Which makes the two things you keep unusually important, because they are the whole record. Keep your own copy of the Private Party Vehicle Bill of Sale, signed and dated by both of you, and note the plate you removed and the date you removed it. The one moment that record is read back is when you move the licence credit onto your next vehicle: the Statement of Fact asks for the plate number and the date the old vehicle was sold, and the department warns on the form that a false statement means the whole credit is repaid and additional registration fees collected.
Do not cancel the insurance until the plates are off and in your hand.
The order matters more here than in states with a notice to file. The registration expires by operation of the statute, but the plates are physical objects that either came off the car or did not, and they are the credit. Cancel cover on a car whose plates are still on it and you have a registered-looking vehicle on the road carrying your number, no insurance behind it, and no credit waiting for your next car. NDCC 39-04-36, plate with owner.
North Dakota Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Division, private party registration
Register at a North Dakota motor vehicle site, or by post to the central office in Bismarck within 30 days of the purchase. Motor vehicle excise tax at 5 percent, paid by the buyer to the Motor Vehicle Division when the title application is made, computed on the full purchase price less any trade-in allowance. You collect nothing. A gift between spouses, parent and child, siblings, grandparent and grandchild is exempt and there are thirty numbered exemptions printed on the application - but a selling price below fair market value is not one of them, and the department may compute the tax on guide value instead unless the condition is explained on the bill of sale. The certificate itself is $5. The abandoned motor vehicle disposal fee of $1.50 does not apply to a transfer of a vehicle already titled in North Dakota - it is charged on an initial application only. A full year's licence fee is due on the vehicle whatever month it is bought in, less any credit the buyer brings from their own plate, and a branch fee applies at seventeen of the department's eighteen sites.
What they need to bring:
North Dakota runs no periodic safety inspection programme and no emissions testing anywhere in the state, so there is no certificate to be current on and nothing for a buyer to fail you over. Inspections exist in the titling system only for five situations - a newly constructed or kit vehicle, a modified vehicle, an antique restoration, a salvage rebuild, and a vehicle with no title at all - and even then the state does not perform them. The department's own answer is that a customer needing an inspection should contact their local motor vehicle repair shops, which are not obligated to provide this service; the law merely allows them to if they choose. The business that rebuilt a vehicle may not be the business that inspects it.
North Dakota Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Division · figures and rules as of 2026-08-24. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in North Dakota and the rest of the guides.