North Dakota’s Insurance Commissioner said this state is one of the few that do not have a statewide building code enforcement.
Jon Godfread said the state does have a statewide building code, but the enforcement is left to local communities. And he said that could be one of the reasons property insurance rates are going up.
"We're doing that (statewide inspections) on the fire side," Godfread said. "But that's only fire inspections."
Godfread said the building code inspections are left to the builders.
"That's fine," Godfread said. "But we're dealing with problems after the fact. And the only time we find them is if there's a catastrophic loss, or a collapse, or something like that."
Godfread said rates are projected to rise by 26 percent from 2025 to 2028. Homeowners in North Dakota saw their premiums increase by around 14 percent between 2024 an 2025.
Godfread said there needs to be some serious conversations about doing what the rest of the country does, and start investing in some of those investigations.
"Every citizen in North Dakota deserves safe buildings to go into," Godfread said. "Whether I'm going to my day care, home, shopping mall, whatever. They deserve to know they are being built appropriately."
Godfread said he's not accusing the builders of not doing that.
"But we don't know unless we inspect," Godfread said.
Godfread said a statewide enforcement of the building code could lead to more moderate insurance rate increases.
"But, with what's happening across the country, and here in North Dakota, you're starting to see these carriers tighten up a bit, on what losses they're going to pay and how they're going to do it," Godfread said. "That all goes back to the economics of , how do you keep an insurance company profitable. I know that's the last thing anybody wants to talk about, is the 'poor insurance companies.' But at the end of the day, they're funding those claims, and they're paying for that rebuilding. It gets a little bit worrisome, when we're continuing to pay for the same loss over and over and over again."
