The North Dakota Title license
Title
Writes title insurance in North Dakota and no other property and casualty business. It is the one North Dakota license with a pre-licensing hour count in front of it, and the hours are not the Department's: eighty hours of training given by an insurer licensed in the title line, certified by that insurer on the application. An abstracter's license or a law license takes the place of the eighty hours.
Course
80 hrs
The shortest single course route.
Ways in
2
None of them requires a state exam, because this license has none.
Exam
n/a
Not required on any of the routes below.
Every way to qualify
More than one route leads to this license, and which one you take changes what you study and whether you sit the exam. They are listed in full because the course is only the first of them.
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Route 1 Complete 80 hours of training given by a title insurer
No state exam for this license
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80 hours of title insurance
N.D. Admin. Code 45-02-02-04(2)(b): "The applicant must have a minimum of eighty hours of training provided by an insurer licensed in the line of title insurance. A certification by the insurer that the training has been completed must accompany the application."The Department prints the same sentence on its title licensing page. Nobody approves the course, because the body that gives it is the body that certifies it: North Dakota keeps no register, and the Department says elsewhere that because no prelicense instruction is required of a producer the material providers hand out is neither approved nor regulated. No school can sell these hours, for the same reason no school sells Massachusetts's damage appraiser course: the training is the appointing company's.
Read at ndlegis.gov on 2026-08-20
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Route 2 Be a licensed abstracter or an attorney
No state exam for this license
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a North Dakota abstracter's license
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a license to practice law
N.D. Admin. Code 45-02-02-04(2) exempts every title applicant from the examination and then puts two qualifications in its place, joined by "or": the applicant must be a licensed abstracter or attorney, or must have the eighty hours. The Department repeats it on its own page and adds the rule for somebody qualifying this way from outside the state: "A licensed attorney/abstracter in another state has to have a title license in their resident state before they can apply for a North Dakota title license."
Read at ndlegis.gov on 2026-08-20
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A course is required and nobody sells one
The eighty hours must be "provided by an insurer licensed in the line of title insurance" and certified by that insurer, so a school cannot supply them however good its course. No national seller prices a North Dakota title product either.