Pitt County, NC Rental Property Rules: Repairs & Habitability (2026)

Pitt County does not maintain a stand-alone minimum-housing or landlord-tenant habitability ordinance; unfit rental housing is instead addressed through Section 30 of the Building Codes Enforcement Ordinance. Under subsection A, once an Inspector finds a building that was not constructed to Code, is dangerous to life, contains fire hazards, is unfit for human habitation, or is a nuisance, the Inspector must notify both the owner and the occupant of the specific defects, and the owner is required to remedy them immediately. S. 153A-368 to vacate, demolish, close, repair, or otherwise correct the property.

Rental status matters earlier in the process too: under Section 22, a landlord who has racked up more than two verified housing-code violations in a 12-month period is, by definition, "reasonable cause" for the Inspections Department to re-inspect the property without waiting for a new complaint. If the owner does not act after notice, the same hearing and order sequence used for any condemned building applies under Sections 31 through 34: a hearing within ten days, a written repair-or-vacate order allowing at least 60 days, a ten-day appeal window to the Pitt County Board of Commissioners, and a misdemeanor charge for an owner who still fails to comply.

Because the standard sits inside the county's general building-safety code rather than a rental-specific chapter, it applies to any residential structure in the unincorporated county and any ETJ area the county administers, not to units inside Greenville, Winterville, Ayden, or Farmville, which enforce their own municipal codes.