Check your municipality. Minnesota does not preempt local rent regulation — city or county ordinances may impose
rent caps, notice rules, and fee limits that are stricter than the state-level rules on this
page and are not covered here. Verify your municipality's ordinances before relying on any
figure below.
What the state record says
No statewide rent control. Minn. Stat. 471.9996 subd. 1 bars any city, county, or town from adopting or renewing rent control on private residential property — EXCEPT that subd. 2 expressly permits it if the ordinance, charter amendment, or law is approved in a GENERAL ELECTION (full text read twice, including the Revisor's official PDF). The exception is live, not theoretical: St. Paul voters approved a 3% annual rent-stabilization cap in November 2021 (effective May 2022), which the city council has since narrowed — most recently on 2025-05-07 (4-3 vote, changes effective 2025-06-13) to permanently exempt units first receiving a certificate of occupancy after 2004-12-31. Minneapolis voters in 2021 authorized their council to draft a rent-stabilization ordinance, but none has been enacted.
Pending legislation — not yet law. The rules on this page reflect current
law only. The following bill would change it if enacted:
SF 4171 (2026) — Laws of Minnesota 2026, chapter 81 — Enacted but NOT yet effective as of the verification date. Section 2 rewrites Minn. Stat. 504B.118 ('Payment of Rent'): landlords must give immediate written receipts for in-person cash rent (three business days otherwise), must offer a no-extra-fee alternative payment method when a digital rent-payment platform is not functioning, and are prohibited from taking any adverse action — expressly including assessing LATE FEES or filing an eviction — when rent goes unpaid because both the digital platform and the landlord's alternative method are down; violation is an affirmative defense requiring dismissal of an eviction plus attorney fees. Other sections bar naming minor children as eviction defendants (new 504B.2136, $300 minimum damages) and allow estimated final submetered/apportioned utility bills at move-out (216B.023, 504B.216). Once effective, the late_fees topic gains a statutory platform-outage exception layered on top of the 8% cap.Status: Passed Senate 67-0 (2026-04-20) and House 134-0 as amended (2026-04-30), Senate concurred 63-3, signed by the governor 2026-05-12 as Laws 2026 ch. 81; effective 2026-08-01 (eviction-related provisions apply to actions filed on or after that date). Incorporate into late_fees notes on the next verification pass after 2026-08-01. (checked 2026-07-09).
Minnesota landlords must make a good-faith effort to give at least 24 hours' advance notice before entering a rental unit, the notice must state a time or anticipated window of entry, and the entry itself may occur only between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. unless the tenant agrees to a different hour.
Entry is allowed only for a reasonable business purpose — the statute lists showings, maintenance, code inspections, disturbances, suspected lease violations or unauthorized occupancy, senior-housing housekeeping, and vacated units — and no notice is required when the landlord reasonably suspects immediate entry is needed to prevent injury to persons or property, to determine a tenant's safety, or to comply with local ordinances on unlawful activity, though the landlord must then disclose the entry in writing. A tenant may accept shorter notice but can never be required to waive prior notice as a lease condition, and each violation exposes the landlord to a civil penalty of up to $500 plus reasonable attorney fees, rent reduction up to full rescission, and recovery of the deposit. These rules took effect January 1, 2024 — anything still describing Minnesota as a bare 'reasonable notice' state is out of date.
Minnesota entry notice at a glance
Advance notice required
24 hours
Notice standard
Minn. Stat. 504B.211 subd. 2 (as amended by the 2023 housing omnibus, 2023 Session Laws ch. 52, effective Jan. 1, 2024): entry only for a reasonable business purpose and after a good-faith effort to give the tenant 'reasonable notice under the circumstances of not less than 24 hours in advance' — 24 hours is the floor, and more may be required where circumstances demand. The notice must specify a time or an anticipated window of time of entry. The tenant may voluntarily permit entry on shorter notice, but may not be required to waive the right to prior notice as a condition of getting or keeping the lease.
Permitted reasons
Statutory reasonable-business-purpose list (subd. 3): showing the unit to prospective tenants before the lease ends; showing to prospective buyers or insurance representatives; performing maintenance work; allowing state, county, or municipal inspections for health, housing, building, or fire codes; a tenant causing a disturbance within the unit; reasonable belief the tenant is violating the lease; prearranged housekeeping in senior housing where 80% or more of residents are 55+; reasonable belief the unit is occupied without authorization; and a unit the tenant has vacated.
Emergency exception
Yes
Time-of-day restrictions
Entry is permitted only between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., unless the landlord and tenant agree to an earlier or later time (subd. 2).
Notes and caveats
PRIMARY STALE-SOURCE TRAP for Minnesota: before 2023 Session Laws ch. 52 (effective 2024-01-01), 504B.211 required only 'reasonable notice' with no fixed period, and a large share of circulating summaries, form-notice generators, and fifty-state charts still say 'reasonable notice — no set hours.' Current text (double-read 2026-07-09) sets a 24-HOUR MINIMUM inside a reasonableness standard, adds the time-or-window content requirement, and adds the 8:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. entry window. Encoding decisions: notice_hours=24 is the statutory floor — render as 'at least 24 hours, and reasonable under the circumstances.' The subd. 6 remedies (up to $500 civil penalty PER VIOLATION plus reasonable attorney fees, rent reduction up to full rescission of the lease, and recovery of the damage deposit less amounts lawfully retained under 504B.178) were double-read and matched. Applicability: the section does not apply to manufactured home parks (separate ch. 327C regime). The emergency exception (subd. 4) is three-pronged (injury to persons/property re maintenance, security, or law enforcement; tenant safety; local unlawful-activity ordinances) — after an emergency or tenant-absent entry the landlord must disclose the entry in writing left in a conspicuous place, a duty the summary carries because it is commonly omitted. The anti-waiver clause (tenant may consent to shorter notice ad hoc but cannot be made to waive notice as a lease condition) was quoted verbatim in verification.
How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official Minnesota Revisor of Statutes site (revisor.mn.gov, Minnesota Statutes 2025 edition): Minn. Stat. 504B.178, 504B.177, and 504B.211 each fetched twice in independent calls — the 1% interest rate, three-week/five-day return deadlines, $500 bad-faith punitive cap, 8%-of-overdue-rent late-fee cap, 24-hour entry notice, 8:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. window, and $500-per-violation entry penalty all matched verbatim across reads. 504B.135 and 471.9996 read twice each (HTML fetch plus the Revisor's official PDF read in full). 504B.147 and 504B.120 read once each. MN Attorney General landlord-tenant handbook (ag.state.mn.us) read for the 'one rental period plus one day' rent-increase derivation. 2026 enactment sweep on revisor.mn.gov: SF 4171 bill status and enrolled text read directly (Laws 2026 ch. 81, signed 2026-05-12, effective 2026-08-01 — flagged as pending, not incorporated, since the Statutes-2025 pages predate it); HF 3245 status read (died in House committee at sine die 2026-05-18, not flagged).