Landlord Atlas

What does Minnesota law require a landlord to repair?

Verified August 29, 2026 All Minnesota topics →

Every residential lease or license in Minnesota carries statutory covenants that the premises and common areas are fit for their intended use, kept in reasonable repair with pests exterminated, made reasonably energy efficient, kept in compliance with federal, state, and local health and safety laws including rental licensing ordinances, and heated to at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit from October 1 through April 30 in every place intended for habitation, kitchens and bathrooms included.

Cited to Minn. Stat. § 504B.161 (covenants of landlord or licensor) subds. 1-6 and 14 more cited sources · Verified August 29, 2026

The covenants cannot be waived, though a tenant may take on specified repairs by a conspicuous written agreement supported by adequate consideration, so long as the landlord keeps the common areas. What Minnesota does not give tenants is self-help: there is no repair-and-deduct right and no right to simply withhold rent. A tenant who wants a remedy gives written notice and, if the violation is not corrected within 14 days, deposits the rent with the court administrator and asks the court to act — the court can order the repairs, abate the rent retroactively and going forward, order the tenant to make the repairs and deduct the cost on terms it sets, or appoint an administrator to run the building, in which case the landlord's right to collect rent is void until the administration ends. Code violations run on the inspector's deadline instead of the 14 days, emergencies such as lost heat, water, or electricity get an accelerated action on 24 hours' attempted notice, and a tenant sued for nonpayment may raise the landlord's breach as a defense under Fritz v. Warthen, with the rent then paid into court. Retaliation is barred, with the burden on the landlord for 90 days after the tenant's complaint.

Minnesota habitability & repairs at a glance

Where the duty comes from Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it
Duty source details The duty is statutory. Minn. Stat. § 504B.161 writes covenants of habitability into every lease or license of residential premises, and the parties may not waive or modify them. In Fritz v. Warthen the Minnesota Supreme Court held that those statutory covenants and the tenant's covenant to pay rent are mutually dependent, and did so expressly on the statute's terms — the covenants are part of the lease by statutory mandate rather than by agreement — while stating that it intimated no opinion on the continued justification for the common-law rule of independent covenants. No separate judicially created implied warranty operates alongside the statute.
Who is covered Statewide — no coverage split
Where the repair standards live More than one source does real work — the details on this page say which
What must be kept in repair Two sources do real work. The statute itself sets five covenants: that the premises and all common areas are fit for the use intended by the parties; to keep the premises and all common areas in reasonable repair during the term, including the services and conditions listed in § 504B.381, subdivision 1, and extermination of insects, rodents, vermin, or other pests, except where the disrepair was caused by the willful, malicious, or irresponsible conduct of the tenant or someone under the tenant's direction or control; to make the premises and common areas reasonably energy efficient by installing weatherstripping, caulking, storm windows, and storm doors wherever the measure will produce energy cost savings exceeding its cost, with interest, amortized over the ten years following the outlay; to maintain the premises and common areas in compliance with the applicable health and safety laws of the United States, of the state, and of local units of government, including ordinances regulating rental licensing, again except for tenant-caused violations; and to equip or furnish heat. The second source is those incorporated codes: a violation of any state, county, or city health, safety, housing, building, fire prevention, or housing maintenance code applicable to the building is itself a statutory violation that opens the tenant's court remedies, so the local housing maintenance code where the property sits is part of the operative standard. The covenants are in addition to any imposed by law, ordinance, or the lease; the section is to be liberally construed; and an opportunity to inspect the premises before signing does not defeat them. They apply to leases and licenses concluded or renewed on or after June 15, 1971, with estates at will treated as renewed at the start of each rental period.
Heat standard type A duty to supply heat or maintain temperatures while the unit is occupied
Heat standard details The covenant is to equip or furnish heat at a minimum temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit in all places intended for habitation, including kitchens and bathrooms, from October 1 through April 30, unless a utility company requires and instructs that the heat be reduced. The 68-degree figure and the October-to-April window are long-standing; what the 2025 amendments changed was the wording from supplying heat to equipping or furnishing it and the express extension of the 68-degree standard to kitchens and bathrooms. City housing maintenance codes may set a higher floor, and the covenants are additive.
Headline repair day count 14 days
Notice and repair-window rules Fourteen days is the general figure, and it measures correction of the violation rather than the start of work. For any violation other than a code violation, the tenant gives the landlord written notice specifying the violation, delivered personally or sent to the person or place where rent is normally paid; if the violation is not corrected within 14 days, the tenant may deposit the rent due with the court administrator along with an affidavit specifying the violation, on a simplified form the court must provide. Where the violation is a code violation found on an official inspection there is no fixed statutory number: the tenant may not deposit rent or file the notice until the time the inspector granted to make repairs has expired without satisfactory repairs being made, unless the tenant alleges that the time granted is excessive. The tenant remedies action carries its own 14-day requirement, which is a pre-filing notice period rather than a cure clock — the landlord must be informed in writing of the alleged violation at least 14 days before the action is brought, and a court may waive that if it finds the landlord cannot be located despite diligent efforts. The emergency action is faster: the petitioner must attempt to notify the landlord at least 24 hours before applying to the court, and an order may issue without notice on a showing that reasonable efforts to notify were unsuccessful.
Repair and deduct No — no statute or decision authorizes it — No Minnesota statute lets a tenant hire a repairer and take the cost out of the rent on their own. The only repair deduction in the landlord-and-tenant chapter is a court's power, not the tenant's: in a rent escrow or tenant remedies action, the court may order the tenant to remedy the violations it finds and deduct the cost from the rent, on whatever terms the court determines to be just. There is no statutory dollar limit because the court sets the terms case by case. A tenant who repairs and deducts without an order is outside the statute and still owes the rent. One genuinely self-executing offset exists elsewhere in the chapter and is often mistaken for a repair remedy: in shared-metered buildings a tenant who pays a utility bill the landlord failed to pay may deduct that payment from the next rent, and the amount counts as rent paid. That is a utility-payment rule aimed at preventing a shutoff, capped at what the tenant actually paid the utility, and it is not a repair-and-deduct right.
Rent withholding or escrow Only on conditions that commonly defeat it — see this page — How: a court or agency escrow program; withholding raised as a defense once the landlord sues — Every lawful route sends the rent to the court rather than into the tenant's pocket. The main path is the rent escrow action: after the applicable notice period the tenant deposits the rent due with the court administrator, and the hearing follows within 10 to 14 days of the deposit. A tenant who owes no rent when the notice is filed need not deposit anything, but all rent falling due before the hearing must be deposited. While proceedings are pending the tenant must pay rent to the landlord or as the court directs and may not withhold rent to remedy a violation. If the landlord counterclaims for possession because the tenant did not deposit the full rent, that counterclaim is heard not less than 7 nor more than 14 days after filing, and escrow and eviction actions between the same parties must be consolidated and heard on the eviction date. The second path is defensive and comes from Fritz v. Warthen rather than from any section of the chapter: because the statutory covenants and the covenant to pay rent are mutually dependent, a tenant who has withheld may raise the landlord's breach in answer to an action for possession, and the court will then order the withheld and future rent paid into court pending the merits, with power to release money from the fund so the landlord can make the repairs.
Termination over habitability failures Only on conditions materially narrower than the general repair duty — Minnesota gives the tenant one narrow self-executing exit and otherwise routes termination through the court. A tenant or occupant of a building that is destroyed or becomes uninhabitable or unfit for occupancy through no fault or neglect of the tenant may vacate and surrender the building — no court order and no notice period is stated. That right is narrower than the general repair duty, since it requires the building to be destroyed or unfit for occupancy rather than merely in disrepair, and it is expressly subject to a contrary agreement, limited only by the non-waivable covenants. Short of that, ending the tenancy over conditions is relief a court may grant in a rent escrow or tenant remedies action.
Essential-service remedies Yes — distinct statutory remedies for essential-service failures — Essential failures get their own accelerated action. An emergency tenant remedies action lies in two situations: where a unit of government has revoked a rental license, issued a condemnation order, issued a notice of intent to condemn, or otherwise deemed the property uninhabitable; and in emergencies involving services and facilities the landlord is responsible for providing, an open-ended list that names a serious infestation, loss of running water, loss of hot water, loss of heat, loss of electricity, loss of sanitary facilities, a nonfunctioning refrigerator, a nonfunctioning air conditioner or elevator where the lease includes it, any condition or service posing a serious and negative impact on health or safety, and other essential services or facilities. The tenant must attempt to notify the landlord at least 24 hours before applying to the court, and an order may issue without notice where reasonable efforts to notify failed. On that showing the court shall order the landlord to begin remedying the violation immediately, may grant the same relief available after a full hearing, and then sets the hearing. The action does not reach emergencies caused by the deliberate or negligent act or omission of the tenant or someone under the tenant's direction or control.
Retaliation protection Protected by a general retaliation statute — Ninety days is a burden shift rather than a presumption of retaliation, and two sections use the figure from different starting points. Under the general retaliation section, where the eviction, increase in obligations, or decrease in services occurs within 90 days after the tenant files the complaint, the landlord carries the burden of proving the action was not a penalty, unless the court finds the complaint was not made in good faith; after 90 days the burden sits with the tenant. Under the eviction-defense section the same 90 days runs from the tenant's protected act to service of the notice to quit, and inside it the landlord must prove the notice was not served in whole or part for a retaliatory purpose. — Two provisions operate side by side. The general section prohibits evicting a residential tenant, increasing the tenant's obligations under the lease, or decreasing services where that is intended as a penalty for the tenant's or a housing-related neighborhood organization's complaint of a violation, with the 90-day burden shift described above. The eviction-defense section makes retaliation a defense to an action to recover the premises after a notice to quit, provable by a fair preponderance of the evidence, and adds a defense in a nonpayment proceeding where the landlord raised the rent or cut services as a penalty — that one is conditioned on the tenant tendering to the court or the landlord the rent due under the original obligation. Neither section limits the landlord's right to terminate for the tenant's violation of a lawful, material lease provision. The rent escrow section separately applies the retaliation protection to tenants who use it, and makes those rights non-waivable. — Complaining of a violation, by the tenant or by a housing-related neighborhood organization; a good-faith attempt to secure or enforce rights under the lease or contract, whether oral or written, or under state, local, or federal law; and a good-faith report to a governmental authority of the landlord's violation of a health, safety, housing, or building code or ordinance.
Damages, penalties, and defenses Judgment in a rent escrow or tenant remedies action can order the landlord to remedy the violations where the court is satisfied corrective action will be taken promptly, order the tenant to remedy them and deduct the cost from rent on just terms, appoint an administrator to collect the rents and run the building, or abate the rent to the extent the uncorrected violations impair the tenants' use and enjoyment of the property they contracted for. In the escrow action the court may also order retroactive rent abatement, release escrowed rent to pay for the remedy, order future rent deposited or abated until the violations are fixed, and impose the statutory fines; where the case is consolidated with an eviction and the landlord prevails, the court may not make the tenant pay the landlord's filing fee as a condition of keeping possession if the tenant deposited the full amount found owing. Where an administrator is appointed, the landlord's right to collect rent becomes void and unenforceable until the administration ends, and the court may keep jurisdiction for a year after it terminates. Attorney fees for a prevailing tenant or neighborhood organization are capped at $500, a cap that does not apply to awards made under the bad-faith-litigation statute or other specific statutory authority; a separate reciprocity section entitles the tenant to fees on the same terms a lease gives the landlord, which creates no entitlement where the lease is silent. The landlord's stated defenses are that the alleged violations do not exist or have been removed or remedied, that they were caused by the willful, malicious, negligent, or irresponsible conduct of a complaining tenant or someone under that tenant's direction or control, or that a tenant unreasonably refused entry to correct them where the effort to correct was made in good faith. Note the widened standard: the covenants except tenant conduct that is willful, malicious, or irresponsible, while the defense section adds negligent conduct.
Can the duty be waived or shifted A delegation provision reaches beyond the usual single-family limits
Waiver and delegation rules The covenants themselves cannot be given up: the parties to a lease or license of residential premises may not waive or modify them. What the law does allow is delegation. The landlord and tenant may agree that the tenant will perform specified repairs or maintenance, but only if the agreement is supported by adequate consideration and set out in a conspicuous writing, and no such agreement may waive the covenants or relieve the landlord of the duty to maintain common areas. There is no single-family or dwelling-type limit on that delegation, so Minnesota is wider on this point than the states that confine tenant-repair agreements to single-family homes. Separate non-waiver clauses protect the remedies: the rent escrow section makes its own tenant rights non-waivable, and a further section voids as contrary to public policy any lease term waiving the emergency tenant remedies action or the sections running from the tenant remedies action through the receivership provisions.
Leading court decisions Fritz v. Warthen, 298 Minn. 54, 213 N.W.2d 339 (1973) — The statutory covenants of habitability and the tenant's covenant to pay rent are mutually dependent, so rent, or at least part of it, is not due under the lease when the landlord has breached the covenants, and the tenant may raise that breach in excuse, justification, or avoidance in the landlord's action for possession. The court reached that result on the statute — the covenants are part of the lease by statutory mandate and the legislature directed that they be liberally construed — and stated that it intimated no opinion on the continued justification for the common-law rule of independent covenants. It also directed that withheld and future rent be paid into court pending resolution, and reaffirmed that abandonment of the premises remains a prerequisite to a constructive-eviction defense, total or partial.
Local rules Local law does substantial work in Minnesota, by design. The covenant to comply with applicable health and safety laws expressly reaches the laws of local units of government, including ordinances regulating rental licensing, and a violation of a city or county health, safety, housing, building, fire prevention, or housing maintenance code applicable to the building is itself a statutory violation that opens the rent escrow and tenant remedies actions. The statutory covenants are also stated to be in addition to any covenants or conditions imposed by law or ordinance, so a stricter municipal housing maintenance code — Minneapolis and Saint Paul both maintain one — sets the standard where it is stricter, and the state's 68-degree heat figure is a floor rather than a ceiling.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Minnesota Habitability & Repair Laws (verified August 29, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/habitability/minnesota/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Notes and caveats

Common questions: Minnesota habitability & repairs

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Does Minnesota have an implied warranty of habitability?
Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it. The duty is statutory. Minn. Stat. § 504B.161 writes covenants of habitability into every lease or license of residential premises, and the parties may not waive or modify them.
How long does a landlord have to make repairs in Minnesota?
14 days. Fourteen days is the general figure, and it measures correction of the violation rather than the start of work. For any violation other than a code violation, the tenant gives the landlord written notice specifying the violation, delivered personally or sent to the person or place where rent is normally paid; if the violation is not corrected within 14 days, the tenant may deposit the rent due with the court administrator along with an affidavit specifying the violation, on a simplified form the court must provide.
Can a tenant repair and deduct in Minnesota?
No — no statute or decision authorizes it — No Minnesota statute lets a tenant hire a repairer and take the cost out of the rent on their own. The only repair deduction in the landlord-and-tenant chapter is a court's power, not the tenant's: in a rent escrow or tenant remedies action, the court may order the tenant to remedy the violations it finds and deduct the cost from the rent, on whatever terms the court determines to be just.
Can a tenant withhold rent for repair problems in Minnesota?
Only on conditions that commonly defeat it — see this page — How: a court or agency escrow program; withholding raised as a defense once the landlord sues — Every lawful route sends the rent to the court rather than into the tenant's pocket. The main path is the rent escrow action: after the applicable notice period the tenant deposits the rent due with the court administrator, and the hearing follows within 10 to 14 days of the deposit.
Can a landlord retaliate against a tenant who complains about repairs in Minnesota?
Protected by a general retaliation statute — Ninety days is a burden shift rather than a presumption of retaliation, and two sections use the figure from different starting points. Under the general retaliation section, where the eviction, increase in obligations, or decrease in services occurs within 90 days after the tenant files the complaint, the landlord carries the burden of proving the action was not a penalty, unless the court finds the complaint was not made in good faith; after 90 days the burden sits with the tenant.
Can a lease make the tenant responsible for repairs in Minnesota?
A delegation provision reaches beyond the usual single-family limits. The covenants themselves cannot be given up: the parties to a lease or license of residential premises may not waive or modify them. What the law does allow is delegation.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes' official Minnesota Statutes — §§ 504B.001, 504B.131, 504B.161, 504B.172, 504B.231, 504B.285, 504B.381, 504B.385, 504B.395, 504B.415, 504B.425, 504B.435, 504B.441 and 504B.465, each read in full, together with the complete table of sections and the full text of chapter 504B; the session-law texts of Laws 2025, chapter 32, article 4 and Laws 2025, First Special Session, chapter 11, read with the revisor's own strike-and-underline amendment markup; the revisor's published table of Minnesota Statutes new, amended, or repealed by the 2026 regular session, read in full for every chapter 504B entry; and the official reporter text of Fritz v. Warthen, 298 Minn. 54, 213 N.W.2d 339 (1973), read in full.