Minnesota 2025 Rental Law Update: Lease and Notice Changes

All four provisions took effect the same day, January 1, 2025, out of the same legislative chapter, but they touch entirely different parts of the landlord-tenant relationship: lease disclosures, renewal timing, fee calculation, and court notice procedure.

[Cite: 2024 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 118, Sections 6, 8, 13, 27]

A landlord who addressed only the most widely reported of these four, the service animal fee disclosure, has a real gap in the other three.

A landlord who requires an additional fee, charge, or deposit under a pet policy must disclose in the lease that this prohibition on fees for service or support animals applies.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.113, subdivision 3]

That's a disclosure requirement layered on top of an existing substantive rule; a landlord already couldn't charge a tenant with a reasonable accommodation an additional fee for a service or support animal, but now has to say so in the lease itself.

A landlord who doesn't charge any pet-related fee, charge, or deposit under a pet policy has nothing to disclose under this specific provision, since the trigger for the disclosure requirement is having a fee-based pet policy in the first place.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.113, subdivision 3]

A landlord evaluating whether this applies to their lease should check whether a pet fee exists at all before worrying about the disclosure language itself.

If a landlord fails to provide this disclosure and a tenant with a service or support animal ends up paying a fee they shouldn't have, that tenant can recover the payment, but only if they can show they would have requested, and likely received, the accommodation had proper notice been given.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.113, subdivision 3]

That's a specific evidentiary requirement, not an automatic refund for any tenant who happened to pay a pet fee. The tenant has to connect the missing disclosure to an accommodation they would have actually sought.

For a lease longer than 10 months, a landlord can't require a tenant to renew sooner than six months before the current lease's expiration date.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.144]

That's a floor on how early a renewal demand can be made, not a requirement that renewal happen at any particular point. A landlord who waits until much closer to expiration to raise renewal isn't affected by this rule at all.

Nothing in this provision prevents a landlord from waiting until closer to a lease's expiration to ask a tenant to renew.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.144]

The restriction only cuts one direction: it stops a landlord from pressuring a tenant into an early renewal decision well before the lease is actually close to ending, not from raising renewal at a more typical, later point.

Any lease provision, written or oral, attempting to waive this six-month restriction is void as against public policy.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.144]

A landlord can't include a lease term requiring earlier renewal commitment and expect that term to be enforceable against this statute, even if a tenant signed it.

For a tenancy operating under a housing assistance payments contract with a federal, state, or local government, a late fee must be calculated and assessed only on the portion of rent the tenant actually pays, not the full contract rent that includes the subsidized portion.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.177, paragraph (c)]

That's a meaningful distinction for a Section 8 or similarly subsidized unit, where the tenant's actual rent obligation is often a fraction of the total contract rent the landlord receives.

Minnesota's general rule caps a late fee at 8% of the overdue rent payment and requires a prior written agreement before any late fee applies.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.177, paragraph (a)]

The subsidized-housing calculation rule doesn't replace that 8% cap; it clarifies what dollar figure that 8% gets applied to when a housing assistance contract is involved, specifically the tenant's own payable portion rather than the full contract rent.

A landlord managing a subsidized unit who calculates a late fee against the full contract rent, rather than just the tenant's payable portion, is applying the 8% cap to the wrong number entirely, which likely results in a late fee that exceeds what this statute actually permits.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.177, paragraph (c)]

A property management system that automatically calculates late fees off total rent needs a specific adjustment for any unit under a housing assistance payments contract.

If a landlord regularly uses electronic written communication to communicate with a tenant, the landlord must also notify that tenant electronically of the eviction hearing's date, time, and place, at least seven days before the court appearance.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.332]

That's an additional notice channel, not a replacement for standard legal service of the eviction summons and complaint under the statute's existing service rules.

The electronic notice requirement isn't triggered simply because a landlord has a tenant's email address on file. It applies specifically when the landlord regularly uses electronic written communication to actually communicate with that tenant.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.332]

A landlord who occasionally emails a maintenance update but otherwise communicates by mail or in person has a different situation than a landlord who routinely texts or emails a tenant about rent, repairs, or other lease matters.

The statute doesn't state an explicit penalty or consequence specifically tied to failing to provide this electronic notice, beyond requiring substantial compliance with the notice requirement generally.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.332]

That's worth stating plainly rather than assuming a specific dollar penalty applies. A landlord should still treat this as an active legal requirement, not a lower priority because the enforcement mechanism isn't as sharply defined as some other provisions in this same chapter.

The practical starting point is auditing lease templates for the service animal fee disclosure if a pet fee is charged, adjusting any automated renewal-notice timeline to respect the six-month floor for leases over 10 months, and correcting late fee calculations on any subsidized unit to use the tenant's payable rent portion rather than the full contract rent.

For any tenant a landlord regularly texts or emails, adding an electronic eviction hearing notice step to the standard eviction process, alongside formal legal service, closes the remaining compliance gap this update creates.