Free Minnesota Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Minnesota residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to current Minn. Stat. ch. 504B — the Total Monthly Payment that must sit on page one, the three-week deposit return, and the 14-day pre-eviction notice no template page mentions.

Minnesota Minn. Stat. ch. 504B 21-Day Return Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Minnesota residential lease agreement is the written contract between a landlord and a residential tenant, governed by a single chapter of the statute book: Minn. Stat. ch. 504B, which runs from leasing and rent through the landlord’s covenants, the tenant’s remedies and the whole of eviction procedure. Minnesota never adopted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, so nothing carries over from a uniform-act neighbour, and the chapter has been rewritten harder than almost any other state’s in the last three sessions. The 2023 omnibus housing article created the Total Monthly Payment rule in Minn. Stat. 504B.120, the move-in and move-out inspection rights in Minn. Stat. 504B.182, and the fourteen-day pre-eviction notice in Minn. Stat. 504B.321. Then 2026 Minn. Laws ch. 81 took effect on August 1, 2026 — five days before this page was verified — and on that day the codified text of Minn. Stat. 504B.118 on the revisor’s own site still showed the pre-amendment section under its pre-amendment title. A lease copied from a template last refreshed in 2024 is wrong on all of it.

Complete the fields below to generate a Minnesota residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. Every field you fill is written into the document, including the utility allocations, the nonoptional fee total, the metering arrangement, the entry window and each disclosure you check, and the generated lease cites the controlling Minnesota section at each point. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening — and note that Minnesota regulates the screening stage too, from what an application fee may cover to which court records a landlord may not consider. Pair the signed lease with a Minnesota move-in / move-out checklist, because the inspection rights in Minn. Stat. 504B.182 are only as useful as the record they produce.

Minnesota recognizes the usual range of residential arrangements, and the statute book treats two of them very differently. A fixed-term lease runs for a stated period and simply expires on its end date — Minn. Stat. 504B.135 does not apply to it at all. A tenancy at will, which is what an ordinary month-to-month arrangement is in Minnesota, continues until one side gives written notice under that section. A room or roommate agreement covers one room in an occupied dwelling; a sublease passes the tenant’s interest onward while leaving the original tenant liable; and a lease-to-own agreement adds a purchase option that sits outside the residential rules.

Two categories fall outside this form. A commercial lease is not governed by the residential provisions of chapter 504B. And a manufactured home park lot runs under its own statutory scheme in chapter 327C, which is why Minn. Stat. 504B.211, subd. 7 expressly disapplies the entry rules to a park governed by Minn. Stat. 327C.015. A Minnesota manufactured home lot agreement must never be built from this page.

There is also a category the rankers miss entirely. Minnesota gives a tenant a statutory route out of a lease that has nothing to do with the lease type: under Minn. Stat. 504B.206 a tenant who fears imminent violence after domestic abuse, criminal sexual conduct, sexual extortion or harassment may terminate without penalty on signed, dated written notice accompanied by a qualifying document — an order for protection, a no-contact order, documentation from a court official or law enforcement, or a statement from a qualified third party on the prescribed form. A sole tenant owes rent for the entire month in which termination occurs and forfeits claims to the deposit, but escapes the balance of the term. The landlord may not disclose the notice, the qualifying document, the tenant’s relocation address or the tenant’s status, including into any shared database, and a breach carries statutory damages of two thousand dollars plus attorney fees. The right cannot be waived and a landlord may not require a waiver.

Only in a building of twelve or more residential units. Minn. Stat. 504B.111 requires a landlord of such a building to have a written lease for each unit rented to a residential tenant, requires that lease to identify the specific unit the tenant will occupy before the tenant signs, and makes a landlord who fails to provide one guilty of a petty misdemeanor. The same section confirms that, notwithstanding any other state law or city ordinance, a landlord may ask for the tenant’s full name and date of birth on the lease and application.

Below twelve units Minnesota compels nothing. That is the answer competitors give and stop at, and it is misleading, because the more demanding question is not whether a lease must exist but what it must say if it does. Three separate sections dictate content. Minn. Stat. 504B.120 requires every nonoptional fee to be in the lease and the Total Monthly Payment on page one. Minn. Stat. 504B.146 requires the start date, the end date and any prorated rent on page one. Minn. Stat. 504B.216, subd. 10 requires a titled attachment for a shared-metered building. An oral Minnesota tenancy is not illegal in a small building — it simply forfeits every protection those sections build into the document, for both sides.

Where a written lease does exist, Minn. Stat. 504B.115 requires the landlord to give a copy to every tenant occupying the unit whose signature appears on it. The landlord may take a signed receipt, which is prima facie evidence of delivery. The sanction is defensive rather than monetary: in an action to enforce the written lease — other than one for nonpayment of rent, disturbing the peace, malicious destruction of property, or a violation of Minn. Stat. 504B.171 — the tenant may defend by proving the landlord never handed over a copy, unless the landlord shows the tenant actually knew the terms at issue.

The Total Monthly Payment, every nonoptional fee, the lease start date, the lease end date and any prorated rent. Two independent sections regulate page one, and between them they make Minnesota a lease-content state rather than a lease-disclosure state. No page currently ranking for this query describes either rule.

Minn. Stat. 504B.120, created by the 2023 omnibus housing article, is the stronger of the two. Subdivision 1 requires a landlord to disclose all nonoptional fees in the lease agreement, and requires that the sum total of rent and all nonoptional fees must be described as the Total Monthly Payment and be listed on the first page of the lease. The same subdivision extends the disclosure to advertisements for the unit and requires the landlord to specify whether utilities are covered by the rent. Subdivision 2 is the enforcement: a landlord who violates the section is liable to the residential tenant for treble damages and the court may award the tenant reasonable attorney fees.

The practical consequence is that the common practice of listing rent at one number and then adding a trash administration fee, a common area fee, a pest control fee and a technology package on a later page is now a treble-damages exposure. If a fee is not optional, it belongs in the Total Monthly Payment. That is why the builder above asks for the fees and the fee total separately and then does the arithmetic itself — the label is statutory and the placement is statutory.

Minn. Stat. 504B.146 covers the second half. A written lease for a residential unit must identify the lease start date and lease end date; where the lease requires the tenant to move in or out on a date other than the first or last day of the month and the rent is prorated, the lease must state the prorated amount for those months; and the information required by the section must be provided on the first page of the lease.

Proration is not merely a drafting requirement either. Minn. Stat. 504B.116 requires the final month’s rent to be prorated at the average daily rate, calculated using the actual number of calendar days in the month in which the lease expires, so the tenant pays only for the days occupancy is allowed. It applies to all leases, expressly including a lease requiring the last month’s rent to be paid in advance, and any attempted waiver by contract or otherwise is void and unenforceable.

There is no limit. Chapter 504B contains no ceiling on a residential security deposit anywhere in it. Minn. Stat. 504B.178, subd. 1 provides only that money deposits securing performance of residential rental agreements, excluding advance rent payments, are governed by the section. Any page reporting a Minnesota deposit cap is importing another state’s rule.

The absence is a real finding rather than a gap, because it tells you where Minnesota put its regulatory effort instead. The section says nothing about how much may be taken and a great deal about what happens to the money: it must earn interest, it must come back on a deadline, the reasons for keeping any of it must be specific and in writing, and the burden of justifying a withholding sits on the landlord rather than the tenant.

Two related deposits sit outside the main section. Minn. Stat. 504B.175 governs a prelease deposit — a payment given to a landlord by a prospective tenant before any rental agreement exists, excluding a reasonable applicant screening fee. It requires a conspicuous written agreement specifying the circumstances of return, requires return within seven days of the triggering event, requires the deposit to be applied to the security deposit or rent if a rental agreement is signed, and makes a landlord in breach liable for the deposit plus one-half that amount as a penalty. And an applicant screening fee under Minn. Stat. 504B.173 is not a deposit at all and is governed by its own rules, discussed below.

Three weeks — 21 days. Minn. Stat. 504B.178, subd. 3 requires the landlord, within three weeks after termination of the tenancy and after receipt of the tenant’s mailing address or delivery instructions, to either return the deposit with the interest required by subd. 2 or furnish the tenant a written statement showing the specific reason for withholding the deposit or any portion of it.

The deadline shortens dramatically in one case. Where the tenant leaves the building because it was legally condemned, for reasons not due to the tenant’s own wilful, malicious or irresponsible conduct, the landlord has five days. That variant is almost never mentioned on template pages and it is the one that catches landlords in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, where rental licensing and condemnation activity is highest.

What may be withheld is narrow: amounts reasonably necessary to remedy the tenant’s default in the payment of rent or other funds due under the agreement, or to restore the premises to their condition at the start of the tenancy, ordinary wear and tear excepted. And the allocation of proof is unusual in the landlord’s disfavour: the same subdivision places the burden of proving that a withholding is reasonable on the landlord. Build the statement with a Minnesota security deposit itemization form and send it with a Minnesota security deposit return letter.

Deposits also earn interest, which the rankers mention but rarely quantify correctly. Under Minn. Stat. 504B.178, subd. 2 the deposit is not held in a fiduciary capacity but bears simple noncompounded interest at the rate of 1% per annum, computed from the first day of the month following full payment of the deposit to the last day of the month in which the landlord in good faith complies with subd. 3, or to the date judgment is entered in any civil action involving the landlord’s liability for the deposit, whichever date is earlier. Interest amounting to less than one dollar is excluded.

Two further subdivisions govern what happens when the property changes hands or the tenancy runs out. Under subd. 5, on a sale, assignment or other change of ownership the landlord must transfer the deposit to the successor and notify the tenant, or return it to the tenant, within sixty days; under subd. 6 the successor becomes responsible for it and the tenant has twenty days from written notice to object to the stated amount. And under subd. 8 a tenant may not withhold the final period’s rent on the footing that the deposit will cover it, except in a month-to-month agreement where no notice to quit has been given — doing so raises a rebuttable presumption that the withholding was not in good faith and exposes the tenant to a penalty plus interest. Our Minnesota security deposit laws guide works through the whole section.

Two separate liabilities, and they stack. This is the single most commonly compressed rule in Minnesota coverage: template pages report one number where the statute creates two independent exposures.

The first is Minn. Stat. 504B.178, subd. 4. A landlord who fails to provide the written statement within three weeks of termination, or within five days of a condemnation departure, or who fails to transfer or return the deposit as subds. 5 and 6 require, is liable to the tenant for damages equal to the portion of the deposit withheld and its interest, as a penalty — in addition to the portion of the deposit wrongfully withheld and its interest. The withheld money comes back and an equal amount is owed as a penalty. A landlord who keeps the whole deposit and misses the deadline is exposed to roughly double it before anything else is considered.

The second is subd. 7. Bad-faith retention of a deposit, its interest or any portion of it subjects the landlord to punitive damages not to exceed five hundred dollars for each deposit, on top of the subd. 4 damages. And there is a presumption attached: retention is presumed to be in bad faith where the deposit is not returned within two weeks after the action is commenced. A landlord who is sued and then sits on the money for a fortnight has, by default, conceded the point.

Subdivision 9 lets the action be brought in the county where the property is located or where the landlord resides, which removes a practical obstacle for tenants who have moved away. And subd. 10 closes the loop: any attempted waiver of the section is void and unenforceable, so none of it can be drafted around.

Minn. Stat. 504B.182 created them in 2023 and no ranking template page carries them. The section is short, it is non-waivable, and it changes the shape of every deposit dispute that follows.

At the commencement of the tenancy, or within fourteen days of the tenant occupying the unit, the landlord must notify the tenant of the option to request an initial inspection whose purpose is to identify deficiencies that already exist, so that they cannot later be deducted from the security deposit. If the tenant requests one, the parties schedule it at a mutually acceptable time. As an alternative the landlord may, with the tenant’s agreement, provide written acknowledgment of photographs or video showing the condition of the unit at the start or end of the tenancy — which is the modern practical route and is expressly blessed by the statute.

The landlord must also notify the tenant in writing of the option to request a move-out inspection. On request, the landlord conducts it at a reasonable time but no earlier than five days before the termination, the lease end date, or the day the tenant plans to vacate. The point of the timing is that it gives the tenant a window to remedy what the inspection identifies before anything is charged against the deposit. If the tenant declines the inspection, the landlord’s obligation is satisfied.

Subdivision 3 confirms the section does not modify the duties in Minn. Stat. 504B.178, 504B.185, 504B.195, 504B.271, 504B.375 or 504B.381, and subdivision 4 voids any oral or written provision by which a tenant waives the section as contrary to public policy. Read together with the burden of proof in Minn. Stat. 504B.178, subd. 3, the effect is that a Minnesota landlord who skipped the inspection notice and then charges for damage is arguing uphill.

No more than 8% of the overdue rent payment, under Minn. Stat. 504B.177 — and only where the landlord and tenant have agreed in writing and the agreement specifies when the late fee will be imposed.

Both conditions matter and the second is the one that fails in practice. A lease that says “a late fee may be charged on overdue rent” without stating when the fee attaches has not satisfied the section. No written agreement, or a written agreement that does not name the trigger, means no late fee at all. The statute also clarifies that the due date does not include any earlier deadline the lease offers for a discount — so an “early payment discount” that expires on the third does not make rent late on the fourth.

There are two carve-outs. Where a federal statute or regulation governing a subsidized tenancy conflicts with the 8% cap, the landlord may follow the federal requirement instead. And for a unit under a housing assistance payment contract