By Minneapolis Senior Advisor Care Team · October 21, 2026
Minnesota's senior property tax deferral caps what your parent pays at 3% of household income and lends them the rest. Applications are due November 1. Here is what the loan costs, and what happens when a move to assisted living ends it.
It is a loan, not a discount
Minnesota runs a program called the Senior Citizens' Property Tax Deferral. It is written into Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 290B. Families hear the name and assume it is a break on the tax bill. It is not. It is a loan from the state, secured by a lien on the house.
Here is the mechanism. Under Minn. Stat. 290B.05, subd. 1, the "annual maximum property tax amount" your parent owes equals three percent of their total household income for the preceding year. The state pays the rest of the property tax bill to the county on their behalf. That paid-on-their-behalf amount is the deferred amount, and it accumulates year over year with interest.
The Minnesota Department of Revenue puts it plainly on its program page: "The state pays the remainder as a loan." When the house is sold, or the deferral ends for any other reason, the deferred taxes, deferred special assessments, penalties, interest and recording fees all come due.
That is not a reason to avoid it. For a widow in a paid-off bungalow in Northeast Minneapolis whose only real problem is a tax bill she cannot cover out of Social Security, it can be the difference between staying and listing the house. But you should walk in knowing you are taking on debt against the home, because that is what it is.
Who qualifies, and the rule that disqualifies most people
The Department of Revenue lists the qualifications for the program. Your parent must be 65 or older in the year they apply. If married, one spouse must be 65 or older and the other at least 62. They must have owned and lived in the home for the last five years, and the home must have been homesteaded for five years.
Total household income must be $96,000 or less. The statute is more precise than the web page: Minn. Stat. 290B.03, subd. 1 ties it to household income for the calendar year before the initial application, using the income definition in Minn. Stat. 290A.03, subd. 5. For most retired Twin Cities homeowners that ceiling is not the obstacle.
The obstacles are the title conditions, and this is where applications die. Your parent cannot have a reverse mortgage. They cannot have a life estate on the property. They cannot have state or federal tax liens or judgment liens against it. And all other liens against the property, mortgages included, must total less than 75% of the estimated market value.
Read that list against the last twenty years in this metro. A reverse mortgage taken out in 2012 to cover a roof and a furnace rules the program out entirely. So does a life estate set up by an estate-planning attorney to move the house toward the children, which is a common piece of advice and a hard stop here. If your parent did either of those things, stop now and spend your energy elsewhere, including on the options in our guide to how families pay for senior care.
November 1, and the document that takes the longest
The deadline is firm: apply by November 1 to defer property taxes the following year. Your parent may apply in the year they turn 65. Once accepted, there is no annual reapplication.
You can apply on paper using Form CR-SCD, Property Tax Deferral for Senior Citizens, mailed to the Minnesota Department of Revenue, Property Tax Division, Mail Station 3340, 600 N. Robert St., St. Paul, MN 55146-3340. There is also an online application at escd.revenue.mn.gov. Note that this is a state program, not a county one. Dakota County's own page on the deferment says so directly: "This program is administered by the state."
The application needs a copy of this year's property tax statement, and it needs a report on mortgages, liens and judgments. That second item is the one that eats the calendar. If the property is Torrens, you need a current certificate of title from the county recorder, dated within 30 days of the application. If it is abstract property, you need an owners and encumbrances report from a licensed abstracter, also dated within 30 days.
An owners and encumbrances report ordered from a private abstracter is not a same-day errand, and a certificate of title request at a county recorder's office is not either. If you are reading this on October 21, you have eleven days. Order the title document today, before you fill out anything else. If it will not arrive in time, treat this as an application for the 2027 deadline rather than a scramble, and put a note in your calendar for next September.
Questions on the application itself go to the Department of Revenue's deferral staff at 651-556-6091 or [email protected], 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays.
What the deferred balance actually grows at
Interest is capped. Minn. Stat. 290B.07 says the commissioner computes interest as provided in Minn. Stat. 270C.40, subd. 5, "but not to exceed five percent." The Department of Revenue's page puts the same point in plain words: "The interest rate varies but does not exceed 5%."
The underlying formula is worth understanding because it tells you which direction the number moves. Under Minn. Stat. 270C.40, subd. 5, the rate equals the prime rate charged by banks averaged over the six-month period ending September 30, rounded to the nearest full percent, determined by the commissioner no later than October 15 and effective the following January 1. Prime has been well above five percent for several years, which means the statutory five percent ceiling, rather than the formula, is what has been doing the work.
We are not going to print this year's announced rate, because we could not confirm the current published figure from a primary source while writing this. Ask the Department of Revenue at 651-556-6091 for the rate in effect, and ask it as a direct question: what rate will apply to taxes deferred for payable 2027. That is a number a family deserves before signing.
One timing detail that surprises people: interest begins accruing September 1 of the payable year for which the taxes are deferred. It does not wait until the house sells.
The part families miss: what a move to assisted living does
This is the reason a senior-care site is writing about a tax program. The deferral terminates when any of four things happens, per Minn. Stat. 290B.08, subd. 1: the property is sold or transferred, all qualifying homeowners die, the homeowner notifies the commissioner in writing that they want to stop, or the property no longer qualifies as a homestead.
That fourth trigger is the one that collides with care decisions. And Minnesota's answer is more generous than you might expect. Minn. Stat. 273.124, subd. 1(f) instructs that the assessor "must not deny homestead treatment in whole or in part" when an unmarried owner "is absent due to residence in a nursing home, boarding care facility, or an elderly assisted living facility property as defined in section 273.13, subdivision 25a, and the property is not otherwise occupied." For a married owner, the home may be unoccupied or occupied only by the spouse.
Read the condition carefully, because it is the whole ballgame. The house keeping homestead status while your mother is in care depends on the house staying empty. If your brother moves into the house after she moves to memory care, or you rent it out to cover her care costs, that protection in subdivision 1(f) no longer describes your situation, and the homestead classification is at risk. Lose the homestead and the deferral terminates, with payment due within one year.
There is a second wrinkle we want to be candid about. The statute's phrase is "elderly assisted living facility property as defined in section 273.13, subdivision 25a." That is a property tax classification term for the building your parent moves into. It is not a synonym for a building holding an assisted living or assisted living with dementia care licence under Chapter 144G. The two definitions were written for different purposes and we are not going to tell you they line up. Before you assume your mother's new assisted living address preserves the homestead on her house, call the county assessor in the county where the house sits and ask them, in those words, whether her absence qualifies under subdivision 1(f).
If the plan is to sell the house to pay for care, the clock is shorter still. On a sale or transfer, repayment is due within 90 days. Build that into the closing, not after it.
The lien, the estate, and the refunds the state will keep
The deferred amount is a real lien. Minn. Stat. 290B.07 creates it under Minn. Stat. 272.31 and sets its priority: liens and mortgages recorded or filed before the notice under Minn. Stat. 290B.04, subd. 2, have priority over the lien for deferred taxes and interest, and a seller's interest in a contract for deed also comes ahead of it. In practice, an existing first mortgage stays ahead of the state. Everything recorded later does not.
On the death of all qualifying homeowners, repayment is due within 90 days, and the Department of Revenue's FAQ is blunt about where that falls: "The lien will stay on your home and your estate must repay the loan within 90 days." Ninety days is fast for an estate that has not sold a house yet. If your parent enrolls, the adult child who will be the personal representative should know the balance each year, not discover it at probate.
Keep this separate in your head from Medical Assistance estate recovery, which is a different claim with different rules and which we cover in our guide to MA estate recovery. A property tax deferral is a loan secured by a lien; it does not move the house out of your parent's name, which also makes it a different animal from the transfers discussed in the 60-month lookback. If your parent is heading toward an MA application, ask the county financial worker how the deferral balance is treated in their case. That question belongs to the county, not to the Department of Revenue.
One more thing worth knowing before you file. While the deferral is active, the state applies certain money owed to your parent against the loan: their individual income tax refund, their property tax refund, their political contribution refund, and lottery winnings over $600. That is in Minn. Stat. 290B.06. If your parent has been counting on the annual property tax refund as spending money, understand that it will be swallowed by the deferral balance instead.
When deferring is the right call, and when it is not
The deferral earns its keep in one specific situation: your parent is staying put for years, the house is in sound enough shape to be lived in, and the property tax bill is the single line item that does not fit the monthly income. That describes a lot of long-held homes in Richfield, Columbia Heights, Crystal and the older parts of Fridley, where the house was bought cheap decades ago and the tax bill has climbed with the land. If aging in place is the plan, read it alongside our look at what Twin Cities housing stock actually demands of an older body, because tax relief does not fix stairs.
It is the wrong tool when a move is likely inside the next year or two. You would be borrowing at up to five percent, then repaying the whole balance within 90 days of the sale that funds the assisted living deposit anyway. The relief lasts a few months and the paperwork costs you an abstracter's fee and three weeks. If you are already reading our guide to a parent who cannot live alone or thinking about moving before winter, the deferral is probably not your answer.
It is also the wrong tool if the heirs are counting on the house. The balance compounds quietly, is invisible on a monthly statement, and surfaces at the worst possible moment with a 90-day fuse. Families who want to help with taxes are often better off doing it openly, in cash, with everyone at the table. If money is the core problem rather than the tax line specifically, start with what happens when the money runs out instead.
And it does nothing about the thing most Twin Cities families are actually squeezed by, which is the cost of care rather than the cost of the house. A three percent cap on property tax does not move the needle on a private-pay assisted living rate. Be clear-eyed about the size of the problem you are solving.
What to do in the next eleven days
If your parent plausibly qualifies, the order of operations matters. First, rule out the hard stops by asking two questions: is there a reverse mortgage, and is there a life estate. Either one ends the inquiry. Second, order the title document, Torrens certificate or owners and encumbrances report, today, because it must be dated within 30 days of the application and it is the slowest piece. Third, pull this year's property tax statement. Fourth, call 651-556-6091 and ask what interest rate will apply.
Separately, call the county assessor where the house sits and ask how homestead status will be treated if your parent later moves into care, and what happens if someone else lives in the house. Homestead classification is a county assessor determination, and the counties in this metro are Hennepin, Ramsey, Anoka, Dakota, Washington, Scott and Carver. Dakota County's Property Taxation & Records office, for example, takes those calls at 651-438-4576. Get the answer before a move, not after.
There is a second state program, the Homestead Credit Refund for homeowners, that is separate from the deferral and that many of the same households qualify for. We are deliberately not printing its income limit, maximum refund or filing deadline here, because we could not verify those figures against a primary source while writing this piece and we are not going to guess at numbers a family will rely on. Ask the Department of Revenue's general property tax line at 651-296-3781 or 800-652-9094 for the current year's figures.
For help sorting all of this against the care decision rather than just the tax question, the Senior LinkAge Line at 1-800-333-2433 is free, is run through the Minnesota Board on Aging with Trellis as the Area Agency on Aging for this metro, and does not sell anything. They will also walk a family through a long-term care consultation, which is a more useful conversation than the tax form if the real issue is that your mother should not be in that house alone another winter.
