Cost to Remodel a House in Minnesota (2026)

What Remodeling Projects Cost in Minneapolis

The 2025 Cost vs. Value Report prices the same project list in 119 markets and publishes a column for Minneapolis, Minnesota. These are that column — not the regional average and not the national one. Job cost is what the project cost; resale value is what it added to the home's price; cost recouped is the ratio.

Source: Cost vs. Value Report 2025 — Minneapolis, Minnesota (2025 Cost vs Value Report), retrieved 2026-09-02. The report's own scope note: "We compare average costs for 28 remodeling projects with the value those projects retain at resale in 119 U.S. markets." Resale figures assume a sale shortly after the work; a project you enjoy for ten years is not an investment held for ten years.

Cost by Project Type, as Minnesota Firms Publish It

Cost vs. Value prices a standardised project so markets can be compared. Design-build firms price the job in front of them. Both are useful and they are not measuring the same thing, so we show both rather than averaging them into a number neither source would stand behind.

Individual line items

Source: College City Design-Build — Minneapolis basement remodel cost guide (published May 27, 2026), retrieved 2026-09-02.

Where the Two Sources Disagree, and Why

Put the kitchen numbers side by side and they look contradictory. They are not — they are scoped differently, and the difference is the most useful thing on this page:

• Cost vs. Value's "minor kitchen remodel" is cheaper than College City's "cosmetic refresh" — $28,196 against $35,000–$65,000. The Cost vs. Value project is a defined specification repeated in every market so the markets can be compared; a firm's refresh tier is whatever that firm's clients actually buy, in a metro whose housing stock is old and whose labour is not cheap.
• The mid-market figures agree closely. Cost vs. Value's major midrange kitchen is $81,187; College City's mid-range remodel is $75,000–$120,000. Where the scopes genuinely line up, two independent sources land in the same place — which is the reason to trust either.
• Use the resale column for decisions, not the cost column. Cost vs. Value is the only source here that publishes what a project returns. No design-build firm publishes that, for the obvious reason.

Minnesota Rules That Move a Remodel Budget

These are the code and licensing facts that change what a project costs here specifically. They come from the Revisor of Statutes rather than from any cost guide — a remodeler's blog is a good source for a price and a poor one for a rule.

• Finishing a basement does not trigger an egress window. Adding a bedroom does. Minnesota Rules 1309.0310 amends IRC section R310.6 to read: "An emergency escape and rescue opening is not required where existing basements undergo alterations or repairs." The very next subsection, R310.6.1, requires that "New sleeping rooms created in an existing basement shall be provided with emergency escape and rescue openings." At $3,000–$6,000 installed, that single distinction is often the difference between a basement plan that pencils and one that does not — and it is decided at layout, not at construction.
• There is a sprinkler alternative. The same rule exempts basements and basement bedrooms where the basement and its means of egress are protected by an automatic sprinkler system installed per IRC Section P2904 or NFPA 13D. Whether that is cheaper than a window well is a question for your contractor; that it is legal is not.
• Your remodeler almost certainly needs a state licence. Minn. Stat. § 326B.805 subd. 1 requires a residential remodeler to be licensed by the commissioner. Subd. 6(5) exempts "a person whose total gross annual receipts for performing specialty skills for which licensure would be required under this section do not exceed $15,000", and that person must still hold a certificate of exemption. If a bid is unusually low, the licence status is the first thing to check.
• You can legally do it yourself — once. Minn. Stat. § 326B.805 subd. 6(3) exempts an owner who improves residential real estate they occupy or will retain for rental. But it "does not apply to an owner who constructs or improves residential real estate for purposes of resale or speculation", and it presumes speculation if you improve more than one property within any 24-month period — "unless the properties will be retained by the owner for rental purposes".
• Pre-1978 houses carry an extra compliance cost. Subd. 1a requires a licensee performing renovation on a residential structure built before 1978 to comply with the lead-safe renovation requirements of Minn. Stat. § 326B.106 subd. 14. Much of Minneapolis and Saint Paul's housing stock predates 1978, so this is a routine line item in core-city remodeling rather than an edge case.

What Your City Charges to Permit It

Building permit fees in Minnesota are set by construction valuation, not by project type — the same schedule that prices a new house prices your kitchen, at your project's valuation rather than a house's. We hold transcribed fee schedules for 16 metro cities, of which 15 publish a permit valuation table at all. Rather than estimate a fee for your project — the fee depends on a valuation only your city can set — see the full transcribed schedules on the cost-to-build guide or your own city's cost page.

Transcribed verbatim from each city's published fee schedule; sources and printed document dates are on the cost-to-build guide.

What We Could Not Source, and Why That Is the Answer

Three of these are absences. They are recorded because a guide that fills every cell cannot tell you where the published data stops.

• No standardised whole-home remodel figure exists. The Cost vs. Value report prices 28 projects and a whole-home remodel is not one of them — there is no standardised specification to price, because no two whole-home projects share a scope. The only figures on this page for whole-home work are one firm's published range (AMEK Design + Build: $150–$300+ per square foot, $300,000–$750,000+ for an average Minneapolis home), and that page carries no date. We show it as one firm's number rather than as a market range, because that is what it is.
• Two of the largest Twin Cities remodeling firms publish no prices at all. Castle Building & Remodeling's project-costs page routes to a gated download and a calculator rather than printing a range. That is not a criticism — a real bid needs a real scope — but it means the published-price sample for this metro is thin enough that two sources is close to all of them.
• Cost vs. Value's Minneapolis column is a market average, not a Minnesota figure. It covers the Minneapolis market, not Duluth, Rochester or St Cloud, and this page does not extrapolate it to them. Where a figure is Minneapolis-specific, we have said Minneapolis.
• We publish no evaluated permit fee. The fee schedules we hold are transcriptions, and a permit fee depends on a construction valuation the city sets. A wrong fee estimate is worse than no estimate, so there is no fee calculator here.

Methodology & Sources

Every dollar figure on this page was published by a named third party and is linked to its source. We synthesized none of them and we performed no arithmetic on any of them — no averaging across sources, no per-square-foot figures derived by division, no reconciliation of one source against another. Where sources disagree, both are shown with their scope stated.

Market cost and resale figures are the Minneapolis column of the Cost vs. Value Report 2025 — Minneapolis, Minnesota, published by the Journal of Light Construction. Project ranges are published by two Minnesota design-build firms in our directory: College City Design-Build ( kitchen, bathroom, basement) and AMEK Design + Build ( whole-home).

Code and licensing facts come only from the Minnesota Revisor of Statutes — Minnesota Rules 1309.0310 and Minn. Stat. § 326B.805. We do not take code claims from contractor cost guides: one of the guides cited above states the basement egress requirement as "at least 44 inches wide", which is the sill-height limit rather than a width, and reproducing that would have put a wrong code fact on a page people budget from.

Permit and water-access charging bases are transcribed from city fee schedules we hold for 16 metro cities, each with its own source URL and printed document date. We publish no evaluated fee from them.

These are published ranges, not quotes. Get 2–3 bids from licensed remodelers who work in your city.

Get Real Numbers for Your Project

Published ranges are the start, not the answer — your house, its age, and what is behind the walls decide the rest. Get matched free with design-build remodelers who work in your city, or browse remodeling services by city.

By project: kitchen remodeling in Minneapolis, bathroom remodeling in Minneapolis, basement finishing in Minneapolis. Related reading: permits & inspections and change orders.