Signing a Minnesota title takes about ninety seconds once you know which boxes matter. Getting one of them wrong sends the buyer back to any deputy registrar office and the car back to your driveway. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Minnesota Driver and Vehicle Services' own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Minnesota titleThe assignment of ownership, the two disclosures, the sales tax declaration and the Notice of Sale stub - what goes in each, and the one that gets torn off.Open the walkthrough →The odometer statement on a Minnesota title offers three answers and you tick exactly one of them. Actual mileage is what almost every transfer is. In excess of odometer's mechanical limits means a five-figure instrument that has gone round past 99,999 and started again. Not actual mileage carries the printed words Warning Odometer Discrepancy with it, and DVS's own booklet warns deputy registrars to check that the figure written into the assignment is the same as or higher than the reading already printed on the face - so a number typed a thousand miles light is caught at the counter and a number typed high can never be walked back.
Where the age cut-off falls is a question Minnesota answers twice correctly and once out of date. The DVS deputy-registrar booklet, revised May 2026, says the reading is needed on vehicles in their 20th year of life or newer beginning with model year 2011, and that vehicles model year 2010 and older are exempt. The Buying or Selling a Motor Vehicle fact sheet says the same in different words. But the instruction sheet DVS still links beside the PS2000 on its own forms page - the one whose footer reads PS2000B-46(11/2020) - lists as its fourth exemption a vehicle that is a model year of 2009 or older. That was right in November 2020 and it has been one model year behind ever since. Take 2010 and older as exempt, which is what the federal rule at 49 CFR 580.17 gives you, and tick a box on anything newer.
Model year 2010 or older: Exempt. DVS's own title-certification booklet says so in a single sentence, and nothing needs to be written in the mileage box on the assignment.
Model year 2011 or newer: Disclosed, and disclosed for twenty years, so the earliest of them drops out in 2031. Whole miles, no tenths, and one of the three boxes ticked.
Gross vehicle weight rating over 16,000 pounds: Exempt. It sits in the same sentence as the age rule in the booklet and on the fact sheet, and it is the reason a heavy pickup can be older than the rule and still exempt on weight instead.
Anything not self-propelled: Exempt. In practice that is a trailer, and most Minnesota trailers are not titled in the first place.
Minnesota DVS, Title Certification: Minnesota Titles & Transfers, Rev. 05/2026
You, the seller: Everything you do happens in the assignment of ownership block on the title itself. Hand print your name, sign beside it, and do the same for every other owner shown on the face. Then the date of sale, the mileage with one of the three odometer boxes ticked, the damage disclosure ticked has or has not, and the purchase price in the sales tax declaration area. If a lender is printed on the front, the buyer needs a lien release from that lender in their hand as well.
The buyer: Fills in the application half of the same certificate - full name, date of birth, Minnesota credential number, address - answers whether the vehicle is subject to a security agreement, signs both the application and the assignment, and takes the whole thing to a deputy registrar with the tax and the fees. On a motorcycle they also write the engine number onto the face of the title.
Nobody witnesses a Minnesota sale. There is no notary anywhere in an ordinary Minnesota transfer. Eighteen DVS vehicle forms were searched for a notary block while this section was written and five have one: the lien notification PS2017, which says in a box of its own that it must be notarized to release a lien; the transfer-on-death designation PS2004; the surviving spouse affidavit PS2071; the repossession affidavit PS2024; and the lien release half of the ownership-correction affidavit PS2025B. Every one of those is a document for a transfer that has gone wrong or a person who cannot sign. The title and the PS2000 application carry a certification and a signature line, and that is all.
Which puts the whole weight of a Minnesota sale on getting the writing right first time, because the other Minnesota rule is that a title you have corrected with a pen is no longer a title. DVS's transfer page puts it in seven words - any alteration will void the title - and the way back from a slip is an affidavit and a fee, not a neat line through the mistake.
Three clocks run out of one handover and they measure three different things. Yours is section 168A.10 subdivision 1: within ten days of the date of sale the owner must complete, detach and return the Notice of Sale printed on the certificate, or transmit the same information electronically - the buyer's name, address, driver's licence number and the date of sale. The buyer's is subdivision 2 of the same section: twenty calendar days to execute the application on the certificate and get it to the department, and the fee page prices a miss at a $2 late transfer penalty. The third is DVS's own, on its report-of-sale page: it will suspend the vehicle's registration if the ownership documents and fees are not submitted within 30 days.
Minnesota Driver and Vehicle Services, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
One green certificate, two disclosures, a price in the tax box and a Notice of Sale to file within ten days. The certificate carries all of that by itself; these are the forms that stand behind it.
A Minnesota lien never rides along to the next owner. It is released on the card, on letterhead or on a notarised PS2017 - and there is a seven-year escape hatch for a lender nobody can find.
A lost title, a mistyped one, or one somebody put a pen through. Minnesota voids an altered title outright, so the fix is always a form and never an amendment.
DVS publishes no power of attorney of its own. The one Minnesota document that separates the person holding the keys from the person printed on the title is the lessee designation.
Two notarised affidavits and a memorial card move a car out of a Minnesota estate without probate, and a designation made in advance skips even that.
Eighty percent of actual cash value is the Minnesota line, and it is drawn twice - once on the damage disclosure you tick at the sale, once on the brand DVS puts on the title.
The plate stays with the car in Minnesota, so the only plate paperwork a seller meets is about the plate they want to keep or the tabs they have already paid for.
If you have sold a car anywhere else, unlearn this one first. DVS states it in a boxed note at the foot of its Buying or Selling a Motor Vehicle sheet: when you sell your vehicle, the license plate and registration taxes are assigned to the new owner. The plates stay bolted on. The tabs stay stuck to them. The months of registration you have already paid for go across with the car, because section 168.15 makes the seller assign the registration tax paid to the credit of the buyer unless the stickers are surrendered before the next registration period begins.
The reason it works that way is a rule most sellers never read. Section 168.12 subdivision 1 says the plates and stickers issued for a vehicle may not be transferred to another vehicle during the period for which the sticker is issued - plates are attached to a vehicle in Minnesota, not to a person. Every special plate in the statute then exempts itself from that sentence individually and at a price: personalised, firefighter, amateur radio and the rest may go to another vehicle you own for a $5 special plate transfer fee. So the only plate you can take off is one you paid extra for, and taking it off means the buyer leaves with a car that has no plate on it.
There is one exception DVS states plainly and it is the one that catches people who advertise beyond the state line. Its deputy-registrar booklet says that when a vehicle is sold to a resident of another state, the plates are to be removed from the vehicle and the sale must be reported on MNDRIVE, and the buyer is issued a 60-Day Non-Resident Permit to get the vehicle out of Minnesota. Selling to a neighbour in Hudson or Fargo is therefore a different job from selling to a neighbour in Hopkins, and it is the one case where you do end up holding your own plates.
Because the plate stays, the thing that actually separates you from the car is the Notice of Sale rather than a screwdriver. That is worth saying twice: your registration is still on that plate until the buyer files, and the record still points at you until DVS is told otherwise.
Minnesota's release of liability has a name, a deadline and two forms. The name is Notice of Sale and it comes from section 168A.10 subdivision 1, which gives the seller ten days from the date of sale to complete, detach and return the block printed on the certificate, or to transmit the same information electronically in a form acceptable to the commissioner. DVS's own report page now asks for the second of those and turns the first into a receipt: have the buyers fully complete the Seller's Notice of Sale portion of the title and keep this portion for your records, take a copy or a picture of the buyer's identification, then report the vehicle as sold using online services. The paper stub stays in your drawer and the filing happens on a screen.
Filing it is not what transfers the car and DVS says so in the first line of that page - reporting the transfer of ownership does not transfer the ownership of the vehicle. What it does is put a date on the record. Until somebody tells the department, the plate on that car is registered to you and the vehicle record answers to your name, and the buyer's own twenty days are the buyer's to waste. Sold to a dealer, none of this applies: DVS says when a vehicle is sold or traded to a licensed dealer, you do not need to mark the vehicle as sold. Sold out of state, the same page tells you to report it as removed from state instead.
Photograph the completed assignment before the title leaves the kerb.
Your Notice of Sale stub carries the buyer's details but not the mileage, not the price and not the disclosures, so photograph the whole assignment block as well - both printed names, both signatures, the date, the odometer figure with its ticked box and the damage disclosure. Then cancel the insurance, and be deliberate about it, because in Minnesota the plate and the registration went with the car and your name is the one still on them until the buyer files. If the transfer never arrives, section 168A.10 subdivision 5 is the sentence to know: an owner who has delivered possession and complied within 48 hours is not liable as owner for damages from the buyer's driving. Minnesota Statutes 168A.10, transfer of interest by owner.
Minnesota DVS, Buying or Selling a Motor Vehicle, March 2025
Register at any deputy registrar office within 20 days of the purchase. Motor vehicle sales tax is 6.875 percent of the purchase price and the deputy registrar collects it from the buyer when the transfer is filed. You collect nothing. Two in-lieu rates replace it: $10 on a passenger vehicle ten model years or older where both the purchase price and the fair market value are under $3,000, and $150 on a passenger vehicle or fire truck registered in a collector class. An older, cheaper car is therefore substantially cheaper to buy in Minnesota than the headline rate suggests, which is worth mentioning to a hesitant buyer. The title itself is $8.25. Around it sit a $12 filing fee, a $2.25 technology surcharge, a $10 transfer tax, a $3.50 public safety vehicle fee and a $1 local office surcharge for doing it over a counter - about $37 before the tax. No plate fee, because the plate is already on the car and stays there.
What they need to bring:
Minnesota does not test cars. There is no emissions programme, no periodic roadworthiness check and no inspection tied to a private sale anywhere in the state, and nothing on the DVS registration, renewal, transfer, fee or forms pages asks for a certificate. Neither the PS2000 application nor its instruction sheet has a box for one. A buyer who asks which station they need to visit is thinking of the state they moved from.
And that inspection is not what its name suggests. DVS says the inspection is not a safety inspection; instead, it's focused on deterring fraud and theft - it is looking at the identification number and the receipts for major parts, not at your brake pads. Passing it costs a $35 salvage inspection fee plus a filing fee and turns a Salvage brand into a Prior Salvage one. Minnesota DVS, Vehicle title salvage vehicle process.
Minnesota Driver and Vehicle Services · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Minnesota and the rest of the guides.