Buying a Home in the Rochester, Minnesota Area: Downtown and the Mayo Campus, Pill Hill, Byron, Stewartville, the River Towns and Bluff Country

In the 1920s Dr. Charles Mayo bought fifteen Canada geese for his roughly 3,000-acre game refuge. The flock grew past six hundred birds and found Silver Lake, a 50-acre reservoir in the middle of Rochester, where warm water discharged from the city utility's coal plant kept the lake from freezing. From the late 1970s into the mid-2000s, somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 giant Canada geese spent each winter there, and for decades the city fed them and invited visitors to come watch (Atlas Obscura; Wikipedia: Silver Lake). The Northwoods League baseball team that plays at Mayo Field, across from Silver Lake Park, is the Rochester Honkers. Locals call the city the Med City, after Mayo Clinic, and a local news site carries the name (Med City Beat; Wikipedia: Rochester, Minnesota).

I'm Jeff Moran, NMLS #483943, a mortgage broker licensed to originate in Minnesota through C2 Financial Corporation, and I have been in the mortgage business since 1996. I work out of Bluffton, South Carolina, and I wrote this page for anyone thinking about buying a home in Rochester or in one of the towns around it. Rochester is Minnesota's third-largest city and the home of Mayo Clinic, and the metro around it is Olmsted, Dodge, Wabasha and Fillmore counties, with commuter towns along US 14 and US 52 and river and bluff towns farther out. I start downtown, then go through the neighborhoods, the land being annexed for new homes, the commuter towns, the two rural counties, the hospitals and employers, and the flood control system. After that comes the homework on any address: the county, the tax bill, radon, wells, the recording taxes and permits. The facts here come from public sources, cited beside the ones that matter most, and most of them were gathered in late September 2026. Please confirm any number that matters to your decision on the publisher's own page, because a figure can move between the day it was reported and the day you read this. The Twin Cities, about 80 miles up US 52, have their own page.

Downtown Rochester, the Mayo campus and the subway

Downtown Rochester has a subway, and it has had one since 1921. It is a system of below-grade pedestrian tunnels, reported at 62,000 square feet, that joins the Mayo buildings, the hotels and the shops (Experience Rochester; Post Bulletin). An enclosed skyway system does the same job one level above the street, and between the two you can cross the downtown core in January without going outside. If somebody tells you to take the subway to the Gonda, they mean the tunnel to the Gonda Building, the main Mayo Clinic building downtown (Wikipedia: Gonda Building).

Nine Mayo Clinic construction sites were active downtown as of October 2025, under a campus expansion Mayo calls Bold. Forward. Unbound. and prices at $5 billion. It adds five new buildings, including two clinical buildings totaling 1.8 million square feet that connect to the Gonda Building (KTTC, October 31, 2025; Mayo Clinic). In 2025 Mayo and the city described 2026 as the year pieces of downtown start reopening. The list included 2nd Street SW back in use once its utilities are upgraded, remodeled East Gonda and East Mayo entrances open in summer, and new parking structures opening through the fall (KTTC, August 25, 2025; Post Bulletin). Those were plans stated in 2025, and I was not able to confirm which of them have landed. If you are looking at a condominium or an older home close to the campus, please drive the blocks around it and ask the city which closures are still in place. The two clinical buildings replacing the Ozmun building and the Damon parking ramp are scheduled for 2030. The city is also spending about $38 million on utilities, streets and streetscaping around the Mayo work, beginning in 2026 (KTTC, March 9, 2026).

In August 2026 the Rochester City Council voted 4 to 3 to let a developer remove the rear sections of 309 to 317 South Broadway, in the downtown historic district, and add a seven-story addition with 35 apartments. The vote granted an appeal and overturned a denial by the city's Heritage Preservation Commission. The meeting ran more than six and a half hours, with more than two hours of public comment (KTTC, August 18, 2026; MPR News, August 24, 2026). So the commission reviews changes to older buildings downtown, and the council can overrule it on appeal. If you are buying an older home in the district, please ask the commission what its rules allow before you plan a new window or an addition.

Green + The Grain opened on January 29, 2026 at 21 First Avenue SW, in a 3,677-square-foot space between the Historic Chateau Theatre and the Peace Plaza entrance. It is the Minneapolis group's first location outside the Twin Cities (Post Bulletin). The Chateau next door opened in 1927 as a vaudeville house, and its interior is built to look like a medieval village (Downtown Rochester; Wikipedia: Chateau Theatre). Downtown runs a Restaurant Week each year, and the organizer's page carries the current dates (Downtown Rochester). On the Zumbro riverfront, the Rochester Art Center is beside the Mayo Civic Center (Rochester Art Center).

Link, the city's bus rapid transit line, was expected to open in November 2026. It runs 2.8 miles along 2nd Street from Cascade Lake to 6th Street SE with seven stations, connecting the Mayo campus, the downtown riverfront and the public library. The buses are fully electric, the stations are heated and lit with real-time signs, and the fare is free to every rider (City of Rochester; Star Tribune). An $84.92 million federal grant supports it (City of Rochester). Published figures for its total cost differ from one report to another, so I have left that number out. If you are choosing between a home on the west side near Cascade Lake and one east of downtown, that line is a way to reach the campus without a parking ramp. The city's page will say whether it opened on schedule.

Pill Hill, Kutzky Park, Slatterly Park and the lakes

Pill Hill is on a limestone bluff southwest of downtown, roughly between 3rd and 9th Streets and 7th and 10th Avenues SW. The name comes from the Mayo-affiliated physicians who built there, starting with seven homes between 1903 and 1911, and Dr. William and Hattie Mayo moved into the Foundation House in 1916. The district has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1990, with 133 of its 151 properties listed. The Plummer House and the Mayo Foundation House are listed on their own (Wikipedia: Pill Hill Historic District; Post Bulletin). The Plummer House, at 1091 Plummer Lane SW, is open as a museum, with its gardens and water tower on the bluff (Experience Rochester). In early 2025 a Pill Hill Historic Landmark District plan passed the Heritage Preservation Commission and went on to the City Council, which the Star Tribune reported approved it (KTTC, February 1, 2025; Star Tribune). A National Register listing and a city landmark district carry different rules for an owner. So if you are looking at a home in Pill Hill, please ask the Heritage Preservation Commission what the landmark district requires before you plan exterior work.

Kutzky Park, northwest of downtown, is a neighborhood of homes more than a century old, American foursquares, craftsman bungalows and Tudors (Homes.com Kutzky Park guide). Slatterly Park, to the southeast, has early-twentieth-century homes along Bear Creek and is within biking distance of the Mayo campus. It hosts an Art on the Avenue festival each year, with this year's date on the organizer's page (Homes.com Slatterly Park guide). Both descriptions come from real estate guides rather than from the city, so the age of a specific home is better read from the county's property record.

Silver Lake Park, at 840 7th Street NE, has a paved loop around the lake and rents kayaks, canoes, paddleboats and bikes in season. The city reports that its rebuilt outdoor pool, with a zero-entry ramp and a 25-yard lap pool, was completed in summer 2026 (City of Rochester). The Silver Lake Dam dates to 1937, and the city's flood control story map says it needs close maintenance and monitoring as it nears a century old (City of Rochester). On the northeast side, Quarry Hill Park covers about 329 acres of restored oak savanna, with a stocked fishing pond and a sandstone cave cut in 1882. Its nature center keeps more than 35 live native species (Quarry Hill Nature Center). On the southwest side, the paved loop around Cascade Lake runs a little over two miles and ties into the city trail system, and that lake is where the Link line begins (City of Rochester). At Soldiers Memorial Field Park, the veterans memorial wall carries about three thousand names from southeast Minnesota (City of Rochester). Foster Arend Beach, on East River Road NE, has sand, a beach house and no lifeguard, and the city says so on its own beaches page (City of Rochester).

The land Rochester is annexing for new homes

Rochester considered annexing 521 acres in the first four months of 2026, against 275 acres annexed in all of 2024 (Post Bulletin). Annexing means bringing land that was in a township into the city, so it gets city water, sewer and streets and pays city taxes.

Pebble Creek, on the northwest side, is 330 acres annexed under a 2003 annexation agreement with Kalmar Township, making way for 900 to 960 homes. DeWitz owns the land and Lennar is the planned builder, with a second phase of housing possibly starting late 2026 (Post Bulletin). The Stark project, on the north edge, is 67 acres the City Council annexed unanimously for about 330 rental homes, duplexes and fourplexes, reported to break ground as early as spring 2026 (Post Bulletin). On the southwest side, at Country Club Road and 45th Avenue SW, Pulte asked to subdivide about 141 acres for 300 lots in an age-restricted, for-sale Del Webb community. The council reviewed it at its first meeting of 2026, and Pulte wanted the first homes for sale at the start of 2027. Neighbors raised traffic and flooding concerns, because Cascade Creek runs through the site (Post Bulletin; The Development Tracker). I was not able to confirm where that approval stands today, so if a Del Webb home is what you want, please check the city's planning page for the current status.

Olmsted County's 2025 housing study says the county needs about 18,000 new housing units by 2035, and that need is what all the annexing is answering. Over the previous five years, builders averaged about 425 single-family homes a year plus more than 2,600 rental units. Rental vacancy runs between 2% and 3%, and the study describes the for-sale market as "record-low supply". It also projects about 5,900 senior housing units by 2035, with a goal of 1,100 new age-restricted for-sale homes. That is the demand the Del Webb plan is aimed at (Olmsted County Comprehensive Housing Study 2025; Star Tribune; KTTC, July 18, 2025).

Rochester voters renewed the city's half-percent local sales tax on November 7, 2023 to fund a $205 million plan. It puts $50 million into an economic vitality fund for housing and workforce needs, $50 million into street repairs, $40 million into flood control and water quality, and $65 million into a regional sports and recreation complex (City of Rochester). The complex's estimate rose to about $120 million, and dirt work was under way at the southeast Rochester site on June 3, 2026. In March 2026 the Rochester DFL legislative delegation moved to revoke the sales tax authorization for it, saying the cost had grown and the plan had drifted from what voters approved. That revocation was left out of the negotiated 2026 tax bill and did not pass (KTTC, March 11, 2026; Minnesota Senate DFL). A 158-acre annexation supports the site. It is a sales tax, so none of this adds a line to a property tax bill.

Byron, Kasson, Stewartville and the other commuter towns

US 14 has been four lanes the whole way from Mankato to Rochester since November 9, 2021, when the 12.5-mile stretch between Dodge Center and Owatonna opened. Later work between Dodge Center and Kasson added a J-turn at Dodge County Road 9 and a cable median barrier, and repaving between Byron and Dodge Center was finished by August 2024 (MnDOT; Dodge County). MnDOT's long-range vision is a freeway with interchanges at Dodge County Road 15 and Olmsted County Roads 5, 3 and 104 (MnDOT). If you are weighing a home in Byron, Kasson or Dodge Center against one in the city, the four-lane is the reason the drive works.

Byron, ten miles west of Rochester on US 14, had 6,331 people at the 2020 census (Wikipedia: Byron). Byron Public Schools, ISD 531, passed a $44 million bond in 2021 for an administration and community services building, more high school classrooms, a new auditorium and a new high school athletic facility (Byron Public Schools; Wikipedia: Byron High School). Oxbow Park and Zollman Zoo, on County Road 105 NW outside Byron, is an Olmsted County park with more than 30 species of Minnesota native animals, and the county charges no entrance fee (Olmsted County).

Kasson, about 15 miles west on US 14 in Dodge County, is six miles past Byron and has more than 6,000 people. Dodge County's housing needs analysis projects that Kasson will add the most households of any city in the county between 2025 and 2035, about 366, followed by Dodge Center at 85 (Dodge County Comprehensive Housing Needs Analysis). The town has a public library, an aquatic center and Veterans Memorial Park with tennis courts.

Stewartville, about 12 miles south of Rochester, is where the metro's manufacturing and logistics growth has gone. United Therapeutics is building a reported $110 million pathogen-free facility there to raise gene-edited pigs whose kidneys and hearts are meant for human transplant. The first pigs were expected in 2026, with about 20 employees (KTTC, May 15, 2025; Post Bulletin). Amazon paid $2.5 million for land in the Schumann Business Park for a delivery station of about 84,000 square feet, reported standing by fall 2025 (Post Bulletin; Star Tribune). In Tebay's Industrial Park, Geotek finished a 105,000-square-foot warehouse and office, the first of four planned phases, and Jimmy's Salad Dressings and Halcon Furniture have expanded or planned to (Post Bulletin; Widseth). City officials put Amazon and United Therapeutics together at 100 to 130 permanent jobs (KAAL). Stewartville has a municipal water park and its own school district, ISD 534. Bear Cave Park covers about 190 acres along the river with trails and playgrounds (City of Stewartville).

Pine Island and Oronoco, north of Rochester on US 52, share a school district that reaches into Goodhue, Olmsted and Dodge counties, with a high school and a K-8 (Edina Realty). So the district's boundary map is worth a look before you assume which school an address feeds. Pine Island itself is in Goodhue County and outside the Rochester metro, and so is Zumbrota; St. Charles, east of Rochester, is in Winona County. All three are in the trade area and the school districts, so they come up here where a road or a district crosses into them. The Douglas State Trail runs 12.5 paved miles on an old railroad grade from northwest Rochester through Douglas to Pine Island (Minnesota DNR).

In 2027 MnDOT plans to repave US 52 in concrete from north of Rochester, skipping a short section at the north end of Oronoco, through Pine Island to the MN 60 interchange south of Zumbrota. The work includes a new frontage road south of the Pine Island interchange and a raised southbound roadway near the middle fork of the Zumbro River to reduce flooding. The medians at 480th, 490th and 500th Streets will close, which ends left turns and crossings at those three streets. A noise study ran in summer 2026 to decide whether noise walls are needed (MnDOT). If you are looking at acreage on one of those three streets, please ask MnDOT how you will get in and out once the median closes.

Eyota, with 2,006 people at the 2020 census, is east of Rochester on US 14 (Wikipedia: Eyota). Chester Woods Park, on Highway 14 East, is an Olmsted County park built around a dammed reservoir on the headwaters of Bear Creek, with a swimming beach, a boat launch, trails and camping (Olmsted County). Chatfield, to the southeast, has a public library and the Chatfield Center for the Arts.

Wabasha County: Wabasha, Lake City and Plainview

Wabasha is on the Mississippi near where the Zumbro River comes in, close to Lake Pepin (Wikipedia: Wabasha). The National Eagle Center is on the Wabasha riverfront, where bald eagles winter along the open water of the river (National Eagle Center). At Reads Landing, the stone overlook on Highway 61 was built between 1939 and 1940 and looks out over Lake Pepin (MnDOT). LARK Toys in Kellogg keeps a hand-carved wooden carousel, an antique toy museum and a mini golf course (LARK Toys). Carley State Park, outside Plainview, follows the north branch of the Whitewater River and is known for spring wildflowers and trout water (Minnesota DNR).

Mayo Clinic Health System's Lake City hospital, at 500 West Grant Street, is an 18-bed critical access hospital with a clinic and a care center on the same campus and a regional clinic in Plainview (Mayo Clinic Health System). A critical access hospital is a federal designation for a small rural hospital, limited to 25 inpatient beds, that keeps an emergency room open around the clock. So routine care and emergencies are handled in Lake City, and more involved treatment is a drive to Rochester. I found little 2026 development news for Wabasha County, so the county's site and the Wabasha County Herald are where I'd look for anything current. The county does lead southeast Minnesota in one measure that matters to a home inspection, radon, and I cover that in the homework section.

Fillmore County: Bluff Country and the Driftless

In 1924 three pigs fell into a sinkhole near Harmony, and the cave found when people went down after them is Niagara Cave, with a sixty-foot underground waterfall (Niagara Cave; Wikipedia: Niagara Cave). Fillmore County is Driftless country, the corner of the Upper Midwest the glaciers missed, and its bedrock is karst, fractured limestone under thin soil, where water cuts caves and the ground opens into sinkholes. The Minnesota Historical Society counts 10,317 catalogued sinkholes in the county, with thousands more filled in decades ago, running from a few feet to a hundred feet deep (MNopedia). Mystery Cave, inside Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park near Preston, is the longest cave in Minnesota with more than 13 miles of mapped passages. The same park holds Historic Forestville, an 1899 village, several miles away (Minnesota DNR). Spring Valley Caverns runs more than 5¾ miles and is the largest privately owned cave system in the state (Wikipedia: Spring Valley Caverns).

The Root River State Trail is 42 paved miles between Fountain and Houston, for bikes in summer and cross-country skis in winter. Five miles west of Lanesboro it connects to the 17-mile Harmony-Preston Valley State Trail (Minnesota DNR; Explore Minnesota). Lanesboro is in a bowl of limestone bluffs and is the hub of that trail system, with a farmers market in town and the Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center on the bluff above the Root River valley (Lanesboro; Eagle Bluff). Preston has two apple orchards (Explore Minnesota). The same limestone that makes the caves is the reason wells and water deserve a look anywhere in these four counties, and that is in the homework section below.

Hospitals, employers and the airport

Mayo Clinic is Minnesota's largest employer, and on RAEDI's list of Rochester-area employers it shows 50,385 employees. Other published Mayo figures run from about 57,000 in Minnesota to nearly 83,000 across every state, so the number depends on what is being counted. The Rochester-area figure is the one that describes this market (RAEDI, Major Employers; Star Tribune). If you are moving here for a Mayo job, you are joining the biggest payroll in the state, and the housing study above is what that payroll does to the home supply. The other employer worth knowing by name is IBM, whose Rochester campus is 3.1 million square feet, described as more than half the size of the Pentagon, and which posts quantum computing roles there (Wikipedia: IBM Rochester). RAEDI's IBM figure of 2,791 is the 2017 site count, so please read it as history and ask IBM for today's headcount if your offer is from them.

Olmsted Medical Center, called OMC, is a separate health system from Mayo Clinic, with more than 290 clinicians and 35 services at 25 locations (Olmsted Medical Center). In March 2026 it consolidated its southwest FastCare clinic and the Rochester Northwest Clinic acute care teams into a new urgent care clinic at its Miracle Mile location, with new services starting May 18, 2026. It also leased more space at 1544 Greenview Drive SW to move audiology and ENT there by February 2027 (KTTC, March 22, 2026; Post Bulletin). If you are choosing a clinic near a new home, you have two systems to choose from. The Federal Medical Center is a federal prison medical facility on the southeast side, near the Fourth Street SE and 19th Avenue roundabout the city is building (Wikipedia: Federal Medical Center, Rochester).

Destination Medical Center, which local news shortens to DMC, is the public side of the Mayo expansion. It is a 20-year plan in which state and local money pays for the streets, utilities and transit around downtown while Mayo and other private owners put up the buildings. For 2026 the DMC Corporation approved $40.8 million, aimed at Mayo's downtown expansion, the Link line and the 6th Street bridge (DMC; Star Tribune). If you buy near downtown, that is the money rebuilding the streets, the bus line and the bridge around you, and it is the reason the construction will keep going for years after you move in.

Rochester International Airport, RST, added a United nonstop to Chicago O'Hare that was scheduled for April 2026 and moved to June. The City Council put up a $1.5 million minimum revenue guarantee to attract more direct flights; that is a promise to cover an airline's shortfall if a new route does not sell enough seats. A $15 million general aviation ramp expansion broke ground in May 2026 (RST; KTTC, May 28, 2026).

Schools: the buildings and the bonds

Rochester Public Schools, ISD 535, is the metro's largest district. Its 2019 bond of $180.9 million paid for, among other things, new Longfellow and Bishop elementary schools. The new Longfellow was built on a different nearby site after the district exchanged land with the city, and the new Bishop went up on the same lot as the old one (Post Bulletin; RPS Project Progress). Longfellow's own website calls it Longfellow 45-15 Elementary School, which is a year-round calendar, usually 45 school days followed by a 15-day break. If that matters to your family, please confirm the current calendar with the district (Longfellow). In November 2024 voters passed an operating levy of $19.4 million a year for ten years, with 57% in favor (KAAL).

The district projects enrollment to fall, by 6% to 7.4% over five years in one projection and to below 15,000 students over ten (KROC). As of July 2026 it was preparing a large package of facilities changes that its administration described as tax neutral and not requiring boundary changes (Post Bulletin). Because the district has been planning around fewer students, please check its current attendance map and any facilities decision for the address you are considering. Byron's bond is above, Stewartville has ISD 534, and the Pine Island district crosses county lines as described above.

The 1978 flood and the system built after it

On July 5 and 6, 1978 the Zumbro River came up through Rochester's streets and into homes. Five people died and damage ran to $60 million. The July 6 crest at the Rochester gage set the all-time record at 23.36 feet and 30,500 cubic feet per second, more than four feet above the 1965 record (National Weather Service La Crosse; Post Bulletin). The response was a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and NRCS flood control project, finished during 1995 at about $92 million and designed to protect the city against a 200-year flood. It is made up of seven upstream reservoirs, channel work on the Zumbro and other streams, levees, concrete and sheet-pile floodwalls along the South Fork Zumbro, bank stabilization and diversion channels. The Corps' Zumbro work, completed in 1996, deepened and widened the channel through the city (City of Rochester Flood Control System story map; National Weather Service). The city has reported that the system "performed as designed" after a storm (City of Rochester), and $40 million of the renewed sales tax goes to sediment removal, floodwall reinvestment and riverbank work.

A 200-year design standard describes what the system was built to handle. It does not tell you whether a given address is in FEMA's Special Flood Hazard Area, the high-risk zone where a lender requires flood insurance. I was not able to pin down FEMA's accreditation status for Rochester's levees for this page. So for any home near the Zumbro, Cascade Creek, Bear Creek or Silver Creek, please look up the address on FEMA's flood map and ask your insurance agent for a flood quote before you compare it with another home. If there is a premium, it goes into the payment a lender qualifies you on.

Homework on any address: the county and the tax bill

The metro is Olmsted, Dodge, Wabasha and Fillmore counties. Olmsted had 166,424 people in the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate, the other three had about 21,000 to 21,600 each, and the whole metro grew 2.0% from 2020 (U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024). The county sends the property tax bill and runs the homestead filing, and the county's property records tell you which one any address is in. Outside the city limits the township matters too, and I come back to that under wells and permits. If the tax statement on a home you like does not add up for you, we can go through it line by line together, and the rest of this section is what we would be looking at.

Minnesota's main relief for a home you live in is the homestead market value exclusion. Instead of a credit on the bill, it removes part of the home's value from the taxable base. For a homestead valued at $95,000 or less the exclusion is 40% of value, up to $38,000, and it shrinks as value rises until it reaches zero at $517,200 (Minnesota Department of Revenue, Homestead; League of Minnesota Cities). So a home valued below $517,200 gets part of its value taken off before the county applies the tax rate, and the lower the value, the bigger the piece that comes off. The county's property record shows whether the home carries homestead today. You establish homestead through the county, and the filing deadline is December 31, so a home bought in the fall needs that filing done before the year ends. Minnesota also runs an income-based Homestead Credit Refund, which people here call the circuit breaker, and the Department of Revenue's page explains who qualifies.

A levy is the total dollar amount a county, city or school district collects in property tax for the year. Olmsted County's 2026 levy is $141,713,639, up 6.80% from 2025, approved by the Board of Commissioners on December 16, 2025 inside a $389.2 million budget (KIMT; Olmsted County). On September 15, 2026 KTTC reported that the county levy is up 52% since 2018 (KTTC). The yearly calendar is the same across Minnesota. The county mails a Proposed Property Tax Notice in mid-November. The Truth in Taxation hearings follow, from November 25 to December 29; that is the state's name for the public meetings where the county, the city and the school district take comment before they set their final levies. The final statement goes out by March 31 (Minnesota Department of Revenue, Truth in Taxation). The assessor values every property as of January 2, and Olmsted County publishes its appeal process each year. For the 2026 tax year, a tax court filing could be made until April 20 (Olmsted County).

The 2026 Olmsted County bill also carries a small correction. In late March 2026 the county found that about $1.5 million more property tax had been levied for 2026 than the board approved in December 2025. That is roughly 1% of the levy, or about $10 to $30 for the year for most homes. In April the board voted 4 to 3 to hold the money in an interest-bearing account and apply it, with interest, against the 2027 levy, the option the Minnesota Department of Revenue recommended. On September 16, 2026 the board set the 2027 levy with the correction in it. An insert will go out with the final 2027 county tax statements in March 2027 showing each property's share (Olmsted County, 2026 Property Tax Levy Error: Public FAQ; KTTC, September 16, 2026). So if you buy in Olmsted County this year, the 2026 tax figure you see is about 1% high, and the credit lands on the 2027 statement for whoever owns the home then.

Radon, wells, nitrate and who issues the permit

Nearly half the properties tested in Olmsted County between 2010 and 2020, 48.6%, came back at or above 4 picocuries per liter, the EPA's action level for radon. Wabasha County's share was 68%, the highest in southeast Minnesota. Statewide, the Minnesota Department of Health says about 40% of homes test high, and 68 of Minnesota's 87 counties are in the EPA's highest-risk zone. The reason given is naturally higher uranium in Minnesota soil (Olmsted County Public Health; Post Bulletin; EPA Map of Radon Zones). Minnesota's Radon Awareness Act requires the seller to tell you in writing, before you sign the purchase agreement, about any radon testing they know of, the most recent results and any mitigation system. It does not require the seller to test (Minn. Stat. 144.496; MDH, Radon in Real Estate). So I'd add a radon test to your inspection, and if the home already has a mitigation system, I'd ask the seller for its most recent reading.

Homes outside a city water system are on private wells, and the same groundwater question comes up in all four counties. Karst, the fractured limestone under thin soil that makes the Fillmore County caves, lets surface water reach groundwater with little filtration. DNR dye tracing has followed water from a sinkhole as far as 10 miles underground (Root River Current; Minnesota DNR). On November 3, 2023 the EPA wrote to Minnesota's agencies calling for action on nitrate in groundwater across eight counties, and Olmsted, Dodge, Wabasha and Fillmore are all on that list, along with Goodhue, Houston, Mower and Winona. An estimated 94,000 people in those eight counties drink from private wells (Root River Current; MDH, Well Tested? Well Done SE Minnesota). Minnesota requires a seller to disclose every well on the property, sealed or unsealed, in use or not, and to disclose any private sewage system and how it works. It does not require the seller to test the well; a new well has to be tested for bacteria and nitrate, and an existing one changing hands does not (MDH). Olmsted County offers free nitrate testing to private well owners in those eight counties, and funding help for treatment requires a test showing nitrate above the state Health Risk Limit of 10 milligrams per liter (Olmsted County). So on acreage anywhere in this metro, I'd ask for the well disclosure and then take the county up on the free test before closing. That way you know what is in the water and whether a treatment system belongs in your budget.

The township decides who issues a building permit outside the city limits. Olmsted County's planning department administers zoning for the county and for Eyota, Marion, Oronoco and Quincy townships only. Every other township administers its own land-use rules, with permits issued by a township zoning administrator or by the Township Cooperative Planning Association (Olmsted County; TCPA). The county was also rewriting its zoning and subdivision ordinances, Chapters 1400 and 1200 (Olmsted County). Rochester Township and the City of Rochester are different jurisdictions with a shared name, so a home with a Rochester mailing address can still be in the township. If it does, the township is who you ask about a permit, and the city's rules do not apply to it. A third-party permit guide says a new home in a platted Rochester Township subdivision, meaning one with a recorded lot map, needs an engineer's grading plan reviewed by the township engineer (Jaspector). I'd confirm that with the township itself. Inside the city, since May 1, 2025 the City of Rochester requires a building permit and inspection for all residential re-roofing, re-siding and window replacement (City of Rochester, Building Permits).

Closing costs, insurance and utilities

Minnesota charges a mortgage registry tax of 0.23% of the amount the mortgage secures, which you, as the buyer, customarily pay at closing. It also charges a state deed tax of 0.33% of the sale price, which the seller customarily pays (Minnesota Department of Revenue; Minnesota House Research). Customary means it is how purchase agreements here are usually written, and either one can be negotiated. Hennepin and Ramsey counties add an Environmental Response Fund tax of 0.01% on top of both, and none of the four counties here charges it (Minn. Stat. 383A.80). The Twin Cities' Sewer Availability Charge on a new connection also stops at the seven-county line and does not reach Olmsted County. I could not pin down Rochester's own connection charges and trunk charges on a new build for this page. A trunk charge is the charge a city bills a new home for its share of the main water and sewer lines. So please ask the builder which utility charges are in the price, and we can put the answer into your cash-to-close estimate together.

Nine Minnesota cities require a city-licensed evaluation of a home before it can be listed, and all nine, from Minneapolis and St. Paul to Richfield, are in the Twin Cities. Rochester does not appear on that list, which comes from inspection-trade pages, and neither does any other city in this metro (Structure Tech; City of Saint Paul). The Rochester rule to know instead is the permit above for roofing, siding and windows, and your own home inspection is still yours to order.

Southern Minnesota is in a corridor of severe thunderstorms from May through September, and hail has reshaped homeowners policies across the state. Two policy features are now common here, and both are worth asking about before you compare quotes. The first is a wind-and-hail deductible set as a percentage of the insured value, usually 1% to 5%, instead of a flat dollar amount. The second is actual cash value coverage on the roof, which pays a depreciated amount on an older roof instead of the cost to replace it (MinnPost, April 2026; Insurify). In Rochester those two features meet the city's re-roofing permit. A replacement roof after a hailstorm needs a permit and an inspection, and an older roof may be paid out at a depreciated value. So on a home with a 20-year-old roof, please get the insurance quote and the roof's age before you compare it with a newer one. The homeowners premium is inside the payment a lender qualifies you on.

Rochester Public Utilities, RPU, is the city's own electric and water utility. Rates set in the December 2025 budget took effect in January 2026, with electric up 4% and water up 9%, which RPU put at about $3.85 and $2.01 a month for a typical residential customer (RPU; KTTC, October 29, 2025). The electric increase came down from a proposed 6% after the Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency updated its wholesale costs.

Townhomes, short-term rentals and First Homes

If you are buying a condominium or townhome, Minnesota's Common Interest Ownership Act gives you a resale disclosure certificate from the association. The association has to furnish it within 10 days of the owner's request, and once you receive it you have 10 days to cancel the purchase agreement and get your earnest money back promptly (Minn. Stat. 515B.4-107). The certificate lists the dues and the association's finances. I am not quoting any Rochester association's dues here, because those numbers belong in the association's own documents and the MLS, and that is where I'd read them with you.

The City of Rochester requires a short-term rental permit for a non-owner-occupied home, townhome, condominium, duplex or twin home rented for 30 days or less. The permit comes with a guest registry, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, occupancy limits, and parking, trash and noise rules. A rental with five or more beds is treated as lodging and needs a lodging license with stricter inspections (City of Rochester, Property Owners & Landlords). If rental income is part of your plan, please confirm the permit fee and the lodging threshold with the city's Community Development Department.

First Homes is a community land trust that dates to 1999, founded as a public-private collaboration with major investment from Mayo Clinic, Rochester businesses and the Rochester Area Foundation. It holds roughly 270 single-family homes across southeast Minnesota communities. In a land trust, First Homes owns the land and you own the home, which lowers the purchase price. Purchases are limited to households at or below 80% of area median income, and when you sell, the subsidy passes to the next owner while you keep the equity you built (First Homes; KIMT). Minnesota Housing recently approved funding for 44 more First Homes homes (Post Bulletin). Minnesota Housing also runs its Start Up and Step Up loan programs, with purchase-price and income limits that differ inside and outside the eleven-county Twin Cities area. Rochester is outside it, so the Greater Minnesota limits apply here, and I'd confirm them with Minnesota Housing before counting on either program (Minnesota Housing).

The way these facts reach your mortgage

The 2026 conforming and FHA loan limits are the same in all four counties, and they are in the box below this article. The conforming limit is the largest loan Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will buy in a county, and a loan above it is a jumbo loan; conforming versus jumbo loans explains what changes when a loan crosses that limit. FHA's limit here is its base limit, the one most of the country uses, while the thirteen Twin Cities counties get the higher limit FHA sets for costlier areas. So a client comparing an FHA purchase in Rochester with one 80 miles up US 52 is working with two different FHA ceilings, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul page linked above covers that market.

Four of the costs on this page go into the monthly payment a lender qualifies you on. Property tax is one, with the homestead exclusion and the 2027 correction figured in. The homeowners policy is another, with its hail deductible included. Flood insurance joins them where FEMA's map requires it. Association dues are the fourth, on a home that has them. The mortgage registry tax is different; it is part of your cash to close rather than the payment, and we will go over that whole list before you write an offer. A radon mitigation system or a well treatment system, if a test says you need one, is a repair you can negotiate in the purchase agreement or budget for after closing. Pre-approval in Minnesota covers what the letter is based on and how those costs change the cash you need. If you are a veteran, how VA loans work in Minnesota covers entitlement and the funding fee. If you already own here and the payment is the question, refinancing in Minnesota explains why the registry tax belongs in that math too. The Minnesota page covers the rest of the state's rules.

Once you're ready, you can run your numbers for a purchase in any of the four counties: rates for your scenario and Minnesota closing costs, with no credit pull and no account. Choose the rate option that works best for you, and the application opens from there. You can change that selection later, so nothing about it is final when you pick it.

Nothing here is a loan approval, a denial or a commitment to lend, and it is not tax advice. The value a county uses for a specific property, and whether it qualifies as a homestead, are set by that county, so please confirm them with the county assessor.

Common questions

Is the subway in Rochester, Minnesota a train?

No. In Rochester the subway is the downtown system of below-grade pedestrian tunnels, in use since 1921, that connects the Mayo Clinic buildings, hotels and shops. An enclosed skyway system does the same job above the street. "Take the subway to the Gonda" means walk through the tunnel to the Gonda Building.

Do I have to test for radon before buying a home in Rochester?

Minnesota does not require a test. The Radon Awareness Act requires the seller to disclose in writing, before you sign the purchase agreement, any testing they know of, the latest results and any mitigation. Because nearly half of the tested properties in Olmsted County came back at or above the EPA action level, I'd add a radon test to your inspection.

Does Rochester require a Truth in Sale of Housing inspection?

Rochester does not appear on the list of nine Minnesota cities that require a city-licensed evaluation before a home is listed, and all nine are in the Twin Cities. Since May 1, 2025, Rochester does require a building permit and inspection for residential re-roofing, re-siding and window replacement.

When does Rochester's Link bus rapid transit open?

The city expected Link to open in November 2026. It runs 2.8 miles along 2nd Street from Cascade Lake to 6th Street SE with seven stations, uses fully electric buses and is free to ride.

Why is my 2026 Olmsted County property tax about 1% high?

In late March 2026 Olmsted County found it had levied about 1% more property tax for 2026 than its board approved in December 2025. The board voted in April 2026 to hold that money with interest and apply it against the 2027 levy, and an insert with the final 2027 tax statements in March 2027 will show each property's share.

Who issues a building permit outside Rochester's city limits?

It depends on the township. Olmsted County administers zoning for the county and for Eyota, Marion, Oronoco and Quincy townships only. Every other township runs its own land-use rules, with permits from a township zoning administrator or the Township Cooperative Planning Association. Rochester Township is a separate jurisdiction from the City of Rochester.

Is Pine Island in the Rochester metro?

No. Pine Island is in Goodhue County, outside the four-county Rochester metro, and so are Zumbrota and, in Winona County, St. Charles. The Pine Island school district reaches into Olmsted and Dodge counties, and the 2027 US 52 project runs from north of Rochester through Pine Island. So both towns come up on this page where a road or a district crosses the county line.