Duluth, MN Business Licensing & Operations: Auto Repair on Residential Property (2026)

10 is a two-part prohibition inside the city's general home occupation standards: no motor vehicle repair is permitted as an accessory home occupation at all, and repair of vehicles not registered to the property's owner or leaseholder is prohibited outright, regardless of whether the work is paid. That second clause closes an obvious loophole, doing a neighbor's brake job for free is still barred if the car isn't registered to someone who owns or leases the home. This sits within the same section that limits home businesses to indoor operation, bars retail sales, forbids non-family workers, and caps space at 25 percent of one dwelling floor or 50 percent of an accessory building, so even a hobbyist mechanic working alone in their own garage on their own vehicle still has to observe those other standards; the code simply removes commercial or third-party auto repair from the list of home occupations that can exist at all, unlike other home businesses that only face space and traffic limits.