Bar Harbor rewrote its vacation-rental rules and dropped the inspection-consent clause
Bar Harbor rewrote its vacation-rental rules and dropped the inspection-consent clause
2026-09-12 · Maine · Compliance
What happened. Bar Harbor's Town Council unanimously approved a rewritten short-term rental ordinance on 19 November 2025. The ordinance roughly doubled in length — from 6 pages to 11 or more — and the rewrite both tightened the documentation owners must produce and removed a provision residents had objected to on constitutional grounds.1
Tighter proof for the VR-1 category
Bar Harbor distinguishes rental types, and the VR-1 category — rentals inside an owner's primary home, or a second unit on the same lot — is the one the rewrite targets. Each primary residence may hold two VR-1 permits.
Owners must now supply three of seven specified documents to establish primary residence, with new provisions addressing trusts, LLCs and other entities, and family estate-planning arrangements. The entity provisions are the practically significant addition: holding a unit in a trust or an LLC is ordinary estate planning in coastal Maine, and it previously sat awkwardly against a primary-residence test.
And the clause that came out
Town Manager James Smith's proposal removed the provision that would have required renters to consent to inspections as a condition of licensing, after residents raised privacy and constitutional objections. Inspections now follow state law. In Smith's words, “interior inspections would continue to require either consent or an administrative warrant.”
Council Chair Valerie Peacock: “I feel comfortable with the way the ordinance is written now.” Vice Chair Maya Caines on the purpose of the rewrite: “The goal was to add some clarity.”
The enforcement number
The minimum fine for operating without authorisation is $1,500.
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Related Maine HOA Topics
- Bar Harbor Story, Bar Harbor OKs New Short-Term Rental Rules, Drops Some Inspection Language (Town Council vote of 19 November 2025) ↩
- Brooks v. Town of Bar Harbor, 2024 ME 21 — official opinion PDF, Maine Judicial Branch (cap ordinance upheld) ↩
- Bangor Daily News, Maine's top court tosses dispute over Bar Harbor luxury vacation rental (1 July 2025) ↩
- Bar Harbor Story, "No More Right Now": Nine Meeting Attendees Urge Strong Limits on Downtown Hotel Growth (2 July 2026) ↩
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