2026-09-12 · Maine · Legislation

What happened. Portland's City Council voted unanimously in August 2024 to replace the city's flat 400-unit ceiling on non-owner-occupied short-term rentals with a formula: 1.5 percent of the city's long-term rental housing stock, recalculated annually. At the time that worked out to roughly 285 units.¹

Then in November 2024, voters tightened the proof requirements on top of it.

How the cap now works

• The formula: 1.5 percent of registered long-term rental stock, mainland, non-owner-occupied. As the registered stock grows, the cap grows with it — reported at 293 units for 2026.
• Peaks Island carries its own separate ceiling: 40 non-owner-occupied units annually.
• Existing operators keep their licences. The city does not revoke; it simply stops issuing new non-owner-occupied licences until the count falls below the cap through attrition.
• Per-building limits: buildings of 1 to 2 units, a maximum of 1 short-term rental; buildings of 10 or more units, a maximum of 5.
• As of 2026, no new tenant-occupied short-term rental licences are being issued at all — only existing operators can renew those.

Councillor Kate Sykes put the logic of a moving cap this way: “Hopefully we're going to build a lot more housing, and if we do we can have more short-term rentals.” The stated rationale for the change was, as reported, “to prevent investors from scooping up homes that could otherwise serve as long-term rental housing.”

And the ballot measure

On 5 November 2024, Portland's council-referred Question B passed with 67 percent of the vote. It tightened owner-occupancy proof, requiring a homestead exemption or a redacted tax return.

That is the part that reaches associations directly, because owner-occupancy is the dividing line between the capped category and the uncapped one.

1. Maine Public, Portland approves new short-term rental regulations (21 August 2024) ↩
2. Bangor Daily News, Portland approves new short-term rental regulations (22 August 2024) ↩
3. News Center Maine, Portland City Council approves short-term rental cap ↩
4. Brooks v. Town of Bar Harbor, 2024 ME 21 — official opinion PDF, Maine Judicial Branch ↩