5 Short-Term Rental Caps That Surprise New Maine Coastal Owners
Portland recalculated its cap on non-owner-occupied short-term rentals on September 1, using a formula that replaced the flat 400-unit ceiling the city ran for years.
The new ceiling can shrink every year.
These are the short-term rental caps that surprise new Maine coastal owners.
Note: This is general information, not legal advice. Short-term rental caps, fees, and registration rules vary by town and are subject to change, so confirm the current requirements with your town’s code enforcement office.
Bar Harbor
Bar Harbor caps investor-owned vacation rentals at 9% of the town’s total housing stock.
A new buyer doesn’t inherit an exemption from that ceiling just because a listing agent calls the property grandfathered.
Voters set that limit themselves in a 2021 referendum, after vacation rentals rose to 16.4% of all housing units in town.
The rule splits every rental into two license types under Bar Harbor’s Vacation Rental (VR) ordinance: VR-1 and VR-2.
A VR-1 is owner-occupied, the dwelling is the applicant’s primary residence for more than half the year, and it carries no cap at all.
A VR-2 is everything else, a whole house rented out by someone who doesn’t live there.
That’s the category stuck at the 9% ceiling, with a waitlist once the town drops under it.
The wait can run long.
Miss the annual registration deadline or skip it entirely, and Bar Harbor’s minimum fine for operating without one starts at $1,500.
Portland
Portland recalculates its cap on non-owner-occupied mainland rentals every September 1, using a formula that replaced the flat 400-unit ceiling the city ran for years.
The new math sets that ceiling at 1.5% of whatever long-term rentals the city had registered a year earlier, so the number can shrink as fast as Portland’s long-term housing count does.
Peaks Island runs on its own separate math.
Non-owner-occupied rentals there are capped at a flat 40 units a year, full stop, with late or new applicants dropped onto a waitlist.
No exceptions, period.
Portland also stopped accepting brand-new tenant-occupied rental registrations starting in 2026.
A single-family home or condo on the mainland can only become a rental if the owner lives there.
Cape Elizabeth
Cape Elizabeth limits every lot to a single short-term rental permit, issued annually.
The permit type an owner picks in January locks in that property’s day limit through December.
An unhosted rental inside the owner’s primary residence tops out at 42 days a year.
A rental on a lot next to the owner’s house is capped at 105 days.
Properties on seven acres or more can run rentals up to 182 days a year.
The limit comes down to lot size, not who owns the property.
Only the lot’s size matters.
Switch permit types mid-year to chase a better limit, and Cape Elizabeth’s code enforcement officer won’t allow the change before the next calendar year begins.
Cape Elizabeth’s Two Different Day Counts
Cape Elizabeth uses one day count to decide whether a rental counts as short-term at all.
A completely different day count decides how many days a year the owner may run it.
Any stay under 30 consecutive days meets the definition many Maine coastal towns use to decide who needs a rental license in the first place.
The 42, 105, and 182-day limits cap how many days a year an already-licensed rental may operate.
Those limits only apply once a property clears that first 30-day test.
A new owner who mixes up the two limits can wrongly assume a short summer rental skips the ordinance.
That day-count cap is the limit on how many bookings fit into a year.
Kennebunkport
Kennebunkport sets a new total for short-term rental licenses every year, using a formula tied to the town’s overall dwelling count.
The town had already closed its registration portal to new applications and renewals for the entire 2026 season, months before many summer closings even happened.
A license also can’t just transfer with the sale of a house.
Buy a Kennebunkport property that already carries a valid license, and it doesn’t automatically follow the sale unless the transfer fits the town’s narrow definition of family estate planning.
Everyone else starts over.
Even a qualifying lot faces a separate ceiling: No more than two licenses, or 50% of the units on the lot, whichever number is greater.
Ogunquit
Ogunquit’s zoning code caps a weekly private home rental at one tenant per seven-day period.
The town sets no numeric ceiling on how many short-term rentals it registers overall.
One booking, one week.
Owners still need a business registration under the town’s rental ordinance, and that filing brings annual inspections from the code enforcement office and the fire department.
Psst! See how your coastal town stacks up against seven others on caps, fees, and inspections.
Camden’s Licensing Choice Over a Cap
Camden’s Select Board rejected its planning board’s proposal to cap commercial short-term rentals at 150 units.
Voters approved a licensing system instead, when the new ordinance took effect on January 1, 2025.
Every short-term rental in town now needs one of three annual licenses.
A residential license, for a rental inside the owner’s primary home, costs $350.
Camden charges $500 for a seasonal license, which covers a camp with no year-round heat.
The most expensive option, a commercial license for a rental the owner doesn’t live in, runs $1,000.
Add a septic system to any of those, and Camden tacks on another $100 a year for the extra code enforcement inspection that requires.
No cap, bigger bill.
Maine’s One Rule Every Town Follows
Maine’s short-term rental market answers to one rule no coastal town gets to waive.
New owners must register with Maine Revenue Services for a free retailer certificate.
Then they collect the state’s 9% tax on rentals of lodging, no matter what the local ordinance caps or charges.
No town is exempt.
That requirement sits on top of whatever the town collects, not instead of it.
It applies whether the property sits under Bar Harbor’s 9% ceiling, Camden’s license tiers, or Ogunquit’s one-tenant-a-week rule.
Why No Two Towns Agree
Maine’s coastal towns write wildly different short-term rental rules because Maine’s home-rule laws hand that power to individual towns, not to the state.
Bar Harbor cited exactly that authority, Article VIII (the home-rule article) of the Maine Constitution and Title 30-A of the Maine Revised Statutes.
That’s what the town used to write its 9% cap into town code.
One coast, dozens of rulebooks.
That’s also why York, less than an hour down the coast from Kennebunkport, has no ordinance at all.
Voters rejected one in 2024.
A town committee voted unanimously on July 21, 2025, to recommend a new registration-based ordinance to the town, but the proposal hasn’t gone before voters yet.
Lawmakers in Augusta have floated a statewide vacation-rental registration process before, and nothing has stopped a coastal town from writing a tighter rule the moment a bill like that fails.
A new owner can buy two houses forty minutes apart in the same state and find one bound by a 9% cap and the other bound by nothing at all.
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