How much notice must a landlord give before entering in Maine?

Verified July 11, 2026 All Maine topics →

Check your municipality. Maine does not preempt local rent regulation — city or county ordinances may impose rent caps, notice rules, and fee limits that are stricter than the state-level rules on this page and are not covered here. Verify your municipality's ordinances before relying on any figure below.

What the state record says

No statewide rent control or percentage cap (§6016's habitability bar is a condition on increases, not a cap). Maine does NOT preempt local rent control: Portland has operated voter-initiated rent control since 2021 (Portland City Code ch. 6, secs. 6-231 to 6-239) — annual Allowable Increase Percentage published each September 1 (2.2% for calendar 2026), one increase per 12 months, +5% of base rent on voluntary turnover, banked increases, a hard 10% ceiling per increase, Rent Board review, and 90 days' written notice, plus a local one-month deposit cap and application-fee ban. South Portland has a council-enacted rent stabilization ordinance (March 2023; 10% annual cap for buildings of 16+ commonly owned units; sunsets 2030). The former state enabling chapter (30-A ch. 167, 'Municipal Rent Control') was repealed in 1995 with nothing enacted in its place; municipalities act under home rule (30-A §3001).

Pending legislation — not yet law. The rules on this page reflect current law only. The following bill would change it if enacted:

LD 2176 (2026) — PL 2025, c. 767 — Three sections: (1) amends 14 M.R.S. § 6025(3) to raise the remedy for unlawful entry, unreasonable-manner entry, or harassment-by-repeated-demands from the greater of actual damages or $100 to the greater of actual damages or $250 (injunction and post-contested-hearing attorney's fees unchanged); (2) enacts 14 M.R.S. § 6025-B barring a landlord from disclosing tenant/applicant personal information with intent to harass, intimidate, or force a vacate outside the judicial process (remedy: greater of actual damages or $1,000, injunction, fees after contested hearing; exceptions for legal process, law enforcement, sale/refinancing, housing-program administration, and code officers); (3) adds § 6025-B to the harassment-injunction predicate list in 5 M.R.S. § 4651(2)(C). Chaptered text read in full from the Revisor's Laws of Maine service.Status: Enacted, 132nd Legislature Second Regular Session (S.P. 881); chaptered as PL 2025, c. 767. No emergency clause or effective-date section in the chaptered text, so it takes effect 90 days after the 2026-04-29 sine die adjournment — 2026-07-28 — and is NOT law on 2026-07-11. Incorporate the $250 entry-remedy figure into entry_notice at the first session on/after 2026-07-28. (checked 2026-07-11).

Maine landlords must give 'reasonable notice' before entering a rental unit, and 24 hours is presumed reasonable unless the evidence shows otherwise — so 24 hours is the safe default, but the statute stops short of a flat 24-hour minimum.

Entry is allowed only at reasonable times and for listed purposes (inspection, repairs and improvements, providing services, and showings to buyers, lenders, or prospective tenants and contractors), with no-notice entry permitted in an emergency, when giving notice is impracticable, or when an animal's welfare is at risk. A tenant cannot waive these protections — any waiver is void — and a landlord who enters unlawfully, enters in an unreasonable manner, or harasses the tenant with repeated demands owes the greater of actual damages or $100, faces an injunction, and pays attorney's fees if the tenant wins a contested case. Tenants who change the locks must give the landlord a duplicate key within 48 hours (72 hours for domestic-violence victims); refusing to hand over a key is ground for a 7-day termination.

Maine entry notice at a glance

Advance notice required	No fixed statutory period (see notice standard)
Notice standard	14 M.R.S. §6025(2): except in case of emergency 'or if it is impracticable to do so,' the landlord 'shall give the tenant reasonable notice of the landlord's intent to enter and shall enter only at reasonable times. Twenty-four hours is presumed to be a reasonable notice in the absence of evidence to the contrary.' Encoded null per the statutory-presumption convention (OH precedent): 24 hours is a rebuttable presumption of reasonableness, not an express minimum.
Permitted reasons	The tenant may not unreasonably withhold consent for the landlord to inspect the premises; make necessary or agreed repairs, decorations, alterations or improvements; supply necessary or agreed services; or exhibit the unit to prospective or actual purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workers or contractors (§6025(1)). Emergency entry is additionally permitted without notice when an animal's welfare is at risk as described in §6025-A (cross-reference added by PL 2023, c. 336).
Emergency exception	Yes
Time-of-day restrictions	None by the clock — entry must be at 'reasonable times' only; the statute sets no hour windows.

Notes and caveats

notice_hours null + standard per the batch convention for statutory PRESUMPTIONS (the phrase is 'presumed to be a reasonable notice in the absence of evidence to the contrary' — session-prep lead framed it as a flat 24-hour rule; that overstates it). The notice escape valve is 'emergency OR if it is impracticable to do so' — the same broad URLTA-derived valve as Nebraska's; render honestly rather than 'emergency-only.' 2023 amendment (PL 2023, c. 336, §2; 131st Legislature, effective 2023-10-25 under the standard 90-day rule): added the §6025-A animal-welfare emergency as an express ground for entry without 24 hours' notice — §6025-A also gives entry-and-care procedures when a tenant has abandoned or neglected an animal. Remedies (sub-3): greater of actual damages or $100, injunctive relief, and attorney's fees only after a contested hearing — RISING TO $250 on 2026-07-28, when PL 2025, c. 767 (LD 2176, 2026) takes effect (flagged in pending_legislation; it also enacts a § 6025-B personal-information disclosure ban with a $1,000-minimum remedy); update this field at the first session on/after that date. Lock-change rules live in subs (1) and (3): notice + duplicate key within 48 hours (DV victims may change locks at own expense, key within 72 hours, 'victim' defined at §6000(4)); if no key is provided, emergency forced entry is allowed at tenant's cost, and refusal to provide a key permits a 7-day termination. Waiver of any §6025 right is void (sub-4). Verified negative: no other entry/access provision in ch. 710 (full chapter sweep); §6025 double-read (HTML + Revisor PDF verbatim).

Statute citations

14 M.R.S. § 6025 (1)-(4) Official source
14 M.R.S. § 6025-A Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official Maine Revisor of Statutes site (legislature.maine.gov): sections 6032, 6033, 6034, 6038, 6015, 6028, and 6025 of Title 14 each read twice in independent formats (the HTML section page and the Revisor's official section PDF, read verbatim), with every load-bearing figure matching (2-month deposit cap; 30-day-maximum/21-day return split with the later-of trigger; forfeiture rule; double damages with 7-day pre-suit notice and landlord burden; separate-bank-account rule with $500/one-month remedy; 45-day and 75-day/10% rent-increase notices with 12-month aggregation; 4% late-fee cap, 15-day late definition, and written-notice-at-inception duty; 24-hour reasonable-notice presumption with emergency/impracticable exception). PL 2023, c. 594 (LD 1490) was additionally reconciled against the enrolled chapter law PDF, which pins 'Sec. 13. Effective date. This Act takes effect January 1, 2025.' Supporting sections read once (6031, 6035, 6036, 6037, 6039, 6000, 6016, 6022-A, 6030-I, 6030-J, 6002) plus full chapter listings of ch. 709 subch. 1, ch. 710, and ch. 710-A as the sweep basis for verified negatives (no deposit interest, no other late-fee or entry provision, no rent-increase frequency limit, no preemption statute). Preemption checked via Title 30-A: former ch. 167 'Municipal Rent Control' (30-A sections 3601-3606) confirmed repealed by PL 1995, c. 194 with nothing enacted in its place, home rule under 30-A section 3001; Portland's active rent control ordinance verified from the City of Portland's own Rent Control FAQ (version 2025.10.24, Portland City Code ch. 6, secs. 6-231 to 6-239; 2026 allowable increase 2.2%). Bill checks on official status pages: LD 1534 (municipal rent-stabilization enabling) died Ought Not to Pass 2025-05-27; LD 1765 enacted as PL 2025, c. 365 (2025-06-18, mobile home park licensing/model-ordinance only); 132nd Legislature adjourned sine die 2026-04-29. Main-session supplement (2026-07-11): the full Second Regular Session public-laws list (chapters ~500-775) was swept via the Revisor's Laws of Maine service; one on-topic enactment found and flagged as pending — PL 2025, c. 767 (LD 2176), which raises the section 6025(3) entry-violation minimum recovery from $100 to $250 and enacts section 6025-B (tenant personal-information disclosure ban), effective 90 days after the 2026-04-29 adjournment (2026-07-28), so NOT in force at this verification. Two manufactured-housing acts (PL 2025, c. 688 and c. 691) checked and confirmed out of v1 scope (lot-tenancy notice/mediation and park-sale machinery; no hard rent caps).