What late fees can a landlord charge 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 The former state enabling chapter (30-A ch. 167, 'Municipal Rent Control') was repealed in 1995 with nothing enacted in its place; municipalities act under home rule (30-A §3001).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 caps residential late fees at 4% of one month's rent and builds in a 15-day statutory grace period: a rent payment is not legally 'late' until 15 days after it was due, so with rent due on the 1st no penalty can attach before the 16th.

On top of the cap and the grace period, no late fee may be charged at all unless the landlord gave the tenant WRITTEN notice — at the time the rental agreement was entered — that a penalty of up to 4% of one month's rent may be charged for late payment; skip that disclosure at signing and the fee is unenforceable for the tenancy. All three rules date to 1987 and have never been amended, making Maine one of the strictest late-fee states in the country. The 'late fees' statute that allows the greater of $20 or 20% belongs to Maine's self-service storage law, not residential rentals.

Maine late fees at a glance

Statutory cap	4% of the amount due for one month (14 M.R.S. § 6028(2))
Mandatory grace period	15 days
Must be in the lease	Yes
Daily fees	Not addressed as a structure, but any late-payment penalty is bounded by the 4%-of-one-month ceiling, so accruing daily fees cannot lawfully exceed 4% of a month's rent for a late payment. Late fees are also expressly excluded from the definitions of 'rent' and 'mandatory recurring fee' (§6000(1-A), (1-B)).
Reasonableness standard	None needed — Maine has a hard statutory cap (4%) rather than a reasonableness test. §6028 has been unchanged since 1987 (PL 1987, c. 215 and c. 605).

Notes and caveats

All three load-bearing elements confirmed and double-read verbatim (HTML + Revisor PDF): (1) sub-1 late definition — 'A payment of rent is late if it is not made within 15 days from the time the payment is due' — encoded grace_period_days=15 because it is a true statutory precondition to any penalty; (2) sub-2 cap — 'may not assess a penalty ... which exceeds 4% of the amount due for one month' (base = one month's rent due); (3) sub-3 disclosure — written notice 'at the time they entered into the rental agreement' that a penalty up to 4% of one month's rent may be charged. must_be_in_lease=true encodes the sub-3 duty; strictly it is a written-disclosure-at-inception requirement (a lease clause is the natural vehicle; even an oral tenancy needs the written notice). No exemptions in §6028; sweep of ch. 710 (§§6021-6030-K) and ch. 709 subch. 1 found no other residential late-fee provision. CONFUSION TRAP: 10 M.R.S. §1376 ('Late fees' — greater of $20 or 20%, 3-day rule) is the Self-Service Storage Act and surfaces in search results; it has nothing to do with residential rent. Note the interplay with eviction law: the 7-day notice for nonpayment under §6002 requires rent to be 7+ days in arrears — a separate clock from the 15-day fee grace period. Since 2025-01-01, §6000(1-A)/(1-B) expressly exclude late-payment fees from 'rent' and 'mandatory recurring fees,' so the §6015 fee-increase notice rules do not govern late-fee terms; the §6028 at-inception disclosure does.

Statute citations

14 M.R.S. § 6028 (1)-(3) Official source
14 M.R.S. § 6000 (1-A), (1-B) 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).