How much notice is required to raise the rent 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 The former state enabling chapter (30-A ch. 167, 'Municipal Rent Control') was repealed in 1995 with nothing enacted in its place; municipalities act under home rule (30-A §3001).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 at least 45 days' written notice before any rent increase takes effect — and at least 75 days' written notice if the increase is 10% or more, a tier added effective October 25, 2023 that also catches multiple smaller increases adding up to 10% within 12 months.

Since January 1, 2025 the same 45-day notice applies to increases in mandatory recurring fees, and a written or oral waiver of these rules is void; a violating landlord must return the sums collected with interest plus the tenant's attorney's fees. Rent may never be increased while the unit is in violation of the warranty of habitability, unless the tenant caused the problem. Maine has no statewide rent control and no limit on how often or how much rent can rise (with proper notice), but it is one of the few states with no preemption of local rent control: Portland has run voter-initiated rent control since 2021 — capped at a published annual percentage (2.2% for 2026), once per 12 months, with 90 days' notice — and South Portland has a rent stabilization ordinance for larger portfolios, so landlords must check city law too.

Maine rent increase notice at a glance

Notice — month-to-month	45 days
Varies by increase size	Yes — an increase of 10% or more requires at least 75 days' written notice (14 M.R.S. §6015(2), added by PL 2023, c. 388, eff. 2023-10-25). Anti-stacking rule: if multiple increases within a 12-month period add up to 10% or more, the 75-day notice is required before the increase that crosses the 10% line. The 75-day tier (only) does not apply to deed-restricted affordable housing or units under landlord- or tenant-side housing-program subsidy restrictions.
Fixed-term leases	§6015 applies to 'residential estates' generally, not just at-will tenancies — the 45/75-day written notice governs any residential rent or mandatory-recurring-fee increase. During a fixed term, rent cannot be raised at all unless the lease itself so provides (contract law); at renewal the §6015 notice periods apply. Separately, §6016 bars any rent increase while the unit violates the implied warranty of habitability (unless the violation was caused by the tenant), with waiver void and restitution plus interest and attorney's fees for violations.
Statewide rent control / stabilization	No
Rent control details	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).
Local rent control preempted	No
Frequency limits	Not addressed by statute

Notes and caveats

notice_days_month_to_month=45 is an EXPRESS statute (§6015(1)) applying to all 'residential estates,' not a termination-notice derivation (the §6002 at-will termination notice is 30 days — shorter than the rent-increase notice). CITATION TRAP: the Revisor's plain URL .../title14sec6015.html returns 404 — the current text lives at the versioned page .../title14sec6015-2.html, because PL 2023, c. 388 (eff. 2023-10-25, the 75-day tier, LD 701) and PL 2023, c. 594 §7 (eff. 2025-01-01, adding 'mandatory recurring fees,' LD 1490) produced successive versions; cite the -2 page. STALE TRAPS: pre-2023 charts say '45 days' with no 10% tier; 2024 charts miss the recurring-fee coverage. The 75-day tier's subsidized/deed-restricted carve-outs apply ONLY to subsection 2 — the 45-day floor still binds those units. PREEMPTION (reverse-trap): some aggregator summaries claim Maine 'prohibits municipalities from enacting rent regulation' — false. The only chapter ever titled Municipal Rent Control (30-A §§3601-3606) was repealed by PL 1995, c. 194 §1 and replaced with nothing; Portland (Nov. 2020 referendum, in force since 2021) and South Portland (2023, sunset 2030) regulate rents under home rule today, and LD 1534 (2025), which would have added a statewide opt-in framework while expressly preserving home-rule authority, died Ought Not to Pass 2025-05-27 — so local_control_preempted=false. Manufactured housing (out of v1 scope — lot tenancies; noted because the landscape moved twice in 2025-26): PL 2025, c. 365 (LD 1765, signed 2025-06-18) directs the state to develop a MODEL rent-stabilization ordinance for mobile-home parks (the introduced bill's CPI+1%/5% hard caps were amended out — debunk 'Maine capped mobile-home rents' noise); 10 M.R.S. § 9093-B (enacted 2025 by PL 2025, c. 399) now separately requires 90 days' notice of lot-rent/fee increases with tenant mediation rights, and PL 2025, c. 691 (LD 2231, Second Regular 2026, chaptered text read 2026-07-11, eff. 2026-07-28) adds a once-per-calendar-year lot-rent-increase limit and expanded notice contents (area-average and CPI+1% comparison disclosures — these are mediation triggers, not hard caps). Park lot-rent guidance should not be sourced from the pre-2025 §9093(2)-only description. frequency_limits=null: verified negative for state law (ch. 709 subch. 1 sweep); Portland's once-per-12-months rule is local. §6015 figures triple-read (HTML + PDF + enrolled c. 594 text).

Statute citations

14 M.R.S. § 6015 (1)-(2) Official source
14 M.R.S. § 6016 Official source
PL 2023, c. 594, § 7 (LD 1490, enacted chapter law, eff. 2025-01-01) secs. 7, 13 Official source
30-A M.R.S. § 3001 (home rule ordinance power) Official source
30-A M.R.S. ch. 167, §§ 3601-3606 (former Municipal Rent Control chapter — repealed, PL 1995, c. 194) Official source
City of Portland, Rent Control Ordinance FAQ (Portland City Code ch. 6, secs. 6-231 to 6-239; version 2025.10.24) 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).