Does Southwest Harbor regulate short-term rentals?

No. As of August 2026 the Town of Southwest Harbor has no short-term rental or vacation rental ordinance, no registration requirement and no cap. On August 11, 2026 the Select Board directed the town manager to determine whether a rental registration program would require an ordinance or could be adopted as policy, whether penalties for failing to register are possible, and to prepare a resident survey.

Which Mount Desert Island towns regulate short-term rentals?

Only Bar Harbor. It has required annual registration since 2021 and caps non-owner-occupied rentals at nine percent of its dwelling units. Mount Desert rejected a licensing ordinance on May 7, 2024 by 134 to 72, and Tremont rejected one on May 13, 2024 by 118 to 120 with two blanks. Southwest Harbor and Trenton have never had one, though Trenton is drafting toward a May 2027 town meeting vote and Tremont reopened the question in August 2026.

How does Bar Harbor's short-term rental registration work?

Bar Harbor separates rentals into VR-1, the owner's primary residence with a two-night minimum stay, and VR-2, a whole dwelling that is not the owner's primary residence with a four-night minimum. Registration is annual and expires May 31, a life-safety inspection is required before issuance and every three years after, and VR-2 registrations are capped at nine percent of the town's dwelling units and allocated from a waiting list. Registrations cannot be transferred when a property is sold. Operating without a valid registration carries a minimum 1,500 dollar fine.

Does Maine have a statewide short-term rental registry?

No. Two bills in the 132nd Legislature would have created one and neither passed. The housing laws Maine did enact preserve the authority of municipalities to regulate short-term rentals and to require registration, but prohibit towns from imposing owner-occupancy requirements on accessory dwelling units.

Do you have to pay Maine tax on a short-term rental?

Yes. Maine charges nine percent sales tax on the rental of living quarters, including casual rentals, and anyone renting living quarters must register with Maine Revenue Services as a retailer. The only exception is a person renting a single unit fewer than fifteen days a year without using a rental agent or platform. If a platform is used, the platform must register and collect regardless of the number of days. A continuous stay of twenty-eight days or more is exempt.

Does a Maine vacation rental need a state lodging license?

Only above a threshold. A state license is required for any building offering sleeping accommodations of four or more rooms as a business, and for every bed and breakfast regardless of size. A typical whole-house rental with fewer than four rentable rooms and no breakfast service falls below the threshold. Fees range from 135 dollars for a small bed and breakfast to 270 dollars for the largest lodging tier, and licenses are not transferable.

How many short-term rentals are there on Mount Desert Island?

There is no reliable total because only Bar Harbor registers them. Bar Harbor reported 615 registered rentals for 2025, of which 195 were owner-occupied. Commercial platform-listing counts for 2024 were 403 in Southwest Harbor, 318 in Mount Desert and 312 in Tremont. Tremont's town manager estimated about 329 short-term rentals out of roughly 1,200 dwellings in August 2026, and about a quarter of Southwest Harbor dwellings are in tourist or short-term use.

Short-Term Rentals on Mount Desert Island | Rules, Registration & Housing

Start Here

Where things stand in August 2026

Short-term rentals get discussed as one subject, but there are really three separate layers: what your town requires, what the State of Maine requires of every host regardless of town, and what the effect on year-round housing is understood to be. They are governed by different bodies and the answers differ sharply.

Does Southwest Harbor regulate short-term rentals?: No. The town’s published ordinance index lists twenty-one ordinances and none of them covers short-term or vacation rentals — no registration, no licence, no cap. [1] That may change: on August 11, 2026 the Select Board asked the town manager to look into it. The detail is here.
Which town on the island does regulate them?: Only Bar Harbor. It has required annual registration since 2021, caps non-owner-occupied rentals at nine percent of its housing stock, and inspects. [4] How that system works.
Is there a statewide Maine registry?: No. Two bills that would have created one failed in the 132nd Legislature. What the state did pass instead protects the right of towns to regulate short-term rentals themselves. See what state law does.
Does a host owe state tax even with no local ordinance?: Yes. Maine charges nine percent sales tax on the rental of living quarters, casual rentals included, and almost every host must register with Maine Revenue Services as a retailer. [22]
How many short-term rentals are there here?: No one knows precisely, because no town outside Bar Harbor counts them. The available platform-listing estimates for 2024 were 403 in Southwest Harbor, 318 in Mount Desert and 312 in Tremont. Those numbers come with caveats.

Our Town

Where Southwest Harbor stands

Southwest Harbor has no short-term rental ordinance, no registration requirement and no cap. The governing land use document is the Land Use Ordinance, and the copy posted online is amended through November 7, 2017 — the town notes that its online editions are not official copies, so certified text must come from the Town Office. [1] The town has been described in regional coverage as the Mount Desert Island town that has taken no action on the subject. [26]

Three things happened in 2026 that are worth following.

1

May 19, 2026 — the housing subcommittee advised against regulating

The housing subcommittee of the Sustainability Committee wrote to the Select Board that “we do not see registration as a prelude to regulation, nor do we recommend regulation of short-term rentals at this time.” It sent along a dwelling-use inventory covering roughly ninety percent of the town’s dwellings. A November ballot question was floated. [3]
2

May 26, 2026 — a land use ordinance rewrite began

An ad hoc Land Use Ordinance advisory committee was approved, and the town contracted with the Musson Group for an ordinance update. Any future short-term rental rule would most likely arrive through that process. [3]
3

August 11, 2026 — the Select Board asked for options

The Select Board directed Town Manager Karen Reddersen to determine whether a rental registration program would require an ordinance or could be adopted as policy, whether penalties for failing to register are possible, and to prepare a survey of residents. Chair Dan Norwood presided; member Natasha Johnson raised the ripple effects of Bar Harbor’s ordinance pushing rentals into neighboring towns. [2]

Two local findings sit underneath that discussion. The dwelling-use inventory found that about half of Southwest Harbor’s dwellings are year-round homes, roughly a quarter are summer residences and roughly a quarter are in tourist or short-term use. [3] And a town working group reported in October 2024 that of 59 homes sold between September 2022 and September 2024, only 29 percent are now year-round homes, while roughly fifteen became short-term rentals. [2]

Town by Town

What each town requires today

Four of these five towns require nothing. Two of them — Mount Desert and Tremont — put an ordinance to their voters in May 2024 and both were defeated, Tremont’s by two votes. Trenton, the gateway town on the mainland side of the bridge, is drafting for the first time.

Short-term rental requirements in the five towns on and around Mount Desert Island, as of August 16, 2026. Sources are listed for each town below and in the sources list at the foot of this page.
Town	Registration required	Cap	Where it stands
Southwest Harbor	No	None	No ordinance. Select Board asked staff on August 11, 2026 to study registration, penalties and a resident survey. [2]
Bar Harbor	Yes — annually, renewed by May 31, with inspection	Yes — non-owner-occupied rentals limited to 9 percent of dwelling units	Chapter 174 in force since 2021; rewritten version effective December 18, 2025. [5]
Mount Desert	No	None	Licensing ordinance rejected at town meeting on May 7, 2024 by 134 to 72. No short-term rental article appeared on the warrant for the May 4–5, 2026 town meeting. [11] [12]
Tremont	No	None	Licensing ordinance failed on May 13, 2024 by 118 to 120 with two blanks. The Select Board reopened the question on August 3, 2026 and posted a survey the next day. [13] [14]
Trenton	No	None	Land Use Ordinance does not mention short-term or vacation rentals. Planning Board held a public meeting on August 12, 2026; a vote on ordinance changes is targeted for the May 2027 town meeting. [16] [17]

Tremont’s second attempt is being driven by a change in state law. At the August 3, 2026 Select Board meeting, Town Manager Jesse Dunbar estimated roughly 329 short-term rentals out of about 1,200 dwellings in Tremont, about a quarter of the housing stock. Code Enforcement Officer Angela Chamberlain suggested starting with registration alone; Fire Chief Keith Higgins described the difficulty of reaching owners in an emergency. Chair Jamie Thurlow and member Kevin Buck both own short-term rentals and did not recuse themselves. [14] Tremont’s current Land Use Ordinance, adopted November 4, 2025, does not use the phrase “short-term rental” at all — it addresses transient accommodations, bed and breakfasts and recreational lodging facilities instead. [15]

Mount Desert’s rejected 2024 proposal would have capped short-term rentals in year-round homes that are not primary residences at ten percent of the town’s housing stock over time. [26] Tremont’s 2023 planning board draft would have defined a short-term rental as a stay of fewer than twenty-eight consecutive nights, set occupancy at two people per bedroom plus two, required two off-street parking spaces not counting a garage, and made the licence transferable to a new owner through the end of the calendar year. [27] Neither is in force, but both indicate the shape a future island ordinance might take.

The Working Example

How Bar Harbor’s system works

Bar Harbor is the only town here with five years of operating experience, so it is the reference point in every other town’s discussion — including as a cautionary tale about rentals relocating to unregulated towns. Its rules live in two places: Chapter 174 of the municipal code, which handles registration, and Chapter 125, the Land Use Ordinance, which sets the categories and the cap. The current Chapter 174 was adopted by the Town Council on November 18, 2025 and took effect December 18, 2025. [5] [4]

Principal terms of Bar Harbor’s short-term rental system. Source: Chapter 174 as amended November 18, 2025, the town’s short-term rental page, the 2026 registration application, and the 2021 Land Use Ordinance amendment.
Term	What it requires
Two categories	VR-1 is the owner’s primary residence or part of it, with a two-night minimum stay. VR-2 is an entire dwelling that is not the owner’s primary residence, with a four-night minimum. Both mean rentals of fewer than thirty days.
Primary residence test	More than 183 days a year, attested by affidavit, with at least three of seven accepted documents — Maine driver’s licence, tax return or W-2, vehicle registration, sales tax certificate, a utility bill within twelve months, a benefits statement, or voter registration. No individual may hold more than one VR-1 property.
The cap	VR-2 registrations are limited to nine percent of the town’s total dwelling units, recalculated by the Assessor each January. VR-1 is not capped. As of February 2026 the cap worked out to just under 300 slots against 420 VR-2 registrations — over the limit, and intended to fall through non-renewal rather than revocation.
Waiting list	A waitlist, not a lottery. An owner files a complete application and pays the fee to join. When slots open the Code Enforcement Officer notifies those at the top, who then have 120 days to complete registration including inspection, or the slot passes on. Thirty-six properties were waiting as of October 2024.
Fee and renewal	Annual, expiring every May 31. The 2026 VR-1 application fee is $275, non-refundable. Taxes and town water and sewer charges may not be in arrears.
Inspection	A life-safety inspection before a registration issues, then every three years, with owner attestation in between. Standards cover egress, ceiling heights, interconnected smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, stairs and handrails, extinguishers, ground-fault outlets, a Knox Box where an alarm or sprinkler system exists, and weekly trash removal while rented. No sleeping in garages, hallways, closets, tents or campers.
Posting and local contact	An emergency information sheet must be posted inside the main door listing the registration number, address, how to reach emergency responders, how to file a life-safety complaint, the owner’s details, and a local contact who can respond promptly. The E-911 address must be visible from the road, and the registration number must appear in all advertising.
Neighbor notice	Within thirty days of issuing a new registration, the Code Enforcement Officer notifies every property owner within fifty feet of the boundary. Renewals do not trigger notice.
Penalties	A minimum $1,500 fine for operating without a valid registration. A second violation within a year brings a $3,000 fine and a twelve-month bar on applying. The officer may also assess three times the average nightly rate for each day of unlawful operation, and each day after notice is a separate offense.
Sale of the property	Registrations are not transferable. If ownership changes mid-term the registration remains valid for that unit only until the following May 31.

Bar Harbor’s registered totals have fallen as the cap bites: 681 in 2022, 662 in December 2024 and 615 in 2025 — 195 owner-occupied and 420 not — as reported by the Code Enforcement Officer to the Planning Board on February 4, 2026. [8] [10]

Enforcement has teeth, and it has been tested. On February 2, 2026 the Ellsworth District Court entered judgment for the Town of Bar Harbor against the owner of an unregistered rental on Eden Street totaling $47,700 — $8,200 in per-day operating fines across two seasons, $3,000 for unauthorized operation and $36,500 in advertising-related fines. [8] A January 2025 town survey had separately found 23 of 192 owner-occupied registrations potentially out of compliance. [10]

Two further Bar Harbor developments bear on the island generally. On July 1, 2025 the Maine Supreme Judicial Court dismissed as moot a neighbors’ challenge to a VR-2 registration issued in a shoreland district, leaving the underlying zoning question unresolved. [28] And on June 9, 2026 Bar Harbor voters passed a Land Use Ordinance amendment revising lodging definitions and setting guest limits, by 1,500 to 496; the planning department explained that removing one lodging category was meant to stop operators from circumventing the short-term rental cap, primary-residence rule and night minimums. [29] [30]

State Law

What Maine does and does not require

There is no statewide short-term rental registry in Maine. A bill on the designation of short-term rental units died on June 5, 2025 when the Legislature accepted the ought-not-to-pass report, [20] and a separate bill to create a residential rental unit registry was carried over, tabled again in January 2026 and never reported out. [21] What the state did enact is housing-supply legislation that leaves short-term rental regulation to towns while restricting how they may treat accessory apartments.

Statewide obligations and authorities that apply on Mount Desert Island regardless of local ordinance. Sources: Maine Legislature bill status pages, Maine Office of Community Affairs guidance, Maine Revenue Services and Maine DHHS.
What	Where it stands
Sales tax on lodging	Nine percent on the rental of living quarters, casual rentals included. Anyone renting living quarters must register with Maine Revenue Services as a retailer. The only exception is a person renting a single unit fewer than fifteen days a year without an agent or platform — if a platform is used, the platform must register and collect regardless. Returns are due the fifteenth of the month, and a continuous stay of twenty-eight days or more is exempt. [22]
State lodging licence	Required for any building offering sleeping accommodations of four or more rooms as a business, and for every bed and breakfast regardless of size. Licences are not transferable. Fees run from $135 for a small bed and breakfast to $270 for the largest lodging tier. A typical whole-house rental with fewer than four rentable rooms and no breakfast service falls below the threshold. [23] [24]
Municipal authority	Towns may continue to regulate short-term rentals and require registration, and may prohibit short-term rentals in accessory dwelling units — but they may not impose owner-occupancy requirements on accessory dwelling units, including as a way of discouraging short-term rentals. [25]
Density floors	At least three dwelling units are allowed per residential lot, or four in designated growth areas or where public water and sewer are available. Towns governed by a council had to comply by July 1, 2026; town-meeting towns, which includes all of the island towns, have until July 1, 2027. [25]
The two enacted laws	The housing act signed June 20, 2025 and its update signed April 16, 2026. The 2026 law is what prompted Tremont to revisit an ordinance in August 2026. [18] [19]
Unorganized territory	The Land Use Planning Commission adopted short-term rental rules effective January 12, 2026, but these apply only in unorganized territory and not in any town on or around Mount Desert Island. [31]

The practical consequence for a Southwest Harbor host is that the absence of a town ordinance does not mean the absence of obligations. The nine percent sales tax and the Maine Revenue Services registration requirement apply now, and have for years.

The Numbers

How many there are, and why nobody knows exactly

Only Bar Harbor produces an authoritative count, because only Bar Harbor registers. Everywhere else the figures come from commercial platform-listing trackers or from a town official’s estimate. The two kinds of number are not interchangeable, and neither is a census.

Available short-term rental counts and estimates. Platform-listing counts include hotel and motel rooms marketed through rental platforms and are not comparable to town registration totals.
Town	Figure	What kind of number
Bar Harbor	615 registered (2025); about 900 platform listings (2026)	Official registration count reported February 4, 2026, alongside a much larger commercial listing figure. The gap is mostly definitional, not evidence of 285 illegal rentals. [8]
Southwest Harbor	403 listings (2024); about a quarter of dwellings in tourist or short-term use (2026)	Commercial listing count, plus the town’s own dwelling-use inventory covering roughly ninety percent of dwellings. [26] [3]
Mount Desert	318 listings (2024); about 420 weekly rentals estimated (2024)	Commercial listing count and an estimate cited at a public hearing. [26]
Tremont	312 listings (2024); about 329 of roughly 1,200 dwellings (August 2026)	Commercial listing count and the town manager’s estimate, which works out to about a quarter of the town’s housing. [14]
Trenton	No figure published	No town count and no published listing estimate located.

Taken together, roughly twenty percent of the housing stock on Mount Desert Island has been described as short-term rental, with the note that nobody tracks occupancy because no regulation outside Bar Harbor requires it. [26] The absence of a count is itself the recurring argument for registration: fire and rescue cannot reach an owner they cannot identify, and a town cannot evaluate a policy it has no baseline for.

Housing

What this has to do with year-round housing

The regional study of record is the Mount Desert Island and Acadia Region Housing Study, a final draft dated March 2025 prepared by the Musson Group for Island Housing Trust, covering Bar Harbor, Ellsworth, Lamoine, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, Tremont and Trenton. It concludes that seasonal and short-term rental conversion displaces year-round residents and essential workers, and it recommends protecting year-round housing from seasonal rental conversion. [32]

A rental market with almost nothing in it

About 465 tracked rental units across the region at the end of 2024, with a stabilized vacancy rate of 1.8 percent and an average asking rent of about $820 for tracked units — against roughly $1,800 average rent measured across the wider market in November 2024. [32]

Rents up by a third in a decade

Median rent in Hancock County reached $1,061, up 34 percent between 2014 and 2024, with a 6.7 percent vacancy rate and 51 percent of renters cost-burdened. [2]

Seasonal homes are a third of the county

A 2020 analysis counted 24,116 year-round occupied units against 14,493 seasonal homes in Hancock County. [2]

Sales are not becoming homes

Of 59 Southwest Harbor homes sold between September 2022 and September 2024, only 29 percent are now year-round homes; roughly fifteen became short-term rentals. [2]

Two honest caveats belong here. First, none of the local figures isolate short-term rentals from second homes and seasonal use, which have shaped this island for a century longer than any platform has existed. Second, the effect of an ordinance is itself contested: Bar Harbor’s stated rationale for its 2021 cap was to stop year-round housing being converted by out-of-town investors, [8] while its neighbors have watched rentals appear on their side of the town line since. That displacement argument was raised directly at the Southwest Harbor Select Board on August 11, 2026. [2] The Housing Workgroup’s own work is on the housing page.

If You Rent Out A Property

What already applies, ordinance or not

This is a summary of published requirements, not legal or tax advice. Anyone unsure of their position should ask Maine Revenue Services or the code enforcement officer in their own town.

Check your own town

Bar Harbor requires annual registration and inspection. Southwest Harbor, Mount Desert, Tremont and Trenton currently require nothing specific to short-term rentals — but three of those four are actively drafting or studying.

Register for the nine percent

Maine taxes the rental of living quarters at nine percent and requires nearly all hosts to register as retailers. Renting through a platform does not remove the obligation once you pass fifteen days a year.

Know the four-room line

Offering sleeping accommodation in four or more rooms as a business, or running a bed and breakfast of any size, requires a state lodging licence. Below that threshold it does not.

Leave a reachable local contact

Not yet required in Southwest Harbor, but it is the single point fire and rescue officials keep raising across the island. Bar Harbor makes a named local contact who can respond promptly a condition of registration.

What To Watch

The next twelve months

Three towns have live processes and one has a fresh state-law deadline. Nothing here is settled, and each of these is decided in a public meeting.

Dates and figures on this page will move. Southwest Harbor is preparing a survey and deciding whether registration needs an ordinance or can be done by policy, with a November ballot question raised as a possibility. Tremont posted its own survey on August 4, 2026 and is weighing a registration-only ordinance. Trenton is targeting a vote at its May 2027 town meeting. Bar Harbor has further lodging limits under discussion. And every town-meeting town on this island must bring its ordinances into line with the state density rules by July 1, 2027.

Two known gaps in the record, stated plainly. Bar Harbor’s fee for non-owner-occupied registrations is not published in any town document found, and its 2026 registration total and current waiting-list length have not been reported — the most recent official figures are for 2025. Southwest Harbor’s posted ordinances are labeled by the town as unofficial copies; certified text comes from the Town Office.

Short-Term Rentals on Mount Desert Island