Landlords
The landlord next door.Most are your neighbors.
Most of Maine's rental homes aren't owned by corporations. They're owned by people who bought a duplex or a triple-decker to build a retirement, often in the town where they live. They keep Maine's oldest homes standing and rented. They deserve a fair shake.
Of U.S. rental properties were owned by individual people, not companies, in the Census Bureau's 2021 survey.
Of Maine renter households live in buildings of one to four homes, against 48 percent nationally. A third live in two- to four-unit buildings, twice the national share.
Of small rental properties, one to four homes, are held as part of the owner's retirement plan, a survey of owners in U.S. metro areas found.
Sources: Congressional Research Service, Ownership of the U.S. Rental Housing Stock by Investor Type (R47332), December 2022, from the 2021 Rental Housing Finance Survey; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024, renter households by units in structure (B25032), Maine; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024, renter households by units in structure (B25032), United States; Terner Center for Housing Innovation, “The Uneven Impact of the Pandemic on the Tenants and Owners of Small Rental Properties,” July 2021
Who they are
Neighbors, not corporations.
Many small owners hold a building in a limited liability company, to keep a lawsuit from reaching the family home. On paper they look like companies. In a national survey of owners of 5- to 49-unit buildings, 38 percent held them in an LLC whose majority owner is one person, on top of 32 percent held by individuals directly. A 2026 study that traced LLCs back to their owners in 11 large metro areas found individuals owned about 68 to 70 percent of the rental homes there in 2019.
They're building a retirement. Two thirds of those small apartment buildings have owners 60 or older, and 42 percent were bought as part of a retirement plan. Of rentals with one to four homes, 43 percent were once the owner's own home.
Maine keeps no statewide count of landlords; a bill for a rental registry failed this year. Portland's registry lists 17,513 homes under 3,924 licenses, and 1,483 of them are in two- to four-unit buildings where the owner lives.
Big owners are real too. Individuals own most rental properties, but big buildings hold many homes: individuals owned 38 percent of U.S. rental units in 2021. In Maine, corporate investors own 20 of the 32 largest mobile home parks, and a California company that bought South Portland's 500-unit Redbank Village raised rents as much as 35 percent.
People can tell the difference. In a June 2026 national poll, 47 percent rated mom-and-pop landlords' effect on the economy positive and 12 percent negative. For corporate landlords it was 17 percent and 53 percent. Rules written for the second group land hardest on the first.
Sources: Terner Center for Housing Innovation, “The Ownership and Management of Small Multifamily Rental Properties,” January 2024; Kestelman, Diamond, Humphries, Pennington, van Dijk and Voorheis, “Towards a Methodology for Measuring Rental Property Ownership in the United States,” NBER Working Paper 35258, May 2026; Terner Center for Housing Innovation, “The Uneven Impact of the Pandemic on the Tenants and Owners of Small Rental Properties,” July 2021; Maine Legislature, LD 1806 (2026), a statewide rental unit registry (ought not to pass, March 12, 2026); Portland Rent Board, 2024 Annual Report (registration data), approved April 23, 2025; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2021 Rental Housing Finance Survey release, November 29, 2022; The Genesis Fund, “Mobile Home Communities in Maine and the United States,” April 2025 (a lender that finances resident purchases); Portland Press Herald, August 14, 2022 (Redbank Village); Data for Progress, national survey, June 2026, crosstabs (a progressive-leaning pollster)
What it costs now
A small building costs more to keep.
Maine's approved homeowners insurance rate increases, compounded, 2022 through 2025 (our calculation). Maine publishes no figures for landlord policies; nationally, multifamily insurance nearly doubled from 2019 to 2024.
The rise in the median wage of Maine's construction workers from 2021 to 2025. Carpenters now earn $29.88 an hour, electricians $36.24.
A month in principal and interest on a $300,000 mortgage at 2025's average rate, against $1,258 at 2021's (our calculation).
Four in ten Maine renter households heat with oil, and when heat comes with the rent, the landlord pays it: heating oil cost 71 percent more last winter than in the unusually cheap winter of 2020-21 (24 percent more than 2018-19). A rental gets no homestead exemption, so its owner pays tax on every dollar of value.
Rents rose too. Maine's median rent went from $945 in 2021 to $1,210 in 2024, up 28 percent, and home values rose more than a third. So the squeeze isn't everywhere. It lands on owners who bought or refinanced after 2021, older buildings where the landlord pays the heat, owners hit by a revaluation, landlords who keep rents low for tenants who've stayed for years, and anyone whose rent is capped while the costs aren't.
Sources: Maine Bureau of Insurance, average approved homeowners rate changes, 2015 to 2024; Maine Bureau of Insurance, 2025 consumer recoveries release, March 31, 2026 (2025 rate changes); Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, The State of the Nation's Housing 2026 (citing Trepp on multifamily insurance); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Maine, May 2021; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Maine construction occupations, May 2025 (median hourly wage); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Maine median hourly wage for carpenters, May 2025; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Maine median hourly wage for electricians, May 2025; Freddie Mac, Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 30-year fixed rate, annual averages (via FRED); U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024, tenure by house heating fuel (B25117); U.S. Energy Information Administration, weekly Maine No. 2 heating oil residential price (our heating-season averages); 36 M.R.S. §683, the homestead exemption; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2021, median gross rent (B25064); U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024, median gross rent (B25064); Maine Association of Realtors, calendar year 2025 housing report
A fair process
Fair rules, for both sides.
Maine's eviction law is quick on paper. A tenant seven days behind on rent can be given a seven-day notice. The hearing comes at least 14 days after the court papers are served (the courts doubled that from seven in 2024), and the writ issues seven days after judgment. An uncontested case takes about six to eight weeks from the missed rent to getting the apartment back (our estimate).
What makes it hard is the rules around the edges. A tenant at will who pays the back rent and the landlord's court costs any time before the writ must be reinstated, and the law sets no limit on how often. The back rent itself takes a second lawsuit. Court and sheriff fees are modest, about $210 to $300 without a lawyer (our estimate), but one York County firm charges about $2,300, and a national study found a filing costs a landlord the equivalent of two to three months' rent.
In Portland, ending a tenancy without cause takes 90 days' notice, or a payment of one or two months' rent for a shorter one, and yearly increases are capped at 70 percent of inflation, with owner-occupied buildings of two to four units exempt.
The other side is real too. Maine's eviction filing rate, about 4 cases a year per 100 renter households, is less than half the national rate researchers have measured, and 2025's filings were 24 percent below the 2015-2019 average. Tenants have a lawyer in about one case in five; landlords in four in five. An eviction raises the odds of homelessness and cuts earnings and credit for at least two years. A fair process protects both.
Eviction cases filed in Maine in 2025, down from 5,820 in 2023.
The most MaineHousing's reopened Eviction Prevention Program pays toward a household's back rent, paid directly to the landlord.
Sources: 14 M.R.S. chapter 709, forcible entry and detainer (current through October 1, 2025); Maine Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 80D, as amended February 5, 2024; Maine Judicial Branch, Administrative Order JB-05-26, court fees, effective March 9, 2026; 30-A M.R.S. §421, sheriffs' fees for service; Litalien Law (York County), flat fees for landlord evictions (a law firm's published prices); Humphries, Nelson, Nguyen, van Dijk and Waldinger, “Nonpayment and Eviction in the Rental Housing Market,” NBER Working Paper 33155; City of Portland, presentation on rent control and tenant protections, November 2024; Maine Judicial Branch, 15-year monthly eviction filing report (our annual totals); Gromis and others, “Estimating eviction prevalence across the United States,” PNAS, 2022; Maine Affordable Housing Coalition, eviction case-file study, September 2020 (an advocacy group); Collinson and others, “Eviction and Poverty in American Cities,” NBER Working Paper 30382 (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2024); MaineHousing, Eviction Prevention Program (reopened September 21, 2026)
Rent control
It lands hardest on the smallest owners.
When San Francisco extended rent control to small buildings, their owners cut the homes they rented by 15 percent, mostly by selling to owner-occupants and converting, and rents across the city rose about 5 percent. In St. Paul, property values fell 4 to 5.5 percent after voters passed one of the strictest rent caps in the country. A big company can carry a capped building. A retiree with a triple-decker often can't.
Sources: Diamond, McQuade and Qian, “The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality,” American Economic Review, 2019; Ahern and Giacoletti, Journal of Urban Economics, 2026
Taxes
Taxed like a business. Planned like a pension.
A rental gets no homestead exemption, and Maine Revenue Services told the Legislature's task force this month what that means: exempting the first $25,000 of a home “shifts the burden of taxation from owners of homesteads to owners of non-homestead property.” The state's program that lets older owners put off the tax until a sale is for owner-occupied homes too.
A landlord pays income tax on the rent every year and property tax on the building's full value every year, sold or not. Savings in a 401(k) grow untaxed until they're withdrawn. To be fair, real estate has breaks of its own, among them depreciation and tax-deferred exchanges, and homeowners pay the same property tax on everything above the exemption.
Maine's Property Tax Fairness Credit already treats 15 percent of a tenant's rent as property tax. A credit built the same way can reach the small landlords who pay it.
Sources: Maine Revenue Services, letter to the Real Estate Property Tax Relief Task Force, September 15, 2026; 36 M.R.S. §683, the homestead exemption; 36 M.R.S. §6251, the State Property Tax Deferral Program; Internal Revenue Service, Publication 527, Residential Rental Property; Internal Revenue Service, Topic 409, capital gains and losses; Internal Revenue Service, 401(k) plan overview; 36 M.R.S. §5219-KK, Property Tax Fairness Credit
Why it matters
Maine's oldest homes, kept up by its smallest owners.
Of Maine's rental homes were built before 1940, more than twice the national share of 12 percent.
Maine rental homes, 54 percent of the total in 2021, that were affordable to households below 60 percent of median income with no subsidy or rent restriction.
Of Maine's lead-poisoned children live in rental housing, and 87 percent in homes built before 1950. The state's grants cover $15,000 to $18,000 a unit.
Owners reinvest: in 2020, 76 percent of U.S. rental property owners made capital improvements. Under pressure, though, they mostly put off repairs rather than sell. In one survey of small landlords in two New York cities, 30 percent of properties had repairs deferred and 2 percent were for sale. We found no data showing landlords moving their money into stocks. The risk is quieter: older buildings that don't get fixed.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024, renter-occupied homes by year built (B25036), via Census Reporter; State of Maine Housing Production Needs Study, October 2023; Maine CDC, Eradicating Childhood Lead Poisoning report, January 2025; MaineHousing, lead paint remediation programs for rental owners; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2021 Rental Housing Finance Survey release, November 29, 2022; de la Campa, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, survey of small landlords in Albany and Rochester, 2021
What we'd do
Keep the landlord next door renting.
A small landlord tax credit.
A refundable state income tax credit, run like the Property Tax Fairness Credit, for owners of up to 15 homes on up to five properties: a quarter of the property tax on each home rented at or below HUD's fair market rent, or to a household using a voucher, up to $750 a home a year. About $12 million a year at our central estimate.
Repairs that pay for themselves.
A credit for a quarter of the cost of fixing lead, heat and safety in older rentals, up to $2,500 a home, for owners who keep those rents at or below fair market for five years. And a one-page version of the historic credit for small buildings; only 13 of 115 completed projects used its small-project option from 2008 to 2020.
Stand behind the landlord who says yes.
Bring back the incentive for landlords who rent to voucher holders, which ended last December, and back those tenancies with a state guarantee against unpaid rent and damage.
One catch-up a year.
Keep a tenant's right to pay what's owed and stay, once in 12 months, with the state's Eviction Prevention Program paying landlords directly. After that, a second nonpayment case goes forward. Let one hearing decide both the apartment and the back rent.
One rule on rent, statewide.
Join the more than 30 states that don't let cities adopt rent control, and help renters directly instead.
Treat landlords as partners.
A landlord liaison at MaineHousing, small landlords at the table when rental rules are written, and the same heat pump rebates for a rental kept at fair market rent as for an owner's own home.
Taxes an owner can plan on.
When a revaluation raises a rental's tax more than 10 percent in a year, let the owner pay the jump over three years, the same as a homeowner.
Sources: 36 M.R.S. §5219-KK, Property Tax Fairness Credit; Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit evaluation, November 2021; Portland Housing Authority, landlord incentives (the state program ended December 31, 2025); MaineHousing, Eviction Prevention Program (reopened September 21, 2026); 14 M.R.S. chapter 709, forcible entry and detainer (current through October 1, 2025); Efficiency Maine, rebates brochure (income-based heat pump rebates require the owner's principal residence)
Most landlords are neighbors. Treat them like it.
Landlords, join us
We're organizing Maine's small landlords.
If you own a duplex, a triple-decker or a few apartments, we want to hear from you: what it costs, what the rules get wrong, and what would keep you renting. Tell us you're in, and we'll keep you posted on the hearings and votes that affect you.
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