Portland, Maine capped rent increases at 2.6%. Market rent still rose 10.9% this year.

Landlords in Portland, Maine can raise rent by up to 2.6% in 2027, the city announced Tuesday, up from 2.2% this year. Notices are going out to all 20,064 registered long-term rentals. Typical rent in Portland rose 10.9% over the past year.

What the cap covers and what it doesn't

The ordinance, passed by voters in 2020 and in force since 2021, ties allowable increases to inflation for tenants who stay put. It doesn't set the rent on a vacant unit, and it carries allowances for turnover and property improvements. So a sitting tenant is protected at 2.6%, while the apartment next door that just turned over gets priced at whatever the market will pay.

Market-wide figures like ours blend both. That's why a city with a 2.2% cap can post a 10.9% increase, and it's not a contradiction or a sign the law is being ignored, though the Portland Tenants Union argues it often is. It's a measurement of the units the cap doesn't reach.

The neighbor with no cap

Portland has a control group sitting right across the Fore River, which is rare for a policy question like this. South Portland has no rent control ordinance, shares the same job market and the same housing shortage, and our data goes back far enough to compare the two since the law took effect.

Since 2021, Portland's typical rent rose 33.3% and South Portland's 42.1%. That nine-point gap is the clearest measure available of what the ordinance did, which is that it slowed the market by roughly a fifth rather than holding it to the 2% a year the cap implies.

The two cities started within $40 of each other and now sit $104 apart, which is a real but modest difference on rents above $2,400. A renter who stayed in one Portland apartment the whole five years did far better than that, since their increases were capped the entire time, while a renter who moved even once got the market price.

Enforcement is the part nobody is happy with

Five years in, the law has critics on every side, starting with the tenants union, which says the system is rife with violations. Landlords say the caps don't cover rising property taxes and are pushing owners out. Mayor Mark Dion has called the ordinance poorly written, and the council has discussed changes without voting on any.

The structural gap is that the ordinance never laid out how to collect fines, so past rent board rulings have been hard to enforce. The city's answer has been inspection volume. It added a second inspector this year, and the unit count has climbed from 3,911 in 2024 to 7,657 in 2025, with 7,426 already covered in the first half of 2026.

For a Portland renter, if you're staying, your increase is capped at 2.6% and you should check any notice above that against the ordinance. If you're moving within the city, expect the market rate, which is currently about $1,597 for a one-bedroom and $2,053 for a two-bedroom, and rising fast.

We've compared the different tools cities are using in whether rent freezes, caps and algorithm bans lower rent, and Maine's wider climb in New England rent beyond Boston.

Sources

• Portland Press Herald, Portland sets rent control increase for next year (September 1, 2026), for the 2027 cap, registered unit count, inspection figures and reaction

• RentDataNow rent data for Portland and South Portland, Maine, June 2021 through June 2026, anchored to the Zillow Observed Rent Index