Short-term rental listings in Maine have exploded in just 3 years

In the past two weeks, 25 homeowners in the western Maine mountain region have reached out to Amber Gellman about turning their properties into short-term rentals.

“It’s been a big boom in business in the last three to five years. It’s definitely growing, faster and faster,” said Gellman, who owns Stratton-based Sugarloaf Rentals LLC with her mother and husband.

Five years ago, Gellman’s family business operated around 70 rentals. By 2021 that had grown to 125 properties, and this year Gellman said they now manage and clean 300 — of which 180 are short-term rentals, she said. They’re the fourth largest short-term rental business in Maine, according to AirDNA, a company that tracks vacation rental data, which only lists them as having half their inventory.

That spurt is demonstrative of a wider trend in Maine. The number of available short-term rental listings has ballooned by 45 percent statewide in only three years, according to AirDNA.

In June 2021, around 14,800 short-term rental listings were available on platforms including Vrbo and Airbnb. There are now roughly 21,500 listings as of last month.

“The supply growth is responding to the increase in demand, reflecting the global impact of the pandemic and the shift in travel dynamics and preferences observed nationally since 2019,” said Zoë Gerniers, an analyst with AirDNA, which tracks listings on platforms including Airbnb and Vrbo.

Demand for short-term rentals in Maine has only increased in the past three years by 19 percent, and occupancy rates are down by about 10 percent, according to AirDNA. That adheres to a nationwide trend of short-term rental supply outpacing demand, a trend that AirDNA expects to continue into next year.

Despite that, short-term rental businesses that operate around Maine’s major tourist attractions and recreational areas don’t see demand slowing anytime soon. The opposite is happening in the four-season tourism area in western Maine, Gellman said.

“The summer used to be slow, and you would look forward to having that downtime,” Gellman said. “It’s picked right up. I’d say 60 percent of our properties are filled right now.”

Driving that demand is the Sugarloaf ski resort’s efforts to increase summertime recreation opportunities with concerts and races. Gellman also thinks that since the pandemic, the “secret’s out” about how desirable a place Maine is to live, recreate in and vacation to.

The spike in new listings is particular to tourist-heavy areas, Steven Dawson, an Airbnb host and real estate agent based in Winter Harbor, said. He got into the business two years ago, meaning his is one of the new listings AirDNA is accounting for. The Mount Desert Island region has a tighter housing market with less room available for new properties.

“There’s not a lot of inventory,” Dawson said of coastal Maine. “That trend is happening elsewhere.”

It’s unclear whether the huge increase in new short-term rental listings means the state’s overall share of seasonal homes is increasing, or to what extent it’s removing units from Maine’s year-round housing stock.

A landmark state study released last fall used AirDNA data to say Maine had about 23,900 short-term listings with at least one reservation between April 2022 and April 2023. But it said that the vast majority would not easily convert to year-round housing due to their size, condition, location or price, casting doubt that the platforms are driving the larger housing crunch.

Despite that finding, many Maine cities and towns where housing inventory is scarce are cracking down on short-term rentals. Voters in Kennebunk were the latest to restrict the growth of these rentals in a landslide June vote .

“Year-round [housing] is the hardest to find up here,” Gellman said of the Sugarloaf region, where a workforce housing project was voted down in Kingfield this year. “They’re all taken by short term or seasonal families that book their stay for the winter.”