11 county-level rules, plus city-specific rules for 1 city in Cumberland County, Maine.
Verified from official government sources
Cumberland County, Maine does not issue short-term rental (STR) permits and has no county vacation-rental ordinance. Under 30-A MRS § 3001 (home rule), the legal authority to require an STR permit sits with each of Cumberland County's 28 incorporated municipalities (Portland, South Portland, Westbrook, Scarborough, Brunswick, Bridgton, Falmouth, etc.), and the operative rule is whatever permit ordinance — if any — your town or city has adopted.
Cumberland County has no county-level noise ordinance applicable to short-term rentals. STR noise is governed by (1) Maine's disorderly-conduct statute Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 17-A §501-A (loud and unreasonable noise — including consumer fireworks — is a Class E crime) and (2) the host municipality's noise ordinance and STR registration conditions.
Cumberland County has no county-level short-term-rental tax or registration fee. Maine imposes a statewide 9% sales tax on the rental of living quarters under Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 36 §1811, which applies to STRs and is collected and remitted by marketplace facilitators (Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com) under Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 36 §1754-B once Maine gross sales exceed $100,000.
Cumberland County imposes no parking requirements on short-term rentals because the county adopts no zoning code. Off-street parking minimums and on-street restrictions are set at the municipal level. State law (Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 29-A §2068) supplies the baseline on stopping, standing, and parking, and Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 30-A §4364(3) caps parking that municipalities can require in affordable-housing developments at 2 spaces per 3 units.
Cumberland County imposes no STR occupancy cap because the county adopts no zoning or housing code. The Maine Uniform Building and Energy Code (MUBEC) under Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 25 §2451 — mandatory in every Cumberland County municipality (all exceed the 4,000-population threshold) — sets baseline life-safety occupant loads, and individual cities (Portland, South Portland, Scarborough) layer per-bedroom caps on top.
Cumberland County does not require short-term-rental hosts to carry commercial liability insurance, because the county imposes no STR licensing program. Maine has no statewide host-insurance statute either. The operative coverage is whatever the host's homeowners or landlord policy provides, augmented by Airbnb's AirCover and Vrbo's Liability Insurance, plus any municipal STR-ordinance proof-of-insurance requirement.
Cumberland County imposes no annual cap on the number of nights a short-term rental may operate. Maine state law sets none either. Where night caps exist in this region, they are set by individual municipalities — Portland, for example, has separate registration tiers for non-owner-occupied vs. owner-occupied STRs, and Brunswick limits non-principal-residence rentals.
Cumberland County does not maintain an STR registry. The only Maine-wide registration that always applies to a vacation rental is Maine Revenue Services sales-tax registration for the 9% lodging tax under 36 MRS § 1811(1)(D), but for hosts who list exclusively on Airbnb, Vrbo, or Booking.com, the platform is responsible for collecting and remitting the tax as a 'marketplace facilitator' under 36 MRS § 1754-B once its Maine gross sales exceed $100,000 per calendar year.
Cumberland County does not require an STR host to be physically on-site during a guest stay, and Maine state law imposes no host-presence rule. The matter is left to each Cumberland County municipality under 30-A MRS § 3001 home-rule authority. Where presence rules exist (e.g. Portland's distinction between 'hosted' and 'unhosted' STRs in Code Ch. 6 Art. IX), they are municipal, not county-wide.
Cumberland County has no rule restricting short-term rentals to a host's primary residence and Maine state law imposes no such requirement. Whether you can run an STR in a non-owner-occupied house depends entirely on the municipality where the property sits — Portland (Code § 6-243) caps non-owner-occupied 'unhosted' STRs at 400 citywide and requires a higher annual fee, while many smaller Cumberland County towns place no primary-residence condition at all.
1 cities in Cumberland County have their own short-term rentals rules. Each link goes to that city's dedicated page with code citations.
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