There has been a significant increase in demand for short-term rentals in several Maine towns, with two small towns topping the list over the past year.
Brooks, a Waldo County town of around 1,000 residents, and Columbia Falls with a population half that size Down East, are the two Maine ZIP codes that have seen the biggest year-over-year booms in Airbnb occupancy levels, according to new data from AirDNA, a company that analyzes short-term rental data pulled from Airbnb and Vrbo.
That is part of a national trend in short-term rental activity: Small cities and rural locations are where that market is seeing the most growth, and urban locations are the slowest growing, according to a U.S. market review from AirDNA released this week.
The top ten towns in Maine seeing a boom after Brooks and Columbia Falls were Port Clyde, Sorrento, the largely seasonal Cushing Island and Great Diamond Island off the coast of Portland, Jackman, Lovell, Winter Harbor, Belgrade and Eagle Lake. The AirDNA data compared bookings between November 2022 and this October with the preceding year.
Many of those towns draw seasonal visitors because of their proximity to natural attractions like Acadia National Park, other parts of the coast and inland lakes like those in Belgrade, as well as four-season outdoor recreation opportunities like skiing and snowmobiling.
Booming short-term rental activity in these towns is extending past the summer and into the off-season month of October. Brooks saw more than a 1,300 percent increase in short-term rental activity from October 2019 to October 2023. Eagle Lake saw a 767 percent increase in that same time, and other towns including remote Jackman, Belgrade and Winter Harbor saw demand increase by over 120 percent in that time period.
“It has been busy in the off-season, which I was kind of surprised about,” said Steven Dawson, an associate broker with The Christopher Group who began operating three short-term rental properties this year, two of which are in Winter Harbor.
Many leaf-peepers were drawn to Acadia and to nearby towns like Winter Harbor in October, Dawson said. However, his two apartment properties have been booked through Thanksgiving too.
It’s a different demographic of visitors in the off-season, Dawson said. Mostly it’s Mainers or New Englanders booking last-minute to see family members for the holidays, rather than tourists from all over the U.S. and beyond booking far in advance for a summer stay, he said.
There aren’t too many Airbnbs on Maine’s coast that operate through the winter, either because the properties aren’t winterized or because homeowners who rent out their properties in the summer return to live there in the off-season, Dawson said.
In small cities and rural areas, housing is pretty scarce considering the size of those year-round populations. That means in most of these in-demand rental markets, off-season demand is outpacing supply.
While demand for a short-term rental in Brooks increased by 30 percent from October 2019 to October 2023, the rate of occupancy only increased by 1 percent in that period. In Jackman, demand for off-season short-term rentals increased by 128 percent from October 2019 to October 2023, and the rate of occupancy actually fell by 4 percent.
AirDNA defines demand as how many available vacation rentals are being booked by guests. Occupancy rates are calculated by comparing supply against demand.
The heightened demand for short-term rentals in smaller cities or rural areas seems to be linked to tightening regulations on that market in urban areas, AirDNA’s report found.
Some coastal communities like Rockland and Kennebunkport have capped the number of short-term rentals allowed in town. Portland began tracking and regulating them in 2017, though the city voted down further restrictions in 2020. Bar Harbor has also instituted restrictions.
