Short-Term Rental Inspection Deadline Is Tomorrow

One historic property has not yet passed

May 30, 2023

BAR HARBOR—The short-term rental licensing deadline occurs on May 31, which means the town’s code enforcement office staff have been working hard with the last minute rush of inspections. All short-term rentals have to be inspected in order to receive a license to rent. Those inspections last for three years.

Two years ago, voters approved regulating short-term rentals (1260-840), putting the rentals in one of two categories. The first category is owner occupied. It has a minimum two-night stay. The second category is for dwellings that are not owner occupied. The minimum stay for those is four nights. Those rentals are also subject to inspections and yearly fees for the permits to rent to be valid. The same vote limited the total number of non-owner-occupied short-term rentals to 9 percent of Bar Harbor’s total housing stock. It also prohibited the transfer of licenses when the properties are transferred to new owners.

Deputy Code Enforcement Officer Mike Gurtler has been inspecting those properties in accordance with the town rules, going through the properties with homeowners. He went to about 15 homes on Friday, inspecting the home via the requirements set out in several chapters of the NFPA 101 Life Safety Code.

“The ordinance went into effect at the end of 2021. We gave everyone notice and allowed until 5/31/2023 for compliance on anyone that had an inspection (or no inspection) predating 2017. Properties between 2017 and 2021 will be due by 5/31/2024. Then everyone will be on the 3-year cycle (of inspection),” Gurtler said.

While also enforcing the rules, the job also sometimes makes him a problem solver.

As of Tuesday, May 30, sixteen buildings were scheduled for re-inspection.

“Our goal,” he said of the town, “is not to deny people their permits, but to make sure they are in compliance.”

Once the ordinance was adopted in 2021, the Code Enforcement Office sent out reminders in the mail and via email. Those reminders went out in the beginning of 2022, and again in August 2022. The communication alerted property owners that they needed to have their license renewal paid and property inspected by May 31, 2023.

The rules, he said, are there to keep guests safe per the national safety rules. Compliance has also sent some property owners scurrying to handle egress windows in each bedroom where windows are too small. Another big issue has been head heights in stairwells that are too low. Gurtler said that he and Code Enforcement Officer Angie Chamberlain work with people to check that they are in compliance. Sometimes, when time is tight and labor is hard to find, compliance for a bedroom without an egress window can be locking that bedroom door so renters can’t access that room, or changing a bedroom into an office.

There are 676 registered property owners who are being inspected in cycles. Multiple historic homes on West Street and in historic districts have passed inspections.

As of Tuesday, Gurtler said, there is only one building that is registered as a historic property that has not passed.

At a council meeting last Tuesday, Councilor Erin Cough had hoped to get an emergency inspection extension for any historic property that might need a deadline extension in the hopes of potentially changing rules for historic properties so that they may not have to change facades to deal with low balcony rails or egress windows. That did not pass.

As of last week there were 17 non-owner-occupied properties that had not yet re-registered or passed inspection. There were about 250 homes in this inspection cycle. Another inspection cycle will occur next year. Cough’s remarks came at the same meeting that an employee of The Knowles Company emailed the council about two of the company’s clients who said they were unable to meet the town’s inspection deadline. Both The Knowles Company and Cough, who is also the Executive Director of the Bar Harbor Historical Society, worried about a historic property not being able to pass the inspection without creating a change to a building’s architecture. When it comes to egress windows in bedrooms for any property, a sprinkler system—or changing that room’s use or securing it so that renters cannot access it—would allow it to pass inspection.