The Oregon Rent Increase Cap 2026 and Your DSCR Loan

The short answer: For 2026, Oregon's maximum allowable rent increase on most residential tenancies is 9.5% in any 12-month period, published by the Oregon Department of Administrative Services under ORS 90.324. That is the first time the figure has landed below the 10% ceiling. A separate 6% cap applies only to manufactured dwelling parks and floating-home marinas with more than 30 spaces.

The Oregon Rent Increase Cap 2026 Number Is 9.5%

Oregon publishes one statewide percentage each year, and for 2026 that percentage is 9.5%. It applies to rent increases on existing tenancies covered by ORS 90.323, which is nearly every conventional residential rental in Clackamas County: the single-family house in Oregon City, the Milwaukie duplex, the Happy Valley townhome held as a rental.

What makes this year different is the direction. The cap was 10.0% in 2024 and 10.0% again in 2025, both times because the statutory ceiling bound before the inflation formula did. In 2026 the formula itself produced the lower number, so the ceiling is no longer doing the work.

Source: Oregon Department of Administrative Services, Office of Economic Analysis, rent stabilization page, published September 30, 2025 for the 2026 calendar year. This page describes Oregon landlord-tenant statute for planning purposes and is not legal advice; for how the statute applies to a specific tenancy, talk with an Oregon attorney.

How the Oregon Rent Increase Cap 2026 Formula Works

The calculation is set by ORS 90.324, and it is short. The maximum allowable increase is the lesser of 10%, or 7% plus the September Consumer Price Index for the West Region, All Items. Whichever of those two produces the smaller number is the number for the following calendar year.

Two bills built that rule. SB 608 in 2019 created the original 7% + CPI cap with no upper limit at all. SB 611 in 2023 added the flat 10% ceiling, which is why the 2024 and 2025 figures stopped at exactly 10.0% instead of running higher.

The publication schedule matters more than investors expect. DAS must publish the following year's percentage no later than September 30. So the number governing your 2027 rent increases is announced while you are still in 2026, which gives you a real planning window before you send notices in the new year.

One practical consequence: if you are reading this after September 30, 2026, check the current DAS figure before you send anything. The 9.5% number on this page is the 2026 figure, and it is scoped to the 2026 calendar year on purpose.

Two Exemptions From the Oregon Rent Increase Cap 2026

ORS 90.323(5) lists exactly two exemptions, and the list is closed. Neither one has anything to do with how many properties you own.

1. New construction, for 15 years. A unit is exempt if its first certificate of occupancy issued less than 15 years before the date of the rent-increase notice. Note the clock runs from the notice date, which makes this a rolling exemption a building eventually ages out of, not a fixed cutoff year.
2. Regulated affordable housing. A unit regulated or certified as affordable housing by a federal, state, or local government is exempt where the rent change does not increase the tenant's portion, or where the change is required by program eligibility or by a change in the tenant's income.

The first exemption is genuinely useful in my footprint, because the newest rental stock in the county is concentrated in a few places. If you own a recently built rental in Happy Valley or Wilsonville, the certificate-of-occupancy date is worth pulling before you assume the cap binds. My guide to Oregon's 15-year rent cap exemption for new builds walks that exemption in full, including how to document the occupancy date.

What is not on that list deserves as much attention as what is. There is no exemption for small landlords, no exemption for single-family houses, and no exemption for someone who owns one rental. More on that below, because it is the single most common error in Oregon investor content.

Notice Rules That Come With the Cap

The percentage is only part of ORS 90.323. Three procedural rules travel with it, and missing one of them is a more likely failure than exceeding the percentage itself.

• No increase during the first year of tenancy. A new tenant's rent is fixed for the first 12 months, regardless of what the annual cap allows.
• Ninety days written notice. An increase requires 90 days advance written notice to the tenant.
• Once per 12 months. You may not stack a second increase inside the same 12-month window, even if the combined total would stay under the cap.

The consequence for getting it wrong is specific. ORS 90.323(6) makes a landlord who violates the section liable to the tenant for three months' rent plus actual damages. On a Clackamas County rental that is a meaningful number, and it is why I tell investors to calendar the notice date the same way they calendar a tax payment.

If you are converting a home you already own into a rental, this is the moment the rules attach to you. Rent stabilization does not care whether you consider yourself an investor; it cares whether there is a tenancy.

What the Cap Means for a DSCR Underwrite in Clackamas County

Start with what does not change. A DSCR loan is underwritten on current qualifying rent, taken from the signed lease or the appraiser's rent schedule, measured against the property's full PITIA payment. The cap does not touch that calculation, so the ratio you compute today is the ratio that matters at closing. If you want the mechanics, my guide to what DSCR ratio you need to qualify walks the arithmetic step by step, and the parent page on DSCR loans in Clackamas County covers how the product works overall.

What the cap changes is everything after closing. A hold model that assumes you can reprice a sitting tenant to market in one move is not available in Oregon. You can move 9.5% in 2026, once, with 90 days notice, and then you wait a year.

That has a direct effect on how thin a ratio you should accept. In a state with no cap, an investor who buys at a 1.02 DSCR can argue that a below-market rent gets corrected quickly and the ratio repairs itself. In Oregon that correction is metered by statute, so a below-market tenancy takes multiple annual steps to close the gap.

My practical guidance for Clackamas County: treat a thin ratio as thinner here, and ask what the in-place rent is relative to market before you lean on future rent growth. Entry-price rentals in Milwaukie and Oregon City often carry long-tenured tenants at rents well under market, which is exactly the situation the cap slows down. The Milwaukie housing market report gives you the pricing backdrop for that comparison.

One more distinction worth stating plainly. The cap governs increases on an existing tenancy. It does not set the rent you may ask when a unit turns over and you sign a new tenant. Turnover is where a below-market unit resets, which is why vacancy timing carries more weight in an Oregon model than in most other states.

Three Myths About the Oregon Rent Increase Cap 2026

Each of these shows up regularly in national investor content, and each one is wrong in Oregon.

The third one causes real damage, because an owner who believes it will send a non-compliant notice in complete good faith. If you own exactly one rental house in Oregon City, you are fully subject to the 9.5% cap, the 90-day notice, the once-per-12-months limit, and the first-year rule.

Modeling a Clackamas County Hold Under the 2026 Cap

Here is how I would build the rent line in a hold model, using clearly hypothetical figures rather than any market rent or quoted payment.

Suppose a hypothetical in-place rent of $2,000 on a tenancy that has run more than 12 months. Applying the 2026 maximum of 9.5% once, with proper notice, moves that hypothetical rent to $2,190. If a hypothetical PITIA of $2,050 sits underneath it, the ratio moves from roughly 0.98 to roughly 1.07 across a full year. That is the honest pace of repair available on a sitting tenant, and it is slower than most spreadsheets assume.

Three planning notes follow from that arithmetic:

• Underwrite to the rent you have, not the rent you want. The lender is going to do exactly that anyway, so your model may as well agree with the file.
• Ask about tenancy age during diligence. A unit with a five-year tenant at a well-below-market rent is a different asset from an identical unit that just turned over, even at the same price.
• Do not assume next year's percentage. It is recalculated annually and published by September 30. Build the model so the rate is an input you can change, not a constant.

None of this makes Oregon a bad place to own rentals. It makes Oregon a place where the rent assumption has to be defended rather than waved at, and investors who do that work have a genuine edge over ones who copy a national template.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Oregon Rent Increase Cap 2026

What is the Oregon rent increase cap 2026?

How is the Oregon rent cap percentage calculated?

Are small landlords exempt from the Oregon rent cap?

Which Oregon rentals are exempt from the rent cap?

Does the Oregon rent cap affect whether a DSCR loan approves?

Does the cap limit what I can charge a new tenant?