by Leslie Black-Plumeau
The median price of a Vermont home jumped to $310,000 in 2022, an historic 15% increase from the prior year. This is the largest annual percentage increase in the median sales price of primary homes since 1988 when the Vermont Department of Taxes began publishing home sales data.
Among newly-built Vermont homes exclusively, the median price rose to $555,264 in 2022, up 21% from the prior year.
Every Vermont county saw an increase in the median home price, with the exception of Essex County which remained the same and has few sales each year. Orange County had the greatest increase where the median home price rose to $283,760 in 2022, up 29% from the prior year.
Home price data for every Vermont town and county are now available on the Vermont Housing Data website for 2022 and prior years.
Steeply increasing home prices reflect Vermont’s constrained supply of available homes for sale and an increased demand to live in Vermont since the pandemic. The annual rate of growth in the number of year-round households in Vermont increased to 1.4% since the pandemic, compared to 0.8% in prior years.
Vermont’s housing supply and demand woes are reflected in national vacancy rate metrics. Vermont has the lowest vacancy rate in the country among rental homes and the second lowest among owner homes, according to vacancy rate indicators from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Republished from Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA) website.
Categories: Housing
One of the biggest issues is that new homes here are increasingly large which translates to expensive as value often correlates with square footage. Even though the average household size in VT is small and certainly so for many people moving here who tend to be older and retired, they still seem to want large houses. I don’t think builders want to build small modest houses anymore either as more money can be made off of larger ones. This is similar to the move towards selling mostly large pick ups and SUV’s as dealers won’t make a lot off of selling small cars.
Not to worry about this: Soon-to-be socialist Governor Ponytail otherwise known as David Zuckerman – along with his organization “Rights & Democracy Vermont” will swoop in and raise YOUR taxes immensely and order up low-income housing units by the multitudes to be built within every. single. town.
Who will pay these contractors when free-market values are so high? Why, YOU will via your own property tax dollars. It will become law via the socialist/progressive legislature. Then who will purchase your fairly average 3-4 bedroom/2 bath home which you own along with the bank which you once considered your primary investment? Answer? NOBODY. Remember now, in light of this socialist move – Real Estate Property Values will drop. Your largest investment will lose value. No more home equity loans, potentially no more Reverse Mortgages for Senior Citizens.
The out-of-staters with hordes of money will stay put or perhaps choose to leave, as the high taxes don’t necessarily bother them. If they do choose to dump & run, eventually those large homes will be then turned into multi-unit housing by slum lord investors (as was done with the once beautiful Victorians in Rutland & elsewhere) and towns will house more than their fair share of “low-income” housing which – by the way, Vermont ALREADY has with its multitudes of trailer parks dotting this state.
Be careful what you wish for, as you will be the one paying for more. And you will be the one seeing tourists & their tourist revenue heading to other locales. The end result? Yet MORE taxes to be collected from YOU instead.
Social programs are NOT “free”. Sorry, Bernie.
…And by the way, since the State claims that low-income housing is so “non-existent” in Vermont as opposed to elsewhere which is farcical – perhaps, just perhaps, we ought to not be allowing illegal immigrants into our southern & northern borders by the multi-millions??
But of course, between the borders being wide open AND the chronic push for additional low-income housing virtually everywhere (except places like Martha’s Vineyard but of course) we merely see what the intended result is: To create a socialist (i.e.: Communist) dystopia wherein there exists ONLY the uber rich & elite who of course encompass our dear “leaders” —- and then the poor, disadvantaged folks (once the middle class) who must live their lives in obeyance to the government who dole out all “favors”, who now “own” virtually worthless houses, and all those for whom the American Dream, which included EVENTUAL home ownership, became the Amerikan nightmare.
Hey….Vermont GOP, where r u? Haven’t heard a peep since last November.. when all I heard then were whispers so as not to “offend” anyone. A Super Majority led by a socialist governor coming soon…what could go wrong?
Sadly, I concur with your well stated assessment of what’s coming. That said, I may be going
Whether custom-built or for speculation, the tendency for home builders is to build large and the excessive fees, regulations and land-use laws are the driving force. Especially if Act 250 is involved, the costs of hiring the wildlife biologist, the wetland expert and the septic engineer are all bundled into the price of a home. As much as liberals in Vermont obsess about diversity, equity, white guilt etc, our land-use laws have always been about maintaining a high level of gentrification and keeping Vermont as a theme park for the rich. The rare exception is allowing the co-oping of trailer parks as mobile homes have always been the mainstay of affordable, owner-occupied dwellings here. This legislature is again PRETENDING that they will address the reasons that it is economically impractical to build affordable, owner-occupied dwellings in Vermont. One can argue about the aesthetic virtues or detriments of Act 250, Vermont’s statewide zoning law that was the first knife in the back of affordable home ownership. Then came the septic revisions that often necessitated $20,000 pumped mound systems that are just so attractive in the front yard. More recently, fire safety officials got involved in mandating excessively-large windows, wide driveways, fire ponds, and/or sprinkler systems in single-family homes if they happen to be “too far from the firehouse”. All due respect to fire safety professionals, but I dont ever remember voting for any of them. Now we have “stormwater” mandates adding to the price of a house. Remember when we used to just call it “rain”? On the federal level, we have an administration and a political party that regards a wide-open border policy a humanitarian obligation, and does not have the mental acuity to realize that letting in hundreds of thousands of indigent migrants will have any contrary effect on a chronic nationwide shortage of affordable housing. Other than the fundamental market laws of supply and demand, excessive government bureaucracy has always been primarily responsible for the high cost of housing in Vermont.
Has anyone evaluated the increase in the median prices of old and new housing stock based upon Covid? People were scared and looked to VT as a “healthy state.” In addition, the fight for housing increased during the low interest rates. Now, add in the higher interest rates, and the soon to be passed Unaffordable Heating Act, and you will see the median housing prices drop drastically.
Please do not use the word “ median “… it means the middle …not the average !
The correct term should be the “mean” …or average …price !
The median house price data is what is published, therefore it is the correct term to use. “Mean” is not used for these kinds of data because outliers at both ends of the curve tend to bias the data.
What goes up, must come down. The housing bubble is about to pop – mortgage lending is drying up, new construction drying up, and many homeowners are upside down, (remember some did not pay their mortgage payments through COVID time), and delinquency rates are climbing higher every quarter. The automobile market is even worse. The implosion is happening and nothing is going to stop it from happening. It will hit like a ton of BRICS.