by FYIVT.com

Property taxes on Vermont apartment buildings have grown nearly twice as fast as rents since 2009, according to an FYIVT analysis of Vermont Department of Taxes grand list data and U.S. Census Bureau housing surveys.

In 2009, property taxes on a typical rental unit in a building of five or more apartments came to about $851 a year. By 2024, the same statewide measure was $1,822, an increase of 114%. Vermont’s median gross rent rose from $823 a month in 2010 to $1,319 in 2024, an increase of 60%.

Calculated with each town’s actual tax rates, Vermont apartment buildings paid $57.9 million in property taxes in 2024: $38.6 million in education tax and $19.3 million in municipal tax. Spread across the state’s 28,011 renter-occupied units in buildings of five or more units, that is $2,066 per unit per year, or $172 a month. That equals about 13 cents of every dollar of median rent.

Values, not rates, drove the increase

The effective tax rate on nonhomestead property, the class that includes rental housing, did not rise. Tax Department figures put the combined education and municipal effective rate at 1.77% in 2009 and 1.70% in 2024. The education portion fell from 1.33% to 1.22%.

The value being taxed changed. The equalized value of the grand list’s “Commercial Apartment” category, which covers larger apartment buildings, rose from $1.12 billion in 2009 to $3.00 billion in 2024 and $3.30 billion in 2025.

The number of apartment parcels rose from 2,044 to 2,344 over the same period. Rental units in those buildings increased 20%, so new construction accounts for only part of the growth. Market value per unit rose from about $48,100 to about $107,150, an increase of 123%.

Statewide equalized property values grew 1% to 3% a year from 2015 through 2020, according to the Tax Department. They then rose 12.1% in 2022, 13.8% in 2023 and 14.1% in 2024.

The Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office does not publish a residential rent series. Its May 2026 housing presentation to the House General and Housing Committee tracked home prices, vacancy rates and building permits.

The Joint Fiscal Office does track the spending property taxes fund. In a February 2026 presentation to the Senate Finance Committee, it reported Education Fund spending grew 3.9% a year from fiscal 2007 to 2027, 5.0% a year from fiscal 2017 and 6.8% a year from fiscal 2022.

Where a rent dollar goes

FYIVT built a per-unit profit-and-loss model using median contract rent, the amount a landlord collects before tenant-paid utilities. That was $707 a month in 2010 and $1,171 in 2024.

Operating costs come from National Apartment Association and Federal Reserve data. Financing assumes a 75% mortgage at about 5% in 2009 and 6.72% in 2024. Income tax uses federal and Vermont middle brackets.

Property tax took 11.4 cents of each rent dollar in 2009 and 14.7 cents in 2024.

An owner who bought at 2024 values keeps 10.9 cents in cash, less than the 14.7 cents paid in property tax. Mortgage interest takes 38.2 cents, up from 21.1 cents for a 2009 buyer. Interest and depreciation reduce the new owner’s taxable rental income to zero, so no income tax is owed in the first year.

An owner who bought in 2009 and still holds the unit keeps 28.2 cents in cash, while property and income taxes together take 25.2 cents. The model does not include major repairs or replacements such as roofs, heating systems or exterior work.

Long-time owners, older buildings

Property transfer tax records show 877 arm’s-length sales of commercial apartment buildings from 2020 through 2025. Vermont has roughly 2,345 such parcels. Some buildings sold more than once, so at most about 37% changed hands at recent prices. Sales from 2023 through 2025, when 30-year mortgage rates were above 6%, totaled 393.

Vermont’s rental housing is older than its owner-occupied housing. Census figures show 59% of renter-occupied units are in buildings built before 1980, and 26.7% were built before 1940. Among owner-occupied homes, 20.9% predate 1940.

Renovation, repair and painting work on housing built before 1978 falls under federal lead-safe work rules. Vermont also requires lead-safe maintenance practices for pre-1978 rental housing, which the Health Department now calls Inspection, Repair and Cleaning practices.

Town by town

Tax per apartment unit varies widely. The figures below use 2024 grand list values, each town’s actual 2024 rates and Census unit counts.

Rutland City and Barre City have the lowest values per unit among these towns and the highest effective rates. Both have municipal tax rates above 2%.

How we did this. Apartment values and parcel counts come from Tax Department Property Valuation and Review reports and town-by-category grand list files. 2024 taxes apply each town’s nonhomestead education, municipal and local agreement rates. Unit counts are Census renter-occupied units in buildings of five or more units. The 2009 figure uses the statewide effective rate. Applied to 2024, that method understates actual taxes by about 13% because apartments cluster in higher-rate towns. Town unit counts are five-year Census estimates with margins of error.