I've Lived in Vermont Since 1978. Here's What We're Getting Wrong About the Housing Crisis.

By Tony Walton, Principal Broker, New England Landmark Realty

I was 12 years old when my family moved to Vermont in 1978. I've lived in Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, and Idaho since then—but I've called Vermont home for 46 years. I came back full-time in 1998 with a belief that this was still a place where you could build a life if you were willing to work hard and show up for your community. I've raised two sons here. I've served on nonprofit boards and sold real estate for over 20 years through the Great Recession, the COVID crash, and two housing bubbles. I love this place.

But I'm watching Vermont hollow out, and the conversation we're having about why is mostly bullshit.

Let me be clear: I'm a real estate broker. I've made a living selling homes to out-of-state buyers, second-home purchasers, and retirees with big-city equity. I'm not anti-wealth. I'm not anti-growth. I'm not some Bernie-bro socialist who thinks private property is theft.

But I'm also a Vermonter who chose to come back and stay, who watches essential workers leave because they can't find housing, and who's tired of pretending the market will magically fix a problem we've spent 20 years creating through policy choices that prioritize aesthetics over people.

So let's stop lying to ourselves. Here's what's actually happening.

The Museum Economy: When Vermont Becomes a Postcard, Not a Place

Vermont has become a museum for rich people to visit. We've built an economy that extracts value from elsewhere while making it impossible for the people who actually make Vermont function to afford to stay.

The math is brutal. Vermont's median home price is now $385,000—up 5.8% in 2025 alone. The median household income? About $79,800. Which means over 91% of Vermonters cannot afford the median-priced home without being severely housing-cost-burdened.

In 2019, a Vermonter earning the median income could afford roughly half the homes on the market. By 2024, that dropped to one-third. And if you're a renter hoping to buy? Only 6% of Vermont renters have the income needed to purchase a median-priced home today, down from 32% in 2021.

Translation: We've priced out the teachers, the nurses, the carpenters, the restaurant workers, the nonprofit staff—everyone who makes Vermont more than a scenic backdrop for weekend Instagram posts.

Meanwhile, property taxes have risen 40% in the last five years, with another 12% increase projected for 2026. Homeowners are furious. They're blaming school budgets. They're showing up at town meetings demanding cuts. And I get it—when your tax bill jumps $1,200 in a year, you want someone to blame.

But here's what nobody wants to say out loud: Your property taxes aren't high because schools are greedy. They're high because we stopped growing the tax base.

Student enrollment is down. We're educating fewer kids than we were 10 years ago. But we're trying to maintain 1970s-era school infrastructure across 200+ towns with half the population density to support it. And because we've blocked housing development, blocked commercial growth, and made it nearly impossible to build anything anywhere affordably, the taxable grand list hasn't grown fast enough to spread those costs across more properties.

So we squeeze existing homeowners harder. And harder. Until they break.

That's not a school spending problem. That's a we-refuse-to-grow problem.

The Second Home Conversation Nobody Wants to Have

Here's the part where I lose some friends.

Vermont has a second-home problem. Not because second-home owners are bad people—many of them love Vermont as much as I do, contribute to local nonprofits, and spend money in our communities. But because when your vacation home sits empty 35–40 weeks a year while the teacher coaching your kid's soccer team is commuting 45 minutes from another county because she can't afford rent in town, we have a resource allocation problem.

Out-of-state owners dominate Stowe's short-term rental market. Entire neighborhoods in Waitsfield, Manchester, and Woodstock have become ghost towns most of the year. And yes, those properties pay property taxes (often at lower nonhomestead rates than they should). But they don't house Vermonters. They don't stabilize communities. They don't keep the elementary school open or the volunteer fire department staffed.

The legislature is now debating Act 73 and S.244—proposals to reclassify second homes and short-term rentals into a higher property tax category, potentially as high as $2.00 per $100 of assessed value. The goal: discourage housing from sitting vacant or operating as Airbnbs instead of long-term rentals, and generate revenue to fund schools.

The pushback has been immediate and loud. "This punishes people who've invested in Vermont!" "You're killing tourism!" "This is class warfare!"

Maybe. Or maybe it's a community finally saying: If you're going to own property in a place with a housing crisis, you're going to help pay for the schools and services that make this a place worth owning property in. And if that makes Vermont less attractive as a second-home investment? Good. We need homes for Vermonters more than we need more investment properties.

I've sold second homes. I'll probably sell more. But let's not pretend there's no tension here. When a wealthy out-of-state buyer outbids a young Vermont family by $50,000 because they can pay cash and plan to use the house six weeks a year, that's not "the market working." That's wealth inequality playing out in real time, and pretending otherwise is cowardice.

The Building Problem We Won't Name

Vermont needs 40,000+ new housing units by 2030 to meet demand. Right now, we're on pace to build about 12,000. We're going to miss the target by 28,000 units—and that's with the state begging municipalities to approve housing developments.

Why? Because we've spent 50 years making it nearly impossible to build anything.

Act 250 was passed in 1970 to protect Vermont from becoming New Jersey. Noble goal. But it's now a permitting gauntlet that adds 12–24 months and $40,000–$80,000+ to every project that triggers jurisdiction. The recent reforms (Tier 1A, 1B, 2, 3) are a step forward—they exempt some housing in designated growth areas. But they also increase scrutiny in rural areas, which is where most buildable land still exists.

And even without Act 250, you've got local zoning boards, design review committees, NIMBYs showing up to every public hearing to complain about "character" and "density" and "traffic," and a culture that treats every new housing development like an existential threat to Vermont's soul.

Here's the thing: Vermont's soul isn't its zoning code. It's the people who live here. And right now, we're choosing aesthetics over people. We're choosing "viewsheds" over teachers having a place to live. We're choosing "I don't want apartments near my house" over young families staying in the state.

The legislature just introduced a bill to ban corporate entities from buying single-family homes in Vermont. It sounds tough. It feels good. And it will accomplish almost nothing, because Vermont's housing problem isn't Blackstone buying up subdivisions—it's individuals outbidding locals, landowners sitting on buildable parcels waiting for appreciation, and towns blocking every development that comes before them.

Banning corporate buyers is political theater. It lets us feel like we're doing something without confronting the hard truth: We are the problem. Our refusal to build. Our refusal to say yes to housing. Our refusal to accept that Vermont in 2026 can't look exactly like Vermont in 1978.

The Coming Reckoning

Here's what happens if we don't fix this.

In 10 years, Vermont will be a state of retirees, remote workers with out-of-state incomes, and vacation homes. The median age will push past 50. The schools will consolidate further because there won't be enough kids to justify keeping them open. The volunteer fire departments will collapse because there won't be enough working-age adults to staff them. The restaurants and ski resorts will close early or reduce hours because they can't find workers—because workers can't find housing.

And the Vermonters who do stay will be the ones who inherited property or who are willing to be housing-cost-burdened at 50%+ of their income just to avoid leaving.

That's not a functioning society. That's a theme park with a property tax problem.

Some of you reading this will say: "Tony, you're exaggerating. The market will correct. Supply and demand always balance out."

No. They don't. Not when policy strangles supply for decades. Not when wealth concentration allows a small number of buyers to outbid everyone else indefinitely. Not when "the market" is designed to allocate housing to the highest bidder, regardless of whether that person actually lives here.

The market is working exactly as designed. It's just not designed to prioritize Vermonters.

What It Takes to Fix This (And Whether We Have the Guts)

I'm not naive. I don't have a magic policy that solves this overnight. But I know what doesn't work: pretending this is a temporary blip, blaming schools for tax increases, and blocking every housing development because it might change the view.

Here's what actually moves the needle:

1. Say yes to housing. Not just "affordable housing" in someone else's town. All housing. Market-rate, workforce, senior, rental, ownership—everywhere, all the time. Because vacancy rates matter, and if you're not building housing, you're rationing it by price. And right now, locals are losing that auction.

2. Tax second homes and short-term rentals differently. If your property sits empty 40 weeks a year or operates as an Airbnb instead of housing Vermonters, you should pay more to support the community infrastructure you're using. Period. That's not class warfare. That's recognizing that housing has a social function beyond ROI.

3. Reform permitting. Act 250 reform is a start, but it's not enough. Local zoning needs to allow as-of-right development in growth areas—no design review, no conditional use hearings, no six-month appeals process. If it meets code, it gets built. Otherwise, we're just pretending to care about housing while ensuring nothing actually happens.

4. Use public land to build housing. The state just announced it's inventorying state-owned land to sell or lease to housing developers. Good. If private landowners won't develop, the public sector should. And if that makes you uncomfortable, ask yourself: Why should your speculation matter more than a nurse's ability to live near the hospital?

5. Stop blaming schools and start growing the tax base. Education spending isn't the problem—it's that we've refused to build the housing and commercial tax base that funds education. You want lower property taxes? Build 5,000 housing units in the next three years. Watch what happens to your rate.

But here's the real question: Do we actually want to fix this, or do we just want to complain about it?

Because fixing it means accepting that Vermont will look different. It means saying yes to housing developments that don't look like restored 1850s farmhouses. It means higher density in town centers. It means your property value might not appreciate at 6% annually forever. It means second-home owners might pay more in taxes. It means some of the postcard aesthetics you moved here for might change.

And I'm not sure we're willing to make that trade.

The Sliver of Hope (Because I'm Still Here)

Here's what gives me hope: Vermonters have always been pragmatic problem-solvers when we stop posturing and start working.

I've watched this state rebuild after floods. I've watched small towns come together when someone loses a barn or a house. I've watched neighbors show up for each other in ways that would shock people from places where "community" is a marketing slogan.

That capacity is still here. The question is whether we'll deploy it before it's too late.

The new "Let's Build Homes" nonprofit is a signal. Burlington's mayor pushing a three-pronged housing strategy is a signal. The state inventorying public land is a signal. These are people refusing to accept that Vermont's best days are behind it.

But signals don't build houses. Political will does. Money does. Saying yes does.

And if we can't muster that—if we keep choosing aesthetics over people, tax relief over growth, and nostalgia over survival—then we're not solving a housing crisis. We're managing a decline.

I didn't come back to Vermont in 1998 to watch it become a museum. I came back because it was still a place you could build a life, raise a family, and be part of something bigger than yourself.

That's still possible. But the window is closing.

So here's my question for all of us—the longtime Vermonters, the new arrivals, the second-home owners, the developers, the selectboard members, the legislators, and everyone in between:

What kind of Vermont do you want your kids to inherit? A living, breathing community where working people can afford to stay? Or a scenic postcard where only the wealthy can play?

Because right now, we're choosing the postcard. And we're running out of time to change our minds.