Nobody Knows What’s Happening. Here’s Why That Doesn’t Change Your Vermont Real Estate Decision.

By the Time You Read This, Something Has Changed

By the time you read this, something has changed. It always does.

A war that was raging may have quieted. Or it escalated. The Fed met on March 17th and 18th and made a decision about interest rates that is already priced into this morning’s mortgage quotes. Oil is doing something. The stock market has an opinion about it. Someone on cable television is describing the current situation as either unprecedented or manageable, and they are equally confident either way.

I am writing this nine days before you will read it. Nine days in which the Strait of Hormuz, a 21-mile chokepoint carrying roughly 20% of the world’s oil, may open or stay closed. Nine days in which the Iran conflict may find a back-channel resolution or a new front. Nine days in which a rate move, an inflation print, or a presidential announcement could shift the mortgage market by a quarter point in either direction.

And none of that changes the question in front of you.

I have been a broker in Central Vermont since 2007. I have watched buyers pause for the financial crisis, then for the recovery, then for the election, then for the next election, then for COVID, then for 8% rates, then for the bank failures, then for the election after that. Some of those pauses were six months. Some were three years. Not one of them was rewarded with the clarity the buyer was waiting for. Every single one of them was rewarded with a higher price.

The Math of Waiting Is Not What You Think It Is

Here is what the decade looked like. In 2015, a buyer who thought Vermont was “too expensive” at a $250,000 median waited. By 2020, that number was approaching $300,000. By 2022, it had broken $400,000. By 2025, Vermont’s median single-family home had landed around $435,000 — and that is statewide, including the more affordable Northeast Kingdom. Washington, Lamoille, and Chittenden counties run higher.

The buyers who paused in 2020 because of COVID uncertainty paid roughly 40% more when they finally moved. The buyers who paused in 2022 because of rate shock watched the inventory they wanted get absorbed by buyers who had done the math differently.

The math of waiting assumes that the future holds a better combination of price, rate, and inventory than today. In most markets, across most of the last decade, that assumption has been wrong. In Vermont, where inventory is structurally constrained by geography, Act 250 permitting, and a development pipeline that cannot scale quickly, that assumption is especially expensive.

Six percent is not a barrier. It is a number that follows three percent, which is why it feels like one. The historical average 30-year fixed rate since 1971 is approximately 7.7%. Buyers who purchased homes in the 1980s at 12% and 14% did not consider those rates a reason to rent forever. They bought the asset, they built equity, and they refinanced when conditions permitted. The strategy has not changed. The memory has just compressed.

Uncertainty Is Not a Weather Event. It’s the Climate.

There is a version of this conversation I have with clients every year. It sounds like this: “We want to wait until things settle down.”

I always ask the same question: when, in your memory, were things settled down? Not calm. Not good. Settled — meaning the kind of stable, low-drama, clear-visibility environment in which a major financial decision feels unambiguously safe.

Nobody has a good answer. Because that moment does not exist. There is always a war, an election, an oil spike, a banking event, an inflation print, a rate decision, a pandemic, or a geopolitical development that is just uncertain enough to justify another quarter of watching and waiting. The news cycle is engineered for urgency. It is not engineered for the long-duration patience that real estate rewards.

Consider what the macro variables actually control in a Vermont real estate transaction versus what they do not.

They control: the monthly payment, the carrying cost at origination, the short-term affordability calculation, and the pace at which other buyers enter or exit the market in any given quarter.

They do not control: the supply of land in Waterbury, Stowe, Morrisville, and Waitsfield. The quality of the Harwood Union or Stowe school systems. The fact that Vermont led the nation with 87% of mortgaged homes equity-rich as of early 2026, a figure no oil price can rewrite. The community, the trails, the farmers’ market, the neighbor who shows up with a chainsaw after a storm without being asked. These are not variables. They are the product.

What the Three Most Likely Macro Scenarios Mean for You Right Now

Read those three scenarios again. In every one of them, Central Vermont real estate has a coherent value proposition. The argument for owning Vermont land does not depend on which of these outcomes arrives. It depends on the reasons you wanted to be here in the first place — which were true before February 28th and will be true after whatever happens next.

A Word for Sellers: Equity Is Not a Feeling. It Is a Number.

Vermont leads the nation with 87% of mortgaged homes classified as equity-rich. That is not a statistic about the economy. It is a statistic about accumulated, compounding, unrealized wealth sitting inside the walls of houses in Washington, Lamoille, and Chittenden counties right now.

If you are a Vermont homeowner who has been in your house for eight or more years, there is a high probability you are sitting on more equity than you have ever had. The question is not whether to access it. The question is whether the market condition of today — still a disciplined seller’s market with 2.9 months of supply, still active out-of-state buyer demand, still historically strong prices relative to a decade ago — is the right condition in which to convert that equity to the next chapter.

The sellers who waited for “peak” in 2022 and missed it are now watching appreciation moderate. The sellers who waited for “certainty” in 2023 and 2024 spent two more years carrying property they had already decided to sell. Strong equity and a disciplined market are not permanent guarantees. They are conditions. Conditions change. This one has been favorable for longer than most.

A Word for Buyers: The Rate You Originate At Is Not the Rate You Die With

The most common buyer mistake of the last three years has been confusing the origination rate with the permanent cost of the asset. It is not. It is the cost of the loan, which is refinanceable. The cost of the asset is the price you pay on the day you close — and that price is compounding whether you own the house or not.

A buyer who purchased at 6.1% on a $450,000 Vermont single-family home in early 2026 and refinanced to 5.2% eighteen months from now at roughly the same balance has paid for the “high” rate for eighteen months on the way to a lower-rate asset. A buyer who waited eighteen months for that 5.2% rate and paid $490,000 for the same house has not saved money. They have bought a more expensive asset with a slightly lower payment — and they have spent eighteen months renting, carrying, or waiting.

Marry the house. Date the rate. This is not a bumper sticker. It is a financial strategy that has outperformed “wait for the right conditions” in every measurable period of the last two decades of Vermont real estate.