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New England Landmark Realty covers the Vermont real estate market 

from the inside — market data, buyer strategy, seller timing, land 

use regulation, and the policy decisions shaping what homes cost and 

who can afford them.

 

Tony Walton has been working Vermont real estate since 1978. 

The analysis here reflects that depth.

 

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Sept. 15, 2026

Waterbury Short-Term Rentals: Fifteen Minutes from Stowe, a Decade of Decisions

New England Landmark Realty · Waterbury Center, VT

Waterbury Short-Term Rentals: Fifteen Minutes from Stowe, a Decade of Decisions

Stowe just capped its short-term rental market at 850 units. Here's how Waterbury gets to write its own ending — and why the real fix was never the rentals.

By Tony Walton, Principal Broker · New England Landmark Realty · Waterbury Center, VT · September 2026

Last month, Stowe voted 5–0 to cap its short-term rentals at 850 units. There are roughly 1,450 of them in town, so nobody gets evicted — it's an attrition plan: as rentals sell or close, they aren't replaced. And if you're not a Stowe resident, you had until September 15 to register what you own, or watch the door close behind you.

Here's what happened immediately after the vote, because it tells you almost everything: the town's rental registry ballooned from about 1,000 properties to over 1,600 — nearly 40 percent of all the housing in Stowe — as owners, many of whom had never rented a single night, rushed to register while the door was still open. There's a certain dark comedy to watching a whole town buy fire insurance after the fire trucks have already arrived.

It would be easy to file this away as a Stowe problem. I think it's a Waterbury problem — just not the way the speculation mill has it. Not "Stowe's loss, our gain." Not "the phones are ringing" — it's too early for that, and that isn't the interesting version anyway. The interesting version is about what Waterbury chooses to be over the next ten years. And if I'm going to think out loud about that, you should get my bias up front.

Here's my bias
I don't like telling people what to do with their own deed.

I've spent a career in this business telling people their deed is their business. I'm constitutionally skeptical of towns telling property owners what they can and can't do with the biggest investment most of them will ever make. The presumption should sit with the owner; the burden should sit with the town, to prove a rule is necessary — not merely convenient.

But I also watched Stowe's numbers, and I get the problem. When a quarter of a town's homes are hotel rooms, and eight in ten of those are owned by people who live in other states — more owners based in Massachusetts than in Vermont — something real is happening, and it isn't nothing. The share of Stowe homeowners who actually live in Stowe fell from 33% in 2012 to 27% in 2024. The median house sells for around a million dollars. That town can't house its teachers, its restaurant workers, or its volunteer firefighters — and a town that can't do that doesn't get to feel smug about anything.

So I'm not here to tell you Stowe was wrong, or that the people worried about this are hysterical. They're not. What I am here to tell you is this:

You cannot regulate your way to a $400,000 house. You can only build it.

The math nobody at the hearings wants to say
STRs are a chapter, not the whole book.

The state's own housing needs assessment says Vermont needs somewhere between 24,000 and 36,000 additional year-round homes by 2029. That is not going to be delivered by making Airbnb slightly more annoying. That's like treating a drought by banning sprinklers in August. There are about 11,000 short-term rentals in the entire state — roughly 3 percent of all residences. We are not short 30,000 homes because of the 11,000 rentals. We are short 30,000 homes because we don't build enough, it takes forever to permit what we do build, and the places where working people can afford to live keep shrinking.

And here's the uncomfortable truth: Vermont had a housing shortage before Airbnb existed — before the first smartphone booking, before the pandemic cash buyers. The STR fight is a real chapter in a book that was never going to be finished by closing that chapter.

The remedies that actually matter are the unglamorous ones. Act 250 — the 1970-era permitting system that can treat a four-unit building like a chemical plant — is finally being reworked, with the first reforms landing this year. The state has published 802 Homes, a catalog of ten pre-permitted house designs meant to shave months off the build clock — a little like shopping the Sears catalog, if Sears required a three-year escrow. There's grant money to build an ADU over the garage. And there's a serious conversation about letting more homes go into village centers where the pipes already are. None of this is as exciting as a town-meeting fight about rentals. All of it matters more.

The Waterbury part
We're a real town with a resort economy next door.

Waterbury is genuinely different from Stowe. They're a resort town; we're a real town that happens to sit next to the resort economy. Since 2024 we've run a rental registry — free, no fees, no caps — covering both short- and long-term rentals. It was sold at the time, accurately, as data collection: "We don't know how many rentals are even in Waterbury," our town manager said. Reading that quote back now gives me the feeling of watching someone smile at a poker table.

The registry gave us our first real numbers: roughly 660 rental units in town, about 180 of them short-term. Meaningful — but not Stowe's. About 63% of Waterbury homes are primary residences, which quietly makes this a town where full-time families still set the character.

Now add geography, which every map app lies about.

From our village green
Stowe — ski country, just capped 15 min
Montpelier — the capital 15 min
Warren / Mad River Valley 20 min
Burlington — the big city 25 min
Fifteen minutes, twenty, twenty-five — and the lightest rental rules of any of them.

We are the midpoint of the busiest corner of Vermont, with the least short-term rental regulation of any town in it:

  • Burlington restricts rentals to owner-occupied homes.
  • Warren, twenty minutes up Route 100, put a licensing regime in last year.
  • Montpelier registers every rental annually.
  • Morristown, back in 2022, went furthest: you can rent your own home, but you cannot buy houses to run as rentals.
  • And us? A free registry.

For everyone who tracks this stuff, that's the story: four towns, four answers, all pointing the same direction — tighter — each for its own reasons. Waterbury hasn't chosen yet. Not because we're wise. Because we haven't had to.

How I read the next ten years
This is my read, not a spreadsheet's.

After long enough in this business, you learn to tell the difference between a town with a problem and a town with runway. We have runway.

Years 0–3: we learn what we actually are. As Stowe's September deadline settles in, some share of rental demand that no longer fits there will go looking for the next town that says yes. We may see more registrations, a few more out-of-state buyers, more conversations at the post office. Keep perspective: even if every displaced Stowe rental owner moved here, we're talking dozens of properties, not hundreds — gradually, not in a flood. And here's the luxury our neighbors didn't have: we get to watch it happen with data, on our own schedule.

Years 3–6: data becomes policy. This is the one I'd bet on. Once we know exactly how many rentals we have and where, the conversation shifts from speculation to policy. If it comes, the most likely shape isn't Stowe's cap — it's Morristown's owner-occupancy rule. I don't love that rule. It tells a new homeowner that the town has opinions on what they do with their land—and no Vermonter hears that without clenching their jaw. But I understand the arithmetic that produces it. Homes people live in: protect. Homes that exist only to be rented: that's a business, and businesses get regulated. It's an honest line, even if I'd rather never have to discuss it.

Years 6–10: the state forces the question anyway. Here's the part most people haven't noticed. The State of Vermont has spent a decade making second homes more expensive in a dozen different ways — a transfer tax on non-primary homes more than double the rate on a primary residence, a 9% rooms tax on every booking, a 3% surcharge on top of that, and withholding when a nonresident sells — and then left rental policy entirely to the towns. That patchwork can't hold. Either the legislature eventually adopts statewide rules (a bill that would have capped owners at one rental each died in committee this session, but the conversation isn't over), or the towns keep legislating themselves into a checkerboard. Either way, the direction of travel is one-way: the investor-friendly window in the unregulated towns closes within this decade. The only question is whether Waterbury writes its own rules first, or discovers them the way Stowe did.

What that means for you
If you're the one who lives here.

  • Your house is not under threat. No town in this region has gone after the homestead owner, and there's no appetite for it here. The person who lives in their home and rents a room or the guest apartment is the one everybody is trying to protect. If you own the place you sleep in, you're on both sides of this fight — which is the only sane place to be.
  • Watch the registry, not the headlines. Here's your leading indicator, and it's public record: how many rental registrations does Waterbury hold at the end of next winter? Flat means we're fine as we are. A jump means it's time for a measured conversation — on our timetable, with our numbers — not an emergency meeting with a Boston lawyer on speakerphone.
  • Second homes aren't the enemy. They pay the higher tax rate. They keep the general store open in February. The question is proportion. Stowe's failing wasn't second homes; it was losing the mix. Everything we do for the next decade should be in service of the mix.
  • And the real work is building. Every hour spent arguing about 180 rentals is an hour not spent on the harder question of how Waterbury gets more homes for the people who work here. Our registry describes what exists; it builds nothing. The towns that win this decade are the ones that learn to say yes — ADUs, village infill, starter homes — without losing what makes people want to live here to begin with.

Full disclosure: this next decade is my livelihood. I sell the houses. Which makes me the guy who'll be explaining to some out-of-state buyer why the town they just fell for has opinions about their new place — or, if we're lucky, why it already settled this with good sense and good data.

I've called Waterbury Center home since 1978. I've watched this town survive the floods, and the ebb and flow of fifteen different economies. The pattern is always the same: the outside sees Waterbury before Waterbury sees itself, and by the time we look in the mirror, a piece of the story has been written for us. This time we have numbers, a registry, a charter, and about ten years of runway. That's more than most towns get.

The rental question is a community question wearing a business suit. When that happens in Vermont, it belongs to the town that sees it first — and we've still got time to be that town.

Sources & further reading

  1. VTDigger — "After years of debate, Stowe caps short-term rentals"
  2. Seven Days — "Vermont towns try different ways to regulate short-term rentals"
  3. Hickok & Boardman — Vermont Market Report, Mid-Year 2026
  4. Act 250 modernization — State of Vermont
  5. 802 Homes Catalog — Vermont ACCD
  6. VHIP-ADU program — Vermont ACCD
  7. Waterbury Roundabout — Select Board gets first look at rental registry ordinance
  8. Waterbury Roundabout — Rental registry deadline, May 1
  9. News & Citizen — "Vermont ranks No. 2 in nation for second homes"
  10. WCAX — "Morristown cracks down on short-term rentals"
  11. Vermont Dept. of Taxes — Short-term rentals & real estate withholding
  12. Vermont Realtors — Short-term rental bills advance in House and Senate
Tony Walton Founder & Principal Broker · New England Landmark Realty

Waterbury Center, Vermont — serving Washington, Lamoille, and Chittenden Counties since 2007. Thinking about Waterbury real estate — buying, selling, or just watching the registry? NELandmark.com

© 2026 New England Landmark Realty · Waterbury Center, Vermont
Posted in Vermont Real Estate Trends
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Sept. 12, 2026

Vermont Legislature Announces Bold 47-Year Plan To Study Whether Housing Shortage Is Real

 

The Vermont Housing Chronicles — Vol. 1

Vermont Legislature Announces Bold 47-Year Plan To Study Whether Housing Shortage Is Real

A satirical dispatch anchored by real 2026 market data — because sometimes the numbers are funnier than the jokes.

By ,

Founding Partner & Principal Broker, New England Landmark Realty · · 8 min read

MONTPELIER — In a stirring display of the decisive leadership Vermonters have come to expect and price into their zip codes, the State House on Tuesday unveiled its most aggressive housing initiative yet: the formation of a bipartisan committee tasked with forming a subcommittee that will, by 2031, recommend the creation of a task force to study whether Vermont has a housing problem.

"We hear you, Vermont," said one lawmaker, gesturing broadly at a landscape where a two-bedroom cape now costs more than the entire GDP of a small Balkan nation. "And by 'hear you,' we mean we have received your letters, forwarded them to a working group, and will circle back after leaf-peeping season, town meeting day, mud season, black fly season, and the ceremonial reading of the 1793 land-use covenants."

The Numbers, For Those Who Enjoy Light Horror

Since 2001, Vermont median home prices have climbed 148%. Median household income has climbed 72%. Vermont officials described this 76-point gap as "healthy tension" and "part of what makes Vermont Vermont."

"Look, if young families could afford to live here, who would move to New Hampshire?" asked one Statehouse veteran, staring wistfully out a window at a $600,000 farmhouse with a caving roof and a septic system last inspected during the Ford administration. "New Hampshire needs people too. This is a regional partnership."

Vermont Housing Market At A Glance (Spring/Summer 2026)

Vermont Real Estate Market Data — 2026
Metric Value YoY Change
Statewide median home price $412,200 +2.7%
Active listings — +11.7%
Median days on market 91 days Longer
Sale-to-list ratio 96.3% Down from 2021 peaks
Homes selling above asking 13.7% Down from ~20%
Months of housing supply 2.9 Balanced is 4–6
Washington County avg. value $397,533 +1.8%
Waterbury avg. home value $550,330 +1.8%
Estimated statewide housing shortage 24,000 units Unchanged, apparently forever

Sources: Redfin, Zillow, VHFA, National Association of Realtors, Coldwell Banker Hickok & Boardman Market Report, New England Landmark Realty analysis.

A Bold Vision For Housing

The Legislature's new "Vermont Strong, Vermont Home, Vermont Someday" initiative includes:

  • A commemorative plaque honoring the 24,000 housing units that were never built.
  • A statewide listening tour, in which lawmakers travel to towns and listen to residents explain, again, that they cannot afford to live in the towns they are currently standing in.
  • A pilot program to convert three barns into workforce housing, pending 14 months of Act 250 review, a hearing on viewshed impact, and a strongly worded letter from a neighbor who "isn't opposed to housing, just this housing, here, now, or ever."
  • A ribbon-cutting for a single duplex in Hardwick, attended by seven state officials, four reporters, and the duplex's future occupants — a hedge fund analyst from Greenwich and his golden retriever, Barleywine.

The Youth Exodus Is Actually A Feature

Officials pushed back on the notion that Vermont's median age — currently hovering somewhere between "AARP eligible" and "carbon-dated" — is a crisis.

"Our young people aren't leaving. They're deploying," clarified one senator. "Some to Manchester. Some to Portsmouth. Some to a Reddit thread called r/ExVermonters. It's a diaspora. Like the Irish, but with better cheese."

Asked whether the state might, perhaps, consider building more houses, the senator paused thoughtfully. "We've considered it," he said. "In fact, we're deep in the consideration phase. Consideration is a critical stage. You can't just skip to construction. That's how Texas ended up with Texas."

Homeowners: "Everything Is Fine"

Meanwhile, existing Vermont homeowners — 87% of whom are now classified as "equity rich," "aggressively equity rich," or "sitting on a gold mine but haven't noticed because they're splitting firewood" — reported that the market feels balanced, fair, and definitely not a Ponzi scheme dressed in flannel.

"I bought this place in 1994 for $89,000. I've done nothing to it. And yet somehow, through the magic of tight supply and out-of-staters bidding against each other on Zillow at 11 p.m., I'm a millionaire. This is what our ancestors fought for."

— Composite Waterbury Resident, Age 68, Sipping A Maple Latte On A $612,000 Porch

The Path Forward

The Legislature closed the press conference by reiterating its unwavering commitment to housing, community, and the Vermont way of life — defined, per statute, as "a life you used to be able to afford."

The task force will release its preliminary findings in Q3 2029, at which point Vermont home prices are projected to have risen an additional 23%, median income will be up 4.2%, and New Hampshire will formally annex Brattleboro.

The Actual Point (Because Satire Deserves A Landing)

Every joke above is anchored to a real number. Vermont has built roughly one house for every three it needs. Homeowners have gotten rich by accident. Young families have gotten priced out by design — or, more accurately, by the absence of design. And the legislative response has moved with the urgency of a sap run in February.

If you're buying in Central Vermont right now, this is the most negotiable market in five years. If you're selling, aspirational pricing has quietly stopped working. If you're just watching from the porch: the numbers are worth paying attention to, because they're going to shape this state for the next generation whether the Statehouse gets around to noticing or not.

That's what The Vermont Housing Chronicles is for. Real data. Unflinching commentary. And the occasional maple-flavored jab at the people who could fix this and don't.

See you in Vol. 2.

Posted in Vermont Housing Crisis
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Sept. 9, 2026

The Thaw Nobody's Selling Tickets To

Tony Walton's Full Article (Unedited)

 

Vermont real estate exhales. Here's what the numbers, the Statehouse, and 24,000 missing homes are trying to tell us.

Tony Walton · September 9 2026 ↓ Key Takeaways

Quick Answer

Vermont real estate in 2026 is less frantic but not cheaper: inventory is up 11.7%, homes sit longer, and prices still rise because the state remains structurally short on housing.

For four years, Vermont real estate behaved like a Soho House membership line. Irrational. Performative. Rigged against everyone who showed up.

Inventory was a rumor. Bidding wars were a personality trait. Buyers walked into open houses the way people walk into the DMV — braced for indignity.

That market is dead. Long live the market.

The Numbers Are Finally Telling the Truth

Statewide inventory is up 11.7% year-over-year. Median days on market: roughly 91. Sellers are taking home 96.3 cents on the dollar — not 105, not 110. Above-list sales have collapsed from nearly 20% to 13.7%.

And yet the statewide median price still climbed to about $412,200. Waterbury's average home value sits at $550,330, up 1.8% year-over-year. Chittenden County crossed $500K in most segments and never looked back.

"This is the first spring market since 2019 that actually feels like a negotiation between adults."

Here's the paradox nobody at the cocktail party can explain: How do prices keep rising while inventory rises?

Because Vermont isn't a real estate market. It's a supply deficit wearing a real estate market's clothes.

We still have only about 2.9 months of supply. A balanced market needs four to six. We've moved from frozen to functioning. We have not moved to fair.

Key Takeaways

Two-Sentence Summary

This page is for buyers, sellers, and developers who need a Vermont market read grounded in current numbers, not pandemic-era memory. Tony Walton's view is simple: negotiating room is back, prices are still supported, and the shortage underneath the market is still doing the heavy lifting.

If You Only Remember 3 Things

  • Vermont inventory is up 11.7%, but 2.9 months of supply is still a shortage, not balance.
  • Act 181 created a real downtown and village-center development window, but January 2027 is now a deadline, not a theory.
  • Equity-rich sellers and patient equity buyers make a statewide crash unlikely.

Quick Facts

  • Inventory: +11.7% year-over-year statewide.
  • Median price: about $412,200 statewide.
  • Transfer tax on a $500,000 second home: about $18,100.

Data from sources listed below.

The Equity Fortress

Eighty-seven percent of mortgaged Vermont homeowners are equity-rich. Among the highest rates in America.

Translation: there are no panic sellers. The 2008 playbook — distressed listings, foreclosure cascades, forced price discovery — does not apply here. There is no kindling.

Vermont owners can wait out a bad rate cycle the way Warren Buffett waits out a bad quarter. Patiently. Sipping something local.

That is why the "crash is coming" YouTubers keep getting Vermont wrong. They are pricing a market that doesn't exist on a topography they've never walked.

The Statehouse Just Walked Back the Walk-Back

This is the story most brokers aren't tracking. They should be.

June 2024: Lawmakers override Governor Scott's veto and pass H.687 — known as Act 181 — the largest Act 250 reform in fifty years. It exempts housing in Vermont's 24 designated downtowns from Act 250 review through January 2027. It exempts projects of up to 50 units around dozens of designated village centers.

It also introduces a two-tier Property Transfer Tax. The general rate stays at 1.25%. But second homes and non-principal residences get hit at 3.4%.

The Math on a $500,000 Home

Vermont resident, principal residence ~$5,410
Nonresident, second-home buyer ~$18,100

Call it what it is — the "Welcome to Vermont" tax. The Legislature finally figured out that the Audi from Greenwich could pay a little more on the way in.

Then, on May 21, 2026, the Joint Committee of Conference on S.325 — now Act 152 — voted to repeal Act 181's Tier 3 jurisdiction and the controversial "Road Rule." The two pieces environmentalists won and developers hated.

But — and read this carefully — the same committee stripped out the Senate-passed pro-housing reforms that would have:

  • Extended the interim Act 250 housing exemptions to 2030
  • Removed arbitrary parcel-size constraints
  • Expanded interim exemptions to more rural communities
  • Expanded the Priority Housing Project for mixed-income and affordable development
"In the midst of a deep housing affordability crisis, this joint committee cast aside a series of thoughtful, reasonable pro-housing changes." — Alex Farrell, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development

The takeaway for anyone holding a developable parcel near a designated downtown — Waterbury, Stowe Village, Montpelier, Burlington: the calendar is now the asset. The regulatory window is real. It has a January 2027 expiration sticker. The Legislature just signaled, clearly, that the door narrows.

The 24,000-Unit Hole

Vermont is short roughly 24,000 housing units. Some studies put the number closer to 30,000 or 40,000.

Since 2001, Vermont median home prices have risen 148%. Median household income has risen 72%.

That spread is not a market quirk. It's a generational sorting machine. It picks winners from a finite pool of equity migrants out of Boston, New York, and the Bay Area. It locks out almost everyone whose paycheck originates inside the state.

"Vermont isn't unaffordable because of greed. It's unaffordable because we won't build."

The press releases keep dancing around it. The math doesn't.

The Buyer Has Quietly Changed

The 2021 Vermont buyer was a panicked Brooklynite with a Zoom job and a Subaru.

The 2026 buyer is a more deliberate animal. Remote workers who already moved, stayed, and are now trading up. Retirees liquidating coastal equity. Second-home buyers — now paying the 3.4% tax and getting choosier about what's worth it. Patient equity migrants who waited out the bidding wars and are finally pulling triggers.

These buyers are less rate-sensitive than first-timers. They're not financing the whole purchase. They're financing the tail.

That is why 6%-plus rates haven't crushed Vermont the way the textbooks say they should. The textbooks assume buyers are stretched. Ours, in large part, aren't.

The Bifurcation Nobody Talks About at Closings

The market is splitting into two markets. The gap is widening every quarter.

WINNING
  • Move-in ready homes in walkable villages
  • Sub-$500K entry-level homes
  • Broadband, new septic, updated mechanicals
  • Chittenden County core
  • Stowe / Waterbury village corridor
LOSING
  • Rural fixers with deferred maintenance
  • Overpriced second-home inventory
  • No broadband, failing septic, oil heat
  • Far-flung properties without amenities
  • Aspirationally priced anything

Condition and presentation now matter more than they did in 2022. A lot more.

The Honest Read

Buyers: this is the best negotiating window since 2019. It is also seasonal, and probably temporary. Spring competition will compress it. Move while the room exists.

Sellers: 2021 isn't coming back. Price to the comp, stage to the buyer, and stop arguing with the market. Aspirational pricing in 2026 just buys you 91 days of carrying costs and a price cut anyway.

Developers: you have until January 2027 to break ground inside a designated downtown without an Act 250 permit. After that, the Legislature has signaled, clearly, that the door narrows. Mud season ends. So does this window.

Vermonters: pay attention to who is getting elected this November. The next Legislature decides whether we solve our housing problem or just keep writing essays about it. (Yes, I see the irony.)

Vermont's market isn't correcting. It's exhaling. The pandemic frenzy is over. The structural shortage is not.

Plan from the math

Buyers, sellers, and developers in Central Vermont have more room than they did a year ago, but the underlying shortage still defines the market. Run your numbers against this market — not last year's.

Read the Vermont Home Buying Guide Read the Vermont Home Selling Guide

Sources

Where to Go Next

Posted in Market Updates
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Sept. 8, 2026

The Hidden Tax in Every Stud: How Tariffs Are Raising Vermont Home Prices

New England Landmark Realty
Vermont Market Essay · September 2026
The Landmark Letter · Straight Talk on Vermont Real Estate

The Hidden Tax in Every Stud: How Tariffs Are Raising Vermont Home Prices

The Federal Reserve traced the 2025 tariffs all the way into American housing — appliances, furniture, framing. The jobs that were supposed to come with them never showed up. The costs did. In Vermont, they land on the one thing this state can't import: a place to live.

By Tony Walton, Founding Partner & Principal Broker · New England Landmark Realty · Waterbury, Vermont ·

I was twelve years old in 1978, which means Vermont has been mine for nearly half a century. I grew up here. I left, as the young do, to wander the country. And in 1998 I came home — married, a chef-school graduate, and certain I'd returned to the best-kept secret in America. I'm still certain, and so are roughly 650,000 other people, give or take a few skiers. That, in one sentence, is both the blessing and the problem.

For most of those years, the price of a Vermont house was set in Vermont. You walked a property outside Waterbury, you knew what it was worth, you shook a hand. The supply line ran from the lumberyard in town to the framing crew up the road. Local market, local money, local math.

No longer. Today the price of a Vermont house is set in Beijing, where the appliances are stamped; in Ottawa, where the lumber is milled; and in Washington, where the tariffs are written. And this time, we have the receipts.

Key Takeaways

  • Where the tariff landed: appliances ~3%, furniture ~2.5%, construction ~1.5% — the sharpest hits in the economy, all on shelter (Chicago Fed).
  • The promised jobs: no short-run employment bump in protected industries — just higher costs.
  • The bill: builders estimate ~$10,900 per home; materials up 40% since 2020; 72.9% of builders reported higher costs year over year.
  • Who pays in Vermont: small builders (9.1% vs. 1.8% for the giants) — and ultimately first-time buyers, renters, and young families.

Where the Tariff Lands

Earlier this year, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago did the quiet, thankless work that politicians rarely bother with: they followed the tariff payments from the port to the product. They compared the industries that absorbed tariff costs against the industries that didn't, month by month, across the ten months the 2025 tariffs were in force. They wanted to know where the money actually came out.

The answer tells a clear story. The industries hit hardest were manufacturers — fifteen of the eighteen most exposed industries were manufacturing. And within manufacturing, the sharpest hits were the things a house is made of. Electrical appliances, equipment, and components absorbed an input-cost jump of nearly 3 percent. Furniture and related products came close to 2.5 percent. Construction itself ran about 1.5 percent. Meanwhile utilities, insurance, and rental services — the parts of the economy that run on regulation and paper — were barely touched.

The tariff didn't land on widgets. It landed on shelter: the exact industries that put a roof over someone's head.

The Jobs That Were Supposed to Show Up

Here was the promise, and you've heard it plenty of times: tariffs protect American industry. They keep jobs here. They pay for themselves in wages saved and factories saved.

The Chicago Fed tested that promise against the data and found no short-run employment bump in the protected industries. No wave of gains for the proponents to celebrate, and no wave of losses for the critics to fear — just higher costs, passed along as higher prices. And when the Cato Institute looked at the same period from another angle, the picture got harder to defend: the manufacturing sectors growing fastest, like computers, electronics, and aerospace, were among the least exposed to tariffs at all. The industries we're best at growing never needed this help, and the industries getting the help aren't growing. We got the costs. We haven't gotten the jobs the costs were supposed to buy.

The Builders Pay First

Now let's bring this home, because builders are where the tariff stops being a policy and becomes a price tag.

Building materials have risen about 40 percent since the end of 2020 — far more than overall inflation. According to the National Association of Home Builders, whose surveys track this every month, 72.9 percent of builders reported that their material costs went up over the past year, with a median increase of 6.7 percent and roughly one in five seeing increases of 10 to 15 percent. The builders estimate the tariffs alone add about $10,900 to the cost of a typical new home. And $10,900 is not a one-time fee. Rolled into a thirty-year mortgage at today's rates, it works out to roughly $70 a month — around $25,000 by the time the loan is paid off. That's the tariff, with interest.

Lumber deserves its own paragraph, because it sits at the heart of every frame in this state. Canada supplies roughly 85 percent of our softwood lumber imports and about a quarter of everything we build with. Between new duties on Canadian lumber and the added surcharges, the effective price of Canadian framing lumber rose about 45 percent. Steel and aluminum carry a 50 percent tariff. Kitchen cabinets and furniture, 25 percent. We taxed the frame of the American house and then wondered why houses got expensive.

There's another layer to this that matters deeply in Vermont. The pain is not shared equally among builders. Builders who started five or fewer homes last year saw their material costs rise a median of 9.1 percent. Builders with a hundred or more starts: 1.8 percent. The big companies can stockpile lumber before the next tariff announcement, sign twelve-month supply contracts that lock in today's prices, and lean on suppliers who will wait for next year's increase. The small builder can't do any of that. The small builder buys this week's lumber at this week's price, with this week's tariff already baked into it.

What That Means in Vermont

Vermont has none of the big national production builders. There is no big-box homebuilder of the Green Mountains. Nearly all of our housing is built by small local crews, custom shops, and family outfits — two people and a saw, in a lot of cases. Our builders are the 9.1 percent cohort. They are exactly the people the tariff squeezes hardest, and they are exactly the people Vermont is counting on to close a housing shortage currently estimated at 24,000 to 36,000 homes by 2029.

You can already see the hesitation in the market. Land sales across Northwest and Central Vermont fell nearly 30 percent in the first half of 2026, as buyers weighed construction costs and contractor availability against what they could build for. Multi-family sales fell 18 percent. Land is where the future of housing begins, and when land sales freeze, the shortage compounds in slow motion.

And then there's the irony that should embarrass Washington a little. Vermont is a forest state. We log, we mill, we make maple; trees are what we do. And still, a quarter of the lumber holding up American houses comes from Canada — because U.S. sawmill production has been essentially flat for two years. Milling takes years to expand, and permitting takes years to clear, and houses do not wait. So right now we are paying 45 percent more to frame a wall with the cheapest, most abundant framing resource on earth sitting in our own backyards. Somewhere in Washington, a policy stands ready to be correct. In a lumberyard in Washington County, the price is already here.

Who Ends Up Paying

In real estate we talk about the all-in cost of a house — not the list price, but the number that actually clears at the table. The tariff shows up in that number, one way or another, on a state where the median home price already sits near $412,000 and where our region's median is still about 62 percent higher than it was in 2020.

What I find hardest to accept is who carries it. Vermont is an unusually equity-rich state — more than 87 percent of mortgaged Vermont homeowners have serious equity, among the highest rates in the country. The people who already own are mostly insulated from all of this. The tariff is paid by the first-time buyer stretching for a first door. It's paid by the renter, whose landlord passes the multifamily costs along. It's paid by the young family waiting for a home that won't get built because a small builder's margin evaporated. Since 2001, Vermont's median home price has risen about 148 percent while median household income has risen about 72 percent. Every extra $10,900 widens the gap that is already Vermont's central economic story — and it lands on the people we most want to keep here.

What We Do About It

None of this is to pretend Vermont controls the international trade winds. We vote, but we do not set trade policy, and the price of wood, wire, and windows is set in a global market where the Green Mountains hold exactly zero votes. What the Fed's research gives us is something almost as useful: a clear line from a decision in Washington to a kitchen in Waterbury, with dates and dollars attached. National and global conditions have always brushed Vermont. Now they land here.

It's worth remembering, too, that Vermont's local market is not standing still. Inventory is up 11.7 percent year over year. Homes are sitting a median of 91 days. Sellers are averaging 96.3 cents on the dollar, and the share of homes selling above list has fallen from nearly 20 percent to 13.7 percent. This is the first market since before the pandemic where a buyer can actually negotiate. But a market with about 2.9 months of supply — a balanced market needs four to six — is still a market where the shortage, not the tariff, has the last word.

So what should happen? I'll give you my honest list. Exempt building materials from tariffs — a tax on shelter is a tax on the price of entry to a decent life, and it's about the most regressive tax we have. Ramp up domestic mills, including Vermont's, so the tariff stops standing in for a real production policy. And treat Vermont's next 24,000 to 36,000 homes as the infrastructure they are — permitted, funded, and built with the urgency the shortage deserves.

I've spent most of my life watching people find their way to this state, and I've never once seen them stop. Vermont's part of this we can do ourselves: permit the land, fund the builds, clear the roadblocks. Washington's part is smaller and simpler — stop taxing the roof over our heads. Give Vermont builders a fair price on a stud, and I promise you, they'll do the rest. They always have.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do the 2025 tariffs affect Vermont home prices?

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago research found tariff costs landed hardest on electrical appliances (a nearly 3% input-cost jump), furniture (~2.5%) and construction (~1.5%). Those higher costs flow straight into the all-in price of housing — including in Vermont, where most homes are built by small local builders who can't absorb or stockpile against tariff spikes.

Are building material costs still rising for Vermont builders in 2026?

Yes. In the July 2026 NAHB/Wells Fargo survey, 72.9% of builders reported material costs up year over year, with a median increase of 6.7%. Builders starting five or fewer homes saw a 9.1% median increase, versus 1.8% for builders with 100 or more starts.

How much do tariffs add to the cost of a new home?

NAHB estimates tariffs add roughly $10,900 to the cost of a typical new home. Financed into a 30-year mortgage at today's rates, that is roughly $70 a month — about $25,000 including interest over the life of the loan.

Who is most affected by tariff costs in the housing market?

Not the people who already own. More than 87% of mortgaged Vermont homeowners are equity-rich, among the highest rates in the country. The tariff is effectively paid by first-time buyers, renters, and young families.

Tony Walton
Founding Partner, Owner & Principal Broker · New England Landmark Realty
Serving Washington, Lamoille & Chittenden Counties since 2007
Office: (802) 253-4711 · nelandmark.com

Sources

  • Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Chicago Fed Insights — "The 2025 U.S. tariff costs: Timing and affected industries" (Hu, Lachowska & Mathew): chicagofed.org
  • Inman — "What the Fed found when it tracked tariffs into housing": inman.com
  • NAHB — "How Tariffs Impact the Home Building Industry" & NAHB/Wells Fargo HMI (July 2026), via NAHB Eye on Housing & HousingWire: nahb.org, housingwire.com
  • New England Landmark Realty — "What the Numbers Actually Say," Vermont Market Analysis (Spring 2026): nelandmark.com
  • Coldwell Banker Hickok & Boardman — Vermont Market Report, Mid-Year 2026 (incl. 2025 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment): hickokandboardman.com
  • Vermont Business Magazine — "Vermont ranked #22 among hottest real estate markets of 2026": vermontbiz.com
Posted in Development and Investment
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Sept. 8, 2026

Inside The Deal: What I'm Actually Telling Buyers and Sellers This Summer

 

Field Notes from Central Vermont — Summer 2026 Edition

Inside The Deal: What I'm Actually Telling Buyers and Sellers This Summer

A Central Vermont broker's July 2026 field notes — the advice I give clients over coffee, not over a listing agreement.

By  · · 9 min read

Every real estate blog you've read this summer says the same thing: "It's a shifting market."

Cool. Thanks. Extremely useful.

Here's what's actually happening in Central Vermont right now — and here's what I'd tell you if you sat across from my desk in Waterbury this afternoon, no listing agreement on the table, no commission on the line. Just the truth as I see it in July of 2026.

First, The Ground We're Standing On

Before I give advice, we need to agree on the terrain. Because most Vermonters are still operating on 2022 assumptions in a 2026 market. That's how you make expensive mistakes.

The July 2026 Numbers, Cold

Central Vermont Real Estate Market — July 2026
Metric Value What It Means
VT 30-year fixed mortgage 6.48% – 6.75% Not going to 4%. Stop waiting.
Statewide median price ~$412,200 Still climbing, slowly
Active inventory YoY +11.7% The unlock is real
Median days on market 91 days Nearly triple the 2021 pace
Sale-to-list ratio 96.3% Negotiation is back
Homes above asking 13.7% Down from ~20% a year ago
Months of supply 2.9 Still tight. Balanced is 4–6.
Washington County avg. $397,533 (+1.8% YoY) Steady grind higher
Waterbury avg. value $550,330 Premium market intact

Sources: Bankrate, NerdWallet, Zillow, Redfin, Coldwell Banker Hickok & Boardman Market Report, NAR, VHFA, New England Landmark Realty analysis.

That's the board. Now let's play.

If You're Buying This Summer: The Five Things I Actually Say

1. Stop Waiting For Rates. They're Not Coming To Save You.

Every buyer who walked away in 2023 waiting for "rates to drop" has watched Vermont prices climb another 5–8% while they waited. The math doesn't work in your favor. A $500,000 home at 6.5% today will cost you less monthly than a $540,000 home at 5.75% next year. And that $540K price? That's the trajectory.

The rate you marry is temporary. The price you pay is permanent.

Refinance later. Buy now.

2. This Is The Best Negotiating Window Since 2019. Use It.

Ninety-six-point-three cents on the dollar is not a rounding error. On a $500,000 house, that's $18,500 in real leverage — plus closing credits, inspection concessions, and the ability to actually get a competent home inspection without waiving it in the parking lot.

For the first time in five years, you can ask hard questions. You can request repairs. You can walk away from a bad septic and not lose the earnest money. Use the leverage. It won't last forever.

3. Know Your Town Before You Fall In Love With A House.

The average Central Vermont buyer spends 90 hours picking a house and 90 minutes picking a town. Reverse that ratio.

Waterbury, Stowe, Montpelier, Middlesex, Moretown, Duxbury, Waterbury Center — each behaves differently right now. Waterbury's average value is holding at $550K because commute-to-Burlington plus recreation-access is the most durable demand equation in the state. Montpelier softened 5.3% over the last three months. Stowe is bifurcated: entry-level moves fast, luxury sits.

If your agent can't tell you the difference in one sentence per town, get a different agent.

4. The Second-Home Market Is Softening. If That's Your Play, Be Patient.

Second-home buyers, listen closely: you finally have the upper hand. The frenzy is over. The Boston buyer who paid $150K over asking for a Stowe condo in 2021 is not coming back this summer. Inventory in the leisure segment is sitting. Sellers are quietly reducing.

Wait for the right property, negotiate hard, and don't be afraid to offer 92–94% of asking on anything that's been on market more than 60 days. You'll get told no half the time. The other half will pay for your down payment.

5. If You Can't Move In Six Weeks, Don't Start Looking Yet.

The single biggest mistake I see: buyers who "want to look around" without financing pre-approval, without a target town, without knowing what they can actually close on.

Well-priced homes in strong locations still move in 10 days. If you're not ready to write an offer, you're not shopping — you're sightseeing. Get pre-approved, sell your current place first (or line up a bridge), and pick your three towns. Then call me.

If You're Selling This Summer: The Five Things I Actually Say

1. Price It Like It's 2026. Not 2022.

The number one deal-killer right now is aspirational pricing. Sellers who saw their neighbor get $50K over asking in 2021 are anchoring to that number. That neighbor is not walking back through the door.

Homes priced correctly are still selling in 30–45 days. Homes priced 8% too high are sitting 120+ days and selling for less than they would have at accurate pricing. The market punishes greed now. It rewards discipline.

If your agent walks in with a comp package from 2022 and a smile, show them out.

2. Presentation Is Not Optional Anymore.

When buyers had three houses to choose from, they overlooked things. When they have twelve, they don't.

The 2026 buyer walks in with a phone camera, a Zillow tab open, and a running comparison to the other five houses they saw this weekend. Deferred maintenance shows up in the offer price. Dated kitchens show up in the offer price. That funky basement smell shows up in the offer price.

Invest $3,000–$8,000 in staging, paint, landscaping, and small repairs before listing. You'll recover it 3-to-1 in the final sale price. This is not opinion. This is the last 40 transactions I've closed.

3. Move-In-Ready In A Strong Town? You Still Have Leverage.

Not everyone should be sweating. If your home is:

  • Under $500K
  • Move-in ready
  • In Waterbury, Waterbury Center, Stowe village, Montpelier's better neighborhoods, or a commutable Chittenden County town
  • Well-photographed and priced right

You will likely still see multiple offers. Entry-level inventory in supply-constrained towns is the tightest segment of this entire market. That's your leverage. Use it, but don't abuse it — asking 8% over comps still ends in a stale listing.

4. Rural, Dated, Or Off-Grid? Adjust Your Expectations Now.

The buyer pool for these homes has shrunk the most. Higher rates hit them hardest. Insurance costs are rising in outlying areas. Well-and-septic surprises now blow deals apart.

If this is your property, price aggressively out of the gate, offer buyer credits for inspections and updates, and be ready to negotiate. The days of a Boston buyer paying cash sight-unseen for a 1978 cape on 4 acres with a spring-fed well are behind us. Not gone — behind us.

5. Time It Right. You Have About 8 Weeks Left.

The Vermont summer selling window peaks between late June and early September. After Labor Day, buyer traffic drops, and by October the leaf-peepers are looking at foliage, not fixtures. If you're going to list this year, now through mid-August is your window. Wait until September and you're either accepting a longer market time or waiting for spring 2027 — during which time you'll pay another 6–8 months of carrying costs.

Do the math. Then decide.

The Broader Truth Nobody Wants To Say Out Loud

Vermont's housing market is not going to crash. It's also not going to boom. It's going to do exactly what it's doing now — grind slowly higher, favoring the disciplined, punishing the impulsive, and rewarding people who understand their town, their financing, and their timeline.

The buyers who win this summer are the ones who stop waiting for a better market and start negotiating in this one.

The sellers who win this summer are the ones who stop pricing from memory and start pricing from data.

And the ones who lose — buyer or seller — are the ones who mistake activity for strategy.

Let's Actually Talk

Every property in Central Vermont has its own math. Your Waterbury cape isn't a Montpelier condo. Your Stowe chalet isn't a Middlesex farmhouse. General advice gets you to the starting line. Specific advice gets you across it.

If you're weighing a move this summer — buying, selling, or just trying to figure out what your equity actually looks like in this market — call me before you call the listing agent on the sign. That's a free conversation. The alternative usually isn't.

Posted in Home Buying Tips, Home Selling Tips
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July 18, 2026

The Vermont Builder's Playbook: An Insider's Guide to Saving Money on Your New Home

The Numbers Guy's Full Article (Unedited)

The Numbers Guy ↓ Key Takeaways

Quick Answer

How can you save money building a house in Vermont?

  1. Buy a lot with septic design, water access, and survey work already completed.
  2. Test for soil conditions and ledge before closing.
  3. Compare builders using line-item inclusions, labor rates, and markup.
  4. Negotiate fixed-price terms where possible and plan an efficient groundbreaking date.
  5. Lock finish decisions early and reduce square footage before reducing construction quality.

Building new in Vermont is expensive by nature — short seasons, strict energy codes, and a state full of ledge and rolling terrain don't lend themselves to cheap construction. But "expensive" and "unnecessarily expensive" are two different things, and most of the gap between them comes down to decisions made before a shovel ever hits the ground. Here's what the process actually rewards, if you know where to look.

1. Buy Land That's Already Done the Hard Part

The single biggest lever most buyers overlook is the land itself. A lot with an approved septic design, confirmed water access (municipal or a proven well), and a completed survey has already absorbed months of engineering, testing, and permitting risk — work that costs real money and real time on a raw, unapproved parcel. Two lots priced $50,000 apart can actually favor the more expensive one once you account for the $15,000–$30,000 and several months typically spent getting an unapproved parcel through septic design and permitting. Always ask what's already been done to a lot, not just what it costs.

Key Takeaways ▼ Open

Two-Sentence Summary

Vermont land buyers and future homeowners can use this playbook to identify cost exposure before choosing a lot, builder, contract, or finish package. The strongest savings come from reducing uncertainty before excavation and preventing avoidable changes after construction begins.

The Numbers Guy Summary

The lowest-priced lot or builder proposal is not automatically the least expensive path to a finished Vermont home. Septic approval, ledge, excluded bid items, contract structure, and late finish decisions can each move the final number. Smaller square footage often protects quality and long-term value better than cutting construction standards. The budget is usually won or lost before the first shovel reaches the ground.

Quick Facts

  • An unapproved parcel may require $15,000–$30,000 in septic design and permitting work.
  • Builder markup on subcontractor work commonly falls in the 15–20% range.
  • A project described as a $500,000 build can move beyond $550,000 through accumulated change orders.

Data from sources listed below.

2. Get a Soil and Ledge Assessment Before You Fall in Love With a Lot

Ledge is the single most common budget-buster in Vermont construction, and it's almost always a surprise because most buyers don't test for it until the excavator is already scheduled. A modest investment in a soil boring or test pit before closing can save five or six figures in blasting and rock-hammering costs down the line — or at minimum, let you negotiate the price down or walk away with clear eyes.

3. Understand What "Per Square Foot" Actually Includes

This is where a lot of budgets quietly go sideways. One builder's $275/sf number includes cabinetry, a generator, decks, and finish allowances. Another builder's $275/sf covers framing and drywall only, with everything else billed separately. Before comparing bids, get a line-item breakdown from each builder of exactly what's inside their number — site work, design fees, appliances, and landscaping are the categories most often left out, and most often forgotten until the invoices start arriving.

4. Push for a Fixed-Price Contract, Not Time-and-Materials

Most Vermont builders work on a time-and-materials (T&M) basis by default, with a builder markup on top of subcontractor invoices and materials. That structure puts nearly all the cost-overrun risk on you. A fixed-price contract shifts that risk to the builder — they'll price in a bit of cushion for it, but it protects you from mid-project material price swings and gives you a number you can actually plan around. If a builder won't do fixed-price at all, that's worth asking why.

5. Time Your Groundbreaking Around Vermont's Building Season

Vermont's construction window is short, and a project that breaks ground in early spring moves very differently than one that starts in October and immediately runs into frost, snow, and reduced crew availability. Winter work isn't just slower — it often costs more directly, through heated enclosures and weather delays. If you have any flexibility on timeline, aim to have permitting wrapped up early enough to break ground by late spring.

6. Choose Municipal Water Over a Private Well When You Can

Where it's available, a municipal water connection is typically more predictable than drilling a private well — mainly tap fees and trenching, versus a well where depth, yield, and rock conditions aren't fully known until the rig is already on-site. It's not always an option depending on the lot, but if you're choosing between two otherwise similar parcels, municipal access is usually the lower-risk (and often lower-cost) path.

7. Lock Your Finish Decisions Before Construction Starts

Change orders are the quietest, most reliable way a project goes over budget — a bigger window here, upgraded flooring there, an extra outlet run somewhere else. None of them look expensive in the moment. All of them add up. Making your finish decisions — flooring, fixtures, cabinetry, paint colors — before the framing is up, rather than deciding as you go, is one of the easiest ways to keep a "$500,000 build" from quietly becoming $550,000+.

8. Ask About In-House Labor Rates and Markup, Not Just the Bottom Line

Most Vermont builders bill subcontractor work with a markup (commonly 15–20%) and bill their own in-house labor at a separate hourly rate. Two builders can have very similar sounding proposals with meaningfully different economics underneath. Asking directly what the markup is, and what's marked up, gives you a much clearer read on where your money is actually going — and some room to negotiate.

9. Consider a Modest Size Over a Modest Finish Level

If a budget needs to come down, cutting square footage usually preserves value better than cutting finish quality. A smaller, well-built home tends to hold resale value better than a larger home with builder-grade finishes throughout — and it's also simply cheaper to heat, maintain, and furnish for years afterward.

10. Get Real Quotes From Local Builders, Not National Calculators

Online cost calculators are a reasonable starting point for a ballpark, but they don't know your specific town's permitting quirks, your site's soil conditions, or which local subcontractors are actually available and reasonably priced right now. A conversation with two or three Vermont-based builders who know your specific area will get you a far more useful number than any generic per-square-foot tool — and it's free.

The Bottom Line

Nothing here makes Vermont construction cheap — the state's terrain, climate, and code requirements make sure of that. But the difference between a build that comes in close to budget and one that blows past it almost always traces back to decisions made in the first few weeks: the lot you choose, the contract structure you sign, and how early you lock in your finishes. Get those right, and you're building smart, not just building.

Have a specific lot or builder quote you'd like a second set of eyes on? That's exactly the kind of conversation worth having before you sign anything.

How Can New England Landmark Realty Help With a Vermont New Build?

New England Landmark Realty can help Vermont buyers compare lots and builder proposals before a $15,000–$30,000 approval gap or a major site-condition surprise reaches the construction budget.

A parcel review can focus the conversation on septic status, water access, surveys, zoning, site conditions, comparable finished homes, and the assumptions behind each builder quote.

The cheapest build is often the one with fewer unknowns.

Vermont Buyer Guide Vermont Seller Guide

Office: 802-253-4711
Toll-Free: 866-324-2427
Cell: 802-233-4107
Website: nelandmark.com

Sources

Posted in Design Build, Development and Investment, Property Insights
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July 15, 2026

Central Vermont Land: Where the Market Is Moving, and Where It's Standing Still

The Numbers Guy's Full Article (Unedited)

The Numbers Guy ↓ Key Takeaways

Quick Answer

Where is land selling fastest in Central Vermont in 2026?

Warren leads the region with 12 land closings year-to-date, an average of 29.5 days on market, and a median sale price at 100% of list.

If you're buying or selling land anywhere from the Mad River Valley to Stowe to the Northeast side of Montpelier this year, here's the honest picture the data is telling us: this is not one market. It's several markets stacked on top of each other, and knowing which one your parcel sits in matters more than any single comp.

We pulled every land transaction across Chittenden, Lamoille, and Washington counties year-to-date through mid-July 2026 — 366 listings in all — and layered in single-family home data for context. Here's what buyers and sellers on both sides of a land deal need to understand right now.

The Big Picture: A Market That's Working, Unevenly

Ninety land parcels have closed across the three counties this year. The median sale landed at 94.6% of list price, with a median 65 days on market. That's a healthy, functioning market by most measures — not a fire sale, not a bidding frenzy, just steady transaction activity.

But absorption pace tells a different story depending on where you're standing:

  • Washington County: roughly 14.4 months of land inventory at the current sales pace
  • Lamoille County: roughly 16.1 months
  • Chittenden County: roughly 26.9 months

Chittenden's number stands out, and it's not because Chittenden land is unwanted — it's that a lot of the active inventory there is small, expensive infill parcels that appeal to a narrower buyer pool and simply take longer to place.

Key Takeaways ▼ Open

Two-Sentence Summary

Central Vermont land buyers and sellers need to judge each parcel by its town, zoning, buildability, and competition from resale homes. The three-county data helps buyers identify leverage and helps sellers price against the economics of building, not just nearby land comps.

The Numbers Guy Summary

Land is moving fastest where demand, buildability, and pricing align. Warren combines 12 closings, 29.5 average days on market, and a median sale price at 100% of list. Waterbury shows the opposite pattern: homes are moving quickly while nine land listings have produced no closings. The decisive variables are zoning clarity, build-vs-buy economics, financing, and the size of the buyer pool.

Quick Facts

  • Ninety land parcels closed across Chittenden, Lamoille, and Washington counties through mid-July 2026.
  • The median sale reached 94.6% of list price after a median 65 days on market.
  • Estimated inventory ranged from 14.4 months in Washington County to 26.9 months in Chittenden County.

Data from sources listed below.

Where the Market Is Moving: Warren Leads the Pack

If you want to see what a genuinely strong land market looks like right now, look at Warren. Twelve closings year-to-date — the most of any town in the region — with an average of just 29.5 days on market and a median sale price at 100% of list. That's volume, speed, and pricing integrity all showing up together, and it almost certainly reflects sustained demand tied to the Mad River Valley/Sugarbush recreational corridor.

Morristown and Stowe are also worth watching. Morristown led Lamoille County in volume with nine closings. Stowe closed seven parcels at a much higher price point (averaging around $704,000) and a longer 119-day marketing period — but still near 91% of list. That's not weakness, that's simply what a slower-moving luxury/resort land segment looks like when it's healthy.

Where the Market Is Stalled — and Why

Now for the towns where land simply isn't moving. These aren't struggling for the same reason, so it's worth separating them into three distinct patterns:

Remote, unimproved land with a thin buyer pool — Waterville, Middlesex, Marshfield. Cheap on a per-acre basis, but often listed with vague or blank zoning information. That ambiguity around access, permitting, and utilities scares off all but the most speculative buyers, and land loans are hard enough to get without adding uncertainty on top.

High-end infill competing for a narrow buyer — Charlotte, South Burlington. These parcels carry premium per-acre pricing in expensive, close-in towns. The buyer here is specific: someone who wants to custom-build, has capital for land and construction, and is willing to wait out a build timeline. That's always going to be a smaller, more patient pool — slow absorption here isn't a red flag, it's just a narrow lane.

Village/urban lots losing out to resale homes — Barre City, Jericho. When construction costs are elevated, the math frequently favors buying an existing house over building on a small in-town lot, even when the land itself is reasonably priced.

The Waterbury Case Study: A Strong Town, a Stuck Segment

Waterbury is the clearest illustration of why "the market" isn't a single thing — because Waterbury's home market and its land market are living in two completely different realities.

Single-family homes in Waterbury are on fire. Fourteen closings year-to-date, a median of just 24.5 days on market, and a median sale price at 96.4% of list — spanning everything from a $257,500 close to a $2.25 million close. Several sold at or above asking price in single-digit days on market. This is a deep, confident buyer pool.

Waterbury land, meanwhile, has recorded zero closings all year, against nine active listings with days-on-market ranging from a few weeks up to well over a year.

Why the disconnect in the same town? Three things:

  1. Much of the active land inventory isn't really residential. Several of Waterbury's stuck listings carry Village Commercial, Town Neighborhood Commercial, or highway-corridor zoning — a fundamentally different, thinner buyer pool than the one snapping up houses.
  2. The build-vs-buy math doesn't favor land right now. The median list price on Waterbury's genuinely buildable 1+ acre lots is around $450,000. Add current Vermont construction costs, and a from-scratch build often lands well above what a comparable finished home just sold for — in 24 days.
  3. Even well-zoned, genuinely buildable land is aging. It's not only the commercial-flavored parcels sitting stale — a 29-acre residentially-zoned lot has been on the market over 400 days. When houses are moving this fast, most buyers take the path of least resistance.

The takeaway for anyone with land in a market like Waterbury: it isn't that buyers don't want to be there. It's that raw land is currently losing the value argument against a hot resale market, townwide.

What Would Have to Change — and How Likely Is It?

A few conditions would need to line up to unstick markets like Waterbury's:

  • Construction costs easing relative to home prices, closing the build-vs-buy gap
  • Resale inventory tightening enough to force buyers toward building out of necessity
  • Land-specific financing loosening — more construction-to-permanent products, more bank appetite for raw land lending
  • Zoning clarity on ambiguous or mixed-use parcels, expanding the effective residential buyer pool
  • Mortgage rates easing meaningfully, narrowing the monthly-payment gap between buying and building

As of mid-July 2026, 30-year mortgage rates are sitting in the mid-6% range, and forecasts from Fannie Mae and the Mortgage Bankers Association both point to rates holding in that same band through the rest of the year and into 2027. Meaningful rate relief isn't on the near-term horizon, and construction costs tend to be sticky downward. Realistically, this is a medium-term structural condition, not something likely to flip in the next few months. The one lever sellers and agents can actually pull sooner is zoning and subdivision clarity — everything else depends on macro forces outside anyone's control.

What This Means If You're Buying

  • You have real leverage on land right now, especially in towns with long DOM and zero closings. Sellers of aging listings are competing against a resale market that's outperforming them.
  • Scrutinize zoning before you fall in love with acreage or price. A great $/acre number on a commercially-zoned or ambiguously-zoned parcel may not translate into a straightforward residential build.
  • Run the full build-vs-buy math before you commit, not just the land price. In towns like Waterbury, a finished home may currently be the more efficient path to the same outcome.
  • In fast-moving towns like Warren, don't expect the same leverage — that market is closing near full price in under a month, so come prepared to move decisively.

What This Means If You're Selling

  • Price to the build economics, not the comp set. Buyers are mentally weighing your land against a finished home, not just against other land. If that math doesn't work in your favor, price is the lever you control.
  • Remove buyer uncertainty before you list. A current survey, confirmed access, and completed perc/septic testing eliminate exactly the kind of ambiguity that's keeping remote and unclear-zoned parcels sitting the longest in this data.
  • Consider seller financing. Since land loans are harder to secure than conventional mortgages, offering to carry part of the note can meaningfully widen your buyer pool without waiting on rates or bank policy to change.
  • Market to the right buyer. Genuinely buildable residential land should be marketed to owner-builders and local spec builders — not lumped in with commercial-adjacent listings chasing an entirely different buyer.
  • Be realistic about timeline. With comparable land in towns like Waterbury sitting 200–400+ days without converting to a sale, pricing to the "wait it out" comp set is pricing to an outcome the data isn't currently supporting.

Have questions about how your specific property fits into this picture? That's exactly the kind of conversation worth having before you list or make an offer — reach out anytime.

How Can New England Landmark Realty Help With Central Vermont Land?

New England Landmark Realty can help buyers and sellers test zoning, pricing, and build-vs-buy assumptions against current market data. In a market ranging from 29.5 days on market in Warren to zero Waterbury land closings, parcel-level strategy matters.

The right decision starts with the parcel, not the countywide average.

Vermont Buyer Guide Vermont Seller Guide

Office: 802-253-4711
Toll-Free: 866-324-2427
Cell: 802-233-4107
Website: nelandmark.com

Sources

Posted in Development and Investment, Mad River Valley Market Trends & Updates, Market Updates, Numbers Guy, Vermont Real Estate Trends, Waterbury Real Estate
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July 9, 2026

Dogs Are Smarter Than Humans

 

By Harris Vexley, New England Landmark Realty

My dog rarely barks at me, which gives his criticism enormous weight.

He is not one of those dogs who narrates every passing leaf. He does not scream at delivery trucks, passing cyclists, or the wind, though I suspect he has notes. He saves his voice for moments of true managerial failure: a late dinner, an insufficiently brisk walk, or the time I tried to put his harness on upside down and briefly became, in his eyes, a government experiment.

Most days, he runs the house like a German Olympic coach. Meals occur on schedule. Walks begin with urgency. I am expected to maintain posture, focus, and a basic understanding of leash geometry. If I pause to check my phone, he looks back with the cold disappointment of a man who has trained luge champions.

There are standards, most of them unwritten, all of them enforceable.

And yet this same creature, this compact household dictator with excellent hearing, is afraid of the coat rack by the front door.

Not wary. Not cautious. Afraid.

The coat rack has never moved, spoken, voted, or expressed an opinion about him. It stands there holding jackets, which, in a better society, would be enough. But to my dog, it is an antlered doorman from the underworld. A six-foot omen in scarves.

The ritual is elaborate. I reach for the leash. He becomes alert, heroic, ready to serve. Then I drift, accidentally or maliciously, toward the front door. He freezes. His ears retract. His eyes widen with the expression of someone who has just seen the coat rack again, despite several formal complaints.

Then comes the bark.

One bark.

Not frantic. Not loud. Administrative.

It means: You know the route.

So we reverse course. We pass through the kitchen, past the laundry room, into the garage, where he waits with the grave patience of an animal who has saved us both from certain retail furniture.

This is how I realized dogs are smarter than humans.

Not because they are always rational. Clearly, they are not. But because they do not confuse endurance with virtue.

A dog fears a coat rack. We leave through the garage.

That is not cowardice. That is logistics.

In summer, he will beg for a walk like a prisoner of conscience. He will pace. He will stare. He will sigh as if I have personally delayed parole.

Then we step outside.

He feels the heat.

He turns around.

Walk canceled.

No debate. No "getting our steps in." No heroic little podcast about resilience. He has reviewed July and found it unacceptable.

Meanwhile, I am standing there in shorts and optimism, holding a plastic bag like the junior member of a doomed expedition.

His goals are clear: eat, patrol, rest, be near the person, correct the person, avoid the coat rack.

I have no such discipline.

I own a calendar, which is essentially a list of future resentments. My dog owns a bed in three rooms and somehow uses all of them strategically. I answer emails from people who begin with "circling back." My dog circles twice, lies down, and has accomplished more.

The older I get, the more I suspect intelligence is not the ability to solve complicated problems. It is the ability to refuse unnecessary ones.

Dogs have boundaries. They understand rest. They greet joy without suspicion. Sometimes the correct response to danger is a single bark and a firm detour through the garage.

My dog will never run for office, despite having the temperament for it. He already controls the household, maintains a strict fitness program, and has reduced foreign policy to squirrels.

But he would never seek power.

He has seen what leadership does to a person.

Also, the podium might look like a coat rack.

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July 6, 2026

Vermont's Land Use Mess Just Got Messier. Here's Why You Should Care.

 

By New England Landmark Realty | June 10, 2026

What You Need to Know

  • Act 181, passed in 2024 to reform Vermont's land use law, was partially repealed in May 2026 after rural landowner protests.
  • Congress passed a landmark housing bill with federal grants to help states implement housing reforms. Trump canceled the signing for political leverage.
  • Vermont now has fewer environmental protections but still-slow housing permitting—and no federal support to accelerate reform.

Vermont is caught in a trap of its own making.

On one side: a housing shortage so acute that Vermont needs 12,000+ more affordable homes, and rents keep climbing because supply is tight. Young people are leaving. Teachers can't afford to stay. Nurses are working two jobs just to pay rent.

On the other side: rural landowners who fought back against Act 181, saying state environmental rules threatened their property rights and land values. Hundreds protested at the Statehouse in March 2026. They won. The controversial parts of Act 181 were partially repealed in May.

So now Vermont has repealed environmental protections without actually speeding up housing development. The core Act 250 permitting process is still slow. Still complex. Still making projects financially unworkable before construction begins.

It's a mess. And it just got worse.

Because Congress passed a housing bill—the first major one in decades—that included federal grants specifically designed to help states implement housing reforms like the ones Vermont is struggling with. Trump killed the bill Tuesday. For political leverage on something completely unrelated.

Now Vermont has no federal support, no federal funding, no federal technical assistance.

Here's what actually happened.

Act 250, Vermont's 1970 land use law, is the core bottleneck. Any housing project over 25 units needs Act 250 approval. The review process takes 12-18 months. Add appeals, and developers are looking at 2-3 years. During that time, construction costs rise significantly a 30% increase—making projects that were viable on Day 1 financially impossible by the time approval arrives.

Act 181, passed in 2024 over Governor Scott's veto, tried to fix this with a tiered system:

Tier 1 (already-developed areas): Loosen Act 250 reviews, speed up housing approvals

Tier 2 (rural areas): Add new requirements (like a road rule for roads over 800 feet) to protect forest fragmentation

Tier 3 (sensitive ecosystems): Boost protections for headwater streams and habitat connectors

The theory: build more housing where it's already urban, protect the farmland and forests that define Vermont.

Rural landowners hated the environmental parts. They argued environmental rules would devalue their land and prevent future development in smaller towns. Beginning in March 2026, they organized protests. In May 2026, the Vermont Legislature—both chambers—voted to partially repeal Act 181, removing Tier 2 (the road rule) and Tier 3 (environmental protections). The Senate vote was 28-2.

So Vermont now has:

The housing-friendly parts of Act 181 (Tier 1) in place. The environmental protections stripped away (Tier 2 & 3 gone). But the core Act 250 permitting process? Still slow. Still complex.

Vermont repealed environmental rules without actually accelerating housing approval. It's the worst possible outcome: fewer environmental protections, but no faster development.

What the federal bill actually offered.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which Congress passed with veto-proof majorities, included $200 million in annual competitive grants for local governments that demonstrate measurable increases in housing supply through "streamlined permitting, density bonuses, and zoning changes."

Vermont towns could have competed for that money and used it to hire permitting staff, modernize their Act 250 review processes, and implement the technical changes Act 181 required.

The bill also included grants for planning assistance—the unglamorous, expensive work of actually implementing reforms.

Most Vermont towns lack the budget to do this independently. Federal grants would have bridged that gap.

Why this matters right now.

Trump was scheduled to sign the housing bill. Forty-eight hours before the signing ceremony, he canceled it. According to reporting, Trump demanded Congress pass his SAVE Act (citizenship verification) first, using the housing bill as leverage.

Congress has veto-proof majorities. They could override him. Instead, the bill sits unsigned. Trump has not indicated when or whether he will sign it.

Meanwhile, Vermont's Act 181 partial repeal just became law in May 2026.

Vermont now has: a partially reformed (and now partially repealed) state land use system. No federal funding to implement the reforms that remain. No federal technical support. No federal grants to help towns accelerate their permitting processes.

The bill that could have provided all three is in political limbo.

What this actually costs.

Here's the likely scenario: A developer in Washington County looks at the Act 250 timeline. Looks at construction cost inflation during a 2-3 year approval process. Does the math. The project becomes unviable.

She moves to a state with faster permitting.

That housing unit doesn't get built. Another one after that. The shortage widens.

Rents climb because supply is tight. Young families get priced out. Teachers working in Vermont schools can't afford to live in Vermont communities. Nurses working at Central Vermont Medical Center live an hour away and commute.

This is mechanical, not emotional. Just the math of supply and demand.

And it was preventable. Vermont was ready to implement housing reforms. Needed federal funding to do it properly. Congress was about to provide it.

Now it's not.

Why this is actually interesting.

This isn't a simple left-right problem. It's Vermont vs. Itself.

Governor Scott (Republican) vetoed Act 181 in 2024, calling it a "conservation bill" that wouldn't fix housing. Democrats overrode him. Rural Republicans then organized massive protests against the environmental protections. Democrats, facing rural voter anger, repealed those protections.

Now Scott is saying the Legislature isn't taking housing seriously.

The Legislature tried to balance growth and conservation. Faced political pressure. Repealed the environmental parts while keeping the housing-friendly parts. Except the housing parts don't work without actual permitting reform and resources to implement it.

Federal grants would have given them that runway. Would have let them say to rural voters: "We're protecting forests AND speeding housing, and we have federal funding to do it right."

Instead, Vermont got: fewer environmental protections, but still-slow housing permitting.

It's the outcome nobody wanted.

The thing Vermonters need to understand.

This isn't about politics. It's about capacity.

Vermont was trying to solve a genuinely hard problem (growth vs. conservation). Had a plan (Act 181). Faced political pressure and modified it. Still needed resources to implement what remained.

Federal government was about to provide those resources.

Now it's not.

So Vermont is left trying to solve a complex, expensive problem—permitting reform, housing development, conservation—with no external support, no federal funding, and no federal technical assistance.

It's harder now. More expensive. Slower.

Your neighbor pays the price.

Sources

  1. Vermont Housing Shortage: National Low-Income Housing Coalition, "2026 Vermont Housing Profile" (2026)
  2. Act 181 Passed Over Governor's Veto: Vermont Public, "Phil Scott Vetoes Bill That Would Make Sweeping Changes to Act 250" (June 13, 2024)
  3. Act 181 Structure (Tier System): Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development, "Act 181: Modernizing Land Use Review"
  4. March 2026 Act 181 Protests: VTDigger, "Hundreds Protest Act 181 on Statehouse Steps" (March 24, 2026)
  5. May 2026 Partial Repeal (S.325): VTDigger, "Partial Repeal of Vermont's Land-Use Law Act 181 Heads to Gov. Phil Scott's Desk" (May 27, 2026); Vermont Senate vote 28-2
  6. Act 250 Permitting Timelines: VTDigger, "Vermont Loosened Act 250 Rules for Housing. Here's Where Developers Are Responding." (December 11, 2024)
  7. Construction Cost Inflation During Permitting: VTDigger op-ed by Kathy Beyer, "The Permit Appeal Process Has Delayed the Start of Construction by at Least Two Years" (2026)
  8. 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act Details: Bipartisan Policy Center, "What's in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act?"
  9. Federal Housing Bill Passage: PBS NewsHour, "What's in the Housing Affordability Bill That Trump Refused to Sign" (2026)
  10. Trump Cancels Housing Bill Signing: BBC News, "Trump Cancels Signing of Landmark Bill Aimed at Lowering Housing Costs" (2026); Wall Street Journal, "Trump's Meeting With Senators Turns Fiery Over Iran War" (2026); ABC News coverage (2026)
  11. Congress Passes Housing Bill With Veto-Proof Majorities: PBS, BBC, ABC News, Axios reporting (June 2026)

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July 3, 2026

Opening Day and the Sacred New England Lie

Harris Vexley's Full Article (Unedited)

 

Every baseball season begins with the same sacred New England lie: this year will be different.

Harris Vexley · June 12, 2026

Quick Answer

Red Sox fans experience cyclical hope because Opening Day arrives before evidence. The season hasn't yet hardened into standings, the bullpen hasn't yet failed, and four generations of inherited optimism remain intact. By June, hope becomes educational.

We say it in March, when the snow is still retreating in dirty, humiliated piles and the Red Sox have not yet had the opportunity to harm us in a statistically meaningful way. The grass is green. The caps are clean. The broadcasters sound rested. Even the bullpen appears, from a distance, to be a professional organization.

This is the dangerous part.

Hope, in baseball, is not a feeling. It is a recurring medical condition.

I know this because I am from Vermont, where baseball is not so much watched as inherited. My great-grandfather was a Red Sox fan. My grandfather was a Red Sox fan. My father was a Red Sox fan. By the time I arrived, the family had already lost several decades, most of its emotional elasticity, and any reasonable expectation of late-inning competence.

Still, every Opening Day, we believed.

My great-grandfather believed by the radio, which hissed and crackled like it was trying to warn him. My grandfather believed through the newspaper box scores, circling batting averages with the tenderness of a man annotating scripture. My father believed from a recliner, issuing small tactical recommendations to men in Boston who could not hear him and, frankly, had their own problems.

I believe through my phone, which is worse.

A push notification has no bedside manner. It simply appears and says, "Three-run homer allowed," as if notifying me that the barn has burned down but the chickens remain optimistic.

Opening Day Harris is always a disgraceful romantic.

Opening Day Harris says things like, "I like the shape of this team."

June Harris replies, "This team has the shape of a folding chair."

Opening Day Harris says, "The rotation looks promising."

June Harris says, "The rotation appears to be a witness protection program for earned runs."

Opening Day Harris says, "The young players just need time."

June Harris says, "I would prefer they stop learning in public."

As of this week, the Red Sox are 27–39 and last in the American League East, which is less a record than a weather report: scattered concern, heavy bullpen, chance of muttering after dinner.

And yet I am not angry.

Anger is too simple. Red Sox fandom, properly practiced, requires a more artisanal suffering. A slow-roasted disappointment. The kind that pairs well with black coffee, porch silence, and saying, "Long season," in the tone of a man describing a minor roof leak that has become sentient.

Each generation of Vexley men had its own phrase for baseball despair.

My great-grandfather said, "Long season."

My grandfather said, "Plenty of games left."

My father said, "They'll get hot."

I say, "I have muted the app for my health."

This is progress, technically.

Baseball is the only sport patient enough to ruin you politely. Football kicks in the door. Basketball runs you breathless. Hockey crashes through the boards with dental consequences. But baseball sits beside you for three hours and gradually convinces you that a walk, a bloop single, and a throwing error constitute a philosophical event.

This is why we love it.

Also, because we are not well.

The great trick of Opening Day is that it arrives before evidence. Before the standings harden. Before the bullpen begins entering from right field with the energy of substitute teachers during a fire drill. Before someone says, "He's day-to-day," and you realize, with horror, that so are you.

On Opening Day, everyone is undefeated.

By June, some of us have become educational institutions.

Still, I will watch.

I will sit with my coffee, or my sandwich, or my inherited anxiety, and I will listen for the old rhythms. The crack of the bat. The murmur of the crowd. The announcer explaining that the tying run is on deck, which is baseball's way of offering emotional credit at a dangerous interest rate.

I will remember my father, who became his father, who became his father, all of them staring toward Boston with the grim patience of men waiting for a cow to apologize.

And next spring, I will believe again.

Not because I am foolish.

Because baseball is the only institution in America that can break your heart slowly enough to call it tradition.

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