By Tony Walton

Vermont needs homes—fast. Below is a clear, data-driven look at what underbuilding costs us, why it persists, and how we fix it. 

Market Snapshot: Vermont Housing Reality (August 2025)

  • New homes needed by 2029: 36,000
  • Annual pace of construction: ~1,000 homes/year
  • Rental vacancy rate statewide: 3.2% (healthy ≈ 5%)
  • Chittenden County vacancy: ~1%
  • Homelessness: ~51 per 10,000 residents
  • Construction cost inflation since 2020: ~30% annually
  • Median home price to renter income: ~7.2× (affordable ≈ 3.67×)

Live data: For current median prices, days on market, and inventory trends, see our Vermont Market Report.

The Math of Denial

Vermont needs 36,000 new homes by 2029. We're building roughly 1,000 per year. That's not a housing shortage—that's economic malpractice.

While we debate zoning variances and hold community meetings about "character preservation," our state hemorrhages talent, taxes spiral upward, and we spend $44 million annually warehousing families in motels. This isn't policy; it's pathology.

The numbers don't lie, but politicians do. Every year we delay building costs us exponentially more than the year before. Every "not in my backyard" decision is a vote for decline disguised as preservation.

The Scarcity Trap We've Built

Here's Vermont's housing reality in August 2025:

  • Rental vacancy rate: 3.2% (healthy market needs 5%)
  • Chittenden County vacancy: 1% (basically zero)
  • Homelessness rate: 51 per 10,000 residents (2nd highest nationally)
  • Construction cost inflation: 30% annually since 2020
  • Median home price vs. renter income: 7.2x (affordable = 3.67x)

We've created artificial scarcity in a state with more land per capita than Switzerland. The result? A housing market that operates like Berkshire Hathaway stock—exclusive, expensive, and inaccessible to most.

The True Cost of Our Housing Deficit

Economic Hemorrhaging

Vermont's unemployment sits at 2.2%—third lowest nationally. Sounds impressive until you realize it's not full employment, it's workforce starvation. Thousands of jobs remain unfilled not because Vermonters lack ambition, but because workers literally have nowhere to live.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce quantifies Vermont's housing shortage cost: $701 million in lost economic output. That's GDP we're hemorrhaging annually while debating architectural styles.

The Motel Economy

We've created a parallel housing system that would make Soviet planners blush. 4,203 households lived in state-funded hotel rooms in 2023—families raising children in Motel 6s because we couldn't build apartments. At $44 million annually, we're paying luxury resort prices for poverty-level accommodation.

The sick irony: For the cost of one year's emergency motel program, we could build 88 permanently affordable apartments. Instead, we've chosen the most expensive, least dignified solution possible.

The Tax Death Spiral

Housing scarcity drives up property values, which drives up tax assessments, which forces out working families, which reduces the tax base, which increases per-capita tax burden. It's a perfectly designed system—if your goal is to turn Vermont into Martha's Vineyard.

  • Since 2001:
  • Median rent: +137%
  • Home prices: +148%
  • Household income: +72%

This isn't market dynamics—it's managed decline.

The Demographic Cliff We're Building

Vermont's population growth comes entirely from migration, not births. Translation: We're importing retirees while exporting workers. By 2030, one in three Vermonters will be over 60.

This isn't aging gracefully—it's economic suicide. Who's going to care for our aging population when we've priced out the caregivers? Who's going to fix our roads when the construction workers move to New Hampshire?

We're building a state optimized for tourism and retirement, not for the working families who make both possible.

The Solutions We Won't Embrace

The 2025 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment reads like a business plan for failure. We know exactly what to do:

  • Zone for density near job centers
  • Streamline permitting from years to months
  • Reform Act 250 for housing projects under 10 units
  • Eliminate parking minimums in walkable areas
  • Allow ADUs by right statewide

But here's what we do instead: Form committees. Commission studies. Hold listening sessions. Deploy the bureaucratic equivalent of thoughts and prayers while Rome burns.

The PATH Act proposed real solutions. The Legislature gutted it. Governor Scott's housing package offered transformative reform. Lawmakers ignored it. We have the tools; we lack the will.

The Choice: Abundance or Irrelevance

Vermont's Future Project frames it perfectly: We can choose scarcity and manage decline, or choose abundance and build prosperity.

Scarcity Vermont looks like this:

  • Higher taxes, fewer services
  • Aging population, shrinking workforce
  • Main Streets with empty storefronts
  • Young families moving to New Hampshire

Abundant Vermont looks like this:

  • More taxpayers, lower per-capita burden
  • Vibrant communities with workers and families
  • Businesses that can hire and grow
  • A future worth inheriting

The Gods Honest Truth

In business, when you identify a problem, define the solution, and have the resources to execute, failure to act isn't strategic—it's incompetent.

Vermont has diagnosed its housing crisis with PhD-level precision. We've designed solutions with engineering-grade specificity. We have the financial tools and policy levers to execute.

What we lack is the courage to disappoint people who prefer decline to change.

The brutal truth: Every "no" to new housing is a "yes" to higher taxes, workforce shortages, and economic stagnation. Every zoning fight that blocks apartments is a vote for making Vermont a museum.

We can build our way to prosperity or preserve our way to irrelevance. But we can't do both.

The Vermont We Could Build

Imagine Central Vermont in 2030 with 36,000 new homes:

  • Teachers living in the districts where they teach
  • Healthcare workers living near the hospitals where they heal
  • Young families staying instead of reluctantly leaving
  • Main Streets thriving because workers have money to spend
  • Property taxes stabilizing because we've grown the base instead of the burden

This isn't fantasy—it's what happens when supply meets demand in functional markets.

The Reckoning

The cost of inaction isn't theoretical—it's compounding daily. Every month we delay building homes, we deepen our economic hole and steepen our demographic cliff.

Vermont stands at an inflection point. We can choose to build abundance and create a future worthy of our past, or we can preserve scarcity and manage our decline with dignity.

But let's not pretend there's a middle path. In housing, as in life, you're either growing or dying. There is no standing still.

The question isn't whether Vermont will change. The question is whether we'll control that change or let it control us.

About the Author

Tony Walton is Founding Partner, Owner and Principal Broker of New England Landmark Realty, serving Central Vermont's Washington, Lamoille, and Chittenden Counties. After two decades in Vermont real estate, he's witnessed firsthand how housing scarcity strangles communities and drives out the very people who make Vermont special. Reach him at tonywalton@nelandmark.com.

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Phone: 802-253-4711
Email: tonywalton@nelandmark.com
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