NELR Edge | Vermont Real Estate Perspective

 

Tony Walton

And for buyers waiting for “next year,” the last six years have delivered the same insult in different packaging: higher prices, higher payments, or both.

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Two-Sentence Summary

This piece is for Vermont buyers, sellers, and homeowners trying to make better decisions in a market that feels tight, expensive, and strangely frozen. It helps readers separate weak demand from trapped movement so they can act with clearer timing, pricing discipline, and expectations.

 

Vermont’s housing market is not broken because people stopped wanting Vermont. Quite the opposite. Too many people want in, too few homes exist, and almost nobody already inside the velvet rope wants to give up their spot. That’s not demand destruction. That’s mobility destruction.

National economists like to describe housing in antiseptic terms: affordability, rates, supply, consumer sentiment. Fine. In Vermont, the better phrase is simpler: the market is clogged. Renters can’t become buyers. Older owners can’t downsize without torching their balance sheet. Employers can’t recruit because workers can’t find a place to live. Builders still can’t produce enough housing fast enough to change the math. Vermont doesn’t have a housing cycle. It has a housing traffic jam.

Key Takeaways

If You Only Remember 3 Things

  • Vermont’s core housing problem is frozen movement, not disappearing demand.
  • Buyers who keep waiting for a cleaner, cheaper year have usually paid for the delay one way or another.
  • Sellers still benefit from scarcity, but pricing and presentation now matter more than they did in the frenzy years.

Quick Facts

  • Vermont still needs a significant increase in year-round housing to approach a healthier market balance.
  • The path from renter to owner has narrowed sharply, especially for working households trying to save while rents stay elevated.
  • Movement has slowed at every stage of the ladder: first-time buyers, downsizers, employers, and new arrivals all feel it.

And unlike traffic, this one doesn’t clear after rush hour.

The state needs tens of thousands of additional homes over the next several years just to approach something resembling a healthy market. Vacancy remains painfully low. In some parts of Vermont, finding housing feels less like shopping and more like competing in a reality show where the prize is a 1978 cape with a damp basement and “good bones.” The result is a market where ordinary life events — getting married, having a kid, taking a new job, getting divorced, retiring — become real estate crises.

That’s what makes Vermont different from the national story. In much of the country, higher rates slowed demand. In Vermont, higher rates mostly slowed movement. People still want homes. They still want these towns, these school districts, this version of life. But wanting and transacting are no longer close cousins. They’re distant relatives who only see each other at funerals.

The hardest truth for buyers is also the least fashionable one: waiting has not been a winning strategy. Since 2019, buyers who decided to “wait until next year” have usually been rewarded with the financial equivalent of a kick to the ribs. If you waited in 2019, you likely paid more in 2020. If you waited in 2020, you almost certainly paid more in 2021. If you waited in 2021, you walked into higher prices and then got clotheslined by higher rates. If you waited in 2025 hoping 2026 would finally be your year, congratulations — you are now shopping in a market where prices are still stubborn, financing is still expensive, and supply is still too thin.

This is not an argument for panic. Panic is for crypto traders and cable news producers. It is an argument for realism. In a structurally undersupplied market, delay is not neutral. It has a cost. Sometimes that cost shows up in sticker price. Sometimes it shows up in monthly payment. Sometimes it shows up in spending another year renting while the down payment target runs away from you like a Labrador off-leash in Stowe.

And Vermont has been especially cruel on that front. The path from renter to owner has narrowed so dramatically it barely qualifies as a path anymore. For a lot of working households, homeownership here has shifted from “hard” to “theoretically possible in the same way becoming an astronaut is theoretically possible.” That is not just a housing problem. It is a social stability problem, a workforce problem, and eventually a political problem.

Sellers, meanwhile, should resist the fantasy that scarcity means they can list anything at any number and wait for the applause. Vermont is still supply-constrained, yes. But buyers in 2026 are not the same buyers from the caffeine-and-carnage years of 2021 and 2022. They are more skeptical, more payment-sensitive, more informed, and less willing to pay a premium for your nostalgia. A market with limited inventory is not the same thing as a market with unlimited patience. Buyers will still pay for quality, location, land, and scarcity. They are less enthusiastic about paying extra for your unfinished mudroom manifesto and “potential.”

That’s the real shift. Vermont remains desirable, but desire now travels with a calculator. Buyers still want in; they’re just no longer willing to cosplay as venture capitalists to get there. They want value, concessions, clarity, and a reason to stretch. If they don’t see one, they hesitate. If enough buyers hesitate, transactions slow. And when transactions slow in a supply-starved state, the market starts to feel dead even while prices keep floating above common sense.

That contradiction is exactly why “demand destruction” is the wrong phrase. Demand hasn’t disappeared. It has been throttled. Choked by too little supply, too much financial friction, too much aging stock, too little turnover, and a policy framework that spent years protecting Vermont from growth with all the unintended elegance of a moat around a bakery. Wonderful if you’re already inside. Frustrating if you’re hungry.

The part we should say out loud — especially here in Vermont — is that this isn’t just about buyers being impatient or sellers being greedy. The system itself is producing the paralysis. Older homeowners often stay put because moving smaller would cost as much or more than staying larger. Renters can’t save because rent consumes what should have become down payment money. Young families can’t find entry-level homes because too few exist. Employers can’t fill jobs because workers can’t find places to live within reasonable distance. Everyone behaves rationally, and the combined result is absurd.

That’s mobility destruction: a market where nobody’s decision is crazy, but the final outcome is.

The encouraging news, if you want some, is that Vermont at least seems to have recognized the obvious: you cannot solve a housing shortage with nostalgia. You need more homes. Not more speeches about homes. More homes. More village housing. More infill. More conversions. More ADUs. More places for teachers, nurses, carpenters, servers, young families, and downsizing retirees to land without having to win a knife fight behind a general store.

But until supply arrives in meaningful volume, buyers should stop confusing patience with prudence. The last six years have not been kind to that bet. In Vermont housing, waiting has often felt responsible right up until the moment it became expensive.

So here’s the straight shot: Vermont doesn’t have demand destruction. It has mobility destruction. The market isn’t collapsing. It’s constipated. Buyers who keep waiting for a cheaper tomorrow should understand that “next year” has been a very expensive country to live in. Sellers should understand that scarcity is still an advantage, but no longer an excuse. And policymakers should understand that housing is not adjacent to economic development in Vermont.

It is economic development.

If we want this state to remain a place where people can build a life instead of just admire one from Zillow, we need to stop treating housing like a side issue. Because the future of Vermont will be decided, in no small part, by who can still afford to stay, who can still afford to come, and who gets tired of waiting.

Sources

Take the Next Step

Talk strategy before you talk yourself into waiting another year.

If you’re buying, selling, downsizing, or trying to understand where Vermont’s market is actually headed, Tony Walton and New England Landmark Realty can help you cut through the noise and make a cleaner decision.

Call Tony’s Cell: (802) 233-4107 Call Office: (802) 253-4711 Toll-Free: (866) 324-2427

Where to Go Next

Useful next clicks for buyers, sellers, and curious Vermonters.

Vermont Home Buying Guide Get the fundamentals right before you chase the next listing. Selling Your Vermont Home Price, timing, and presentation matter more when buyers are choosier. New England Landmark Realty Explore Vermont communities, listings, and local market guidance.

Contact

New England Landmark Realty

Office (802) 253-4711
Toll-Free (866) 324-2427
Tony’s Cell (802) 233-4107
Website www.nelandmark.com