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Out of all 50 states, Vermont house prices soared the highest with new data revealing they jumped 12.8 percent in the last year — nearly double the national average.
According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), house prices across the US rose by an average of 6.6 per cent between Q1 of last year and this year, despite stubbornly high national mortgage rates, and continued fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the start of the year, house prices have increased 1.1 percent.
The highest jumps in housing prices are predominantely all on the east coast — with New Jersey, New York, Delaware all seeing double-digit increases in property appreciation.
Behind Vermont, the four states with the highest annual appreciation were New Jersey, with 11.6 percent; New York, 10.9 percent; Delaware, 10.7 per cent; and Wisconsin, with an increase of 9.9 percent.
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Only District of Columbia, which technically isn’t a state, saw a decline, with house prices dropping -1.5 percent on average.
At the opposite end of the scale, southern states including Louisiana and Missouri saw the lowest increases in property value, with 2.2 percent, and 2.7 percent, respectively. Texas and North Dakota both saw low increase, with 3.3 percent each, while West Virginia and Colorado both saw an increase 3.6 percent
Low housing inventory is contributing to the high prices across the US, said FHFA’s Anju Vajja, in a statement.
Out of all 50 states, Vermont has seen the highest increase in home appreciation in the country over the past year – 12.8 percent – according to the FHFA.
Great news perhaps, for those already with property in the Green Mountain State, but realtors say that a lack of new inventory and seller hesitancy are actually harming Vermont’s property market – and prospective homeowners are losing out.
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So what is it that is driving up house prices in Vermont?
Vermont consistently ranks among the safest states in the US, taking pole position in 2024 data from World Population Review. The state has the second smallest population in the nation (around 650,000) and is known for its natural beauty.
Historically, certain aspects of the home sale market follow a seasonal cycle in Vermont, according to the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. Most sales take place in the warmer spring and summer months.
Home prices typically increase the most during this period, with harsh winter conditions making it more challenging and less desirable to sell property.
However the median sales price of primary homes sold in Vermont in the first half of 2023 reached a value of $315,000. Even then the VHFA noted that the state was experiencing “strong demand among homebuyers relative to the inventory of homes for sale”.
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Dan Titus, real estate broker and co-owner of Flex Realty in Vermont, says that the lack of inventory in the state, restrictions on construction and state property tax, means it is unlikely that a climb down on property price will be happening any time soon.
“It’s a big time seller’s market right now, and it has been for a long time but it’s even worse now for sure,” he told The Independent. “There’s a lack of housing inventory throughout the whole state, which is only driving prices up”.
“Homes just aren’t being built fast enough to keep up with the demand, and a lot of that has to do with Vermont because it’s tough for developers to build in Vermont. There’s a lot of restrictions and red tape you have to get through in order to develop around here.
“Then our property taxes are some of the highest I believe and, and the country as well. It’s not a cheap place to live.”
All this, Mr Titus said, is coupled with a combination of “out-of-staters” and “empty-nesters” buying or keeping property and pricing out young, native Vermonters. Mr Titus said he had noted a significant uptick during the pandemic.
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“To an out-of-state $100,000 for a home may not be a lot from where they’re from, but here in Vermont, that’s quite a hefty price tag and it’s making it difficult for folks to compete with those out of state buyers,” he told The Independent.
“There’s certainly some of that going on, not as much as what we were seeing during Covid… in the Covid years there was a huge influx of people scooping up homes from out of state. But it is still happening.”
In addition, the climbing prices discouraged current homeowners, even parents whose children no longer lived at home, from selling their properties.
“It’s great if you bought a home 10 years ago, but at the same time, it’s also created a problem where people who are empty-nesters are in large home, their kids have moved out and they want to downsize, but they’re in a low interest loan or something like that or the cost to buy a smaller home doesn’t make sense versus just staying and staying where they’re at,” he said.
He told The Independent: “It’s good if you already own a home, sure. But obviously there’s really no first-time homes for first-time homebuyers. Those are almost gone.”
A person holds a giant penny at a mock funeral for the coin, which was discontinued in 2025, in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
What good is a penny at this point? Penny candy is a thing of the past, and a modern-day penny-pincher wouldn’t get very far if this were their get-rich strategy.
(This newsletter, though, costs you less than a penny. Chip in if you can.)
U.S. mints no longer make pennies, a decision that saves taxpayers an estimated $56 million annually. When the U.S. Treasury Department announced the country would stop minting them, it marked the end of an era — sorta.
Though those pesky copper-colored coins remain in circulation, some businesses, both in Vermont and nationwide, have begun experiencing penny shortages.
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Enter H.837. The bill outlines a plan that could allow retailers to phase out the penny by rounding up or down cash transactions to the nearest nickel.
Other states, including Arizona and Indiana, have passed rounding legislation, and a handful of others are considering it. As written, Vermont’s bill wouldn’t require rounding, a similar approach favored in other jurisdictions.
Some Vermont businesses have already adopted rounding. But lobbyists for Vermont businesses say some of their members fear the practice — without explicit state blessing — could open a business up to a lawsuit over alleged unfair and deceptive practices.
Worried or not, rounding will likely become more necessary as pennies get harder to find, Maggie Lenz, a lobbyist for the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association, told the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee Tuesday. She encouraged the state to create a rounding framework, but discouraged lawmakers from making such a program mandatory.
Rep. Tony Micklus, R-Milton, agreed that rounding should be optional, but said the state should mandate a specific rounding framework for the businesses that choose to round.
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H.837’s approach, which would round down totals ending in 1,2,6 and 7 cents, and round up totals ending in 3, 4, 8 and 9 cents, would seem to be the fairest to consumers and businesses, those who testified agreed.
But the change is likely not net neutral. Zachary Tomanelli, a consumer protection advocate for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, cited a Federal Reserve study that indicated rounding could cost consumers $6 million annually nationwide. That’s because businesses price goods in ways that tend to lead to rounding up.
He called the cost modest and said he generally supported the bill.
Despite H.837 not making it past the crossover deadlines, there’s still hope that pennies might make it into Vermont’s currency cemetery. Rep. Michael Marcotte, R-Coventry, the commerce committee’s chair, said his committee could stick the rounding legislation in the Senate’s economic development bill.
That said, you might not want to ditch your pennies quite yet.
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In the know
Here are some numbers for you: Between 2012 and 2022, Vermont’s primary care workforce declined by 13%. In that same time period, the specialist workforce grew by 23%. That’s according to testimony Jessa Barnard, with the Vermont Medical Society, gave to lawmakers in the House Health Care Committee Tuesday. She said the numbers are reflective of a trend in medicine nationwide, attributed to the fact that primary care docs often make less but pay the same high cost for medical school as their peers in more specialized roles.
In Vermont, Barnard said that this widening gap is leading to a particularly acute shortage. According to a report her organization put out in 2022, the state needs 115 primary care providers to meet the national benchmark for our population size. That figure includes OBGYNs, pediatricians and family medicine docs. By 2030, as our state’s population grows even older, the Vermont Medical Society expects the state to need 370 more primary care physicians to meet the national benchmark.
— Olivia Gieger
Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, spoke with members of the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee Tuesday afternoon about S.327, an economic development bill that supports a number of public resources for business owners across the state.
The bill has had a tough go of it so far.
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Clarkson handed out copies of what she referred to as “the actual bill,” which meant the package voted out by her own Senate Economic Development Committee before being “pretty much fully gutted” on its way through the Senate Appropriations Committee.
In a tight budget year, she said, this bill’s focus was on “supporting what works really well” for Vermont businesses. For Clarkson, that means continuing to invest in the initiatives like the Vermont Economic Growth Incentive program, a set of grants to help businesses expand in the state, which is scheduled to end in January. The Senate, she pointed out, has voted to extend the program for several years in a row, most recently through S.327.
“I am charging the House with doing the same thing,” she said.
Clarkson is also in favor of deepening the state’s relationships with outside investors by funding state delegates abroad. Vermont, she argued, should have more well-placed representation in areas like Québec — which this bill would provide for — and in the future Taiwan, which recently pledged to invest heavily in U.S. tech industries.
“We need somebody whose hand is up saying ‘yes, over here!’” Clarkson said.
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House commerce members met informally with a delegation from Taipei later Tuesday.
— Theo Wells-Spackman
On the move
The Senate advanced a bill Tuesday that would allow parents in Essex County to pay tuition to send pre-K students to New Hampshire schools.
In Vermont’s most rural county, families struggle to access pre-K programs, at least on this side of the border.
But S.214, legislation originally proposed by Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast, would allow for a handful of families near the New Hampshire border in Essex County to tuition their pre-K-aged children to New Hampshire schools, Sen. Steve Heffernan, R-Addison, said on the Senate floor.
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Kindergarten through grade 12 are already able to tuition to New Hampshire schools.
The Senate will need to vote on the bill once more before sending it to the House.
Vermont and the federal government faced off Monday over the state’s first-in-the nation law aimed at forcing polluters to pay for the effects of climate change with the Trump administration warning it would spur “the type of chaos that the Constitution is designed to prevent.”
The hearing before Judge Mary Kay Lanthier of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont comes as the administration has unleashed a broad assault on state-based climate efforts, including suing to invalidate the Vermont law establishing a “climate superfund” to recoup money from the oil and gas industry.
The Biden appointee did not tip her hand, pressing attorneys for the state and the federal government over whether the state is within its rights or stepping on federal authority. The administration is challenging a similar law in New York, and a ruling against Vermont would likely jeopardize that law and chill efforts in other states to adopt climate superfunds.
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Vermont argued the law — “a modest action” — was passed by state lawmakers in 2024 to help raise money to deal with climate change.
RUTLAND, Vt. (WCAX) – Attorneys defended Vermont’s landmark climate superfund law on Monday, as it faces a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration.
Vermont lawmakers passed the Climate Superfund Act in 2024 after devastating flooding in 2023 and other extreme weather events.
The law requires certain large fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate-related damage linked to their emissions between 1995 and 2024.
It is being challenged by the federal government, along with the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and attorneys general from 24 Republican-led states.
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They argue Vermont is overstepping and that climate policy should be handled at the federal level.
Attorneys for Vermont and environmental groups asked a federal judge in Rutland to dismiss those challenges, arguing the state has the right to hold companies accountable.
“It was an intense and technical day of legal arguments over whether the Climate Superfund Act passes muster under federal law, and whether it is appropriate under our Constitution and other doctrines, and is going to survive this series of lawsuits that have been filed against it,” said Christophe Courchesne of the Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Vermont was the first state to pass a law like this. New York followed, and more than 10 other states are considering similar measures.
This case could help decide whether those laws move forward.
