Peter Tucker Discusses Vermont’s Housing Market, Affordability and What Comes Next
Monday, August 31, 2026, on Common Sense Radio with Bill Sayre, weekdays, 11 o’clock till Noon.
Peter Tucker, Director of Advocacy for the Vermont Realtors Associationwi, joins Bill with an update on the health and resiliency of the Housing Market — Vermont and National — and the factors that affect the outlook for future conditions.
Potential Questions and Issues
What indicators should we use to evaluate the health and resiliency of the Housing market? Sales of existing homes, median sales price, housing starts, housing permits, measures of construction costs. Other measures? What do these measures show, compared with earlier times, and compared with other parts of the nation? And, what about variations in the state of Vermont — Chittenden County or Northwest Vermont, compared with other areas, particularly rural areas?
How should we best measure affordability? Median price relative to family income, or household income, or relative to a general measure of personal income. Mortgage payment, with 20 percent downpayment, relative to family income. What do these measures show?
How do demographics affect, and how are they affected by, these housing market measures of health, resiliency and affordability? Vermont population down last two years for which we have statistics? Yet the number of households continues to increase. So the average household size is declining. What are the implications of this trend for the housing market? Other demographic trends: second highest median age in the nation; increases in population over 65; declines, particularly in the working age population; declines in school enrollment; lowest fertility rate in nation; lowest number of births since before the Civil War; low migration into Vermont — from other States, and from other Nations.
How do high property taxes affect housing affordability and other measures housing health and resiliency? How do current property taxes compare with those in earlier times, and also how do they compare with property taxes in other States of the nation, such as those whose working age population, and total population, have been increasing. Mortgage interest rates are a major factor in affordability. What is the connection between Federal Deficits and Mortgage Rates? However, property taxes, at least in Vermont, often are more important than mortgage rates in affecting affordability? What is the connection between housing prices and travel time till work?
What policy changes have been made to improve affordability? Increases in supply? Changes in regulation — accessory dwelling units, state law, temporarily increasing accessory units as an allowable use. What are the conditions under which this new right can be exercised? What are the limitations? What about limitations on infrastructure — Community Housing Investment Program (CHIP)? And the potential for rehabilitating existing homes. Aren’t existing homes largely more affordable than new homes?
What will be the effects of creating a new tax on second homes? How will a second home be defined? What is the intended purpose of such a tax? Is there an element of the politics of envy? What might be the unintended consequences of such a tax? On the travel and tourism industry, in particular. And on retail sales and meals taxes in tourist areas? And, perhaps most importantly, on attitude toward high income earners.
Similarly for proposed tax on the highest income earners? Could this tax be seen as punishing the economically successful? What should we know about the pattern of income fluctuations over time? And what should we know about the mobility of income earners? How is this mobility a key benefit of a federalist decentralized form of government.
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