Key Takeaways — If You Only Read This Far
Two-sentence summary: Uncertainty is not a temporary condition that will lift before your Vermont real estate decision becomes due — it is the permanent weather. Every buyer who paused from 2020 to 2025 waiting for clarity paid more when they finally moved, and the structural conditions that make Vermont different from the national market have not changed regardless of what happened last week.
- 1. Vermont home prices rose 92% over the last decade. The buyers who waited for a better entry point during that window didn’t find one — they found a higher price.
- 2. Vermont leads the nation: 87% of mortgaged homes here are classified as equity-rich. This is a function of scarcity, not speculation. Scarcity does not resolve when the news calms down.
- 3. The macro variables — war, oil, rates, the Fed — are inputs, not answers. They change the monthly payment math. They do not change the Vermont land supply, the school, the community, or the reason you wanted to be here in the first place.
- 4. The FOMC met March 17–18. Whatever they decided, mortgage rates in the 5.9%–6.3% range remain the operating environment for 2026. Six percent is not a barrier. It is a number that follows three percent, which is why it feels like one.
By the Time You Read This, Something Has Changed
By the time you read this, something has changed. It always does.
A war that was raging may have quieted. Or it escalated. The Fed met on March 17th and 18th and made a decision about interest rates that is already priced into this morning’s mortgage quotes. Oil is doing something. The stock market has an opinion about it. Someone on cable television is describing the current situation as either unprecedented or manageable, and they are equally confident either way.
I am writing this nine days before you will read it. Nine days in which the Strait of Hormuz, a 21-mile chokepoint carrying roughly 20% of the world’s oil, may open or stay closed. Nine days in which the Iran conflict may find a back-channel resolution or a new front. Nine days in which a rate move, an inflation print, or a presidential announcement could shift the mortgage market by a quarter point in either direction.
And none of that changes the question in front of you.
“The news is not the obstacle. The habit of treating the news as a precondition for action — that is the obstacle.”
I have been a broker in Central Vermont since 2007. I have watched buyers pause for the financial crisis, then for the recovery, then for the election, then for the next election, then for COVID, then for 8% rates, then for the bank failures, then for the election after that. Some of those pauses were six months. Some were three years. Not one of them was rewarded with the clarity the buyer was waiting for. Every single one of them was rewarded with a higher price.
The Math of Waiting Is Not What You Think It Is
Vermont home values have risen 92% over the last decade. The buyers who paused during that window, waiting for a better moment, did not find a better moment. They found a higher price and, eventually, a higher payment at whatever rate was current when they finally moved.
Here is what the decade looked like. In 2015, a buyer who thought Vermont was “too expensive” at a $250,000 median waited. By 2020, that number was approaching $300,000. By 2022, it had broken $400,000. By 2025, Vermont’s median single-family home had landed around $435,000 — and that is statewide, including the more affordable Northeast Kingdom. Washington, Lamoille, and Chittenden counties run higher.
The buyers who paused in 2020 because of COVID uncertainty paid roughly 40% more when they finally moved. The buyers who paused in 2022 because of rate shock watched the inventory they wanted get absorbed by buyers who had done the math differently.
92% Vermont home price appreciation, last 10 years
87% Vermont mortgaged homes classified as equity-rich — #1 in the nation
2.9 Months of supply in Central Vermont — still a seller’s market
6% The mortgage rate that stopped feeling like 3% and started feeling like a wall
The math of waiting assumes that the future holds a better combination of price, rate, and inventory than today. In most markets, across most of the last decade, that assumption has been wrong. In Vermont, where inventory is structurally constrained by geography, Act 250 permitting, and a development pipeline that cannot scale quickly, that assumption is especially expensive.
Six percent is not a barrier. It is a number that follows three percent, which is why it feels like one. The historical average 30-year fixed rate since 1971 is approximately 7.7%. Buyers who purchased homes in the 1980s at 12% and 14% did not consider those rates a reason to rent forever. They bought the asset, they built equity, and they refinanced when conditions permitted. The strategy has not changed. The memory has just compressed.
Uncertainty Is Not a Weather Event. It’s the Climate.
There is a version of this conversation I have with clients every year. It sounds like this: “We want to wait until things settle down.”
I always ask the same question: when, in your memory, were things settled down? Not calm. Not good. Settled — meaning the kind of stable, low-drama, clear-visibility environment in which a major financial decision feels unambiguously safe.
Nobody has a good answer. Because that moment does not exist. There is always a war, an election, an oil spike, a banking event, an inflation print, a rate decision, a pandemic, or a geopolitical development that is just uncertain enough to justify another quarter of watching and waiting. The news cycle is engineered for urgency. It is not engineered for the long-duration patience that real estate rewards.
“Vermont does not resolve with the news cycle. The soil does not negotiate with the Fed. The school does not close because oil is trading at $90 a barrel.”
Consider what the macro variables actually control in a Vermont real estate transaction versus what they do not.
They control: the monthly payment, the carrying cost at origination, the short-term affordability calculation, and the pace at which other buyers enter or exit the market in any given quarter.
They do not control: the supply of land in Waterbury, Stowe, Morrisville, and Waitsfield. The quality of the Harwood Union or Stowe school systems. The fact that Vermont led the nation with 87% of mortgaged homes equity-rich as of early 2026, a figure no oil price can rewrite. The community, the trails, the farmers’ market, the neighbor who shows up with a chainsaw after a storm without being asked. These are not variables. They are the product.
What the Three Most Likely Macro Scenarios Mean for You Right Now
The Iran conflict, the Fed, and oil prices each have a plausible range of outcomes between now and your spring closing. Here is an honest read of each scenario and what it actually changes — and does not change — for a Central Vermont buyer or seller.
Scenario A — The Resolution
The War Winds Down
A ceasefire or negotiated pause reduces oil-price pressure. Brent retreats toward the $70s. The inflation outlook improves. The Fed gains cover to cut. Mortgage rates drift below 6% by summer. Pent-up buyer demand — which has been enormous and patient — floods back into the market simultaneously. Inventory, already at 2.9 months in Central Vermont, gets absorbed fast. If you are a buyer waiting for this scenario, you will be competing with everyone else who was also waiting for it. The price relief from lower rates gets offset by the competition premium of a suddenly crowded market.
Scenario B — The Grind
Nothing Resolves, Nothing Explodes
The conflict persists at low-grade intensity. Oil stays in the $85–$95 range. The Fed holds. Rates stay in the 6%–6.3% band. The spring market proceeds with the same constrained inventory and the same patient, equity-motivated out-of-state buyers who have been driving Central Vermont demand since 2020. This is the most probable scenario and the most familiar operating environment. Properties priced correctly and presented well sell. The rest sit and accumulate days on market.
Scenario C — The Escalation
The Conflict Widens
Oil pushes back toward $100 or beyond. Inflation re-accelerates. The Fed stays on hold or tightens. Rates climb toward 6.5%–7%. National buyer sentiment freezes. And Vermont — as it did in every prior crisis — benefits from safe-haven demand. The buyers who move during uncertainty are typically the best buyers: decisive, cash-heavy or equity-mobile, and motivated by something more durable than a rate target. Vermont land has historically performed as a flight-to-quality asset precisely when the national picture is most uncertain.
Read those three scenarios again. In every one of them, Central Vermont real estate has a coherent value proposition. The argument for owning Vermont land does not depend on which of these outcomes arrives. It depends on the reasons you wanted to be here in the first place — which were true before February 28th and will be true after whatever happens next.
A Word for Sellers: Equity Is Not a Feeling. It Is a Number.
Vermont leads the nation with 87% of mortgaged homes classified as equity-rich. That is not a statistic about the economy. It is a statistic about accumulated, compounding, unrealized wealth sitting inside the walls of houses in Washington, Lamoille, and Chittenden counties right now.
If you are a Vermont homeowner who has been in your house for eight or more years, there is a high probability you are sitting on more equity than you have ever had. The question is not whether to access it. The question is whether the market condition of today — still a disciplined seller’s market with 2.9 months of supply, still active out-of-state buyer demand, still historically strong prices relative to a decade ago — is the right condition in which to convert that equity to the next chapter.
The sellers who waited for “peak” in 2022 and missed it are now watching appreciation moderate. The sellers who waited for “certainty” in 2023 and 2024 spent two more years carrying property they had already decided to sell. Strong equity and a disciplined market are not permanent guarantees. They are conditions. Conditions change. This one has been favorable for longer than most.
“Strong equity and a disciplined market are not permanent guarantees. They are conditions. Conditions change. This one has been favorable for longer than most.”
A Word for Buyers: The Rate You Originate At Is Not the Rate You Die With
The most common buyer mistake of the last three years has been confusing the origination rate with the permanent cost of the asset. It is not. It is the cost of the loan, which is refinanceable. The cost of the asset is the price you pay on the day you close — and that price is compounding whether you own the house or not.
A buyer who purchased at 6.1% on a $450,000 Vermont single-family home in early 2026 and refinanced to 5.2% eighteen months from now at roughly the same balance has paid for the “high” rate for eighteen months on the way to a lower-rate asset. A buyer who waited eighteen months for that 5.2% rate and paid $490,000 for the same house has not saved money. They have bought a more expensive asset with a slightly lower payment — and they have spent eighteen months renting, carrying, or waiting.
Marry the house. Date the rate. This is not a bumper sticker. It is a financial strategy that has outperformed “wait for the right conditions” in every measurable period of the last two decades of Vermont real estate.
The Bottom Line
I do not know what happened between the day I wrote this and the morning you are reading it. A ceasefire may have been announced. The Fed may have moved. Oil may be cheaper or more expensive than it was last week. Some new event may have entered the news cycle with a name we do not yet know.
Here is what I do know. Vermont’s housing supply is structurally constrained and will not dramatically expand in the next nine days, or the next nine months. Vermont leads the nation in homeowner equity and has for years. The out-of-state buyers who have been moving toward Central Vermont since 2020 — from Boston, New York, and other expensive, dense, loud places — are still moving toward it. The school is still good. The trail is still there. The neighbor still shows up with the chainsaw.
The news will settle. Or it won’t. Either way, the question in front of you will still be the same one it was before the war started. The only thing that changes is how much longer you have been paying someone else’s mortgage while you waited for the answer.
If you are ready to have the real conversation — not about the news, but about the house — call us. That’s the conversation I have been having with Vermont buyers and sellers for over two decades. I know how it ends. It ends with you in Vermont.
Ready to Make the Move? Let’s Talk.
New England Landmark Realty has been navigating Vermont buyers and sellers through every market condition since 2007. Not just the easy ones. If you are ready to cut through the noise and have a real conversation about your Central Vermont real estate decision, we are here.
Office: (802) 253‑4711 • Toll‑Free: (866) 324‑2427 • Tony’s Cell: (802) 233‑4107
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