Every few months a buyer asks me some version of the same question. Is now actually a good time to buy, or does it just feel impossible? It's the right question, but it doesn't have a one-word answer. Affordability isn't a single number. It's a handful of separate forces pulling in different directions, and the honest answer depends on which ones you weigh most heavily.
So here's a report card. Grades assigned category by category, based on real Vermont and Chittenden County data, with an overall grade at the end. I'm going to grade honestly rather than optimistically, because a report card where everything gets a B+ isn't a report card, it's a promotional piece. The point of grading is to give you a clear picture of where the friction actually is and where it isn't.
Home Prices: C+
The median single-family sale price in Chittenden County is $575,000 as of April 2026. That's up 1.1% year-over-year from $569,000 in April 2025. Steady appreciation, not a spike.
The reason this earns a C+ rather than a lower grade is that Vermont's price appreciation has been measured rather than extreme. We didn't get the speculative 2021-2022 run-up that Austin, Phoenix, and much of Florida experienced, so we're not in the middle of a correction now. What we have is a market that has appreciated meaningfully but sustainably, at a rate that reflects real demand rather than a bubble.
The reason it doesn't earn higher is that $575,000 as a median price is a substantial number. For a family with median income, that's a challenging home to buy without significant savings, a strong dual income, or family help. This is not a market where a first-time buyer can easily land in a starter home on one modest income.
The verdict: prices are high enough to be a real barrier for many buyers, but they're not climbing so fast that waiting is likely to help. If you can make the math work today, waiting probably won't reward you.
Mortgage Rates: C-
Thirty-year fixed rates in Vermont are hovering around 6.75% as of this month. That's meaningfully harder than the 3% rates buyers had in 2021, but historically it's not extreme. Rates were higher than this through much of the 1990s and early 2000s. Buyers built lives at those rates and so can buyers today.
The reason this earns a C- rather than a middle grade is that the math at 6.75% is genuinely tough. On a $500,000 mortgage, the monthly principal and interest payment is roughly $3,240. A single point drop in rate to 5.75% would drop that payment to roughly $2,918, a savings of over $300 a month, or nearly $115,000 in interest over the life of the loan. Rates matter more than most buyers realize, and every quarter-point move changes affordability in ways that a $10,000 price difference does not.
The advice I give buyers about rates is that trying to time them is a losing game. If you can afford the payment today at 6.75%, you can buy today. If rates fall meaningfully later, you can refinance. If they don't, you own a home. If you can't afford the payment today, waiting for rates to drop is a strategy that only works if the drop happens before prices climb enough to eat the savings, which is not the way to bet.
Inventory: C+
Chittenden County had 154 active listings in April 2026, up modestly from 146 a year ago. Closed sales in April were up 14% year-over-year, from 71 to 81. Both supply and demand are up, with demand outpacing supply, which is why prices are still climbing.
The reason this earns a C+ rather than a lower grade is that inventory is genuinely moving in the right direction, and market clearing is healthy. Median days on market across all price bands is 23 to 28 days, meaning well-priced homes are moving in three to four weeks. That's a functional market, not a broken one.
The reason it doesn't earn higher is that inventory levels are still tight relative to buyer demand, and the pending pipeline in some submarkets is even tighter. Winooski has more homes under contract than actively listed. Essex Junction has 41 pending against 36 active. In competitive segments, buyers still need to be ready to move fast, and inventory constraint is a real friction.
Wage Growth vs. Housing Costs: B-
This is the category most affordability headlines skip, and it's the one where the data surprised me most when I ran it.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Vermont wages grew 5.7% from June 2025 to June 2026. Chittenden County median home prices grew 5.4% over the roughly equivalent period. For the first time in several years, wage growth is keeping pace with, and actually slightly outpacing, home price growth. That's meaningful.
The reason this doesn't earn a higher grade is that the multi-year picture is weaker. Looking back five years, wage growth has significantly trailed home price growth in Vermont, as it has nationally. The gap that accumulated between 2020 and 2024 is real and it's the reason affordability feels tighter now than the current year's numbers would suggest. Twelve months of parity doesn't undo four years of divergence.
But the direction has changed and that matters. If wage growth continues to keep pace with or slightly outpace home price growth over the next few years, the affordability squeeze will gradually ease rather than worsen. That's a real shift from the trajectory of the past several years.
Down Payment & Assistance Programs: B+
The Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA) runs several programs that can materially change what a buyer can afford, and most buyers don't know about them or misunderstand what they actually provide.
The common assumption is that VHFA is a down payment assistance program, and that most eligible buyers get significant help with their down payment. In practice, most of the buyers I work with who qualify for VHFA programming don't qualify for down payment assistance itself. What they do qualify for is a meaningfully better interest rate than they'd get on a standard conventional mortgage. On a $500,000 loan, even a half-point rate improvement saves roughly $150 a month and tens of thousands over the life of the loan.
That reframing matters because it means VHFA is useful to more buyers than most people think. If you assumed you didn't qualify because you're not first-time, low-income, or asking for cash toward closing, you might qualify anyway for the rate advantage.
The reason this earns a B+ is that these programs meaningfully improve affordability for buyers who use them, they're state-backed and well-established, and they're broadly underutilized because buyers don't know they exist. The reason it doesn't earn an A is that they don't help every buyer, income limits apply, and the process adds some complexity to the transaction. But if you're buying in Vermont and you haven't asked a lender specifically about VHFA options, you're leaving money on the table.
The Overall Grade: C+
Vermont housing in 2026 is not easy. Prices are elevated, rates are high, inventory is tight in the segments most buyers actually want, and the accumulated gap between wages and housing costs from the past several years is still working itself out. That's the honest picture and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
But it isn't broken either. Wages are keeping pace with prices for the first time in years. Rate improvements through VHFA are available to more buyers than most people realize. Inventory is easing, slowly. And the market is functional, clearing efficiently, and generally rewarding buyers and sellers who make good decisions.
A C+ market is a market where the strategy matters. The buyers I see succeeding in 2026 are the ones who work with a lender to understand every dollar of their real monthly payment before offering, who explore VHFA and other programs, who buy at their comfortable number rather than their qualifying number, and who move decisively when the right home appears. The buyers who struggle are the ones who wait for the market to hand them a deal it isn't going to hand them.
The Bottom Line
No single grade tells the whole story. A market can be tough on price and workable on rates, or the opposite. The report card matters less than where you personally land within it, which depends on your income, your savings, your timeline, and what you're actually looking for.
