Vermont Housing Production:
What's Actually Being Built?

A decade of state data reveals where Vermont's homes are coming from — and what's at stake for rural communities.

Note: This is a rapidly developed overview of broad statewide trends using publicly available data — a napkin sketch, not a rigorous research project. Numbers should be understood as directionally informative, not authoritative. Do not cite specific figures as canonical fact without independent verification against the underlying sources linked in the methodology section.

Vermont is building about one-fifth of what it needs.

Vermont's official housing target is 8,237 units per year — the number the state needs to build annually to address its housing shortage. Since 2016, the state has averaged just 1,808 units per year, roughly 22% of that goal.

1,808
Avg. units/year built (2016–2025)
8,237
State's annual target
6,429
Annual shortfall
Annual Housing Units Completed by Community Type — 2016–2025
Source: DHCD New Housing Database (Vermont Agency of Commerce & Community Development)
State target: Vermont's annual goal of 8,237 units/year is not shown on the chart because it is nearly four times the highest year recorded — including it would make year-to-year differences unreadable. Community types are based on 2020 Census population density. Year-round means the permit was not classified as a seasonal structure (camp, cabin, seasonal home) — it does not mean the unit is a primary Vermont residence. Many year-round units may be second homes or part-time residences.

Rural Vermont accounts for about 38% of the state's housing production.

Vermont's 180 rural towns — covering the vast majority of the state's land area — collectively produce more new housing than urban Vermont's 13 designated urban centers. Together, rural and suburban communities outside of urban centers are responsible for 73% of all new homes built since 2016.

That production is spread thinly. Nearly every rural permit is a single home, built one at a time, by individual families, contractors, and small developers.

Share of All Statewide Units by Project Size and Community Type (2016–2025)
Source: DHCD New Housing Database (Vermont Agency of Commerce & Community Development)
Each bar shows that tier's share of total statewide production, broken down by project size. Bar lengths are not normalized to 100% — a shorter bar means that tier produced fewer homes overall. 93.3% of rural units come from single-unit projects. In urban areas, the majority of units come from projects of 10 or more.

Rural housing is mostly single-family homes and seasonal camps.

Of all permitted rural structures, about 23.4% are seasonal — camps, vacation cabins, seasonal homes. These do not add to Vermont's year-round housing supply and are excluded from the production counts above. The remainder is overwhelmingly single-family residential construction.

Rural Housing Permits by Type — 2016–2025 (all permits, including seasonal)
Source: DHCD New Housing Database (Vermont Agency of Commerce & Community Development)

What Act 181 means for rural housing production

Vermont's Act 181 (2024) restructures Act 250 development review into a tiered system. Tier 1 designates growth centers and downtowns — the urban cores — for streamlined development review. Tier 2 and Tier 3 cover the remaining 97–98% of Vermont's land area, including nearly all of the rural and suburban towns where single-family homebuilding occurs.

The data above shows that rural Vermont's housing production depends almost entirely on single-unit, one-at-a-time construction — the exact type of development that Tier 2 and Tier 3 regulations govern. New or expanded permitting requirements in these tiers would apply to the category of construction responsible for roughly a third of Vermont's total housing output.

Vermont needs to build more rural housing to meet its targets. Regulatory changes that increase friction on single-family construction in Tier 2/3 risk moving in the opposite direction.

Large-scale development is concentrated in Tier 1 communities.

The table below combines the largest projects from two sources: DHCD (which captures large multi-family buildings as single permit records) and ESITE (Vermont's statewide parcel database, which reveals single-family subdivisions that appear in DHCD as many individual 1-unit permits). Together they show that large-scale residential development — whether apartment buildings or developer subdivisions — is overwhelmingly concentrated in urban and suburban Chittenden County.

Source Address / Parcel Town Community Type Units Year(s) Category
ESITE 09009.063000 Williston Urban 141 2024 Condo
DHCD 70 CAMBRIAN WAY Burlington Urban 134 2024 Multi-Family Dwelling
DHCD 125 CAMBRIAN WAY Burlington Urban 117 2025 Multi-Family Dwelling
ESITE 09012.082000 Williston Urban 107 2024 Multi-unit
DHCD 61 N DORSET ST South Burlington Urban 83 2024 Multi-Family Dwelling
ESITE 08102.028000 Williston Urban 80 2022 Multi-unit
DHCD 422 BLAIR PARK ROAD Williston Urban 72 2019 Multi-Family Dwelling
DHCD 175 LAKE ST Saint Albans City Urban 72 2023 Multi-Family Dwelling
DHCD 66 ZEPHYR ROAD Williston Urban 72 2023 Multi-Family Dwelling
DHCD 2 FREEMAN WOODS Essex Urban 71 2021 Group Quarters
DHCD 27 SUSIE WILSON RD Essex Urban 68 2021 Multi-Family Dwelling
DHCD 197 PEARL STREET Essex Junction Urban 67 2021 Multi-Family Dwelling
DHCD 1712 SHELBURNE ROAD South Burlington Urban 66 2023 Multi-Family Dwelling
DHCD 664 ZEPHYR ROAD Williston Urban 65 2021 Multi-Family Dwelling
DHCD 35 CAMBRIAN WAY Burlington Urban 65 2021 Multi-Family Dwelling
ESITE 0860-01699. South Burlington Urban 63 2018 Residential
ESITE 1260-0200F.001 South Burlington Urban 62 2023 Single-family
ESITE 004005.000 Middlebury Suburban 51 2025 Residential / Farm
ESITE 0570-R1580. South Burlington Urban 50 2018 Multi-unit
ESITE 000000RT10-539 Saint Albans Town Suburban 40 2006–2009 Multi-unit
ESITE 060201.000 Ludlow Rural 39 2022–2025 Single-family
ESITE 1260-00150. South Burlington Urban 37 2023 Single-family
ESITE 022048.005 Saint Johnsbury Suburban 34 1998 Single-family
ESITE 31-1201-903 Lyndon Suburban 31 1998–2003 Residential
Sources: DHCD New Housing Database (Vermont ACCD) · VCGI ESITE Development Sites Parcel Layer
Two data sources: DHCD records are individual building permits; large multi-family projects appear as a single entry. ESITE records group all homes sharing a parcel number within a town — a reliable signal for developer subdivisions that would otherwise be invisible in DHCD as dozens of single-unit permits. The two datasets cannot be directly joined; they are shown here as complementary evidence.

Regional production by planning district

Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC) leads both in total volume and in average project size — a direct result of its urban character and concentrated demand. Most other regions average close to one unit per permit, reflecting the single-family rural pattern.

Regional Planning Commission Total Units (2016–2025) Avg Units / Project
Chittenden County RPC 5,241 2.38
Central Vermont RPC 1,844 1.17
Northwest RPC 1,836 1.15
Northeastern Vermont Dev. Assoc. 1,742 1.04
Lamoille County PC 1,484 1.36
Two Rivers-Ottauquechee RC 1,381 1.11
Windham RC 1,256 1.07
Addison County RPC 883 1.05
Rutland Regional PC 850 1.12
Bennington County RC 625 1.08
Mount Ascutney RC 601 1.1
Source: DHCD New Housing Database (Vermont Agency of Commerce & Community Development) · Year-round units only

Data & Methodology

DHCD New Housing Database

The Vermont Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD) tracks new residential housing completions statewide, derived from local permits and state reporting. Coverage begins in 2016. Each record is a single address with a unit count and coordinates. Large single-family subdivisions often appear as many individual 1-unit records rather than one aggregated project; ESITE parcel analysis (below) is used to identify these.

VCGI ESITE Layer

Vermont Center for Geographic Information (VCGI) maintains the ESITE database of residential sites. We used the ESITE_DevelopmentSites_ParcelCatJoined layer to identify developer subdivisions by finding multiple homes sharing the same parcel number within a town. ESITE and DHCD use different data sources and cannot be reliably joined by address or ID.

2020 U.S. Census (via VCGI)

Town-level population counts come from the 2020 Decennial Census county subdivision geography via VCGI's FS_VCGI_Census2020CountySubdivision_WM_v1 layer. Population density was computed using town boundaries reprojected to Vermont State Plane (EPSG:32145). Classification: Urban — pop ≥ 5,000 and density ≥ 100/km² (13 towns); Suburban — pop ≥ 2,500 or density ≥ 40/km² (62 towns); Rural — all others (180 towns).

What counts as housing?

All year-round residential structures are counted. Seasonal structures — camps, seasonal homes, vacation cabins — are excluded from production counts and target comparisons but are shown separately in the rural construction type chart.