VHFA is welcoming the official change of seasons this week with some spring cleaning. This means that the www.vhfa.org and www.vhfa.net web sites will be down for scheduled maintenance beginning at noon Thursday.
Calls fielded by Vermont 2-1-1 operators for emergency housing increased dramatically during January and February 2013. Calls for housing and shelter assistance exceeded all other types of calls in February.
Yesterday, Vermont Public Radio’s Steve Zind explored how to make sense of two recent reports that show vastly different housing affordability experiences for Vermonters.
Zind interviewed representatives from VHFA, the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition, and the Vermont Economy Newsletter.
Historically low mortgage interest rates continued to improve home buying affordability in 2012, according to an index prepared each year by the Vermont Economy Newsletter.
An estimated 14,400 Vermont workers (4.8 percent) commute an hour or longer, according to a recent Census Bureau study of people who worked outside the home in 2011. Every New England state had a higher prevalence of long commutes than Vermont. Nationwide, 8.1 percent of workers commuted this long.
After a trough in 2009, volumes and median prices of primary homes in Vermont are on an upswing. The median sales price jumped two percent in 2012 to $199,000, according to VHFA’s analysis of VT property transfer tax records processed by December 31, 2012. This is almost as high as the state's peak of $200,000 in 2007 and 2008.
Vermont's 2013 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count will take place next Tuesday, January 29 – Wednesday, January 30, 2013. The PIT count is a HUD-required annual count of sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations over the course of a 24-hour period.
Investing in thermal efficiency improvements—primarily air sealing, insulation, and heating system replacements—can dramatically reduce a home’s heating energy use. An estimated 62,000 single and multi-family homes in Vermont will require energy efficient improvements by 2020, according to the state’s recent
Vermont’s economic performance coming out of the recession is among the best, if not the best, in New England, Fed economist Robert Clifford explained at a Lake Champlain Region Chamber of Commerce breakfast yesterday. Clifford identified the state’s steady job growth and much “healthier” housing market as key drivers of this success.
