Is Vermont a Good Place to Live? Don't Move Here If...

Is Vermont a good place to live? For a lot of people, yes. You get space, four real seasons and a pace that lets you breathe. But it’s the wrong move for anyone who needs short winters, quick errands or a house by next month, and it’s better to find that out from a blog post than from a moving truck.

I’m a REALTOR® who lives in northern Lamoille County. My husband Daniel and I moved here from Boston and kept our remote work. This first part of the guide is the filter: the honest list of reasons not to come. If you read it and still want to move, the rest of the guide is for you.

Good fit if you…	Not a fit if you…
Want space and quiet more than convenience	Need takeout, transit and stores within 10 minutes
Like winter, or at least don’t mind five months of it	Count the days to spring every January
Can plan errands and stock up	Expect everything to be a short drive away
Work remotely and can get a solid connection	Can’t risk a single dropped call
Can wait for the right house	Need to buy within a month or two
Want to know your neighbors	Want to stay anonymous

Short on time? Jump to the pros and cons.

Don’t move here if you need winter to be short

How bad are Vermont winters?

Long more than brutal. Snow can fly in November and hang on into April, and the dark arrives early.

Winter by the numbers:

• 88 inches of snow a year in Burlington, one of the milder spots in the state
• 29°F and 13°F: Burlington’s average January high and low
• 41 inches of snow in January alone on the summit of Mount Mansfield, almost double Burlington’s 21 inches
• 4:12 PM: the earliest sunset, around December 9
• 8 hours 49 minutes: daylight on the shortest day of the year

Snow and temperature: NOAA 1991 to 2020 normals. Sunset and daylight: 2026.

Most northern towns sit somewhere between Burlington and the mountain, and a few hundred feet of elevation can change your driveway’s whole winter. If you work an East Coast schedule, you’ll start and finish a lot of winter workdays in the dark.

We moved in on Black Friday. By the time we were “moved in” that Sunday, it had started to snow, and it didn’t stop until Wednesday. That first winter turned out to be mild by local standards. We still planned ahead: we’re 20 minutes from the nearest full-size grocery store, so we shopped once a week and kept enough on hand in case anything happened.

Don’t move here if mud season would wreck your week

What is mud season in Vermont?

Mud season is the stretch between snowmelt and green-up, roughly March into May, when the frost comes out of the ground and dirt roads turn soft. Some years it’s a few weeks. Some years it feels like a season of its own, because it is.

Towns protect their gravel roads by posting weight limits. In 2026, Morristown posted its roads from March 9 to May 1: 15,000 pounds for two-axle vehicles and 18,000 for three-axle trucks. In Stowe, Trapp Hill Road was closed for a stretch that March, and a driver who ignored the closure got stuck.

Mud season is not the time to go hiking. It’s also not the time to go exploring on roads you’ve never driven, unless they’re paved. Towns do their best, but if your transfer station is only open on weekends, the road to it is pretty torn up by Saturday afternoon.

Don’t move here if you expect to find a house fast

Is there a housing shortage in Vermont?

Yes. The state’s own housing needs assessment, released in August 2024, estimates Vermont needs an additional 24,000 to 36,000 homes by 2029. Single-family purchase prices rose 38% between 2019 and 2023. In the northern towns most remote workers look at, the good houses don’t sit long, and there often aren’t many to choose from in a given month.

Our own story is a lesson in timing more than speed. We weren’t actively house hunting when it happened. A year earlier we’d talked to a realtor and missed out on this house. A year later it came back on the market, the realtor called us, we went to see it, put in an offer, and that was that. If we hadn’t already been on someone’s list, we’d never have known.

A year or more out? Tell me what you’re looking for (towns, budget, must-haves) and I’ll let you know when something that fits comes on the market. Send me your wish list.

Don’t move here if you want low taxes

Is Vermont expensive to live in?

Yes, mostly in three places: housing, taxes and heat. What tends to surprise people is the property tax bill and how long the heating season runs.

Income tax. Vermont has four brackets: 3.35%, 6.60%, 7.60% and 8.75%. On the 2025 schedule, the top rate starts above $249,700 of taxable income for single filers and $304,000 for married couples filing jointly. If you’re coming from Massachusetts or New York, compare your own numbers rather than the headline rates.

Property tax. A big share of a Vermont property tax bill is the education tax, and it comes in two rates: homestead and nonhomestead. Your primary home gets the homestead rate only if you file a Homestead Declaration every year (due April 15; the state’s last accepted date is October 15). Second homes and rentals are always nonhomestead. Every town’s rate is different, so look up the current rate for the exact town before you budget.

Education funding is changing. Act 73 of 2025 overhauls how Vermont pays for schools: a per-pupil funding formula starting July 1, 2028 (if conditions are met), a capped homestead exemption replacing the current property tax credit, and plans for larger school districts. Key reports are due in December 2026 and the details are still being decided. Budget conservatively and don’t count on today’s rate staying put.

If your employer is in another state. A handful of states, New York the best known, can keep taxing remote employees who move away under what’s called the “convenience of the employer” rule. If your job is based outside Vermont, ask a CPA how it applies to you before you move, not after.

This section is general information, not tax or legal advice. Part 4 goes deeper on taxes and the cost of living.

Don’t move here if you need everything close

How far is everything in rural Vermont?

Farther than you’re used to. Vermont is built around the car, and outside Burlington there isn’t much public transit to fall back on. In most small towns, “close” means a general store for the basics and a 20 to 30 minute drive for everything else.

Here’s our version, from northern Lamoille County:

Errand	Drive from our house
General store (milk, bread, the basics)	About 5 minutes
Full-size supermarket and most errands	20 to 30 minutes
Hospital	About 30 minutes
Dentist	About 45 minutes

What I miss most from Boston is the convenience: everything nearby, a train when you need one, food delivered to the door. More restaurants are on DoorDash around here than when we moved, but it still isn’t something we use. Amazon, on the other hand, shows up all the time.

The main hospitals in northern Vermont are Copley Hospital in Morrisville, the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans and Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin. Ours is Copley, about 30 minutes away. Specialists are often in Burlington, which can be an hour or more from the hill towns.

Don’t move here if your job can’t survive one bad connection

Can you work remotely from rural Vermont?

Yes, from more places every year, but it’s decided address by address, not town by town. Two houses on the same road can have completely different options.

The state is close to finishing a long buildout. According to the Vermont Community Broadband Board, there are plans in place to serve more than 99% of Vermont addresses, and about 82% of the state is projected to have fiber once the current grant programs wrap up. “Planned” isn’t the same as “lit,” though. The last federal grant round covered 16,895 addresses, and providers have four years to finish building.

We started on Starlink and switched to fiber a year or two in. Neither one has given us trouble, but fiber is cheaper and doesn’t have data limits, which matters when two people work from home.

Don’t move here if you need nightlife and anonymity

Is Vermont boring?

It depends on what you need. If you want late nights, a dozen restaurants to pick from and something new every weekend, rural Vermont will feel quiet, and Burlington is the closest thing to a city. If quiet is the point, it’s the opposite of boring. There’s always something to do outside, and the community life is real.

The flip side of small towns is that people know who you are. When we moved in, our neighbors came over to say hello with Rice Krispie treats, and we met all of their dogs. Every neighbor we’ve met has been lovely. That kind of welcome is common here, and so is everyone knowing your car.

Social life takes some effort, but the doors are there:

• Town Meeting Day, the first Tuesday in March, when many towns still vote on budgets in person.
• Front Porch Forum, the neighborhood email list most Vermont towns run on, for everything from lost dogs to firewood.
• The ski hill, the trailhead and the general store, where you’ll see the same faces every week.
• Volunteer fire departments, libraries and town committees, which always need people.

The second-winter test

Are people leaving Vermont?

Some are. Census estimates show Vermont lost more than 1,800 residents in the year ending mid-2025, the largest percentage drop of any state. More than 700 more people moved to other states than came from them, just over 600 arrived from abroad, and more people died than were born.

Those numbers don’t mean Vermont is emptying out, but they’re a useful reminder that moving here and staying here are two different decisions. Your first winter has novelty on its side: the first big storm, the first cord of wood, the first clear night with real stars. The second one is just winter.

So here’s the test. Don’t picture your first January. Picture your second: the 4:12 PM sunset, the drive to the store when the road hasn’t been plowed yet, mud season right behind it. If that still sounds like a good trade for the quiet, keep reading.

Why we stay

For all of the above, the reason we’re here is simple: the nature and the calm. There’s no hustle and bustle outside our door. The trade is real, and for us it’s worth it.

Vermont does well by people who want:

• The outdoors as a daily thing, not a weekend trip: trails, rivers, lakes and ski hills within a short drive.
• Four distinct seasons, including the inconvenient ones.
• Local food, from farm stands to the general store’s sandwich counter.
• A town small enough to be part of, where showing up to a meeting actually changes something.
• Quiet, the kind you notice the first night you can hear nothing at all.

The short version: pros and cons of living in Vermont

Pros	Cons
Space, quiet and natural beauty	Long, dark winters
Four real seasons and outdoor access year round	Mud season on dirt roads, roughly March to May
Close-knit small towns and neighbors who show up	Few homes for sale and a statewide housing shortage
Fiber internet reaching more addresses every year	Connection quality varies address by address
Remote work lets you keep a city salary	High property and income taxes, with education funding in flux
A slower pace	20 to 30 minute drives for most errands and care

Sources

1. NOAA NCEI 1991 to 2020 climate normals: Burlington snowfall, January temperatures and January snowfall, via Current Results
2. Sunrise and sunset, Burlington VT, 2026
3. Morristown Highway Department, posted roads, March 2026
4. “Towns ban heavy rigs from muddy roads,” News & Citizen via VTDigger, March 2026
5. Vermont Housing Needs Assessment 2025 to 2029, August 2024
6. Vermont income tax rate schedule, tax year 2025
7. Vermont Department of Taxes, Homestead Declaration
8. Summary of Act 73 of 2025, January 2026
9. Vermont Community Broadband Board annual report, January 2026
10. Vermont Business Magazine on federal broadband grants, February 2025
11. “Vermont population declines again,” Vermont Public, January 2026