The Answer to Vermont’s “Underwater” Property Market
Peter G de Krassel
Vermont’s housing has priced itself beyond the reach of most buyers and renters – and is making people more house insecure after July’s record-breaking rainfall and historic flooding that drowned downtown Montpelier — and which continued into August. A cataclysmic replay of the late winter flood of 1992, and Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 that has disproportionately impacted low-income areas, and many of Vermont’s 234 mobile home parks, that are built in floodplains.
Manufactured housing, traditionally referred to as mobile homes, account for about seven percent of Vermont’s housing. A third of those homes, or about 6,700 are in mobile home parks. The rest on private lots.