Best Places to Buy Rental Property in Vermont (2026)

Resideline currently has enough sales and rental data to compare South Burlington, Essex Junction, Colchester and Burlington. This is a comparison of four covered markets, not a comprehensive ranking of Vermont. Gross asking rental yields run from 5.7 percent in Burlington to 6.2 percent in South Burlington. One caution on the rent side: in Burlington houses asked a median of $3,600 while the all-type median was $2,445. For a house, compare house rents with house sale prices; substituting the house rent into a ratio whose denominator is a mixed sale median only makes the number look better, not more representative. Volume and yield part ways: Burlington closes about 56 homes a month, more than any other city here, and ranks fourth on yield at 5.7 percent. Measured against the whole state, these are expensive markets: a median of $481,750 here against $415,000 statewide.

The ranking

Gross yield here is an asking rental yield screen: twelve times the median asking rent over the median closed price, before taxes, insurance, vacancy, management or repairs. Sales use municipal boundaries. Rental listings use the associated city name and may cover a wider postal area. The ratio therefore compares related, but not perfectly matched, market samples, and a home bought at the median price does not necessarily earn the median rent. Confirmed-close medians appear where at least 30 confirmed lease closes were recorded in the window.

City by city

1. South Burlington, 6.2 percent gross

Read South Burlington's $2,500 rent as an apartment figure: 62 percent of its listings are apartments or condos, and the house median is $3,800. At $485,000 to buy and $2,500 a month to rent, South Burlington yields 6.2 percent gross on 329 tracked closings. Houses there closed at about $280 per square foot. See the South Burlington page for the property mix and the price band.

2. Essex Junction, 6.1 percent gross

Essex Junction's rental sample is 71 percent apartments and condos while its sales are mostly houses, so the $2,150 asking median understates what a house rents for there. Homes in Essex Junction closed at a median of $425,000 over the last twelve months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $2,150, a gross yield of 6.1 percent. The Essex Junction market page carries the monthly figures.

3. Colchester, 5.8 percent gross

Colchester's rental sample is 66 percent apartments and condos while its sales are mostly houses, so the $2,300 asking median understates what a house rents for there: houses asked $2,775. At $478,500 to buy and $2,300 a month to rent, Colchester yields 5.8 percent gross on 184 tracked closings. Houses there closed at about $270 per square foot. See the Colchester page for the property mix and the price band.

4. Burlington, 5.7 percent gross

Burlington's rental sample is 82 percent apartments and condos while its sales are mostly houses, so the $2,445 asking median understates what a house rents for there: houses asked $3,600. The numbers: $512,500 median closed price across 334 closings, $2,445 median asking rent across 1,052 listings, 5.7 percent gross. Full detail is on the Burlington market page.

How this ranking is built

• •Cities: every Vermont city where Resideline tracked at least 100 closings inside the municipal boundary in its reporting window (six or twelve months) and at least 50 rental listings under the city's name since September 10, 2025: 4 cities qualify.
• •Prices: the median price homes closed at inside the city limits, from Resideline's tracked closings; the state comparison uses the statewide median of $415,000 across 5,747 closings.
• •Rents: the median advertised rent on rental listings Resideline tracked in the last twelve months, all property types, measured on the listings that carry the city's name (a postal footprint, wider than the city line in some places).
• •Confirmed-close medians: Observed rent blends two kinds of record: confirmed lease closes extracted from property records, and the final asking rent on listings that left Resideline tracking without a recorded close. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed closes in the window, their median is printed beside the asking figure; in the last twelve months about a quarter of Resideline's close episodes are confirmed closes. The asking and confirmed-close samples are separate, not paired, so a difference between their medians is not a measured gap on the same listings.
• •What is missing: taxes, insurance, vacancy, management and repairs, which turn a gross yield into a net one, and the unit mix, which differs between what sells and what rents.

Sources and related pages

• •Resideline tracked closings inside city limits (window per city, updated September 10, 2026) and rental listings since September 10, 2025; confirmed lease closes extracted from property records.
• •More Vermont rankings: The Vermont housing market hub carries the statewide figures and the largest Vermont markets by closings.
• •Asking rent vs observed rent compares live asking rents with final asking rents under that study's own definition; it says nothing about confirmed lease closes.

Prepared with Resideline's research pipeline and reviewed by Jeffrey Batista, Resideline's founder.