Written & reviewed by Stephen A. Sobin, President of Select Commercial Funding LLC
Vermont
Vermont Apartment Loans
Select Commercial arranges Vermont apartment loans from $1,500,000, up to 80% LTV, with rates as low as 5.67%. We compare Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, bank and bridge programs to fit your property. For larger balances, see multifamily loans. See current rates on every loan type we offer.
Get a Free QuoteFinancing Options in Vermont
Vermont apartment, multifamily and commercial properties each have dedicated financing. Pick the page that matches your property:
Financing more of the state? See Vermont commercial mortgages.
Financing in another state? Explore our apartment loans, multifamily loans and commercial mortgages nationwide.
Vermont Apartment Loan Rates
Rates updated as of August 31, 2026
| Loan Type | Rate* | Max LTV |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Year Fixed | 6.07% | Up to 80% |
| 7 Year Fixed | 6.17% | Up to 80% |
| 10 Year Fixed | 6.25% | Up to 80% |
| Loan Type | Rate* | Max LTV |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Year Fixed | 5.67% | Up to 75% |
| 7 Year Fixed | 5.77% | Up to 75% |
| 10 Year Fixed | 5.85% | Up to 75% |
- Streamlined underwriting for institutional multifamily
- Cash-out refinances are acceptable
- Interest-only and non-recourse options
- Minimum 1.25x debt-service-coverage ratio
Rates last updated August 31, 2026. Rates and maximum LTV shown represent our best-case pricing scenarios. Actual rates, LTV, and loan terms are subject to underwriting approval and may vary.
Compare Vermont Apartment Loan Programs
As a broker we compare every program for your best-fit Vermont apartment financing:
| Program | Typical rate* | Max leverage | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fannie Mae Small Loan | 6.07% | Up to 80% | Non-recourse, fixed to 30 yrs |
| Freddie Mac SBL | 6.15% | Up to 80% | $2M to $10M small balance |
| FHA / HUD | 6.12% | Up to 85% | Highest leverage, longest term |
| Bank / portfolio | 6.25% | Up to 75% | Flexible, value-add |
| Bridge | 9.00% | Up to 80% LTC | Reposition, lease-up |
Most apartment lenders look for a debt-service-coverage ratio (DSCR) of at least 1.25x.
2026 Vermont Apartment Loan Market
Two things define Vermont apartment lending in 2026. Burlington is pulling away from the town next door at a rate you would expect in a much larger market. And most of Vermont produces so little professionally managed apartment data that a lender genuinely has to work harder here than in almost any other state.
Where rents stand. As of August 2026, average asking rent in Burlington was $2,617, up 6.02% over the year, the strongest growth we have measured in New England this year. South Burlington, immediately adjacent, was $1,879, up 1.75%. Those are RentCafe figures for professionally managed buildings of fifty units and up. Burlington asks roughly seven hundred and forty dollars more than South Burlington and is growing more than three times as fast.
That pattern is worth noting because it runs the other way in most of New England. In Rhode Island, Providence fell while the cities around it rose. In Maine, Portland was flat while South Portland posted the strongest gain in the state. In Vermont the core is doing the pulling and the ring is not keeping up. If you have been underwriting New England on the assumption that the suburbs are where the growth is, Vermont will not behave the way you expect.
The data problem is a real underwriting constraint, not a footnote. Outside Chittenden County, most Vermont communities do not have enough fifty unit and larger professionally managed inventory for the standard survey sources to publish a rent or a vacancy figure at all. That is not a comment on demand, which in most of Vermont is tight. It means the appraiser cannot lean on published market data and has to build a comparable set from the ground up, and it means an out of state lender working from a screen will not find the numbers it is used to finding. Files here move when the borrower supplies what the market data cannot: several years of the property’s own operating history, a documented occupancy record and a rent roll that shows real, collected rents.
What that means for your file. Vermont apartment loans are sized on demonstrated in place income at a coverage ratio, and the state specific item to settle early is whether the property carries an Act 250 land use permit and what its conditions say. That is covered below.
Across Vermont we arrange apartment building loans from $1,500,000 through agency, bank, FHA and bridge programs. Rate and leverage follow the rent roll and the trailing twelve months of operating income.
Vermont Markets We Finance
Vermont’s apartment stock is concentrated around Burlington, with smaller markets strung along the Champlain valley, the Connecticut river and the central corridor. Almost everything outside Chittenden County is a small balance, community bank and credit union business.
Burlington and Chittenden County
The center of the Vermont apartment market, at about $2,617 as of August 2026 and up 6.02% over the year. Burlington runs on a major university and medical center, a substantial technology and manufacturing presence in the county, state and regional healthcare employment, and a well established downtown and waterfront economy. The city is physically small and constrained, and its housing stock is largely older wood frame, much of it converted from single family and two family use. That combination of hard supply limits and durable institutional demand is the whole story of Burlington rents. It is also the part of Vermont where an out of state lender is most likely to have an existing view and where agency small balance and bank capital compete most actively.
South Burlington, Essex, Williston and Winooski
South Burlington was about $1,879 as of August 2026, up 1.75%, and the Chittenden County ring is where most of Vermont’s newer apartment product has been built. Essex, Williston, Colchester and Winooski carry a mix of mid-century and recent construction at a lower basis per unit than Burlington proper, with a tenant base that overlaps heavily with the city. For a buyer, this ring is the most conventional apartment product in Vermont and the easiest to finance on standard terms.
Montpelier, Barre, Rutland and central Vermont
The central corridor runs on state government in Montpelier, healthcare, education, granite and manufacturing in the Barre area, and a regional retail and healthcare role in Rutland. Basis per unit here is a fraction of Chittenden County and going in yields are correspondingly high. These markets do not generate published apartment rent surveys, so the appraisal has to be built rather than looked up, and a lender will want more operating history to compensate. That is a documentation problem rather than a credit problem, and it is solvable.
Bennington, Brattleboro, St. Albans, the Northeast Kingdom and the resort towns
Vermont’s edges. Brattleboro and Bennington in the south, St. Albans and the Champlain islands in the northwest, and the Northeast Kingdom communities are small, largely older stock, financed by Vermont banks and credit unions. The resort towns are a separate business again: Stowe, Killington, Ludlow, Warren and Manchester have economies built on visitors, a large share of housing that is not conventionally rented at all, and short term rental competition that is a genuine factor in the analysis rather than a footnote. Conventional apartment comparables in those towns are very thin, and an appraisal needs to be defended explicitly.
Rent figures above are average asking rents across professionally managed buildings of fifty units and up as of August 2026. Where a Vermont market is not quoted here, it is because those sources did not publish a figure for it on that basis, and we would rather say so than repeat a number we cannot stand behind.
Act 250 Is a Diligence Item on a Vermont Apartment Building
Vermont is the only state with anything quite like Act 250, and an apartment building can be subject to it in ways that are not visible from the street. If you are buying here from out of state, this is the question to ask first, because the answer shapes what you can do with the property afterwards.
What it is. Act 250 is Vermont’s land use and development law, enacted in 1970 and codified at 10 V.S.A. Chapter 151. The State describes it as a public, quasi judicial process for reviewing and managing the environmental, social and fiscal consequences of major subdivisions and developments in Vermont. It is administered through nine District Environmental Commissions, staffed by citizen volunteers and full time professionals and overseen by the Land Use Review Board, and it handles roughly four hundred applications a year. Applications are reviewed against a set of ten criteria, which have been modified several times, most recently in 2024.
The sentence that matters to an owner. The State says that district commissions generally attach conditions to land use permits to ensure that the Act 250 criteria remain satisfied in perpetuity. Conditions written to hold in perpetuity are conditions that outlast the developer who agreed to them. If the building you are buying was permitted under Act 250, those conditions are part of what you are buying, and they can touch things an apartment owner cares about: site access and traffic, water and wastewater capacity, stormwater, landscaping and screening, lighting, hours of construction, and in some cases the number and type of units themselves.
Why a lender treats this as a threshold question. Two reasons. A permit condition can constrain a business plan. If your underwriting assumes adding units, converting space, expanding parking or changing site access, a condition may require a permit amendment before any of it happens, and an amendment is a process with a timeline rather than a formality. And a permit condition can be a compliance exposure. A property operating outside its permit conditions has a problem that a lender will treat as a title and compliance issue rather than a market one, and it is exactly the kind of thing that surfaces late.
The good news is that Vermont gives you a way to get a straight answer. District coordinators issue written jurisdictional opinions on whether an activity requires an Act 250 permit. A written opinion from the district coordinator is a document. It goes in the file, a lender can read it, and it settles a question that would otherwise be answered with opinions. Where a property is clearly permitted, get the permit and every amendment to it, and read the conditions rather than the cover page.
What to actually do on a purchase. Ask the seller directly, in writing, whether the property holds an Act 250 land use permit and request copies of the permit and all amendments. Read the conditions against your business plan, not just against the current operation. Where there is genuine doubt about whether jurisdiction applies, or where your plan may itself trigger review, obtain a written jurisdictional opinion from the district coordinator before you go under contract, or make the contract conditional on it. Then hand the permit, the conditions and the opinion to your lender with the rent roll. A Vermont file that arrives with this settled prices and closes like any other apartment loan. A file where it is discovered during title review does not.
And where Act 250 does not apply. Plenty of Vermont apartment buildings are outside it entirely, particularly older stock in the established parts of Burlington and the other cities that predates the law or fell below the thresholds. If yours is one of them, say so in the submission with something to back it up. It removes a question that an out of state underwriter will otherwise raise.
Refinancing a Vermont Apartment Building
Vermont refinances are sized on coverage rather than value in nearly every case, and the practical work is usually about documentation rather than about the numbers, because the published market data an underwriter would normally lean on does not exist for most of the state.
The rent roll and the trailing twelve months, and then some. Proceeds are set by in place income at a debt service coverage ratio near 1.25x. In Vermont it is worth sending more history than the minimum. Where market data is thin, a documented multi year occupancy and collection record is the evidence that substitutes for it, and it materially changes how an out of state underwriter reads the file.
Act 250 documents if they exist. The permit, the amendments and the conditions, or a written jurisdictional opinion if you have one. If the property is outside Act 250, say so and explain why. Either answer is fine. An unanswered question is not.
Heat, metering and the winter. Vermont winters are long and much of the state’s apartment stock is older wood frame built around older heating systems. Buildings where residents pay their own heat carry a structurally lower and more predictable expense ratio, and a lender reads that difference directly into the loan amount. Where the owner pays, send actual billing across a full heating season rather than an estimate, and state plainly how each unit is heated.
The age of the building. Roofs, heating plant, wiring, windows and the exterior envelope drive the reserve number on Vermont stock, and reserves come off the income used to size the loan. Freeze and thaw cycles and snow loading are real here in a way they are not further south. Capital work completed in the last several years belongs in the file with invoices rather than in a sentence.
Cash out is available and is sized the same way. Agency, bank, credit union and life company lenders will all consider cash out on a stabilized Vermont apartment property. The constraint is the coverage math, not the program. Chittenden County owners who have held through the last several years of rent growth frequently have more available than they expect, and the fastest way to find out is to send the rent roll and the trailing twelve months.
Vermont Multifamily Financing
Apartment loan and multifamily loan describe the same debt: financing secured by a building with five or more residential units. We arrange it throughout Vermont, from a Barre walk up to a newer South Burlington asset, and the terminology has no effect on how the file is underwritten.
In Vermont, loan size decides who competes, and so does the availability of comparable data. Smaller balances usually price best with Vermont banks, credit unions and the agency small balance programs, where local knowledge substitutes for published market data. Larger balances open the field to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, life companies and CMBS, and multifamily loan rates there are frequently tighter because the loan is large enough to securitize. The trade is a heavier package: full appraisal, property condition report, environmental review, and sizing driven by net operating income, debt service coverage and debt yield.
Vermont multifamily lenders settle two questions before most others: whether Act 250 touches the property and what its conditions permit, and whether the operating history is long enough and clean enough to stand in for market data that does not exist. Answer both with documents and the file moves. Send the rent roll and the trailing twelve months and we will tell you which multifamily lenders are sharpest on your property, and what multifamily financing looks like at that size.
Vermont Apartment Loan Types We Serve
We arrange financing across Vermont for:
- Urban high-rise apartment buildings
- Suburban garden apartment complexes
- Small apartment buildings with 5+ units
- Underlying cooperative apartment loans
- Portfolios of small apartment and rental properties
- Mixed-use and other multifamily property
Apartment Loans Across Vermont
We arrange apartment loans throughout Vermont. Burlington, South Burlington, Winooski, Essex, Williston, Colchester, Montpelier, Barre, Rutland, Bennington, Brattleboro, St. Albans, Middlebury, St. Johnsbury and Newport are all financed through the same agency, bank, credit union and FHA programs. What changes from one Vermont market to the next is the depth of the comparable data, the age of the stock and whether Act 250 touches the property, not the shape of the file.
For larger balances see our Vermont multifamily loans. For office, retail, industrial and owner occupied property see Vermont commercial mortgages, and nationwide we lend in most major U.S. cities.
Recent Apartment Loan Closings
A sample of apartment and multifamily loans we have arranged for investors nationwide.
Other Property & Loan Types We Finance in Vermont
As a full-service commercial mortgage broker, we arrange Vermont financing across every major property and loan type:
We consider commercial loan requests of all sizes, beginning at $1,500,000.
What Our Clients Say
“I am a veterinarian who purchased an existing practice. I was surprised to find a company that offered 100% financing at a good rate, with great terms and rates for medical office financing.”
Carol K. · Chicago, IL“I spoke to several commercial lenders before finding Select Commercial. They got me a lower rate and their service was exceptional. If you need a multifamily loan, you need to talk to Stephen.”
Nathan B. · Philadelphia, PA“Select Commercial was very helpful with my multifamily mortgage. Stephen went over several options and we came up with the best lender to meet my needs. I got the funds and also lowered my payments.”
Gary M. · Portland, OR“Select Commercial offered 100% financing for my medical practice when my bank would have required 20% down. They delivered something my bank could not, and handled everything professionally.”
John C. · Boston, MAGet Your Vermont Apartment Loan Quote
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